Who the Folk?! Cincinnati is Cincy Jewfolk’s new podcast spotlighting the diverse voices shaping Jewish life in the Queen City. 

Hosted by Cincy Jewfolk’s editor Sam Fisher, the series features conversations with notable and fascinating Cincinnati Jews—from artists and entrepreneurs to community leaders and culture-shapers. 

Each episode dives into personal stories, passions, and perspectives, showing that Jewish life here is anything but one-size-fits-all. The Who the Folk?! Cincinnati podcast is part of the Jewfolk Podcast Network and a product of Jewfolk, Inc. 

If you have suggestions for Who the Folk?! Cincinnati podcast guests, please fill out this form.

Be sure to check out the entire series and follow along as Sam interviews and features notable Cincy Jews & Jews doing interesting things in the Queen City!

Rabbi Ari Jun (courtesy)

Introducing this week’s WTF?! Cincinnati’s guest

Rabbi Ari Jun is a respected spiritual leader, scholar, and community activist. As the son of two rabbis, Rabbi Jun was born and raised in a vibrant Jewish household, and from a young age he developed a deep passion for Judaism and serving others.

Trained in advanced religious studies and equipped with a compassionate heart, Jun has dedicated his life to guiding and inspiring individuals on their spiritual and cultural journeys. With a warm and engaging personality, he has a unique ability to connect with people of all backgrounds, fostering a sense of belonging and understanding within the communities he serves.

Rabbi Jun’s devotion to social justice and tikkun olam (repairing the world) are evident in his tireless efforts to address pressing issues and create positive change. He firmly believes in the power of education and has established various initiatives to share with individuals the knowledge and skills they need to improve their lives and communities. He promotes the value of inclusivity, and he advocates on behalf of the Jewish community and other marginalized groups. Likewise, he actively engages in interfaith dialogue and is known for his passion for interfaith collaboration and community building.

He lives in Cincinnati with his wife Hara and their two cats, near to many other family members who are lifelong Cincinnatians.

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A note for you

Below, you’ll find a full transcript of this interview. We provide these so that you can read along, catch anything you might have missed, or revisit your favorite moments. 

We do our best to make sure everything’s accurate, but if you spot a typo or mistake, that’s on us. We hope you’ll enjoy listening — and reading — along!

Show transcript

Sam: All right. Well, first, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to sit down and talk with us on what might be the inaugural podcast for Cincy Jew folk. And we’re just going to start with like the really easiest, the easiest of easy questions, which maybe, as a rabbi, you might not find so easy. So where are you from?

Ari: That’s actually not an easy question for me to answer. I don’t think it’s because of a rabbi, incidentally, but because of my own family history before I answer it, though, let me just say thanks for having me on. It’s a pleasure. Thanks for schlepping out for my office to join me even more so, where am I from? For a Cincinnati audience, the quickest thing I can say is I don’t technically count as being from Cincinnati, because I didn’t go to high school here. I was born in Oakland, California. Was there for a very short amount of time, like a matter of weeks before my family moved me to Cincinnati, where I was until I was about eight years old, moved down to Atlanta, where I was until I was third college or up to college. Went to college in Louisville, Kentucky, just a bit south of here, lived in Israel for a year, and then I had been back in Cincinnati since 2011 I came back here for HEC to train to train to become a rabbi, and what is it? It’s 2025, now, so I’ve been here for like, 14 years as an adult. But again, for a Cincinnati audience, that doesn’t count, I didn’t go to Walnut Hills or Sycamore, so I’m a fake.

Sam: I’d say, I’d say, I think you’re a at this point. You are a Cincinnati in my book, at least. Thank you. You’re welcome. You are now a, well, you went to rabbinical school. That was one of the things that was one of the things that sort of brought you back to the community. What sort of led you, or what paths led you to going to rabbinical school? Because that’s not something that everybody does.

Ari: I sometimes when I’m feeling real chipper, I’ll say a string of bad decisions. That’s what led me down to rabbinical school, but when I’m being a little bit more serious about it. For me, in a lot of ways, it was an obvious decision to go to rabbinical school. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do in my life, but I knew I wanted to do something working and being of service to the Jewish community, that was non negotiable. And when I got to the end of undergrad, I still wasn’t sure what kind of Jewish work I wanted to do, but I knew that training to become a rabbi could open a whole lot of doors. So whether I wanted to get into academia, whether I wanted to work in a congregation, Jewish nonprofit, you name it, being a rabbi prepares you for a lot of different things, 

Sam: And what sort of things were you doing in undergrad, they sort of that led you to that place.

Ari: Nothing I did in undergrad really prepared me so well for it that this was something that I had been thinking about for a lot of years. And the advice in those days for people considering becoming a rabbi was, and you know, this might come as a surprise to you or folks listening, they used to say, don’t study anything Jewish in undergrad. When you go to rabbinical school, they’re going to teach you everything you need to know, and they’re going to teach it to you the way they want you to know it. So don’t burn yourself out. You know, getting a Jewish Studies major, you can if you want, but you don’t need to. So I took that advice to heart, and I decided I would just find something that would be interesting in undergrad, something that, if I never touched it again professionally, I would still say, Huh, I’m glad I did it. So I went into undergrad with a major that was actually kind of relevant to this, and I promptly dropped it after arriving. So I started as a foreign language major that lasted not even a semester. So I was studying French and Spanish, and I done German before that, obviously, Hebrew, I still love foreign languages, by the way, just didn’t love that major at that school, Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky, I then transferred to be a nursing major. I spent two years in nursing school, same train of thought, right? If, if I never work as a nurse, I never touch this again, I’ll still be better off for having learned this stuff. So I made it two years in that, and then I went to political science, and that’s what I wrapped up in. 

Sam: I mean, that’s a really varied undergraduate career that intersects many different many different places, many different studies, many different interests. How has that, has that kind of continued on in your professional life?

Ari: Definitely, yeah, I, you know, I didn’t even talk about the fact that I spent a lot of time also in music performance classes and music theory classes in college too, just because it was a passion of mine, I did a so my undergrad Bellarmine University was it’s a small Catholic liberal arts school, and I also. I studied and did choir. It was a Catholic school, right? So that the choir was a Catholic choir. You know, I was singing all sorts of Latin, whatever, hymns. And I remember thinking to myself, you know, this is a little weird, but someday when I’m a rabbi, I’ll be happy to have had the experience

Sam: You were working on your interfaith collaboration from your undergrad days.

Ari: I mean, that’s one of the reasons I picked that school. Actually, believe it or not, both of my parents are rabbis. I grew up in what I often have called like a claustrophobically Jewish family, around a lot of Jews and a lot of Jewish stuff. And when I was picking where I wanted to study, I wanted to go someplace that would respect a religious perspective, but not be the same one that I had been subjected to up until that point. So I was thrilled to go to a Catholic University.

Sam: And was it your parents being rabbis that led you to sort of move around a lot when you were growing up? Were they taking different jobs in different communities? 

Ari: Yeah, that’s exactly what it was. So my parents were both chaplains in the Navy as rabbis. Actually my mom, who’s still in town, whom I adore, and I’m so proud of, Julie Schwartz, she was the first female Chaplain as a rabbi in the US military. So that military background moved us around a decent amount. That was the California stint they were on at an evil hospital there. And different things came to Cincinnati, because we had roots in Cincinnati after they wrapped up the military career, went to Atlanta because one of my parents took a job at a Jewish Day School down in the south. And then, you know, from place to place.

Sam: And when you describe it as claustrophobically Jewish, I think most people, they would kind of go the opposite direction. They would rebel and want to go as far away from their Jewishness as possible, or at least get a completely different perspective, which you sort of did attending a Catholic University, but it’s still surprising that you ended up still going to rabbinical school after, after, maybe you’re flippantly describing it as a claustrophobia,

Ari: yeah, being a little irreverent. The truth is, I loved the the upbringing I had was complicated. And, you know, having both of your parents be rabbis is a whole thing that could be an hour of discussion on its own, but I loved it. The flip side, of course, is I’m one of five siblings. I’m the only one who went down this path and works in, you know, full time Jewish professional life, so it’s only a 20% rate, right? So I’m the exception that proves the rule.

Sam: Maybe, I think so. So what? After you went to rabbinical school, after rabbinical school, you went into working, into public life as a with your rabbinical degree, but not doing necessarily rabbinical work right away.

Ari: Yeah. So when I was at rabbinical school, I quickly began to feel, and I’ll address the temple Sholem connection, we’ll get there, don’t worry. But I quickly began to feel like my professional calling wasn’t in the realm of synagogues. So, you know, I did the training that everybody does. I served in small student congregations and places like Paducah, Kentucky, for instance. And you know, there were things that were lovely about it, but it wasn’t what I felt like I was going to do for my my whole future and career. When I got out of rabbinical school, I spent five years working at a congregation up in Dayton, Ohio, which was, you know, was lovely. It wasn’t what I saw myself doing forever, but it was, it was a great place to work. While I was there, my senior rabbi at the time, Rabbi Judy Chesson, she had a very close relationship with the Federation director, or Federation CEO, rather, in Dayton. And the two of them had, if I remember this story right, I think the two of them were out to lunch or something. And we’re talking about this is in like 2016 2017 something like that. How they really needed to breathe some new life into the JCRC in Dayton, Ohio, because, well, it was a crazy time. Let’s I’ll just leave it like that. And Judy, the you know, Rabbi Chesson, my senior rabbi, turned to the Federation director, Federation CEO, and said, You got to talk to Ari. He’d be great at that. And then she also came and talked to me one I remember as a Shabbat morning. She said, You know, I just talked to Kathy, and she’s, you know, looking for new JCRC director. You should really do that. I didn’t tell Judy at the time. I don’t know if I’ve told her since either I didn’t know what a JCRC was, so I said, Oh. Oh yeah, and I nodded my head, and then at some point later in the morning, I jumped on my phone and I Googled what a JCRC was. So I sometimes say that that job just sort of fell into my lap. On the one hand, it was perfect for me, and I loved it. On the other hand, I had no business picking just sometimes in life, you’re in the right place at the right time, and that’s what led me to then do similar work in Cincinnati. Later on, after doing that, I actually spent a few years working in recruitment admissions at HUC, and then wound up doing work as the JCRC director, and then latest chapter here at Temple Sholem.

Sam: You worked at the JCRC for a long time. That’s how I first met you, because you were the director of the Cincinnati JCRC at the time. And what sort of lessons are you taking from working in that public sphere, and how are you bringing that to your new position as a congregational rabbi?

Ari: Well, so many things are transferable, and I said I would address the feeling that I shouldn’t be working in or I wouldn’t want to work in, a congregation. I would reconcile that with where I am now, and the reconciliation is this temple Sholem. What drew me to it was the fact that it is really not like other congregations in many respects, I’ve described as the sweet spot between a JCRC and a normal synagogue. It’s somewhere in between those two. Not to I’m not trying to pile on to my rabbinic colleagues, but sometimes I describe Jewish organizational  settings as too much talk, not enough action. I would describe certain Jewish advocacy settings, meanwhile, is too much action, not enough talk. I think temple Sholem is right in the middle, where we do a lot of talking and a lot of action, which makes the you know, the experience I’ve had on both sides of that fence really very relevant. The the work in community organizing and the experience in community organizing could hardly be more relevant for a congregation, the ways that you bring people in, that you make people feel included and valuable, like their time is worth something, those sorts of lessons are all very, very relevant, I would say, too, at a place like Sholem, where we do a ton of tikkun alum social activism and engagement, something that we spend a lot of effort thinking about, planning, engaging in is building coalitions  and working in coalitions with people who are different than us, and that’s really, that’s the name of the game in JCRC,

Sam: Yeah, because we’ve spoken in the past about how one of your big goals, one of your main drivers, when you were working at the JCRC, when we have these discussions as a journalist trying to get information, you would say, you know, the big thing that we are always trying to do is build community connections to not only make the Jewish community safer, but to fight anti semitism, because you have to have other people fighting with you. And you know, what sort of things are you taking not just from your experience at the JCRC, you know? How are you taking those lessons, and what kind of specific things are you doing here now at Temple shalom, to thread that needle as you were saying.

Ari: The interesting thing is that at toward the end of my time at the JCRC, I changed that philosophy a little. What I used to say all the time was that there were two reasons why the Jewish community worked in coalition and would support causes other than, you know, our own parochial causes. I used to say, number one, we do it because it’s the right thing to do, and number two, we do it because we are a tiny minority, and when we have issues, we’re going to need allies, and we show up for other people, so they show up for us. In a post October 7 world I pretty quickly wound up scratching number two off of that list. I think the Jewish community has learned that there can’t be an expectation of quid pro quo in community relations, work in alliance, building, you do the work because it’s the right thing to do. It may or may not pay dividends, and it’s lovely when it does, don’t get me wrong, I’m always happier to see that. But we can’t be so mechanical in our thinking, so transactional as to assume that the you know, if we don’t expect to get something in return, then it’s not worthwhile. It has to be sufficient just because it’s the right thing to do. And that’s something I think about here a lot. You know, who are we going to partner with, simply because our value. Point us to the right, point us in that direction. 

Sam: Yeah, you know, I think we’ll kind of move on a little bit, yeah. I think we’ve talked a little bit about your about your past, where you were, and now we’re kind of getting into where you are, professionally, at least. And sort of, you know, what sort of things, what sort of teachings or beliefs are you sort of bringing into your work at Temple, shalom, or your work just personally at the moment, that maybe you weren’t from the JCRC, or maybe they’re from rabbinical school, maybe they’re from your time being a nurse or being a nursing student or studying music. What sort of things are you? What are your touchstones as you come into this new role? Because this is your second or third week on the job.

Ari: Now, I think this is week three. Yeah, I started the day after the inauguration. So whatever that makes this three years, it does three years in, yeah, I would say that there are certain things from that eclectic past is, I think, a fair way of framing it that feel so relevant right now. You mentioned the music piece, and I would say from music and also from various spaces that I’ve been before. One of the things that I’ve learned is that the you know, the Enlightenment philosophy that you know, we’re all a bunch of walking brains, and there’s nothing more to us, except for the intellectual. There are times in my life where I’ve wanted that to be true, or even believed it to be true, but it’s not true. Yeah, people seek esthetically pleasing experiences, whether that’s in a synagogue on a Friday night or Saturday morning. You know, the music has to be good. If that’s at a program that we’re planning somewhere in the community, it has to connect with people at a visceral level. And, you know, to the extent that we don’t think about that, we fail, yeah, and we don’t always know that we failed in the moment, for what it’s worth, but we see failure in the long term, at least.

Sam: That’s also, you know, a big part of the, probably, the cultural identity of Jews in America, at least Ashkenazi Jews in America, right, is that they they’re thinkers, or over thinkers, certainly, you know, if you look at, you know, people like Woody Allen in the popular cultural scandal noted, but he the way he was portrayed in film to the way Jewish characters were portrayed in film and TV, as people who are constantly thinking and thinking out loud, and kind of did fit into that enlightenment theory of we are just walking, talking brains trapped in these bodies, sort of so what ways or how are you? How do you approach that? How do you approach not fighting that, but countering that? Because I think that’s certainly part of Jewish culture where it’s like, we’re going to study and we’re going to argue and we’re going to be intellectual about these things, but there also has to be that counterweight. 

Ari: Yeah, I would say this. I am. I’m no post modernist. I haven’t gone there yet. I do still believe that there, you know, there’s history and there are facts, there’s truth, capital T, truth, and it’s not all relative. So I haven’t, I haven’t thrown out reality yet. I do think, though, we have to be more sensitive to gonna say the emotional experience of our peers. This is something I did in some recent work, actually, in the interim book between JCRC and now, I did a project in conjunction with a group called Project over zero and the AJC, where I brought together Jews of different political backgrounds, you know, politically conservative, politically liberal, to share their stories and create more common understandings, which I would characterize, in some ways as being a little bit of a postmodern project to say that this isn’t about debating the facts, which is something I said at each one of those discussion sessions. This is not about a debate. It’s about understanding one another, and I think that’s something that in American Judaism’s push to be about claiming the mantle of fighting for what’s right and fighting against what’s wrong, and those are things I really believe quite a bit in we’ve also sort of missed some of the human experience and missed some of the connection. So I think that’s the balance there, is that we need to be more mindful of all of. Things that go into a human experience, not just the intellectual, but that doesn’t mean we throw out our our fundamental truths.

Sam: Yeah, with those discussion groups, were there any things that you learned that you didn’t already know going into it? Was there anything that surprised you, coming from either ends of the political spectrum or things. Was there anything that was a common thread through those discussions that was that surprised you?

Ari: There are probably two big takeaways I’ve had so far, I say so far, because I’m not officially finished with this project. There are. There’s more I want to do, and I’m trying to figure out what exact direction I think it’s best to go in from where we are now, two big themes that emerged, and these may seem facile, but this is what people said over and over. Number one is that folks are craving conversation with people different than themselves, doesn’t mean that those conversations are fun. The point of this wasn’t to have easy conversations, but instead to create a a controlled setting in which hard conversations could happen. People could ask tough questions of one another without, you know, resorting to a fist fight or anything like that. You know, to the extent that people tend to talk about tough issues in politics and Jewish identity, we really we vacillate between not talking about it and then talking about it in unhealthy ways, yelling past or at one another. So people, over and over, expressed how grateful they were to get to know Jews who weren’t like them, and to get to ask them deep questions. And you know, they weren’t leaving having changed their minds or anything. It wasn’t a debate that wasn’t the goal, but they found a lot of value in getting to know people who were not in their normal circles,

Sam: And were the people who are participating this? Were they also spanning the spectrum of, I guess, religious observance, or how they kind of looked at things, or was it only political?

Ari: I was just looking at politics. So I did people assessed themselves on a political scale, and then I matched people across the spectrum, so that there was always there were always people from the fringes on each side, people mainstream on each side, and somewhat centrist in each session. And how large were these sessions? How many people? Usually took six to eight people in each session, and they were very interesting. I will say, the other theme that emerged, and I found this emerging from conservatives more than from progressives, and I’m obviously talking politically conservative and progressive in this case, is that, well, maybe I’m not. I’m talking a little bit about both religious progressives who are politically conservative. So right if I’m a, for instance, a Republican who’s a Reform Jew, I feel so in many cases homeless right now, religiously homeless because, you know, it simply is the case that our progressive religious settings are also most often progressive politically. And look, we could have a discussion about whether that should or shouldn’t be. That’s not really the question I was most interested in. What I was interested in and intrigued by was the experience of homelessness, religious homelessness, that emerged as a theme amongst many people. And it should make you sad to think that, you know, here’s somebody who had a religious home for their their whole life, and then suddenly, for reasons other than their religious identity, they they don’t know what to do, and that’s disconcerting to me. One thing that’s interesting from that is that those people often these days, have gravitated religiously toward the right. So I’m a reformed Jew, and suddenly I find myself at an orthodox shul or at Chabad, not because I agree with them religiously, but because they don’t make me feel marginalized within that space for my politics. And again, this isn’t we could have a conversation about whether, well, to use one of those phrases that people use now, Sucks to suck. We could discuss whether or not that’s just the way it is. Yeah, but it is, I don’t know how you can look into the face of somebody having that experience and not just feel the pain of it. Yeah. I never thought Sucks to suck would come up in our conversation.

Sam: Oh, it’s one of those best I love that it did. And if people wanted to get you, said you’re not done with. This project now. And this project, to me, is fascinating. If people wanted to get involved with this project or get in touch with you about this project, how would they go about doing that? 

Ari: Oh, please do. I will give you my email right now and send me an email and say you’re interested. I’ll give the email in a second. Let me say here are the three directions I’m interested in taking this project next. I may have just more of these sessions, because I still have more people who are interested. We may go deeper with the group of people who’ve already done it, because to a person, they’ve all almost said, they’ve almost all said, This is great. It was a two. And these were two and a half hour conversations. We wish we had more time. And the way that you do that is you bring those people back together, or three, I might be interested in talking about Israel. The real motivation here is to find those fracture points. Where are the fissures, not the SAM Fishers, the fissures, fissures within our Jewish community that are preventing us from being able to unite, and the conversations that we don’t have in civil ways and talking about them. So those are the three directions I’m curious about going. If you want to get involved, it’s [email protected] it’s because Ari Jun was already taken, by the way, when I changed my last name. 

Sam: We’ll have that email in the show notes. Yeah, so just in case you hear it and aren’t sure how to spell it, we’ll have that for you. And you know, I think to me, it sounds like that’s another thing that you’re doing, because it seems that a lot of things in your life, you are trying to thread a needle that’s not necessarily through the middle, but you are trying to pick up as many ideas and opinions as you can and experiences as you can, and trying to not walk a middle course, but to say, Oh, I’m going to take all of this and I’m going to use all of it to inform my way forward. It sounds like that was something you were doing, literally in college, taking all these switching majors so many times, and studying all these different things, being involved in all these different things. And you were doing it as well in your early, early professional career, you were working with different organizations. And even in your work with the JCRC, you were trying to work with multiple organizations, trying to find some sort of not a consensus, but a consensus within yourself of how to move forward. And this project, to me, was what it sounds like is you are trying to find that in the Jewish community, in a time when not only is the American citizenship divided over multiple issues, but the Jewish community has become even more factitious, especially after October 7. 

Ari: Absolutely. You know, I describe sometimes the way that I think about the world or the way that I operate in the world. I’m a pragmatic idealist. It’s I have ideals, right? I’m I do think we should all have things to which we aspire. But I also know the world is messy, and sometimes what works is good enough. And you know, I when it comes to like politics, for instance, there’s nothing that makes my skin crawl. Makes my skin crawl more than you know, purity test culture around politics, not because it might be principled, right? I’m not. This is not an ethical argument I’m making here. I like ethics is not the primary lens that I’m using to measure this. You could maybe say that it’s better to be purely an idealist and and have purity tests. That could be true, but it doesn’t get anything done. And I’m most concerned with, what are the results that move your cause forward, right here, right now. And you know, in terms of, for instance, piecing together ideas or alliances. You take what works and you make the best of it.

Sam: That sort of leads me to the next part of our conversation, which is sort of what I’ll call a bit of the Jew folk questionnaire. Okay, name might be changed, but for right now, that’s what we’re calling it. And sort of, you know, you were talking about, you know, just a second ago, we were talking about phrases, idioms that you like to use. And, you know, did you have, do you have, like, a favorite Jewish saying, or Jewish idiom, Jewish thought that sort of guides the way you behave, or guides the way you approach things.

Ari: That’s a great question. You know, there are so many good Jewish sayings that to pick one that’s your favorite. If. Chutzpah, Dick, right? Yes, but let me give you one. I don’t want to go with something. I don’t want to use the low hanging fruit here. There is, which would be, what, what’s, what’s your, I don’t know, like low alligm more, you know the it’s not your responsibility to finish the task, but you can’t desist from it. Great saying, I’m not saying it’s bad. But let me give you, you know, a little bit of more esoteric one, which I think about a lot, which I love a lot. There’s a story, naturally, this is a Talmudic story. I wish I could remember the citation off the top of my head, but I can’t. So there are a couple of rabbis, and there’s a dream interpreter. Oh, you know, it’s in Brachot. I said, I can’t give you the, at least the tractate citation. It’s like page 50 ish of tractate brochure. There about, and you know, there are these two rabbis who are visiting a dream interpreter, and one of them is getting a set one of them is getting good interpretations that all come true, and the other is getting bad interpretations that all come true. And of course, what’s really going on is the good the rabbi getting the good interpretation has been paying the guy, and the one who’s getting the bad interpretations hasn’t been compensating the dream interpreter. Right? So what happens, among other things, in this story, I’m not going to tell the whole thing you have to look it up later, is that at one point, the dream interpreter drops his like dream interpretation handbook, you know, his guide that he uses, and the one who’s been getting all of these bad interpretations and having terrible things happen to him, that Rabbi, picks up the dream book and opens it up, and he finds this line in it, the original of the language is like, roughly translated, like the dreams meaning is whatever you say it is. So you know, my wife and I, my wife, I think this is a stereotypical sort of thing, but she always tells me her dreams and worries about their meanings. And I say they’re whatever you want them. I quote this line a lot. I say they’re whatever, whatever you think they mean. That’s what they mean. But I think there’s something also more higher level than just like the literal dreams that you have at night, or, you know, daydreaming in the middle of the day. You know you’re the dreams that you have are what you make of them. There’s no, like, Oh, this is my dream, therefore it must be this or that. It’s like, no, that’s the dream. And like, you can make it whatever the heck you want to make it. I love the concept, sort of.

Sam: Like, you can’t control what’s going to happen, but you can control your perception.

Ari: Exactly. There’s, there’s a version of this, I would say the equivalent in English idioms that I might skewer here. What is it they say, whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right, or there’s something like that. Yeah, that’s basically, I would say that’s the Talmudic equivalent.

Sam: I was. I was going to get zionisty on you, because there’s always good I know, I know it is no dream.

Ari: Well, so he didn’t even well. He may have known this text, but I think it’s unlikely, but that’s what he’s saying to you know, the the line between your dream being and not being is your perspective, not the dream itself. I love that. Yeah, right. I love that good text.

Sam: And moving on further into our into our questionnaire here, what’s your favorite way or your ideal Shabbat celebration? How would you like what’s if your dream Shabbat, you can make it happen. How? How do you want to celebrate Shabbat?

Ari: I would love to celebrate Shabbat amongst a community. Such a cliche answer, right? But that is sort of like what Shabbat is about with family amongst my community, with beautiful music, with delicious dinner in the evening, and then just, you know, some wonderful prayer and Torah on a Saturday, on, you know, the day of Shabbat, along with some good study. I am still a Jewish nerd as me trotting out the Talmud. If that didn’t prove it.

Sam: I think you’re a rabbi. So if you weren’t, if you weren’t trotting out the Talmud goes hand in hand.

Ari: But I do love studying text simply, you know Torah le, if you know that phrase like Torah for its own sake, you know it’s one of the cool things about Judaism is that we are a textual tradition. Not every tradition is textual in the way that we are. There’s nothing like right or wrong about it. It’s just, you know, every every religion has got its flavor. We create meaning out of texts. And I love that flavor. I never thought about it like that, but yeah, we absolutely do.

Sam: So moving along. What’s your favorite Jewish holiday?

Ari: Oh, Pesach. Now. Sounds easy. Why? Pesach, it’s an easy answer, but it’s a it’s a bad answer. I was born on Pesach, okay, so, so my I was born on like, first Seder. My mother, when she was in the Navy, was supposed to be running a Seder at the Naval Hospital for the Jewish Navy people. I don’t know. I wasn’t in the Navy. She was, yeah, she was service members. But instead, I was born, so I got her out of work that night. But what it means is that, you know, I grew up with stories about how, you know, Pesach is basically my birthday, which also, of course, is a complicated relationship, because that meant, as a kid, there were many years where I didn’t get to have cake. Yeah. So, you know, you you win some you lose. But Pesach …

Sam: Is it because? Is it also because? Do you enjoy the story of Pesach, or is it just because it’s your birthday?

Ari: The birthday is a big piece. It’s not the story, I have to confess. It’s, it is the ritual I love satyrs. By the time I’m done with them every year. I’m sick of them. Because, as a rabbi, you never just have two Seders. Yeah, you know, I’ve got the two Seders and then I’ve got like, three community Seders and this and that, sort of like, I love snow, but by the time the winter is over, I’m ready to not see snow for a year. But, you know, Seders are just such a nice occasion. They’re such the esthetic experience, right? You’ve got pageantry, you’ve got music, you’ve got good food, you’ve got the Seder plate, which I think is the coolest thing that Judaism has. Maybe it’s, think of it. It’s a metaphor box. Anything you stick on that Seder plate is an is fair game for interpretation. What a cool idea.

Sam: I have never thought of the I mean, I know the Seder plate is symbolic and ritually symbolic. I’ve never thought of it as a metaphor. 

Ari: Everything on there is a metaphor that’s true. And when people want to make a new symbolic thing for Pesach, they stick it on the Seder plate, because that’s our metaphor box. 

Sam: Is there anything that you add to the Seder plate that’s outside of the traditional Seder plate?

Ari: I have no like, regular fixture on my Seder plate that’s special. You know, sometimes I have different things. You know, there’s the orange on the Seder plate that a lot of people do. Some people do that for women. Some people do that for the queer community. I have done that in the past, but it’s not like every year I make sure I have an orange so no, I have no like, fixed thing that I do.

Sam: Moving on to our next question on the questionnaire, and this is a special rabbinical question that we only ask rabbis. Maybe we’ll include it with everyone else. Who is your favorite, or who was your most impactful Jewish teacher?

Ari: Oh, that’s tough. I’ve had a lot of good Jewish teachers. Wait, I just want to clarify. You mean teacher of Jewish stuff, or Jewish person who was a teacher. I mean teacher of Jewish stuff. Okay, I figured that, but then I suddenly doubted myself.

Sam: You could also interpret this as, like, a favorite rabbi, either living or historical, you know, so that that’s, it’s a multi layered question that you can approach however you’d like.

Ari: You know, this is dangerous, because I’ve had, I’ve had a lot of great teachers. I want to use somebody real. I guess they’re all real. I want to use somebody tangible, somebody I’ve really studied with. And if any of my other teachers, other than the one I’m about to name, are listening, I love you too. But Rabbi, Dr Mark Bucha ski was, he was a professor of Jewish law and Talmud at H, U, C, and he’s just, he’s a remarkable scholar with a tremendous personality, great humor. And he’s absolutely, you know, he’s one of the dolim He’s one of the greats of our generation in terms of being a Jewish mind with a way of connecting historical texts to contemporary Jewish practice. And he has absolutely enabled me over the years to be able to personally connect with our texts and our traditions and relate them to whatever is going on in the world around us. So many, many, many people who could, I could name, but Dr Wachowski is he’s top notch. And keep in mind to the people that weren’t mentioned, that just means you maybe weren’t at the top of Ari’s mind today. You’re whoever you are. You’re the second one, if it weren’t for Dr Wachowski. So take it up with him.

Sam: Moving on with our questionnaire. What’s your favorite thing to do in Cincinnati? Or your idea? Well, Cincinnati day, and you have the day off on that day, you’re not coming to work that day, you’ve got a free day in our fair River City.

Ari: So I’m not gonna get up in the morning. That’s I would just, you know, let’s establish it’s not happening. When I wake up, my wife and I are going to cafe Alma, because A, the people who run it, Laney and Yair, are true, true gems, true menches And B, of course, the food is wonderful. And then I think we’re going to the park, which Park? Okay? I know this could be political, right? I love alt Park. It is a really nice park, and they’ve got great walking paths out back, and you can’t go wrong with alt Park. So I don’t know what else I would integrate, but those are big ones for me. Maybe the zoo. I’d throw the zoo in there. Well, A zoo that serves drinks. I mean, it’s fabulous.

Sam: I mean, it’s one of the best things to do to walk around the zoo buzz, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. And, you know, this sort of, this sort of, this next question sort of, sort of bleeds a little bit into the last question. But you know, you’re a rabbi, what do rabbis like to do for fun. What does a rabbi do on his day off?

Ari: These days, sleep. Okay, so this rabbi, what does he like to do for fun? I feel like eclecticism is the theme of the entire conversation. I love woodworking. I love any kind of, like, home improvement project and that sort of stuff. So I might be doing things like that. I love music, playing music and listening to it. So I might be playing music.

Sam: Yeah, what are you listening to right now? Sure, what’s your top artist? If we’re gonna look up your Spotify or Apple Music. Who’s your top artist?

Ari: So I don’t do Spotify. I do Pandora because I I’m, like, trapped in 2005 or something. It’s a longer conversation. What have you been listening to late Okay, so there’s this group called watch House. They used to be called mandolin orange, and they are, like, I think they’re from South Carolina, and I event, they’re like, East they’re bluegrass group. Oh, you know them. They’re, I’ve never met someone who knows that. I know who they are. Yeah, that’s incredible. They’re amazing. They’re like, a bluegrass, American folk sort of duo. So one of my musical backgrounds is in Celtic music, so I don’t have them in where, you know, in my office, I don’t have them in my office, I have a guitar, but I also play bagpipes and Irish flute, and have been active in that scene for a long time.

Sam: What led you to playing the bagpipe and the Irish flute, I know that’s probably like its own conversation. Oh man.

Ari: The short answer, yeah, I went to a Highland Games when I was in high school. I was down in Georgia, and for whatever bizarre reason, I was a weird high schooler, right? I mean, most high schoolers are weird by definition, but I might have been a cut weirder than the rest. I decided to go to a Highland Games. I don’t know why. I seemed like something to do, and I saw all these bagpipe bands playing. I was like, that is the coolest, weirdest thing. I’m going to learn how to do that. So I found myself as, you know, a teacher, and here I am anyway. So they’re, you know, this bluegrass. They also integrate a lot of a lot of Celtic music into their thing. So been listening to watch house a lot.

Sam: And if you weren’t a rabbi, if you ended up not going to rabbinical school, what other professions would you want to try?

Ari: Well, I had a backup plan. It was either rabbinical school or it was law school was the plan. I took the LSAT and, you know, I rabbinical school was always plan A. But I I’m a pragmatic idealist, so I wanted a good plan B. And I figured, you know, you can serve people and do some really good things as an attorney, you know, I didn’t want to be ambulance chasing or anything like that, but to practice law that really helps people was an attractive idea, and I think that’s probably what I would be doing if I weren’t a rabbi. 

Sam: Cincinnati centric question, yeah, Skyline. 

Ari: I wondered if it was going to be about Skyline.

Sam: It’s going to be a skyline question, Skyline, is there a blessing for skyline? Considering it is not kosher, inherently, because it mixes milk and meat. But if one were to eat it, how could they and get the full version, not the vegetarian? Inversion, which could skirt that line of Kosher could, depending on your interpretation. They certainly are not kosher restaurants. They cook poor hot dogs on a steam grill. But if you were to thread that needle, what sort of blessing could you give skyline?

Ari: So yeah, I mean the short answer is, you don’t say food blessings on on kosher foods. If you, if you in this extrapolation, I know. So, yeah, so even I’ve never had the meat skyline, okay, because I do. I keep kosher style, but I will have the vegetarian skyline. And even that, technically, speaking, you wouldn’t say the Bucha over because it’s not kosher food, even though it’s vegetarian. I like the idea there’s this blessing that you say for like, very weird things Chicago. Lobo Lo, you know that this is how it is in God’s world you’re supposed to say when you see, like an elephant or something like weird stuff. I don’t know. I feel like Skyline should fit for that.

Sam: I think, I think so too. And the last question is, if you could have a billboard, what would you want to put on that billboard? 

Ari: Hmm, what’s give me some like parameters for the billboard? 

Sam: You know, it’s a regular billboard. It’s on either 71 or 75 whichever, whichever one you choose, it could be on both, and it’s something that everyone’s going to see driving to and from work. So normally it would be like you want some sort of message on there, that could be a picture, that could be a phrase, that could be anything you want, but it would probably need to be short enough for people to be able to read it as they drove by. It 70 miles an hour.

Ari: Okay, so if I can only have, like billboard, 70 miles an hour language, I’ll go cheesy. You know, we’ve, we’ve got, you know, they have to lore como ha, like Love your neighbor as yourself. But I think I’d want to jazz it up a little bit and make it something like, love your neighbor who isn’t like you like yourself. That you know, going back to some of the conversations that I’m into these days, we don’t have too much trouble loving our neighbor who looks like us, literally or metaphorically, in the way we would want to be treated or taken care of or cared for, but we have a total breakdown and compassion for people who who aren’t like us. And I mean not that people listen to billboards, but if they would, that would be a good one for them to listen to. One for them to listen to.

Sam: Yeah, well, I think that’s a perfect way to end our conversation again. Rabbi Ari Jun, the rabbi at Temple Shalom. Thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule. I know it’s your third week, so there’s still probably so many things that you’re doing. Is there anywhere that people should look for you, whether that be on social media or just out in the world? 

Ari: When you say that, what do you mean? Like handles?

Sam: Yeah, I mean handles if you want. You know. I mean they can find you here, obviously, every Friday night and Saturday and Saturdays and Saturdays. Or is there? Do you have a you have a blog as well, which we should mention that you still are using, still uploading your blog?

Ari: Absolutely. I renamed it from being a blog. It’s now ruminations. Ruminations, my ruminations. You can find my ruminations on Arijun.com Right? Or you can visit temple Sholom his website. I think we’re templesholom.net and from time to time, yeah, you can see Ari June’s ruminations on Cincy Jewfolk. So I ruminate a lot. 

Sam: He’s a he’s a ruminating kind of guy, but thanks so much for taking the time, and we’ll catch you next time. I appreciate it you.