The Arts that Made Us

0:06SPEAKER_01:Welcome to Finding Our Why, a podcast by the Jewish Independent. I'm Itai Flesher, joining you from Jerusalem.

0:13SPEAKER_00:And I'm Courtney Winter Peters, joining you from the Gold Coast.

0:17SPEAKER_01:We both grew up in the Melbourne Jewish community where we danced Odla Hafti Day at many bar mitzvah and weddings from Tudor Court to Leonda.

0:24SPEAKER_00:But our journeys took us in very different directions.

0:28SPEAKER_01:Yet we found ourselves asking the same question.

0:31SPEAKER_00:At a time when so many conversations in the Jewish world are focused on anti-Semitism, security, and survival, we found ourselves looking for deeper meaning and grounding.

0:41SPEAKER_01:For the rituals, stories, values, and traditions that have sustained Jewish life for generations.

0:47SPEAKER_00:Not just what we're fighting against, but what we're living for.

0:50SPEAKER_01:Welcome to Finding a Way. And we're going to look at things like paintings, music, poetry, dance, books, films, podcasts that have shaped our Jewish identity and maybe also yours too.

1:34SPEAKER_00:I understand why this is a really important topic, especially for Yui Tai. As we we've spoken about a lot, how much music means to you, and it's a big part of my life too. But in preparing for today, I became like acutely aware that Jewish music hasn't been a part of my life for a while.

1:51SPEAKER_01:And do you feel like your Jewish identity is not as full because it doesn't have the arts as part of your identity?

2:00SPEAKER_00:I don't think so. And I'm looking forward to kind of exploring that a little bit more today. But I guess I think it's really important to hear from you. Why were you so excited about today's topic in particular?

2:11SPEAKER_01:So when I think about things that give meaning into my life, and we've talked about a lot of them, you know, travel and rituals and synagogue and all of those things. But for me, like music is, I guess, a bit more personal because you don't do it so much in a public place now that everyone has their own headphones. But I think music, podcast, culture, books is such a huge part of my identity. And you mentioned paintings, like I often feel like when I walk into a home and aside from saying hello to the people that I'm meeting, the first thing I do is I look at the walls and I notice is there a picture of Jerusalem, or is there a picture of Aboriginal art or is there a picture of maybe a cute family photo or something from a wedding?

2:57SPEAKER_01:Is there a picture of travel? Is there a picture of maybe a deceased relative? And I learn so much about a person by the art they have hanging on their walls because I think the art that you put on your walls tells a story about yourself and it tells also a story about how you want others to see you. And in a podcast where we're talking about Jewish meaning and how do we tell the story of who we are, I thought we have to have an episode about the arts because it's a big way of how we represent ourselves.

3:31SPEAKER_00:I don't disagree. When I stop and think about it, music is a big part of my life. I guess it's just I looked around at my walls because I know that you told me that experience that you have when you walk into people's houses, and I looked around at my walls and went, ooh, we have a lot of art and we love our art and we love the colour, but there actually isn't any, and I'm putting in an inverted commas, like Jewish art. What you will see when you come into my house.

3:58SPEAKER_00:And look, I'm also mindful that when we packed to leave Melbourne and to come to Queensland, we actually did it in two weeks. We came back from our trip on the road, our four-month trip. We had two weeks to kind of pack and work out what we want to bring for us for what might only be a year and what we wanted to send in storage. And it felt kind of like our own little exodus, like pack what you can and bring what you can. So I was just really suddenly aware of what were the things we bought.

4:25SPEAKER_00:We didn't bring any family photos. I don't know why we didn't, but we did bring like our Jewish artifacts, and we have this one cupboard in our kitchen where we're renting that has a glass wall, glass panel, and I call it our Jew cupboard, affectionately, and it's got Ashabak candles, our wine cups, colourboard, colour cover, like these were all gifts to us, either from our wedding or handed down to us from grandparents. So that's displayed, and that you can see very clearly, but it's not the art on my walls.

5:01SPEAKER_00:And I really had this moment of listening to you going, Oh, does that mean I'm less engaged? Do I have less Jewish culture in my life? I have been stopping to think about it, and what I realize is for me it might show up differently. No, there's the food in our house, color, dips, pickles, like all these very like quintessential Jewish things and the and the smells. And when I think of Jewish music, honestly, I like I don't know what to look up. I'm really grateful to you because you shared some playlists with me, and I think maybe we should share a few more today in the show notes.

5:34SPEAKER_00:But I kind of am like, do people still still listen to David Brother? Is that you know my my knowledge kind of stopped at the end?

5:41SPEAKER_01:David Brother is still rocking it out. He's pretty remarkable. But yeah, there's been new songs uh that have come into my life since then. But I just wanted to reflect on what you said about the moving to the Gold Coast. So when we moved from Melbourne to Jerusalem, we also only could take four suitcases and had you pack your whole life into four suitcases. So there's obviously a lot that we left behind, and we didn't bring any of the family photos.

6:07SPEAKER_01:And I'm thinking now the only art that I bought was the indigenous art that I collected when I was on Yori Yoruba Biachad because I knew that's art that I was never going to find in Jerusalem. It's a picture of a turtle, which is the totem animal for the for the ordinary nation. So it was important for me to have like a few of these pieces of indigenous art in my home in Jerusalem. And I knew that the family photos, you know, we take new photos and the kids would get older, and now we've got plenty of photos of the kids on the walls as well.

6:38SPEAKER_01:But yeah, it's interesting what you take with you when you're very limited in what you can take. And you still have your Jew cupboard, you still have your shofar and your kiddush cups and your menorah and that sort of thing, but it's in one place, it's not everywhere. And I'm wondering if that's because is your Jewish identity one cupboard and it's not everywhere? Do you think there's a metaphor there?

7:01SPEAKER_00:Just quickly, I just wanted for people listening, Yoda Yoda Bayachad is a program that stand-up ran with Mount Scopus that you were actually really pivotal you develop. Am I correct?

7:13SPEAKER_02:Yes, that's right.

7:14SPEAKER_00:And Yoda Yoda refers to the community that kind of borders Victoria and New South Wales. So for our listeners. But back to your question metaphor, are you trying to say that my my Jewish identity is only Yeah?

7:31SPEAKER_01:I'm just curious, why is it in a cupboard and not spread out all over the house?

7:35SPEAKER_00:I see it as like how nicely displayed is it? Like I got really excited that there was a glass cupboard that I could put everything in and have it, and that I get to say to the kids, oh, here's our Jew cupboard. Sounds like a really ridiculous way to say it when I say it out loud. But here's our special cupboard with all our things that we can look at together. When you talk about arts and culture, though, you're talking about music and books and the art on your walls.

8:05SPEAKER_00:And I think for me, culture is also the TV shows that I watched growing up. I was really trying to think what were those cultural moments that really had an impact on me. And what struck me was how excited I used to get when I saw Jewish people on TV. And I think partly that's got something to do with when you see yourself represented or someone of your people represented, especially as a minority, like how exciting that was. And I think there's a lot more representation now.

8:33SPEAKER_00:But when we were growing up, I think it was maybe more rare. There was the nanny, which was like a really key example, and I loved seeing the family dynamics, the humour, the neurosis, the noise, the focus on food. It felt like I understood it and it felt like I was in on the joke.

8:49SPEAKER_06:Right.

8:49SPEAKER_00:And then I'll also like Seth Cohen on the OC as like the cute, openly Jewish character that everyone wanted. That was highlight for me.

9:01SPEAKER_01:He's the guy that invented Chrismoka, isn't he?

9:03SPEAKER_00:He's the guy that invented Chrismaka, and it's that's still a term.

9:08SPEAKER_01:Look, I think I love also seeing, especially in American TV shows, it's very rare in Australian shows. Maybe John Saffron will make an appearance here and there, but you don't often see kind of Jewish characters. But I think there's an interesting phenomenon now of taking a non-Jewish character and then making their culture Jewish. So, for example, like Dolly Parton recently passed away, and then I'm scrolling on Instagram, and all of a sudden I'm hearing Dolly Parton in Hebrew.

10:10SPEAKER_00:That's so funny because I'm hearing Dolly Parton in Yiddish.

10:14SPEAKER_01:Oh wow.

10:35SPEAKER_05:Arbeiten, what the Zoomen nach dem Tommy's not name, nicht boss ohne, ich gehe neugierig, ich gehe neuen, you can finster, finster in the eye, not too far.

10:55SPEAKER_01:So it's very interesting that after this amazing celebrity passes away, I'm getting Dolly Parton in Hebrew videos and you're getting Dolly Parton in Yiddish videos. What does that say?

11:04SPEAKER_00:Our culture is everywhere. But it actually makes me wonder what makes art Jewish? Is it just that the artist is Jewish? Is it that it has to be a painting of a Hamsa or a picture of Jerusalem? Is it that it has to be in Hebrew? What is it that makes it Jewish?

11:24SPEAKER_01:Right. So when you hear Jolene in Hebrew or Yiddish, it's still Jolene, it's not a Jewish song, but what makes it Jewish is the language. So sometimes just speaking in Ladino, Arabic, Hebrew, any any one of the languages that Jews have spoken for many years, Yiddish, then that makes something Jewish, but something to be Jewish, then it has to have a Jewish theme or reference a Jewish festival or a Jewish idea, or just be performed by a Jew as well.

11:50SPEAKER_00:And what about the art on your walls? Do you have it there because it's by a Jewish artist, or it's very clearly of something that's Jewish, like that someone coming into your house would know exactly what it is?

12:02SPEAKER_01:So I think I have Jewish art on my walls for three reasons. I think the first is a talking point. So like I've got next to my front door this series of postcards called Tel Aviv versus Jerusalem by City Cat Stories, and it's a series of 18 postcards, and on the left is a stereotype of Tel Aviv, and on the right is a stereotype of Jerusalem. So for example, the first one is Golden Arches, and for Jerusalem it's the Ten Commandments, and for Tel Aviv it's Makers, and then there's one of a little ball, and for Jerusalem it's gefilterfish and Tel Aviv it's sushi, and often people come in and then they go, Oh yeah, they I get that stereotype, that's funny.

12:41SPEAKER_01:And so it's a conversation starter. I also have, I'd say, beautiful photos and paintings of doors and windows. I think Jerusalem just has amazing historic doors and windows. I love having photos of them, and we have some like a beautiful tapestry from the Armenian quarter of the old city. I also have a Palestinian Tatris that I've got from Ramallah. So I've got all sorts of things that were like I guess my identity building, and then of our family, our Sinpurim costumes, moments of joy, Eitan's Bam Mitzvah, those sorts of things as well.

13:16SPEAKER_00:They're all really beautiful and meaningful pieces, and I there's certainly artwork that we have that is really meaningful to us. Some of it's just that we like, but I'm just interested, do you hang that artwork because you love it or because you feel you you need to have it up there?

13:33SPEAKER_01:I think when I come into a house that has no bookshelves or no paintings or no souvenirs that have been collected from travel or even fridge magnets, I feel like there's something missing. Like I'm not seeing the whole person. Almost like seeing a person without clothes. Like the art is part of what makes you who you are. So yeah, it's something I notice, and it's not just in people's houses, even when I go to a school or a building or a synagogue, I pay so much attention to the signs they put on the wall.

14:06SPEAKER_01:I remember actually one synagogue I went to, there was a very small printed sign, and it said, Imkante dabel efotitbalel, which means if you talk in this building, where are you gonna pray? Because I guess it was a synagogue where more people are coming to talk to their friends than talk to God. And I was like, that's such a clever sign to have on the wall, and not just to shush people, but to make them think about what's the purpose of a synagogue.

14:32SPEAKER_01:And then at other times, I guess when you're in a room where you know you're gonna be bored, like a lecture theater or something, you know. Sometimes people put up a roll-up or they have something on the screen. I give a lot of lectures, I always use a slideshow, even if I'm not addressing the slideshow, sometimes it's just a photo or it's a quote, or it's it's just something because I know that visually people can't always pay attention just by listening to someone, they need to see something as well.

14:59SPEAKER_01:So and I guess I'm like that too. So I think the art is part of being a visual learner and experience the world visually, and just to come back to the question of who I am. So, yes, I'm Australian, yes, I'm a Jerusalemite, yes, I'm Jewish, and so I want all of those things to, I guess, appear in my home to tell the story of my identity.

15:26SPEAKER_00:Ite, I've been listening to you talk about the art on your wall, and particularly as someone who made Aliyah, or you actually moved back from Australia to Jerusalem. And I was really thinking about the contrast between how Israelis show culture there and as opposed to like diaspora Jewish culture, and I was thinking back for me, highlights was in fact, it still is Israeli dancing, although I don't seem to have enough chances to engage and hit the dance floor in that way as I'd like to, although there is a Gold Coast Israeli dancing group happening soon.

16:05SPEAKER_00:I know. Watch this space.

16:07SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna you've got to get all the kids there for school this week, they've got to try it out. Yeah.

16:12SPEAKER_00:I'll trick them. But it it just made me think back, like that was my way of engaging. I know we've spoken about our experiences at youth movements, but you go to any Jewish simcha, the horror is such a highlight. I even think back to my wedding, I was so excited for that. It was, it went on a bit long. I actually had to tell we had put together music to be played by a DJ, and I think it was like 40 minutes worth, and after just over 20 minutes, I was sweating and so uncomfortably hot that I had to be like, stop it, or I'm gonna pass out.

16:43SPEAKER_00:But it's always such a highlight. And is that something that's just a diaspora thing? What does culture look like for people living in Israel?

16:53SPEAKER_01:So I haven't seen anyone in Israel dance a horror for many years.

16:57SPEAKER_00:Not even at a wedding or a bundle?

17:00SPEAKER_01:I mean, it depends on where you go, but it's not so common at weddings anymore. No, it's more DJ, Omeradam, kind of that sort of pop music vibe. The circle dancing thing is not a thing. Maybe if you're like over seven here and on a kibbutz, or some people do it on the on the tail at in Tel Aviv, but it's it's not so much a thing anymore. I often think that the diaspora has this idealized version of Israel, and the Israeli dancing and the horrors and Odla Hafti Dae is a big part of that, as is singing Hinematovannaim and David Broz, and you know, stuff that we heard 30 years ago.

17:38SPEAKER_01:But I think Israeli culture is it's in Hebrew, it's in Arabic, there's now a lot of Haredi music as well. Like it's much more diverse than I think what you would get in the diaspora.

17:48SPEAKER_00:So I guess it makes me wonder what are the ways we can connect to culture? How important is culture in our search for why, and what are the ways we can pass it on if we're not learning language? Like there have to be ways we can engage. You know, not everyone is learning Hebrew around the world.

18:04SPEAKER_01:So I think film is fantastic. Well, like what's your favorite Australian film?

18:09SPEAKER_00:Uh I'm thinking like Muriel's Wedding, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. That's where my mind went.

18:14SPEAKER_01:The castle.

18:16SPEAKER_00:The castle, yeah.

18:17SPEAKER_01:If I wanted to teach someone about Australia, I'd watch those three movies. Now, I know probably the most famous Israeli thing on Netflix now, right now, is Fauda, which I have a lot of issues with. So, but putting that aside, something like Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, which is a show that I I love, and actually my book launch happened in the place where that was filmed in in the Albright Institute in East Jerusalem. But I think seeing like a film or a TV show or series in Hebrew, which you don't need to speak the language to enjoy, or listening to Yishai Ribo while you're cooking Shabbat dinner, or having Idain Reichel on when you're having a dance party night with the girls with a bit of Omerda mixed in there as well, and not just Yachabi Tel Aviv, there's more songs than that.

19:03SPEAKER_00:Not according to Australian Jews.

19:05SPEAKER_01:Uh yes, it's just Yah Bibi Tel Aviv's from the Pride March, I think. Yes. But bringing in that culture is like you don't need the language necessarily to do. It's obviously maybe not on as a richer level, but it's something that you can do quite easily when you're having a movie night with the kids, like watch something in in in Hebrew or in Yiddish or Ladino, or I guess there's less Yiddish and Ladino stuff on Netflix, but definitely there's a lot of Hebrew, yeah.

19:31SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm definitely searching for those ways to engage. And honestly, it's it's sitting down and having these conversations with you every week that's making me stop and think, okay, I'm living here, I've made a choice to be away from community. This is the constant battle I'm having, and everyone's hearing me process it in real time. And in preparing for today, I had this moment of, oh, books. Like that's such a simple way. My daughter, who's 10, is constantly reading, reading all the time, and she's loving Greek mythology.

20:07SPEAKER_00:And I said to her last night, what about reading some books about Jewish people in history? And she kind of looked at me funny and I said, No, no, no, we'll find some good ones. So I don't know, maybe that's something you can recommend.

20:19SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I just want to give a shout out to my neighbor Julie Silverstein, who's also a dear friend, and she wrote this amazing book called Chutzbah Girls, which is kind of based on Rebel Girls, and so it's like a hundred stories of awesome Jewish women that uh have done fantastic things throughout history. So that's great, but mitzvah gift and something if you're looking for role models. But yeah, for me, I can say books as have been something that have definitely helped me, I guess, imagine impossible things.

20:50SPEAKER_01:I remember one of the earlier books that I read that was like formative in my Jewish identity was a book called As a Driven Leaf by Rabbi Milton Steinberg. It was actually written in 1939, so it's a very old book, but it's about this character from the Talmud called Elisha Ben Abuya, who is a Jewish religious leader who abandons rabbinic Judaism and looks to find meaning in Greek Hellenism, which is like the antithesis of Judaism. And the whole book is about the tension between uh faith, the faith in which he was raised, and sort of logic and reason, which he sees as contradicting his faith.

21:27SPEAKER_01:And then as he moves towards Greek Hellenism, there's a tension between being loyal to a community and and assimilating. And even though it's set 2,000 years ago in the time the Talmud was written, those are very perennial themes of Jewish conversation. But what I loved about that book is it humanized the Talmud. Because until that point, when I read the Talmud, I was like, who are all these like dead bearded Jewish guys? Like I don't connect to any of them, I don't understand the rivalry between them.

21:58SPEAKER_01:And then you read a book and you see Them in 360 full colour, and your mind imagines their conversations and what they eat and the arguments they have with each other. And it made me think wow, like the tensions and the arguments we have today, we've been having for a really long time. And there's also some really interesting solutions and ways of solving hard problems that come up from that story that I still think of to this day. Do you have a book like that?

22:26SPEAKER_00:I just want to make a comment. Firstly, I think that Talmud is becoming like the third character somehow in the podcast. But what I wanted to say is so the book I'm reading at the moment, I've I think I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, is The Amen Effect by Rabbi Sharon Brouse.

22:43SPEAKER_06:Yeah.

22:43SPEAKER_00:But I think what I'm also finding when I'm picking up a book at the moment is I'm looking for something really lighthearted. I'm looking for complete switch off, easy read because I'm finding everything else in our world, like social media, the news is so full on. So even what you're talking about then is it's arguments and it's a deep dive. Maybe there's a part of me that's not picking up. I recognize this is probably a simplistic view of Jewish writing, but maybe I'm not picking up Jewish writing because I don't want to engage in the intensity all the time.

23:16SPEAKER_01:Yeah, definitely all the books that I was going to recommend are not beach reads.

23:21SPEAKER_00:That's right. It's it's it's time. It's time for me to switch back on.

23:25SPEAKER_01:Although there's a book actually I read recently called Heart of a Stranger by Rabbi Angela Buchdal, and she's the first Asian American rabbi. She's the rabbi of Central Synagogue, one of the sort of largest, most influential synagogues in the United States. And the book is about her life story, about how she became a rabbi. But in between it, there's different sort of Torah teachings. And it's a good, almost like if you were converting to Judaism, I I would recommend this book for you because it gives you a sense of her journey into this religion, and also it gives you the little bits of wisdom that are very bite-sized and easy to consume, and it doesn't have that all that tension with you know anti-Semitism and Holocaust.

24:08SPEAKER_01:I mean, I think they're a bit of a one line.

24:20SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and it comes back to the reason why TV shows and movies form that really key part of culture for me. Because whether it's like you're in on the joke or you just understand or you're seeing representation, it speaks to my heart. But one thing I wanted to say now was music is such an important part of my life. So I look forward to you sharing some more playlists. But you and I often get into conversations about pop culture. There's a lot of talk about Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift and the impact these people have on our lives as songwriters and the meaning behind their work, because nothing speaks to me more than like a combination of pop and Jewish culture.

25:06SPEAKER_00:So I thought now might be a nice time to play a clip of your own singing, of Itai singing Adonalam to Olivia Rodrigo's one of her latest songs, Silly Song.

25:18SPEAKER_01:Stupid song.

25:20SPEAKER_00:I should remember that.

25:53SPEAKER_01:So what you just heard there was me and my friend Charlotte in Jerusalem singing a stupid song walking down Tarka Mesila in Jerusalem at seven in the morning. And I think one of the reasons we did that was because firstly, I just heard that album last month and I loved it. It's called You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love.

26:14SPEAKER_02:And I love her songwriting, and I think a lot of her songs you just rings out something in me and whenever I give you the song, I just want to put the wings on and run and fly, and so I thought let's make it do it.

26:27SPEAKER_00:We love a bit of joy.

26:29SPEAKER_01:We definitely do.

26:31SPEAKER_00:So as we near the end of our episode, I wanted to ask you a final question before I ask for some recommendations. I was originally gonna ask you can culture be one of the ways we remain Jewish even when we're not consciously practicing Judaism? But I guess the flip side is also can we be practicing Judaism without engaging in culture?

26:53SPEAKER_01:It's like chicken and the egg. I don't know what comes first, but I think if you're a religious Jew, then you can connect to Judaism just through maybe prayer and ritual. And if you're a cultural Jew, you can connect to Judaism just through music and art and books. And if you're a traveling Jew, maybe you'll connect to Judaism just by visiting synagogues in Milan and Rome. And we've looked at all of those, and we've looked at grief as well. Some people will not do anything Jewish until they have to say Kaddish.

27:26SPEAKER_01:So I think different people connect in different ways, but I definitely think uh Jewish identity is richer when you have all of those. We started this appetite by talking about horrors of Baum mitzvah. So one of the other things that bae mitzvahs are big on is food. And you walk into Tudor Court in my childhood, I don't know if it's there anymore, or Leonda, and you see a table of more food than you could ever imagine. And it's not just carrots and chumus, it's the it's now it's the sushi rolls and the chicken things and the dumplings and whatever you have.

27:58SPEAKER_01:And even the food is like we could all stay alive by just eating the same food every day. But we eat a variety of different foods because it makes our lives richer to have a different taste on our palate.

28:11SPEAKER_00:I'm not sure why I was originally so nervous for this episode. I was too focused on the books I'm reading, the art on my wall, but it's been this really nice reminder, especially in what you said then about cultural Judaism. There are ways that I can engage and engage my kids, especially in really unique and creative ways. And yeah, maybe it is just the music we play in the background.

28:38SPEAKER_01:I was actually recently asked by Fathom Journal to write an article about my top ten Israeli songs. They feature different Israelis in this series, and so had thousands to choose from. It's like asking, What's your favourite child? But so anyway, I eventually came up with my top ten. But one of the songs that I put as the number one song was it's called Shrak Tikhayek by Yuvaldayan, which means May You Only Smile. I first came across it actually as an ad from our education ministry at a time when there was a lot of bullying going on at schools and they were trying to do this anti-bullying campaign, and so they got Yurvaldayan to sing this song in a school with hundreds of students.

29:16SPEAKER_01:And what about you? Do you have a go-to song?

29:19SPEAKER_00:I have a really beautiful Shabbat playlist that was given to me, but it's more like those collanal songs. So I can I'm happy to share that one. But I will give a shout out to my dad at this point because I know he'll be thinking his favourite song is Abinor Makenu and the Barbara Streisand version or the traditional one? I'm thinking more traditional. I don't know. I'm sure I'll be told otherwise. But yeah, I I think what's really interesting and what's really interesting to hear you talk about that song.

29:51SPEAKER_00:You're talking about that song that's in Hebrew, but it's not necessarily about anything.

29:57SPEAKER_01:No, it's not it's not about Israel or being Jewish, it's just in Hebrew and it became popular.

30:01SPEAKER_00:I think us in the diaspora just need better access to the music with to update our our music listening.

30:09SPEAKER_01:Totally. And maybe we'll finish off. I'll just play one little clip. You've probably heard throughout this series different clips of the Hinaini band that I was a part of in the year 2000. We also recorded an album back then at the SBS Studios as a way of teaching our Khanikim classic Zionist the Israeli Hebrew song. So we'll finish off with one of them here on this episode today.

31:06SPEAKER_00:I wanted to thank you for a really just uplifting chat today that was really full of joy and for dressing up. As everyone's heard, I love a theme, I love a costume, and we'll share some photos. Betty Tai and I got into our cultural party fun best today.

31:23SPEAKER_01:Definitely always fun to dress up, even though we're on different sides of the ocean. It was nice being in the room with you today.

31:30SPEAKER_02:And if you have any feedback, please write to us on our social media or at findingourwhy at the jewishindon.com.au. And if you love this podcast, I have other podcasts about Jewish culture, such as Ashamed to Win.

31:45SPEAKER_01:Hosted by Tammy Sussman and Shoshana Gottlieb Becker, who are two of the most creative and hilarious Jews I know, and their podcast is filled with not just pop culture recommendations, but also thoughts and ideas about how to bring Judaism to life in really beautiful ways. So that's definitely something to check out if you want to learn the Judaism that you didn't learn in Sunday school. We will see you all back next week, and until then, Shana Tova and Chevroletov.

32:14SPEAKER_03:Bye.