Can you be a Christian, and still be a Jew?

As a wise rabbi once said (It was Rabbi Susan Shankman, our very first episode), there as many ways to be Jewish as there are Jews. Well, friend-of-the-show Evan Feinberg is a living example of how one can live their "Jewishness"....as a Christian? Evan is Chairman of the Stand Together Foundation, and through the work he's done with non-profits like CarePortal, Points of Light, and Good Soil, among other things, he's kind of become "the faith guy" at work. We bonded when we met at Stand Together, both being obvious MOTs (members of the Tribe) and each time we worked on a project together, we'd have to spend the first few minutes trying to figure out the latest Gabers he'd discovered in his family tree and how the heck we must be related. TBD, by the way. I'll keep you posted. 

But, I discovered later: Evan is a practicing Christian. I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't met many Jews who converted away from Judaism, and I had some questions. Thankfully, he's here to tackle them and present from both perspectives, and I'm pretty confident he'll help complicate your thinking in the same satisfying ways he did mine. Evan is a huge proponent of volunteerism and service, and is starting a new position at Praxis, where he'll continue to share his message: the power that created you (and all things) also empowers you to be a creative force to do good in this world. If you don't know where to start, click any of the links above or go to Catchafire.org.

GLOSSARY

Christian apologetics: a branch of theology that uses logic and reason frameworks to defend the claims of Christianity.  

Tikkun Olam: “world repair,” is a concept that all human beings are responsible for one another and the world, and for repairing harm and damage through their actions, big or small.

Tzedakah: often translated as “charity,” it actually means “justice," reflecting the idea that things like having enough food to eat, shelter and dignity, and helping to provide those things is not charitable, it’s balancing the scales of justice. 

Redemptive Entrepreneurship is a concept used by Praxis which centers "creative restoration through sacrifice" to support ventures and individuals working to help solve cultural and societal problems through their organizations.

MORE

CS Lewis’ argument in favor of Christianity, sometimes called the Trilemma, popularized an approach that has been traced as far back as John the Apostle, using a logic framework to argue for the legitimacy of Christ a

Transcript

THIS IS AN AI GENERATED TRANSCRIPT. THE ROBOTS ARE HELPFUL BUT THEY'RE NOT PERFECT, PLEASE FORGIVE ANY MISTAKES!

Hannah Gaber  0:00  
Uh, I regret to inform you, the group chat did not track down our great auntie and uncle. Uh,

Evan Feinberg 1  0:09  
we will just have to assume that we're cousins then and obviously figure out the connection later.

Hannah Gaber  0:16  
Allow me to introduce Evan Feinberg, chair of the stand together Foundation, and fellow member of the tribe. When Evan and I first met, we bonded over our similarities in some ways, and our shared heritage. He's been really good at hunting down the Gabers in his family, and I not so good at figuring out how they fit into mine, but we're sure they do they must. But it wasn't until later that I found out Evan is a Christian. I will admit, this is kind of a new one for me. I have not met a lot of Jews who have left the faith to join Christianity. I've obviously met more who have done it the other way around, which could also be because I just am not really going to church all that often. But anyway, Evan was kind enough to share a little bit about his journey, and I think what he does most importantly is complicate our thinking. I mean, people are complicated. And as a wise Rabbi once said, There are as many ways to be Jewish as there are Jews in the world. It was Rabbi Shankman. She said it in our first episode. Go listen to it anyway. Thanks for joining us, and don't forget to check the show notes for some links about some of the things Evan's gonna mention, and as always, some terms that you may not have heard before. So welcome.

Evan Feinberg 1  1:29  
Well, it's so good to be with you. Hannah, just a huge fan of the podcast. My name is Evan Feinberg. We came to know each other because for the last 13 years, I've been working an organization called Stand together, and we had this incredible opportunity to work together. You produced a number of projects that I was working on with you and get to know you through that. My background is born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I moved down to Washington, DC. After college, I worked on Capitol Hill, and then I at one point, I moved back to Pittsburgh and ran for Congress and sort of got the political bug out of my system, came back to Washington, DC, and for about the last 13 years, been working in the stand together philanthropic community, until last week, when I sort of moved into just a board role at stand together. And I'm taking about a month off before starting a new job next month. And so, you know, I've got some some free time to spend talking about my Jewishness. That's

Hannah Gaber  2:25  
what I like to hear. Nice segue, yeah, you got it. That is awesome. So there is a question that we all must answer, you know, existentially, but mostly for the pod, which is what it means for you to be Jewish. Like, what does being Jewish look like to you?

Evan Feinberg 1  2:44  
Yeah, well, you know, I'm a believer that being Jewish is about being a part of a tribe, that we are a tribal people. And when you think of us as a tribal people, it's a little bit broader and more holistic of a view of what it means to be Jewish, then to think of it as a religion or a faith or just a heritage or just a culture, there's something about being a part of the Jewish people that has us deeply connected to 1000s of years of Jewish history and the millions of people who have been a part of of our people, and then a real solidarity with so many people today who are either born into our tribe or have chosen our tribe and and all the different aspects of it. So for me, it's it is all of those other things too. It is cultural, it is a heritage, it is a religion, it is sets of beliefs, it is a moral code. It's all of those things. But when you think of it as sort of part of being a part of a tribal people, I think it's a much richer concept.

Hannah Gaber  3:49  
I love that. And what a succinct way of explaining how we like see each other in the streets, and we're like, oh, you're an MOT and, you know, we just know what it's member of the tribe for, you know, our Jew curious friends. But I love that. How were you raised into thinking about that? Like, how were you raised into thinking about Judaism when you were growing up?

Evan Feinberg 1  4:07  
Yeah, so, you know, I was born into a Reform Jewish home in the South Hills, Pittsburgh. My parents are both 100% you know, line of David, members of the tribe, and so Judaism was, it was a big part of my family and my cultural heritage. I wouldn't say my parents were super serious about practicing their Judaism. So we weren't exactly going to every Friday night services or practicing spot at our home each week, but it was still an important part of our lives. So I became a Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13, I spent, you know, a solid year and a half of my life going to a bar Bat Mitzvah every single weekend, sometimes a couple. And those were the days, yeah, exactly. I don't think we should swap any stories from, uh, from those days. So what happens at Bar Mitzvah? Stays at Bar Mitzvahs. Yeah, that was my my thought exactly. So, being Jewish a big part of my upbringing. Hmm, but, you know, I, I questioned the sort of religious beliefs and practices of Judaism pretty quickly. I went to a very small synagogue in the middle of nowhere. We had, we had left the much larger synagogue with all my friends when I was in my early preteen years, because they had, they raised dues on us a handful of times, and it no longer made sense for us. And so I was the only Bar Mitzvah at my sort of remote synagogue that I then joined. And we did not have a regular Rabbi. We had a student Rabbi traveling down to Pittsburgh from New York once a month, and I was his first ever Bar Mitzvah. And so he took my Bar Mitzvah very, very seriously. Oh my so I had to jump through quite a lot of hoops service projects. And so you're fluent in Hebrew. Oh, my goodness. I feel like I had to, I had to lead prayers that I had never even heard before in a service, memorize the entire Torah, and I had to chant it too. I didn't, I didn't get his read, bizarre portion. So, you know. But regardless, during that time I was sort of did explore my beliefs, and I remember being just deeply unsatisfied with some of his answers. And that was my bar mitzvah was probably the start of a journey on what I believed about God and about the sort of tenants of the Jewish faith, and so, yeah, that led me to some pretty dramatic changes in my life over the course of my high school and then early in college years. Yeah,

Hannah Gaber  6:25  
it is a journey, right? It's always a journey. Spoiler alert, no, I was gonna say you no longer consider yourself Jewish, but that's not actually true, is it?

Evan Feinberg 1  6:33  
Well, you know the name of the podcast is Jewish, and I don't just think of myself as Jewish. Hannah, I am, I am Jewish, and I have never before leaned into my identity of being Jewish more than I do today. But, and I know for it's a somewhat major but for some of your listeners, and I hope to dispel them of some of those thoughts over the course of our conversation. But when I was 18 years old, I became a Christian by faith, and that was the sort of the result of a journey for me. That journey had a lot to do with, first of all, trying to just think of sort of where my life choices were leading me in high school and whatnot, and the path that I was on as a as a student and as a young adult, and thinking to myself as a young man, and so a combination of, sort of trying to discover what were the moral precepts that were going to govern my life, and sort of who was I. So there was a combination of that and dating a young woman of Christian faith that sort of was part of that journey. But that young woman, she confronted me, Hannah, and she said to look, this isn't a serious relationship, because you're not a Christian. And I was, I was like, you know, and I was a, I was a look true to maybe some of the sort of stereotypes about our people. I was a debater, and I love to argue, and I was quite good at it, and I I just wanted to tell this girl I had no intention of marrying this girl that I had been on a few dates with and in high school, not your current wife. It is not my current wife, but I I just as a debater. I just wanted to be like, how could you prevent yourself from marrying someone that you could be happy with, based on a fairy tale? In my opinion at the time of that, I thought the sort of the Christian faith was because it wasn't a sort of a culture, like, I can't marry you because you're Jewish and I'm Christian. It was because I can only marry someone who believes in Jesus Christ. Was what she interesting, what to make. And so I went on a journey to try to prove her wrong about what she believed. And I started getting into Christian apologetics, sort of people writing about the truth of Christianity. And I read a gazillion books and really studied, and I went off to the University of Michigan that next fall, sort of still in that journey, I took a world religion course taught by three professors, three graduate level professors, one who was famous for their Christian studies, one that was famous for Islamic Studies and and one for

Hannah Gaber  9:03  
Jewish Studies. The beginning of a joke somewhere. Yeah,

Evan Feinberg 1  9:07  
three professors walk into a giant auditorium at the University of Michigan. It's

Hannah Gaber  9:12  
suddenly not funny anymore. Yeah, go ahead. So,

Evan Feinberg 1  9:16  
so, yeah. So I started to read the Bible as part of that class, I went deeper into my Jewish roots and beliefs while I was sort of in the midst of that. And one thing led to another, I just began to believe that the Jesus of the New Testament was, in fact, the Messiah and and that He came to serve and to lay his life down to save me from my sins and to and for the life of the world, to redeem all things. And one thing led to another, I then committed myself to Jesus as a Christian by faith. And for me, that never meant being any less Jewish. To me, it was it was my Jewish heritage, my my affiliation with my tribe, wasn't broken to me, it was just a set. Of religious beliefs and faith beliefs that I could then layer on top of the sort of the cultural heritage and the affiliation that I had, and so that's been my my life ever since, man,

Hannah Gaber  10:10  
you are a committed arguer, Remind me to never get into an argument with you, because this could go on for years. Yeah, there you go. I You touched on a lot of things that I think are like, for lack of a better term, like inherently Jewish. But, I mean, lots of people contain these qualities, but it is to your point, also a culturally reinforced set of principles, curiosity, genuine, inquisitiveness, true and humility in the asking, right? Because if what I'm saying doesn't make sense, doesn't make sense, then it doesn't make sense for me either, right? So it's like those types of thinking that as part of our discipline and our upbringing, and you know, secular Jews participate in that exactly. I think that there's this thing, and I hope that this isn't offensive for me to say, for atheists, perhaps, or non Christians in general, there is a like, if you just did your research, right? Like, if you just check the history, if you just blah, blah, blah, do you know if you learned enough, if you were smart enough or didn't? I don't want to say smart enough, but you know, like, if you were educated enough, then you would know that, like the Jesus thing, I'm glad you have a story. It makes you feel good, but not not real, not, quote, unquote, true. And I think it's super interesting that exactly that journey of exploration and digging and educating yourself took you in the other direction. Can I ask, how do you what do you find in the source material that convinces you, and I will say for the record, from everything that I've read and been raised to understand like, like he existed. He was a beloved and moving rabbi and teacher. The early Nazarenes in the early days, were 100% Jews. They were, they were a sect of Jews. And they proliferated, not easily, through hardship in the early Roman times. And eventually, you know, fast forward to Constantine, the rest is history. So they say, that's the short version. So like, if we start from that premise, what got you the rest of the way there?

Evan Feinberg 1  12:20  
Well, certainly the historicity of the person of Jesus was important as part of that. And then, then you start to go back. Well, I could take this a bunch of different ways. I'll start by saying I was really moved by some of the writing of CS Lewis early on and something that I hear, I would, if you would have asked my parents, you know, what do you think of this Jesus character, they would have said something along the lines of, oh, he was a prophet. He was, he had, he was a good moral teacher. And we should sort of look to some of those moral teachings. But, you know, wasn't God and and CS Lewis has a really interesting mental model that he introduces the liar, lunatic or Lord mental model. And it's like, Look, if you take Jesus at his word, and you believe that the historical accounts of what he said were relatively accurate, then you're sort of left with a dilemma, that he is one of three things. He either is a liar. He was saying things that were untrue. He was trying to be deceitful. He was, I don't know whether to puff himself up or whatever it might be. He was either lying about who he was, or, you know, all the sort of different aspects about himself. The second one is that he's a lunatic. This guy's crazy. He's walking around saying He's God. He can forgive sins, and, you know, he can raise people from the dead and heal people from afar, and all these things that, just if somebody came about today and said all those things, we'd like that dude is crazy, and so, you know, he's either a liar, he's a lunatic, or he is who he said he was. He's telling the truth, and he's not crazy because he's describing his nature, and he's doing so in a fairly sober, methodical way of introducing himself to the world, because it's such a sort of a crazy idea if it's not true. And so that was an early sort of framework for me. I had to wrestle with, you know, who, who do I believe Jesus is? And you know how he talked about himself? But backing up for a second, I can sort of recreate my logical journey back as an 18 year old kid. You know, I started by saying, Do I believe there's a God in heaven? And I don't know how to describe the logic of this part, but I quickly decided that I believed in God, that faith part, yeah, that the world wasn't just chaos, that there was reason to believe that there was a creator. And so I started there, and once I got past that, I said, Well, if there's a God in heaven, and he's good, that he would speak to his people, and so there'd be a record of how he communicated to his people, that how he inspired them, or revealed Himself to them. And that sort of leads you sort of inexorably to it explains a whole lot about why Jews are still here. You know, all these years later. It explains a lot about sort of the the relationship to Israel, that God had, that if God is, if there's God in heaven, he would reveal Himself to His people. And it makes very good sense that he would do so through a tribe of people, that he that he miraculously led through all kinds of experiences and hardships and so so I kind of started there, and that sort of brought me to get much more serious about my Judaism, for what it's worth. And then, and then from there, I started to read the Old Testament Scriptures, and I started to wrestle a whole lot with what the Scriptures said about who the Messiah would be. And so I believed that the scriptures were pointing toward a messiah, not just many or something like that. And that sort of led me to Isaiah, and Isaiah chapter 53 and the passage of the suffering servant. And Jews today talk about those passages as if they're they're talking about the nation, not the country, the nation of Israel, and the suffering servant being Israel, and I didn't I didn't buy that argument. I just didn't fit for me. And I started to be more and more convinced that the Messiah that was promised would be one that was a servant, and that would be one that sacrificed, and not a political savior, as the Jewish people of the time were looking for. And, you know, one thing led to another. I started to read the Gospel of John and and began to believe that was the foretold Messiah. And, you know, as a Christian, I believe that God moves in our hearts. So there are a lot of things that if you're reading the Gospel of John might not be the most logical. Like, Oh, he's raising people from the dead. Like, obviously, that's just something that people will do. So, so, you know, I feel like I got there in what I believe to be a logical way, but I certainly believe that, you know, God worked on my heart as well. Yeah,

Hannah Gaber  16:53  
I think all faith is highly, highly personalized, right? Like, it has to work for you. For it to extract, I shouldn't say extract, for it to allow us to make these sacrifices with the understanding that they are rewarding to us, whether that's, you know, dietary restrictions, but more so it's sacrifices, I think, in our conduct, right? We each religion has sort of different proscriptions. I think a lot of the time it depends more on your specific car specific congregation, how those things are interpreted, versus like the Scripture itself, right? We can read it any number of ways, but there has to be something in it for you specifically that is rewarding. Or why would any of us do any of this? This is madness, you know? I mean, here I am, you know. I mean, into my 40s, still scratching my head and noodling around with people being

Evan Feinberg 2  17:44  
like, but why? But Are you Jewish? But why? You know, like,

Hannah Gaber  17:48  
Okay, so there's something in it for us. And I think there is no journey that's not legitimate. And I think it's like I said, I think it's so fascinating, especially the child of like scholars and biblical scholars and historians of this period specifically. And I just finished reading desire of the everlasting hills. Did you read that one? I have not? Oh, big recommendation for you. Everybody go out and get it. But it was such it's such a gorgeous It's Thomas Cahill historian. Gorgeous telling in as much as we can, there's not a ton of primary materials. It's built as like a biography of Jesus and the apostles. But of course, biography in as much as one can, right? Yeah, of course. So he looks at all of those as the source material, and sort of places them each in historical context to one another. You know, yes, they're exploring the same themes, sometimes using the same words, sometimes retelling the same stories, but differently, because, and I think he treats the whole thing with a lot of respect, and I'm really happy that I had that reading of it, especially thinking about, you know, the way that Christianity was practiced in those early days. Again, like I see it, I see the threads, I see the ties. You know, it's not that, it's not really a leap. Yeah, I Yeah.

Hannah Gaber  19:05  
So I'm just curious, did you undergo a conversion process to like become Christian, or was it more like you? Because in Judaism, they say you discover you've always had a Jewish soul, and then you just live that. Was it more of that? What was that like? Were you required to do anything.

Evan Feinberg 1  19:21  
Well, I'm a baptized believer in Jesus now, which is sort of the closest thing to a ritualistic way that you would quote, unquote, convert. But I've never thought about it as a conversion, because, again, that sort of suggests I left one identity behind for my new identity. And it is not untrue that I, I have an identity in Christ now that an identity with Jesus, and it is, it is, it is, I would say, my first identity, but I did not convert out of a previous identity. And so I've never liked. Liked the conversion language, you know, I get it to become Jewish, to become a part of the tribe, you need to say I'm sort of not something else. I'm converting to be Jewish. And so I understand that language going the other direction, but never thought of myself as less Jewish, yeah. So, you know, I would say I'm still 100% Jewish, and then 100% Christian by faith. You know, I'm a part of a church. I do not attend a synagogue. So, you know, sort of folks can take from that those implications, what they want. But to me, my Jewish identity is still extremely important to me. It's important to my family. You know, where my my wife, she's she very much wanted our kids to become Bar Mitzvahs. You know, she, she's loved the we have. We haven't done it, which is not too late. A little bit of shame to say it's not too late, although my older son is 14, so it's

Hannah Gaber  20:52  
getting my mom did it in her 40s. Hey, it's true. She just

Evan Feinberg 1  20:55  
wanted to do it as a as a rite of passage that come in

Hannah Gaber  20:58  
to party. Oh, that's right, okay, yeah.

Evan Feinberg 1  21:01  
Well, and, you know, and she got, she goes to all my, my cousins, bar mitzvahs, and she sees them, it was she would put it at the most awkward stage of their life. They are getting up in front of their friends and leading a service and giving this, this sort of, this lesson in front of everyone, and accomplishing something significant. And she, she's like, I see why you Evan, have you know, been able to develop and succeed in life? You had this experience among others that really shaped you? And so, great perspective, yeah, for sure. And my wife has always been extremely encouraging in my Jewish identity and of our boys. And so, yeah, it's a that was a roundabout way to say, I don't, I don't love the conversion. Like,

Hannah Gaber  21:44  
yeah, well, and I get it right. And I think you and I talked about this briefly the other day, for me, as the, you know, the outsider. I was raised Jewish. I'm still Jewish. I mean, as, like, the outsider to the, the main, the hegemonic presence in the United States, which is Christianity as an outsider, it's like very clear to me, or so I thought, What makes you Christian is believing that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God died for your sins. If you believe that you are a Christian, but you could even be a Chris, a bad Christian. I don't know. We don't want to use that language, but you know you could, you could do all kinds of things that still be a Christian, like you don't have to no longer believe the things you believe as a Jew to be a Christian. But I don't think it works the other way. So, you know, I don't if you believe Christ is the Messiah and that he came, then he'll be back. I don't think you can really also call yourself a Jew. It's a I don't know. I'm maybe I'm working. Maybe I'm on my own journey over here.

Evan Feinberg 1  22:39  
Well, look, for what it's worth. Christians love to come up with reasons why other Christians aren't Christians. They do it all the time. Totally fair, and it's well, if you believe this but not that, or if you practice this lifestyle versus that lifestyle, you're not a real

Hannah Gaber  22:56  
Christian. The real Christian language. Oh yeah, yeah. And

Evan Feinberg 1  22:59  
I think there is for me, just speaking for myself and my theological beliefs, I believe there is a demarcation line. It is as as you said that in Romans, Paul says, If you believe in your heart and profess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, you will be saved. And that's my belief. Of the demarcation between a Christian and a non Christian is that fundamental belief, it is an orthodoxy. Now there are lots of people who call themselves Christians who don't believe that to be true, and it's not my role to judge on those on those margins, but just to share what I believe on that and so I think that is true, that there's plenty of sort of cultural Christians in America that go to church. They consider they would call themselves a Christian, but they would say that that that belief is not a part of who they are. And I think that is, it's at least different. I'll put it that way.

Hannah Gaber  23:53  
Yeah, that's interesting. Well, I guess I'll never know. I mean, I could know I would have to go to a lot of church. I don't think I'm doing that. But anyway, you mentioned something else that I kind of want to come back to. You mentioned that your whole family is still practicing Jews. You've got bar mitzvahs and nephews and all kinds of things happening. What was your family's reaction to sharing your I don't even want to say change of faith. I think in your case, it's really more of an evolution of faith. How was that received?

Evan Feinberg 1  24:22  
Yeah, well, look, it's not easy for parents anytime their kid comes home and shares with them a different identity than their own. And so they did react to my decision to follow Jesus with concern. First of all, concern for me, because they felt like I was just being led astray by a girlfriend, or, you know, that it wasn't, the decision wasn't as grounded as it should be, which I think they just, they were just wrong about but, but I can understand, I will say that this is a fun story. They put me, they put me on the phone so my. My mom's best friend is this amazing woman. Her name's Laurie, and Laurie was the was a guidance counselor at one of the local high schools. Oh, and my mom was just like, I don't know. You need to talk to, you know, the rabbi, talk to Laurie. And so I was like, I don't know the rabbi, like, at all. So, but I know I've known Laurie since I was a kid. And so I immediately went upstairs, and I called Laurie and, or I should say, my, I think my mom put got coffee on the phone. And so I remember being in my room talking to Lori, and I had one of the most amazing conversations. So she asked me about, you know, what was up? And I told her the story, and Lori was just, she goes, Evan, that's just amazing. You know, it sounds like you found a real peace and a real understanding of yourself and what you believe. And, you know, I had this boyfriend in college who was a Christian believer, and he just was always sort of at peace putting things in the hands of God and and if you've, if you've found something like that, just, I'm so encouraged and good for you. And I remember just being blown away. And so, so if Lori listens to this, thank you. Yes, my mom was not happy with that, but that's not what you were supposed to do. They're still best friends. So So I think it's all good. And so it wasn't easy for my parents at first, you know, the girl that I was in question, she came and went, you know, and as I sort of matured, and then met my wife, and my wife and my parents have such a great relationship, and then grandkids came along, and, you know, any of those sort of old wounds, I think, quickly gave way to to a great relationship that my Parents and I have have

Hannah Gaber  26:41  
maintained, right? Yeah, nobody doesn't want to be with the grandkids you got. I mean, okay, no doubt. And I love you know, how validating I think we have that some of us more than one, some of us none, which makes me sad to think about, but that one adult who took us seriously as a young person, that really helped us find our direction. And it sounds like Laurie for you, was like, Oh, sounds like you found your faith this. This is the one for you. Sounds great. I'm a big believer in that. I think you know, to me, what we're all doing is trying to circle closer and closer to the drain of truth and love, yeah, like, that's all we're trying to get to. Whatever path gets you there,

Evan Feinberg 1  27:18  
yeah. And look I had cousins who came at me fast and furious with all of their arguments against Christianity and a bunch of other objections that they had. And those are, I can think of one cousin in particular who I've got a great relationship with to this day, because he cared, you know, this is sort of the, this was sort of the Jewish way, right? He cared enough to to get to the bottom of it, to argue, to ask, to Yeah, yeah. So it was, I certainly was never offended by how any of my family members reacted, because, you know, it was all out of love and care, and our relationships have have been strong ever since, as a result,

Hannah Gaber  27:56  
yeah. I mean, that's lovely too, because I think the best part of that process is you have to ask real questions. So you had to ask real questions of yourself. You really did. You had to, for lack of a better turn, go through the crucible of really, really holding up these core identifiers of who you are to the fire, and you came out the other side. And the people who are willing to do that with you can only know you better for it, right? They can only have a deeper connection to you, the human that's at the core of all of this, and what you really stand for and what your values really are by asking. And in my opinion, there really is no greater way to treat people with dignity than to honor them when they tell you something. So I believe you know, if I ask you a question, I'm going to assume that you're earnest in your answer, and we can proceed from there, because I'm going to assume that we are on the same level of intent.

Hannah Gaber  28:58  
Much of your professional life, at least as far as I've known you, has been defined by influenced by projects that are faith related, not just Christian and not just Jewish. You've always been very tuned into and looking for opportunities to lift up, protect, give voice to people who are speaking on issues of faith or are being persecuted for their faith. How do you weave your identity into the work that you've chosen to do, and how does it influence you getting there?

Evan Feinberg 1  29:31  
I guess I'll answer that in a bit of a roundabout way, from a very early age. And I think this is probably the Jewish culture

Hannah Gaber  29:39  
still Jewish. My mom always says, make a short story long exactly we have

Evan Feinberg 1  29:44  
time. If I could just figure out a way to start it off with four questions for you. So, so you know, from a young age, I wanted to make a big difference in the world. I wanted to, I wanted to. Accomplish big things. And you know, to my parents credit and my community's credit, everyone told me I could from as young as I remember. And so, you know, I watched the west wing as a kid. Is my favorite show, and Sorkin is my favorite, my favorite writer. And you know, I didn't even know he was Jewish. When I was in high school, I just learned that he's Jewish. You don't know that sorghum is Jewish. Oh, my goodness,

Hannah Gaber  30:24  
I've never seen the West Wing. Don't yell at me. I'm about

Evan Feinberg 1  30:27  
to yell at you. Look after this podcast. You need to go watch. Even in the pilot episode, there's an incredible scene. This is a worthy detour. There's this incredible scene in the pilot where a bunch of sort of fundamentalists and fanatical Christians who are saying and doing bad things are coming into the White House, and Josh Lyman, the very Jewish deputy chief of staff in the White House, is going to have to apologize to them for calling them wackos on national television. And he comes in, and this is like the first time you actually meet the President in the show is him coming in to then defend Josh Lyman, instead of him apologizing for it, he goes crazy on these, on these crazy Christians, yeah, and it's, it's a really wonderful scene. And I want to circle back to this, because I have plenty to say about sort of the Christian culture today, but that was a digression, because I, you know, I wanted to do big things, and you think that's politics when you're a kid. And so I came out to DC. I worked on Capitol Hill. I worked for a wonderful senator from Oklahoma for a number of years. I moved home to Pittsburgh. I ran for congress myself. I did not win, and and so I kind of came out of that with this belief that actually politics and policy wasn't going to be the way to truly change the world, but the way to change the world is through culture that that the culture is upstream from everything, and by that, it's sort of the norms, beliefs and expectations we have of one another, how we see each other. And here is where my faith comes in so strongly, because when we see people as made in the image of God, and we see them for their creative potential as God creates, we have the potential to create as we see each other for that, everything else about how we should treat one another flows from that and that that means how we should treat each other as friends and colleagues, or even if we were strangers who met on the street, but also how we might order our government and politics so as to protect the dignity and worth of each and every human being. And I think one of the great things about the American experiment was it was the first time that instead of trying to apply religious beliefs as a set of policies and rules from a king, instead that the best way to apply religious principles to governance would be to protect everyone's rights equally, because those rights come from God and not government. They come from nature, not government, which is very much a Jewish and Christian, very rich, yeah. And so that's shaped, I would say, that's been the animating thing in my career. And then where that has led me is often toward building bridges. It's led me to approaches that lift up the last and least the orphan, the widow, the prisoner to do justice. And a lot of my Christian friends that don't have the benefit of learning about tzedakah and what it means to do justice in a in a in a sort of the Jewish tradition, to think about Kuna Lam and think about repairing the world. I think those things have really animated who I am in my career. And then, you know, then I become the faith guy at work. And so it gives me an opportunity to then work directly with faith communities and to do outreach within the faith community and organize and mobilize the faith community to lift people up. So done that work for a long time at stand together Foundation, and as I mentioned earlier in my new role, I'll be doing it in an explicitly Christian organization focused on redemptive entrepreneurship, which is to say, how do we inspire and help more people to take creative action, to do things that renew culture, that drive redemptive impact in the world? That's the work I'll be doing at this organization called praxis. And and it sort of brings everything together for me in one place. And, and, look, Praxis is different. I mentioned that I wanted to come back to critiquing the some of the the Christian world today. You know, a lot of people in the name of a Christian faith, are just trying to play the oldest tricks in the book and gain political power and impose their morals and worldview on others. And it's a we win, you lose mentality, and it's destroying our country for sure. We're seeing it all over the world too, and it's a Chris. Christianity that I don't really recognize as how I would live my faith. And so I could, you know, point my finger at those folks and yell at them, and, you know, I don't know, rant on on X or something very

Hannah Gaber  35:12  
productive, notoriously productive.

Evan Feinberg 1  35:16  
Or I could join forces with the Christians that I see out there that are showing a better way. This redemptive approach is is one in which we can repair the world through cultural renewal, through actions that Christians can take to make the world a better place and bring people together. And that's what I've tried to dedicate my life to at every stop of my career, and it's where I'm going next.

Hannah Gaber  35:41  
Wow, the people who are doing the good work. So to say that's really exciting. I mean, you've, you know, you've touched so many purposes and movers and lives. I'm just curious, like, what are some of the projects that you're most proud of, and what are some of the changes that you've seen that you're just like, man, if we could keep this going, we could really fix some stuff here.

Evan Feinberg 1  36:08  
Well, one of my favorite projects at stand together has been with a group called care portal. Care portal is an incredible organization. They built a what they call a care sharing technology so there are about 7 million referrals every single year to child welfare agencies, with about 400,000 kids at any given time ending up being removed from their home and placed into foster care because of one of these referrals, but only about 70 to 80% of the kids removed from their home are there because there's abuse. The majority of kids removed from their home are there because of poverty related neglect. And of course, that means of the 7 million, that means every year, there are a ton of social workers getting calls saying, Hey, I'm not sure if this kid is all right because their family is in poverty and can't fully meet their needs. And so along comes an organization like care portal, and they say, Well, you know what? We have a solution to that. What if we could every time a social worker gets one of those needs, they could connect that need to a community of people who wanna meet that need in real time, care sharing. And then what they do is they train churches to sit at the center of that relationship. So they're trained so they can take the resources. Mom needs a new crib, right? Or she can't bring her kid home from the hospital. They don't have a car seat for the car. Grandma could take the kids while mom's in rehab, but she doesn't have enough beds to qualify for kinship care in that state.

Hannah Gaber  37:44  
Wow, so complex the barriers

Evan Feinberg 1  37:47  
it really is. So care portal connects that real time need, and then a church can then deliver the need, but say, hey, what you really need is a relationship. You need someone who cares enough to say, hey, yeah, you needed the crib. But obviously, if you needed the crib, you needed a whole lot more. And so what can we do to help and relationships out compete programs and services every day of the week and twice on Saturday or Sunday, whichever one you're allowed to work with tradition. And so we started working with care portal a handful of years ago. They're now on their way to serving a million kids a year. They're growing all over the country, and they're showing a better way that this top down War on Poverty mentality that hasn't worked. Here comes care portal and says, Here's a bottom up approach, people loving people, people serving people, people doing justice every day that can change the world. And so we've been able to help care portal scale. And you know, it's one of many projects like that that I'm just really proud that I get to be a part of. And as I think about redemptive entrepreneurship, the leaders at care portal, they are redemptive entrepreneurs. They say, what's broken about the world and what creative action can I take to make it better? And I think they've just done a remarkable job, and we need a whole lot more like them. I love it. So

Hannah Gaber  39:03  
how can people get involved, you know, how can your sort of other, everyday Americans, even Jews, get involved and help promote the kind of healing that you are working towards? Well, we

Evan Feinberg 1  39:15  
live in a charged time, and the first reaction in the face of injustice is to point our finger at it, yell about it, draw lines, who's on this side of justice and who's on that side of justice. And you know, when I look around and I see what's happening in our country today, for example, I am tempted to do that every single day, but it's not gonna be what repairs the world? What's gonna repair the world is going to be individual action. And so there are a ton of ways that every single individual can get involved. You know, whether it's going to points of light right now, which is a volunteer matching website, or. You know, a site like catch a fire.org that connects skills based volunteering, or, you know, there's, there's plenty of them out there, vomo and others, I would, I'd recommend folks start volunteering. And Volunteering is a really high bar to getting involved. I get it. But when you start volunteering, you start realizing that it's it really you're going to get a whole lot more out of it than what you can get. But even beyond that, small dollar donations, getting involved to support local organizations or national organizations, not the advocacy don't donate to the advocacy groups right now, the answer, yeah, go donate to the to the nonprofit that's caring for the homeless or folks coming home from prison, or whatever it might be. And so if you can't think of anything else, care portal is a pretty good example to sign up for so that will keep some families together, kids out of foster care and and so on. But, but any creative action that an individual can take starts you down a journey. And then the broader call to action would be this, everyone should be on a redemptive quest with their life, which is, what are my unique gifts and talents, and how can I use those gifts and talents to make the world a better place? And what am I willing to risk and sacrifice in order to do that? And you know, I think if every sort of person starting to think of themselves on a journey to use the what God has given them to repair the world. I think that we'd, we'd all start getting on those journeys together, and it would be so much. It would be such a huge idea. It would be so much bigger than anything that politicians in Washington, DC are trying to promise millions of people just saying, What can I do to make the world a better place? That's mine. That's the bigger call to action.

Hannah Gaber  41:48  
So no pressure, yeah, yeah. Just gonna each of one of us go out and fix it? Yeah? There you go. But seriously, no, I mean, there's nothing you can give that is more valuable than to give of yourself. And I think one of the things that people don't count on is something that you mentioned, and Judaism focuses on this too, that the giving, having people receive a gift from you is also a gift to you, and the reward that you get back from contributing your time, which can never be replaced, your energy, which is hard to replace, but you know, is has to be focused at the moment that you're doing the thing and of yourself. I mean, it's just, I love it. Let's do it. Everybody go.

Unknown Evan Feinberg  42:32  
That sounds like a plan.

Hannah Gaber  42:37  
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