Each episode of our podcast will focus on a particular topic. Our editor, Brett Krutzsch, serves as the host, and our editorial assistant, Anna Donch, serves as the production editor. All episodes will feature conversations with someone who has written for the Revealer. As with the topics covered in our online magazine, the podcast will feature discussions about religion and politics, sexuality, race, gender, and how religion influences our world and people’s lives.

The first episode is on the current state of the Catholic Church sex abuse crisis and acts as a follow-up to our March special issue on religion and sex abuse. In the episode, Brian Clites, who wrote “The Problem with Spotlights: Rethinking Our Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse,”  joins us to discuss how we can support survivors of clergy abuse, what the Catholic Church should be doing to improve the situation, and what he has learned from interviews with more than 70 survivors of clergy abuse.

We hope the discussions we have on the podcast inform and motivate people to join our conversations. We’d love to hear from you! If you have a comment about something we discuss or an idea for something you ‘d like us to cover, please reach out to us at therevealerpodcast@gmail.com.

You can listen to the Revealer podcast on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any of our monthly episodes.

Without further ado, we are happy to share episode 1 of the Revealer podcast: “The Catholic Church Sex Abuse Crisis and the Problem with Spotlights.”

Happy listening!

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This excerpt comes from the book’s third chapter.

***

West Side Story might be one of America’s most famous musicals, but its almost-ten-year genesis is not well known by even the show’s most ardent aficionados. The musical is a modern-day retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, now set in the streets of late-1950s New York. The Montagues and the Capulets have been replaced by the Jets, a gang of native-born Americans and the scions of immigrant parents, and the Sharks, a gang of Puerto Rican immigrants. Romeo has become Tony (of the Jets), and Juliet is Maria, recently arrived from Puerto Rico. The action proceeds quite quickly: Tony and Maria fall in love almost immediately at a neighborhood dance, and their ominous fate is sealed by the next day.

But what is perhaps most interesting is that this was not the show that was initially imagined by the creators at all. West Side Story is a musical with a fascinating history, a genesis that speaks to the work’s racial underpinnings as well as to the lives of the show’s Jewish creators themselves.

West Side Story had its genesis when choreographer/director Jerome Robbins’s actor friend and lover, Montgomery Clift, who was performing the role of Romeo, asked Robbins for advice on how he should approach his character. A lightbulb went on, dim at first: make Romeo and Juliet contemporary. The idea sat in Robbins’s head until 1949, according to composer Leonard Bernstein, when “Jerry called up and gave us [Bernstein and book writer Arthur Laurents] this idea. . . . It was an East Side version of Romeo and Juliet, involving as the feuding parties Catholics and Jews at the Passover-Easter season with feelings in the streets running very high, with a certain amount of slugging and bloodletting. It seemed to match the Romeo story very well, except that this was not a family feud, but religion-oriented.” Arthur Laurents picks up on Bernstein’s narrative: “My reaction was, it was Abie’s Irish Rose, and that’s why we didn’t go ahead with it.”[1] Laurents writes in West Side Story’s 1957 Playbill, “East Side Story was the original title of West Side Story. . . . The locale was to be literally the lower East Side of New York: specifically, Allen Street for Juliet and the Capulets, Mulberry Street for Romeo and the Montagues.”[2]

Early on, the idea of doing a show that would focus on the issue of religious and ethnic tolerance inspired Bernstein, Laurents, and Robbins (lyricist Stephen Sondheim would enter the project after the transition to West Side Story had already occurred), but something still wasn’t working. Following World War II, Jewish identity was in flux. Jews were no longer entirely marginalized, and yet anti-Semitism lingered. At midcentury, according to the scholar Matthew Frye Jacobson, “ethnic revision of race stopped at the color line, universalizing whiteness by lessening the presumed difference separating ‘Hebrews,’ ‘Celts,’ and ‘Anglo-Saxons,’ but deepening the separation between any of these former white races and people of color, especially blacks.”[3] Yet even at this early moment, a conflation of racial issues and religious ones seemed to be occurring. What exactly were Jews? A race? A religion? A people? A culture? All of the above? It was hard to say.

Leonard Bernstein

One possible answer to this ambiguity of categories can be found in the Library of Congress, which has Bernstein’s own annotated copy of Romeo and Juliet, presumably marked up after Robbins pitched Bernstein his idea. The Library of Congress’s senior music specialist Mark Horowitz explains that “in the inside cover of the book, Lenny has penciled a scene breakdown. Act one begins with scene ‘I. Street Scene—pushcarts—enter R—or Mulberry St. Festival—or Easter=Passover.’ Scene three is ‘Balcony Scene’; Scene five is ‘Bridal Scene’ and the act ends with scene six ‘Street Fight.’ Act two includes this cryptic description of scene two: ‘Sex—Plan to escape to Mexico’; and the act ends with scene four’s ‘Romeo’s death with Tante’ and scene five ‘Juliet’s death.’” From the allusion to Passover as well as what we know about earlier instantiations of the musical, it’s clear that Shakespeare would be given a Jewish makeover. Yet perhaps the most interesting annotation is the one that appears on the top of the first page of dialogue, where Bernstein has written, “An out and out plea for racial tolerance.” Assuming that this annotation was made early on in the process, what does this mean for how we understand Jews and race? Does this apparently simple notation not offer, at least in theory, the possibility for us to read Jews, at this moment, as a distinct and even visible group of people? Bernstein’s call is not for religious but racial tolerance.

What, though, did East Side Story look like? Several drafts were penned, and traces of the early incarnation live on in theatrical archives. In one manuscript, simply titled “Rough Outline: ‘Romeo,’” Romeo is Italian and the Capulets are Jewish. Laurents’s script takes its cue rather directly from the Bard. The play opens with a fight involving Mercutio, Benvolio, and Romeo. Romeo has been following Rosalind, much as in Shakespeare’s original, and the script informs us that “Mercutio and the others kid him [Romeo]. He ought to know better than to ‘chase a Jew babe.’ ‘They don’t put out.’ But ‘Rosalind ain’t orthodox’ etc.”[4]

Not much changes in Laurents’s script from Shakespeare, except for the ethnic and religious backgrounds of the characters. In act 1, scene 4, of the draft, Shakespeare’s balcony scene is reset on a fire escape, and Laurents writes that “the difference in religion should not matter to either of them and Juliet here explains she is a cousin come to visit the Capulets for the Passover holidays with her Tante.” Act 2, meanwhile, opens with a seder at the Capulets’:

Scene One: A tenement is revealed and we are looking into one of the upper apartments: the Capulets’. To music, a seder is in progress. The Cpaulet [sic] family, Julet [sic], Tante, other cousins (how many?) are all there. They have come to the Four Questions. Tybalt, the only child, should ask these but he is not home. Loafing with that gang, his mother says irritably, and a cousin asks the questions. The seder (sung in English) continues and the background slowly is lighted.

Outside, a cop chases Romeo. The seder continues, and “they have reached the last of the ten plagues: the death of the first born (Tybalt),” who was killed by Romeo. The scene even involves the search for the “hidden Matzoth.”[5]

Can we even imagine a show in which Jews would be looking for the afikomen (“hidden Matzoth”)? Broadway’s most Jewish musical, Fiddler on the Roof (1964), was still a few years away. While this East Side Story had the potential to be game changing by putting Jewishness onstage so nakedly, the show’s racial politics were fiercely dated. Jews and Catholics might have had some latent animosity, but they were hardly murdering each other on the streets of New York in the late 1940s or early 1950s.

What, though, was the turning point that took the show away from its Jewish-Catholic roots? Arthur Laurents was at least partially correct; there was something very Abie’s Irish Rose about the whole initial project, but is there more to the story than that? Bernstein and Laurents “recognized that the East Side wasn’t what it used to be: there had been an influx of Latin Americans, and the Jewish-Catholic ghettoes were not now the exclusive zones of gang rivalry.”[6] The idea of an East Side story was dated not simply because the project bore resemblances to Abie’s Irish Rose but because the racial and ethnic landscape of the United States, particularly the country’s white landscape, was quickly changing as the team was writing.[7]

Laurents recounts the moment in 1955 when the key to West Side Story’s puzzle appeared. While lounging at the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel and talking about all things theatrical, he and Bernstein began to discuss that morning’s headline in the Los Angeles papers: “More Mayhem from Chicano Gangs.” Conversation soon turned to the possibility of using Latin music in the show, and the pieces began to come together in their heads. Laurents, though, had no knowledge of Chicanos in Los Angeles: “New York and Harlem I knew firsthand, and Puerto Ricans and Negroes and immigrants who had become Americans. And however it turned out, the show wouldn’t be Abie’s Irish Rose. It would have Latin passion, immigrant anger, shared resentment. The potential was there, this could well be a ‘Romeo’ to excite all of us. ”[8]

***

[1] Dramatists Guild, “Landmark Symposium: West Side Story,” Dramatists Guild Quarterly 7, no. 3 (1985): 13 (emphasis added). Abie’s Irish Rose was a long-running 1922 Broadway play about a Jewish man and Irish woman who strike up an interfaith relationship.

[2] Arthur Laurents, “Musical Origins,” Playbill, West Side Story, September 30, 1957, 17.

[3] Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 35.

[4] “Rough Outline: Romeo,” Box 81, Folder 1, Jerome Robbins Papers, (S) *MGZMD 130, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York, NY.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Keith Garebian, The Making of “West Side Story” (Toronto: ECW, 1995), 31.

[7] Laurents had explored this racial shift himself in his play Home of the Brave (1945), about the anti-Semitism a soldier faces in the military. The plot was changed for the 1949 movie version, in which the solider is no longer Jewish but black, reflecting a shift from religion and white ethnicity to race as defined by skin color.

[8] Laurents, Original Story By, 337–338.

***

Warren Hoffman is the Executive Director of the Association for Jewish Studies. He received his Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of California-Santa Cruz. He is the author of The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture and The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (now in its second edition). Learn more about him at warrenhoffman.com.

The post The Lost Origins of Broadway’s West Side Story appeared first on The Revealer.

It was the night after his wife died, and the leader of the Sanhedrin—the rabbinic court— took a bath.

His students were puzzled. “Our rabbi,” they asked him, “didn’t you teach us that this is not done? Isn’t a mourner forbidden to bathe?”

The leader of the Sanhedrin told his puzzled students that the rule he had taught them did not apply to him, the Nasi, Rabban Gamaliel. 

“I am not like other people,” he said. “I am delicate.” 

***

What does it mean when the rules don’t apply to you?

What does it mean to have the power to set the rules? What are the ethical obligations we incur when we have such power? What should we consider when we make exceptions? And how might our ways of engaging the rules thwart—or enable—abusive structures and patterns of behavior?

To answer these questions, I am turning to ancient Jewish texts. While the classical rabbis whose voices populate the Talmud were, famously, a self-perpetuating boys’ club with gender politics that leave much to be desired, rabbinic texts can help us think about the dynamics of sexual abuse and assault. How these texts describe power, often in ways that leave feminist readers uneasy, may help elucidate some of our current dynamics behind sexual abuse.

My primary question for now is this: How should we respond when people who create or teach the rules assert that those rules do not apply to them?

***

When Rabban Gamaliel pronounced his uniqueness, his students held their peace—or, so the reader may assume, as that is where the text ends.

His wife, too, held her peace, as she had (again, so the reader may assume) when, years earlier, Rabban Gamaliel had, against his own teaching, taken time out of their wedding night to recite the Shema—the prayer recited every morning and evening, except for extraordinary circumstances, such as a wedding night— and, when his students learned of this, boasted to them of his piety. What say did she have in the rules her husband laid out in the beit midrash—the house of study—which was closed off to her anyway on account of her sex? She might serve to help her husband demonstrate his mastery of the tradition to his students, but neither he nor they would preserve her thoughts, her questions, her experiences. She was, after all, his wife—her name is lost to us—and now she was dead and would hold her peace forevermore.

***

When the rules don’t apply to the one who teaches the rules, who must hold their peace?

It is a core tenet of most feminist analyses of sexual assault that sexual abuse is fundamentally about power, and only secondarily—or, perhaps more precisely, only instrumentally—about sex. To commit sexual assault is to use sex as a weapon through which to exercise power over someone. And it is therefore apt that much recent discourse about sexual abuse has crystalized around the entirely predictable revelation that yet another set of powerful and famous men are, in fact, sexual predators, and that they used sex to control and manipulate people over whom they held professional, social, and economic power.

I am an ethicist who studies Judaism, classical Jewish texts, and sexuality. I’m also a queer, neuroatypical Jewish woman. Power, sexuality, and the ways we communicate and interpret rules are always present in my work. And, as it happens, this core principle about sexual assault as a violent demonstration of power is congruent with what has come to be, for me, a core interpretive tenet: the best texts for thinking about contemporary sexual ethics aren’t necessarily those texts whose subject matter is explicitly sexual. For this reason, I’m drawn to Mishnah Berakhot 2:5-7, a passage from the Talmud that has much to do with power and little to do with sex. In this story, Rabban Gamaliel II—a second-generation nasi, or leader of the Sanhedrin— exempts himself from a series of rules he himself has taught. These stories reveal some of the ways one man relates to his power, and how that affects those over whom he has power.

Rabbinic texts often teach through stories of sages behaving in laudable ways. Sometimes, intentionally or not, they also teach through sages’ bad examples. Now, while the Talmud offers myriad cases of rabbis behaving badly, I don’t think this particular passage means to teach through the sage’s poor example. Indeed, it’s likely that the text approves of Rabban Gamaliel’s behavior. But that doesn’t mean that we, reading now, can’t come at it from a different angle and learn something by evaluating Rabban Gamaliel’s actions with a more skeptical eye.

***

It was the day after Tavi the slave died, and the leader of the Sanhedrin stood to receive official condolences for him.

His students were puzzled. “Our rabbi,” they asked him, “didn’t you teach us that this is not done? One does not receive condolences on behalf of slaves.”

The leader of the Sanhedrin told his puzzled students that the rule he had taught them did not apply to him, the Nasi, or to Tavi, his slave.

“Tavi was not like other slaves,” he said. “He was worthy.” (Or perhaps he said, “He was fit,” since the word he actually said, kasher, might be correctly translated as either).

 The students held their peace.

Tavi, too, held his peace, as perhaps he had when, years earlier, he had passed by the Nasi’s bedchamber on his wedding night and heard the sound of the Nasi reciting the Shema. And perhaps he saw or heard the Nasi’s wife waiting for her bridegroom.

 Was his wife confused? Was she hurt, or frightened? Did she wonder why he did not come to her, that he thought her so insignificant? Was she grateful that she could wait just a little longer before her body became his, or did the wait excite her and make her want him all the more? Was she proud that her husband was so pious? Did she join him in reciting, since if he took on a commandment from which he was exempt, why shouldn’t she as well? And if she did so, how did he respond?

 We will never know, since the text doesn’t seem to think her response matters for how the rules are made, and who may break them. It therefore doesn’t tell us what she thought or did. And, thus, neither does the text reveal Tavi’s thoughts or actions. He was, after all, a slave—a worthy slave, but a slave nevertheless—and now he too was dead, and the two—wife and slave–would hold their shared peace forevermore.

***

The passage in question (which I retell in my own words throughout) is a sequence of ma’asot—happenings, or occurrences—in the life of Rabban Gamaliel that appear in the Talmud. In each case, he disregards a rule he has taught his students. Each time, the students ask why. And every time, he responds with a terse and deeply particular explanation.

Here is how the passage reads in direct translation:

A bridegroom is exempt from reciting the Shema​ on the first night, until the end of Shabbat, if he has not done the deed.

It happened that Rabban Gamaliel recited on the first night he was married. His students said to him: Our Rabbi, didn’t you teach us that a bridegroom is exempt from reciting the S​hema on the first night? He said to them: I will not listen to you to remove from myself the kingdom of heaven for even one hour.

He washed on the first night after his wife died. His students said to him: Our Rabbi, didn’t you teach us that a mourner is forbidden to wash? He said to them: I am not like other people; I am delicate.

And when his slave Tavi died, he received condolences for him. His students said to him: Our Rabbi, didn’t you teach us that one does not receive condolences for slaves? He said to them: My slave Tavi was not like other slaves; he was worthy.

None of the specific exemptions Rabban Gamaliel takes are, in themselves, wrong. (I, incidentally, bathed on the first night after each of my parents died). Nor has he technically overstepped his authority to take them. It is, rather, the way the exemptions are made that I find troubling and worthy of exploration.

The key phrase in this sequence is “aini kha’asher kol adam—I am not like other people.” It’s also possible to translate this as “I am not like any other person.”

This second translation is strong and perhaps somewhat forced. But it gets at something important, because it brings into sharp relief the sense that Rabban Gamaliel is exempting himself on the grounds of his particular difference and then leaving it at that. His uniqueness does not, it seems, cause him to wonder about whether there might be other unique persons whose experiences might somehow change how we read or implement the rules. It’s a singular exemption, and one that he’s able to carry out because of his position of power.

When Rabban Gamaliel uses a variation on the same phrase to explain why his slave, Tavi, merited formal condolences, we see a similar pattern. Tavi was not like other slaves. He was kasher— worthy, or fit. Indeed, other sources report that Tavi was unusually pious. Rabban Gamaliel, therefore, accepted public condolences for him, that his death might be ritually marked. But this doesn’t seem to lead him to conclude that other slaves might also be worthy in important ways. He instead carves out one distinction, because he can, because his slave is not like others.

Even Rabban Gamaliel’s recitation of the Shema when he was exempt from doing so, read back in this fashion, is more complicated. At first glance it seems unlike the other cases: here, rather than taking a leniency for himself, he’s taking an unnecessary stringency upon himself and justifying it on the grounds of his great piety. But it also singles him out as different and less bound to the rules. By beginning with an act of greater stringency, the sequence also functions to indemnify him against later leniencies. (It’s also why I started my own retelling with the second occurrence, which immediately alerts the reader that something is off). Rabban Gamaliel is closer to God, after all, and won’t hear the questions of mere students about it.

***

And as the students of the leader of the Sanhedrin offered him their unusual condolences for Tavi, the worthy, fit, silent slave, perhaps some of them remembered a day several years earlier in the beit midrash—that is, the house of study— when they learned that the Nasi had recited the Shema on his wedding night.

As would come to be something of a habit, when they learned of the Nasi’s deed, they were puzzled. For the tradition, taught to them by none other than the Nasi himself, was that a new bridegroom was exempt from reciting the Shema on his wedding night, until—as the tradition put it, in a way that was at once blunt and euphemistic—“the deed was done.” Deflower first, pray after.

 So his puzzled students asked him: “Our rabbi, didn’t you teach us that this needn’t be done? Isn’t a bridegroom exempt?”

 He responded with indignant pride, “I will not listen to you, lest I remove myself from the kingdom of heaven for even one hour!”

And the students saw that whatever the reason, it was not up for discussion. Rabban Gamaliel held himself apart from his peers, on account—at least, for this time—of his superior piety. He would always find reasons to justify those ways he diverged from the disciplines he taught others that applied only to him, for he was always cleaving to the kingdom of heaven.

And what of his nameless wife? She—as is the text’s habit where she is concerned—held her peace. Whatever she might have preferred to be done with the story of her wedding night, however she felt, whatever she did, it was no longer hers. She was alive, but she might as well hold her peace now, and the next day, and the next. Her story, as with Tavi’s, as with the stories of so many women like her and slaves like and unlike him, was now her husband’s.

He was, after all, the leader of the Sanhedrin, and he was not like other people.

***

What does this passage teach us about the power dynamics that enable abuse? One mechanism by which power structures can facilitate abuse is when the people in charge of making and enforcing rules make arbitrary judgments about who must comply and who can be exempt—especially if they’re the ones being excused.

We needn’t look too hard to see this dynamic play out in our own context. How do we understand what has happened whenever a prominent male feminist—think Louis CK, for example— turns out to be an abuser? When Eric Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general who built a reputation as a women’s advocate and who filed a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein, resigned in the face of sexual abuse allegations? When Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who made unprecedented space for women’s ritual participation, turned out to have been a sexual predator? In all of these cases, I wonder whether the perpetrators decided that they were not, in some crucial way, “like any other person.”

I don’t think this text gives us a clear answer for how to diagnose or proceed. But, if we are to take any lesson from this text, perhaps it is this: when you see a figure who makes rules and exempts themselves from those rules, be suspicious. Maybe it’s benign, maybe it’s idiosyncratic. Maybe they do have particular needs they don’t feel like sharing. But their position of power opens them up to greater suspicion—and, in any case, their lack of transparency has broader implications in and of itself because it builds a climate in which it’s that much more possible for a powerful figure to cloak abuses in the claim that they “aren’t like others.”

And if this is the case with those who claim the feminist mantle, how much more so with someone who does not? This is not hypothetical. When President Trump—a man whom 24 women and counting have accused of sexual assault—was tried in the U.S Senate for obstruction of justice and abuse of power, his defense attorney Alan Dershowitz (who has also been accused of sexual assault) argued that if the President considers his own reelection to be in the national interest, nothing he does to that end is an abuse of his power. In the last gasp of official accountability for a man who, in addition to the actions for which he was impeached, has bragged about sexual assault, shepherded another man accused of multiple sexual assaults to the Supreme Court, and stacked the federal judiciary with people hostile to the self-determination of pregnant and potentially pregnant people, Dershowitz argued that now, at long last, he could not be held accountable. The rules no longer applied to the man whose job it was to carry them out.

He is, after all, the President. And he is not like other people.

Rebecca J. Epstein-Levi is the Mellon Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at Vanderbilt University. She is an expert on Jewish sexual ethics, and is working on a book on sex, risk, and rabbinic texts. In her copious free time, she enjoys cooking unnecessarily complicated meals and sharpening her overly large collection of kitchen knives.

***

Published with support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs.

The post Not Like Other People: How the Talmud Helps Us Think About People Who Believe They’re Above the Law appeared first on The Revealer.

Because I am revising a book manuscript about yoga, I have signed up to receive a daily email that includes 10 recent articles about yoga. Over the past year, three types of yoga have shown up consistently in my daily alert: trauma yoga, goat yoga, and rage yoga. Within the past few weeks, these alerts have drastically changed. The alerts are now are about canceled classes, yoga studios closing, and making yoga a virtual experience. Today, yoga is moving from communal to virtual spaces.

Yoga is an ancient South Asian combination of movement, meditation, and philosophy that has migrated and changed over time and space. The yoga practiced in the United States today is different than the yoga practiced centuries ago in South Asia. So, while we can trace yoga to the South Asian subcontinent and to various ancient Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain texts, we cannot pinpoint an actual start (much like a banyan tree has many roots, so does yoga). Yoga has been ever moving and changing, which is what makes yoga such a contested and creative space today. In fact, there is a long tradition of people in South Asia using yoga in different ways at different times. To this day, people still use yoga for a variety of reasons.

In the last few years, American yoga has gone from a focus on physical health to a focus on mental health. The growing popularity of trauma yoga, goat yoga, and rage yoga reflect this shift. These three types of yoga all have a therapeutic aspect – either an escape from or a confrontation of personal, societal, or structural anxiety. What makes these three types of yoga particularly interesting is that they are less focused on how the body will look and function after doing yoga, and more about what a person is dealing with mentally in the present moment. This, I believe, is the direction we’re going to see yoga move: yoga is not only a tool for the external body, but a practice for how we can use our bodies to process our emotions. And this new trend in yoga may be especially important with the isolating shift Americans are currently experiencing.

Trauma Yoga
“I wasn’t really aware of how much [yoga] makes you aware of your body and physically and mentally being present . . . I think a lot of people who have experienced trauma are scared to get in tune with their bodies. As women, a lot of people have experienced sexual assault and that sort of thing, and it’s kind of intimidating to be that aware of your body, but I think it’s a good experience, and it’s nothing to be afraid of. I never leave yoga class wishing I hadn’t come” – Jill Shockley, abuse survivor

People have practiced trauma yoga for almost 20 years, but in the last few years it has become more popular and accessible. There are yoga programs to help people with PTSD after war, childhood abuse, or some sort of assault. Yoga studios across the country are dedicated to a “trauma-informed” or “sensitive” approach to teaching yoga, and there are multiple books that explore this topic. Trauma yoga, done well, is empowering; through yoga people are able to create spaces that feel safe. Yoga, in turn, becomes part of a multi-faceted approach to treating PTSD and other types of trauma. Mental health therapies often neglect the body during the healing process, and some trauma survivors feel uncomfortable in their own skin. Trauma yoga helps bridge that divide.

What makes trauma yoga different than other styles of yoga is that teachers are careful not to touch students or offer corrections in terms of “proper” yoga positions. The focus is not on having correct forms or postures, but on what feels right for one’s body in that moment. David Emerson, director of yoga services at the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute in Massachusetts, says “power dynamics are key . . . the facilitator has an obligation to understand power dynamics . . . Trauma does things to relationships where it really splits actor and acted upon in all different ways. It is about really manipulating power. Participating together is an antidote for that.”

Another emerging trend among “trauma-informed” or “sensitive” yoga is yoga that addresses the trauma of racism. We know that racism causes stress, and many yoga studios in the U.S. perpetuate and privilege whiteness to the detriment of black and brown people. So when a person of color goes into yoga studios it often can be re-traumatizing. Gail Parker, a scholar who practices and teaches yoga out of the Detroit area, has written extensively about adapting yoga to address racial trauma. In an interview with Yoga Journal, Parker says, “Ethnic- and race-informed Restorative Yoga teaches people to experience safety in their vulnerability . . . People who are consistently marginalized, discriminated against, and profiled already know how to stand in the fire of unbearable suffering. They need the therapeutic experience of resting in safety. They need to learn what the absence of stress feels like.” The focus on safety and feeling okay in one’s body is why we are starting to see people look at trauma-informed yoga in order to heal the emotional pains of white supremacy and racism.

In this new moment of social distancing, trauma yoga classes have gone online. Because of the practice of not touching the body and making everyone feel safe, trauma yoga might easily adapt to moving out of the studio and into the virtual world. It might also gain in popularity as people experience more anxiety and uncertainty about Covid-19. At the same time, for many people part of the healing process includes physical proximity with others, so it remains to be seen if virtual spaces can facilitate healing  in different ways. Dr. Parker is currently offering an online course on the “psychological impact of ethnic and race based stress and trauma on all of us, and how we in the yoga community can contribute to healing the wounds that result.” And Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga is offering a series of online sessions “to provide support and community for people in every city, state and country.”

Goat Yoga
“Yoga is about the breath. If you sit here the whole time and have a goat chew on your hair, and you’re present and you’re breathing, that’s yoga.” – Meridith Lana Schwartz, Goat Yoga Instructor

A typical goat yoga class involves goats roaming around as people learn yoga poses. Some classes stop so students can play with the goats, while others offer a more traditional yoga class followed by playtime and cuddle-time that can include taking selfies with the goats. Goat yoga businesses offer private classes, bachelorette parties, retreats with wine, and more. One yoga studio even offers a troop package for Girl Scouts to earn a Goat Yoga Badge. The common thread at goat studios is the spiritual and therapeutic experience they claim to offer. At Secret Eden Goat Yoga in Dayton, Ohio, which considers itself an “Urban Retreat for your Mind and Body,” they state that goat yoga is not only a fun experience but also a “spiritual experience like no other. You’ll feel it inside you.” Many also tout the therapeutic benefits of goat yoga, pointing to various studies that show how goats add a fun element to yoga, which leads to laughter and happiness and helps combat depression and anxiety. This past January, the Wounded Warrior Project organized a goat yoga event for veterans suffering from PTSD. During this class, they “disconnected from stress and found relaxation and positive feelings.”

Goat yoga experiences might not be possible in the coming months. The Original Goat Yoga, which was trademarked, merchandised, and franchised across the U.S. in 2016 by Lainey Morse, is attempting virtual goat yoga classes, which offer the opportunity to look at goats but do not recreate the experience of goats roaming a yoga studio. Other goat yoga places, like Arizona Goat Yoga (they claim they started goat yoga first in 2015) are canceling classes through mid-April. Once we can safely have yoga classes again, it remains to be seen if goat yoga will continue its popularity or if it will fizzle out.

Rage Yoga
“Rage Yoga – [reyj yoh–guh] noun: a practice involving breath work, positional exercises, and the expressing of raw emotions with the goal of attaining good health and to become zen as f*uck. More than just a practice, Rage Yoga is an attitude and a method of connecting you to your most Badass Self” – Lindsay Istace, Rage Yoga Founder/Creator

Like goat yoga, rage yoga has reimagined what can happen in a yoga space. For example, Ashley Duzich, a certified rage yoga teacher, holds some of her classes at Brash Brewery in Houston, Texas. During a typical rage yoga class at the brewery, heavy metal music plays in the background, participants raise their middle finger, students take beer breaks, and people curse and scream while practicing yoga poses. Duzich told a local TV station that rage yoga is therapeutic because “we’re all angry about something. We all have been holding onto an f-bomb for a little bit too long . . . [rage yoga] allows you to have a safe space to let go of your anger and frustration and rage in a healthy way, and then also wash it all away with some ice-cold beer!”

Rage yoga founder Linday Istace and Duzich are clear that this type of yoga might not be for everyone. But, they stress, it works well for those who do not feel comfortable in a “traditional” yoga space, and for those who want a more communal yoga experience. At a rage yoga class, students are encouraged to make eye contact with one another. They also drink and laugh together, all while releasing their built up anger, which practitioners claim helps treat anxiety and stress.

Rage yoga classes currently take place in fourteen cities across the U.S. Online rage yoga courses are also available. In this way, rage yoga was already positioned for the onset of a global pandemic and the anger, frustration, and rage that might arise from being cooped up in one’s home all day. And yet, like goat yoga, rage yoga has a communal aspect (laughter, drinking, screaming with others) that might not be duplicated in one’s living room.

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All three of these yoga practices are part of a larger global trend that stretches back almost a century. People have used yoga to treat drug addiction, to become slimmer, to gain strength, and to feel younger. Yoga and health have always been connected since yoga was first exported out of India. Now, in the 21^st century, people are finding new ways that yoga can use the body to help the mind, to alleviate anxiety, and to address the symptoms of trauma. At the same time, we are becoming more aware of how yoga in the U.S. has been dominated by whites. Yoga spaces can feel oppressive to many people of color. It does not surprise me that using yoga to heal the trauma of racism has also become popular.

The thing about yoga is that it works. It worked in South Asia for thousands of years in ways that fit South Asian context, and it continues to work here in ways that make sense in this context. So, as you read this article while practicing social distancing and as you think about what to do next, one of these three yoga practices might appeal to you. You can either try to join in virtually or make plans to join a class once we can safely be more proximate to each other. The speed at which yoga studios started to offer live-stream and virtual yoga classes to fit this moment of social isolation is reflective of the ever-changing nature of yoga. The question now is what happens after social isolation. Will the smaller yoga studios permanently close? Will yoga flourish virtually? Will people jump back into communal yoga spaces, craving contact after weeks or months of isolation? And will the very contours of American yoga continue to change to meet the challenge of better mental health support, or will yoga’s older focus on physical health eclipse the trends of last few years?

Shreena Niketa Gandhi is a member of the Religious Studies faculty at Michigan State University. She is an expert on religion and race in the Americas and has been researching yoga in the U.S. for over 15 years. Her book on the cultural history of yoga and whiteness in the U.S. is currently under review.

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Published with support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion in International Affairs.

The post Trauma Yoga, Goat Yoga, and Other Yoga Trends in an Age of Social Isolation appeared first on The Revealer.

Dear Revealer readers,

I am writing this letter from my apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood I love dearly. Like many others with the privilege to do so, I am working from home and have not left my apartment, except to take out the dog, for weeks as the world grapples with the novel coronavirus. My husband and I have taken on new rituals to adjust to our life in confinement. We started a gratitude journal and write in it every night, we light Shabbat candles on Fridays and have virtual Shabbat dinners with friends, and we seem to say “I love you” to each other with more frequency. Amidst my many fears and frustrations, I take comfort in these moments that punctuate our new lives as we try to survive a pandemic.

Although much of our world is in upheaval, some things are continuing on schedule and that brings me much contentment. In that regard, I am happy to share our April issue with you and to announce the launch of the Revealer podcast.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

Much of our April issue continues the conversation from our March special issue on “Religion and Sex Abuse Within and Beyond the Catholic Church.” In this issue, Shreena Gandhi shows us how survivors of sexual abuse are using yoga to treat trauma. She also considers how people can continue to practice yoga in this time of social distancing. Next, Rebecca Epstein-Levi, an expert on Jewish sexual ethics, explores ancient Jewish texts to see what they can teach us about men in power who do not believe the rules apply to them. And in this month of Passover and Easter, when many of us will not be able to join others for seders or services, we are running an excerpt from Warren Hoffman’s The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical, where he recounts how the creators of West Side Story initially imagined a musical about Jews and Catholics who fought over Passover and Easter on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

I am also thrilled to share with you the launch of the new Revealer podcast! Each episode of the podcast features discussions with experts and explores religion’s influence on politics, culture, and people’s everyday lives. We will release one new episode each month. Our first episode, available now, is on “The Catholic Church Sex Abuse Crisis and the Problem with Spotlights” and includes a fascinating conversation with Brian Clites, who has interviewed more than 70 survivors of clergy sexual abuse. You can listen to our podcast on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Please subscribe to the podcast and let us know what you think!

At this time of tremendous uncertainty, stress, and grief, I hope these article and our podcast offer you some respite, new knowledge, and thoughtful observations about the world we share.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.

The post Editor’s Letter: Continuing the Conversation Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic appeared first on The Revealer.