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Sam and I sit in the Adams Morgan Tatte. As the late afternoon traffic rolls by, we chat about the ideal time to network, observance’s relationship to faith, Petworth’s standup comedy scene, Shabbat, and making a difference through your career.
Samuel:…good catch. I had not realized that we never settled on a location.
Sam: Everything in my life is on a to-do list that runs four to 12 days [behind]. I remember when I said I was going to do something, but it’s going to take a few days to get to it.
Samuel: I’m in the same boat. Are you like a super-organized, Type A person?
Sam: No. My approach to organization is what I would call “minimal.” I used to work in data analysis. My job was sitting there by myself, working on my stuff for three years. I joked to people that I think I had fewer than 50 email threads in my entire history. But now the work I do is constantly meeting and chatting with tons of different people, so it requires more organization and a better organizational system.
Samuel: What’s the new job?
Sam: I lead a very small organization called the Jewish Social Impact Network. What I’m focused on right now is helping people build careers focused on making a meaningful difference in the world. I do a lot of career advising, basically helping people think through what direction they want to go and what their options are, connecting them to resources, introducing them to people who I think could mentor them.
Every few years, I feel like I have to come back to the question of what role I want Judaism to play in my life. My predecessor led a fellowship program that I participated in as a fellow – I was making a career change at the time, exploring and figuring out what direction to take things, and hadn’t really found a Jewish community yet, so I thought [the fellowship] would be an opportunity to think about it all. Next thing I knew, my predecessor ended up going to Harvard Law, and I interviewed for the job. It’s just not a direction I ever expected life to take me, but it’s been a challenge, and it’s been fun, and it’s been rewarding.
Then, recently, I’ve started writing a Substack that develops some of the intellectual framework that underpins the programs and perspective that I have on impact-focused careers.
Samuel: How’s this work – especially since so much of it seems to be advising other people on their careers and decisions – showing up in your own life?
Sam: A ton of my first year was just networking and learning. I’d chat with people and try to learn from their experience and get some advice. There was a lot of quickly downloading a lot of thinking and information and reading. For me personally, it’s caused some frustration actually because there’s a big part of me that wishes I’d come across this stuff 10 years ago! That reinforces that I think there’s a lot of value in [the work]; if I can help someone else discover that thing 10 years earlier than they might otherwise have, then that’s paying it forward and making up for lost time.
It’s also been quite exciting and motivating to learn that there are all these smart people who have built a lot of compelling ideas I can adapt specifically for a Jewish audience. Our tradition is so rich and deep, and there are so many ideas and concepts in there to put in conversation with what’s going on in the world. What do I make of my place in the world? How do I act in it?
There’s this really big opportunity there to challenge people to think more deeply about what their values imply that they should try to accomplish. I think about the 20th century American Jewish liberal consensus that was, I think, this amazing and powerful set of values and social and political perspectives. That framework that developed and coalesced at that time is kind of going out of date. It’s time to replace it with something new, and so I’m hoping to be a part of the intellectual project of figuring that out.
Samuel: You mentioned networking a bit earlier. Something I hear all the time is that, when you’re looking for a job, or you’re at these job fairs and conferences, those interactions can feel so transactional and surface-level. How do you avoid that?
Sam: There’s a lot of things in life that are best done before you really need them. Like, we learned a lot of these lessons painfully during the pandemic – a lot of public health and infrastructure and science is needed before the thing happens. Networking is a lot like that. The best time to network is when you don’t urgently need a job, and the best forms of networking are often ones that aren’t oriented around super direct goals. If you are looking for a job, you can still approach new people from a place of curiosity about who they are and what they do, not just what you can get from them.
It’s like being single; you don’t come to every first date thinking about whether you’re going to marry this person. Network with the goal of meeting interesting people who care about important things, who care about problems you care about, and the results will follow naturally.
Samuel: What’s your Jewish community look like now?
Sam: I’ve been in DC for five years now. I really like it here, and it’s just an always-evolving question. I’m always figuring it out. I’m a member of DC Minyan, which I really enjoy. I find myself traveling a lot for various reasons, which is a barrier to more regularly attending stuff. So it’s a little in and out, but I do really like that and enjoy having the chat. I’ve also really enjoyed getting to know some of the people at Moishe House Columbia Heights. Some of my closest Jewish friends don’t live in DC, so it’s kind of scattered.
Samuel: What feels really alive in your Jewish practice?
Sam: Shabbat is at the core of what being Jewish means to me in a lot of ways. I do my best. I try to light candles and make kiddush every week. I’m not highly religious as a matter of belief system, but I enjoy observing the religion. There’s a lot of beauty in observance and in our tradition, and I think those of us who find meaning in that should be unapologetic about it.
Samuel: I’m really interested in the idea that observance can have value even without belief.
Sam: Religion is social technology. I don’t know if, as a historical matter, belief in God and tenets of religion emerged from the socially useful aspects of religion, but I find it plausible that the social, communal system is more core than the belief. Ritual and tradition has a lot of value for identity formation and organizing groups of people. Almost regardless of the content of those rituals and traditions. It helps cohesion and mutual understanding and trust. Like, I’m sure if I were born into another tradition, I’d feel this way about the contents of that different tradition. But there’s a lot of beauty and value in the specifics of what Judaism is – it’s had so much time and so many contexts in which to be refined and changed.
And when ideas or practices remain core over time – like Shabbat – I think it suggests that there’s something really, really powerful and beneficial to us as individuals and communities for having that specific practice. We’re not just connected to the people around us, but we’re connected to the Jewish past. We’re connected to a sense of the future world to come. The way ritual can create stability and comfort and that connection to time, it’s a source of inspiration and sustenance in your life.
Samuel: Alright, a couple quick ones to close. You live in Petworth. What’s something you love in Petworth?
Sam: I could sing Petworth’s praises for a long time. The first thing that comes to mind is Room 808. It’s a cool community institution, and DC has a surprisingly awesome comedy culture, and it’s so cool that I get that right on my block.
Samuel: You can bring any three people to Shabbat dinner. Who are you bringing?
Sam: Abraham Joshua Heschel, Randy Clarke, and my favorite person to have at any Jewish event: my friend Anna Levin Rosen. She’s great at bringing people together and creating Jewish community.
Samuel: Last one. Finish the sentence: When Jews of the DMV gather…
Sam: There’s always a connection that’s like: Someone in the room used to work with someone that someone else knows. There’s always one of those connections that can only come from the intersection of Jewish geography and DC’s whole company town vibe.
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