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Eli and I slide into seats beneath a large plastic floral at the 9th Street Maman. Over iced drinks, we chat about Eli’s remounted Jewish Monthly Article Club, how couples therapy helps us navigate conflict, public transit, loneliness, and why he’s looking forward to Yom Kippur.
Samuel: What brought you to the DMV?
Eli: I moved out here in 2016 for a job. I was out of college and looking for something to do, and this cool non-profit I’d followed for a while had an opening. I lived here for three years, met my wife, and fell in love with the DC area. I moved back to California for graduate school. Then, my wife and I were thinking about where we want to settle, and we both felt pretty strongly that we wanted to come back here.
Samuel: What did you miss about DC?
Eli: Not the weather. But I missed people being in-the-know. I loved being in a place where everyone sort of vaguely knows what’s going on around the country and around the world. People in California tended to be pretty myopic around the tech world. Here, everybody sort of knows what else is going on.
Another major thing is the metro. I am absolutely a metro evangelist and enthusiast. Public transit in America has become a big interest of mine. Not having a driving commute has been such a pleasure – it’s allowed me to relax and, honestly, my love for articles started the first time I lived here because I had a metro ride. There was no wifi, no service at the time, so it was like: I can read articles!
Samuel: Great transition – I was going to ask about your article club, which is just about to have its first meeting in the new iteration. So, what brought you to start this project originally, and why bring it back now?
Eli: On a shameless, selfish level, I really wanted to get together and talk about cool ideas with other people in the community, friends, strangers, et cetera. I always loved the idea of a book club, but I find it very intimidating to commit to a book a month. That’s a significant barrier to entry for me, whereas a long article is maybe 40 minutes of reading. It’s not that much. So I actually [started the article club] when my Open Doors Fellowship was happening. This was my capstone. They asked us to think: What is a niche that you want to fill? What’s something you wish existed but doesn’t? This was it for me.
And, my hope at the time, in 2017 or 2018, was…you know, discourse across lines of difference was not at a great place in the country.
Samuel: Luckily, we’ve solved that.
Eli: Yeah, it’s totally fixed now. But I thought it was really important for people to be able to get together and talk about important things, bounce ideas around, think about the country. And coming back to DC, the world is different. I am different. I think the additional niche that I hope to contribute to in some way is [countering] the loneliness epidemic, which is something I think has been getting a lot more attention. People in their 20s and 30s report that they’re very lonely and struggle to find community. That’s something I’ve experienced at times. My hope is that – though the core of the group is still bringing people together across difference, talking about things, having cool discussions – I hope this will be one of those places where people can open up, get to know each other, and look forward to once a month.
Samuel: How are you, as an organizer in this space, planning to navigate conflict when it comes up?
Eli: I have two answers: the first is that I’m filtering the articles [we read] to not be on a particularly partisan topic. I want us to talk about things that are interesting and matter but aren’t part of a traditional blue-red split. Like, the first article we ever talked about was about Amish communities and how they don’t have one governing board as to which technologies get adopted and which don’t; each community votes for themselves, and there are differences. I think you’d have a hard time pegging how people would break on that topic just based on their personal politics. I think that allows people to step outside their comfort zone because they know they’re not going hammered down.
The other answer is that there’s a pretty heavy opt-in bias, right? People are coming to this group because they want to have open discussions. They want to know people and bounce ideas around. So if conflict comes up, my day job is doing couples therapy – I’m used to refereeing high conflict and high intensity. But I don’t anticipate that coming up here.
Samuel: Do you think conflict is a good thing? Do you root for at least a little bit of intensity?
Eli: Totally. I certainly hope to get people with different ideologies. You want a mix of different ideas. On an individual level, that helps us grow in our own ideas. You might change your opinion. You might just adjust the edges of it. Even if you don’t change your opinion, now you can be really confident that you actually hold that opinion; you know why. I’ll say also, from personal experience, I’ve been in a number of spaces where ideologically I was in the minority, and sometimes I came out feeling even more confident and strong in my opinions. Or, there were ones I changed. Like: I had never heard some of these really thoughtful critiques, and I actually buy them!
Samuel: Couples therapist seems like a fascinating day job. How has that work changed you as a person?
Eli: One thing I really like to do in couples therapy is understanding what people’s motives are. On the outside, something you said or did seems really awful. But if you can go in with curiosity, you understand that it actually made a lot of sense – because that’s the only move they’ve ever known, or they’re doing what they were taught to do, or the intention was good and the execution was awful. People have different families, different traumas, and they come in and can’t understand why this other person is behaving this way. Why do they believe this thing? I’m a little less interested in the end point, and more interested in how you got there.
Samuel: What are you looking forward to during the High Holidays?
Eli: This might be a real hot take but my favorite Jewish holiday is Yom Kippur.
Samuel: Honestly, I hear that from people all the time.
Eli: I love the reflective part of it. I find it to be really, really meaningful. I do fast, and I go to synagogue, but the most spiritually meaningful part of it is the reflection. Growing up, my family did the tradition where you reach out and ask for forgiveness and apologize to people in your life who you might have let down, and I really take that seriously. I reach out to people I’ve let down, or [for whom] I didn’t show up in a way I should have. Maybe we lost touch, and I played a part in that. I’ve actually had multiple friendships saved via Yom Kippur apology where we were teetering or I hadn’t been my kindest, and it totally changed the trajectory of our relationship.
There are so few times and circumstances in our society where there’s a built-in way to apologize for something. Wounds just lay there. Yom Kippur is this beautiful opportunity. I love it.
Samuel: Does leaning into that practice get easier over time?
Eli: The easy ones are always easy. The hard ones are always hard. But I always feel better, personally, after putting my best foot forward and giving it a shot.
Samuel: A few quick ones to close. What’s something you’re bad at?
Eli: Drawing.
Samuel: You’re hosting Shabbat dinner and can bring any three people. Who are you inviting?
Eli: Abraham Lincoln, Jonathan Haidt, and David Brooks.
Samuel: Last one. Finish the sentence: When Jews of the DMV gather…
Eli: They schmooze!
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