Park Slope Reader

Emily Gawlak

The Reader Interview: Back to School – At the Eye of the Storm of Controlled Creative Chaos

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The Reader Interview with Liz Phillips, Principal of PS 321

 

P.S.321, which lays claim to a full city block off Park Slope’s 7th avenue, is — and long has been — one of the hottest tickets around. Desperate parents have been known to rent second apartments, or just fake their address, to enroll their child in what is widely understood to be one of the best public elementary schools in the city. And at the eye of this storm of controlled, creative chaos is the widely admired Liz Phillips, who’s served as principal for, as of this fall, 20 years. Along the way, she’s advocated for teachers, pushed forth policies in her own school as well as others, and seeded the city with an ever-growing network of mentees.

A former editor for Knopf and Pantheon, Phillips began working at the Feminist Press not long after her children were born, and while working on an educational series for high schoolers had her aha moment: she loved producing great books, but, she realized, “a really great teacher could make do with mediocre materials… I wanted to be in that position.” Phillips enrolled in a one-year program at the Bank Street College of Education, and secured a spot student teaching with education titan Carmen Fariña, who would eventually go on to serve as the New York City Schools Chancellor. Phillips had her eye on District 15 because of their “strong leadership and emphasis on the writing process,” but it was somewhere between kismet and calculation that brought her to P.S. 321, where her daughter was currently enrolled, to teach first grade. Soon, she was mentoring other teachers on the writing process, and when an assistant principal transferred out of the school, then principal Peter Heaney tapped Phillips to take her place. She agreed, on the condition she could return to teaching if she didn’t like it. Eight years later, she took over as principal.

Liz’s philosophy, official Parent Coordinator and my ad hoc tour guide, Deb, tells me — with clear awe for the woman who has helmed this hub of progressive, pint-sized learning since well before her own children matriculated — is to always say “yes, if you can.” We snaked through the labyrinthine hallways, passing bulletin boards of welcome greetings; a teacher who taught Deb’s son over a decade ago; a classroom of students on sleek Apple desktop computers, learning not how to use the tech (of course not), but how to be better digital citizens; and a young boy painting determinedly on an easel in what was either reward or engaging punishment. Eventually, we passed the office of the Assistant Principals. I told them about my chat with Liz and joked about her “enough already!” attitude about the retirement question. Seems like she’s not planning on going anywhere any time soon, I remarked. At that, one of the APs, already half way out of the door for a meeting, ran back towards her desk and rapped on it, hard. “I need to knock on something made of real wood.” 

Congratulations on another school year! What do you love the most about back to school? 

Liz Phillips: You know, I think one of the privileges of working in education, in a school, is that every year is a new beginning and you can start fresh, and it’s really exciting. You can build on successes from the previous year but, you know, avoid problems that you figured out. And certainly just everybody’s excitement, getting to know new teachers when we have new teachers and new staff members, and seeing the children coming into school and just really feeling great. There are some kids who have some separation issues in kindergarten, but most of the kids I see in the lobby just so excited about going upstairs, seeing their friends. 

Bye mom!

[Laughs] Right. In fact, it’s funny because we allow our kindergarten parents to bring the kids into the room and today — sometimes the first graders, the beginning of the year, because they’re not used to going up alone, are a little nervous. So I was in the lobby and I saw a kid with their parent, who I didn’t know, crying, and I thought, oh, this must be a first grader who wants to go upstairs with his parent. Turns out it was a kindergartener who didn’t want his mother to go upstairs with him. 

As principal, do you feel far away from your years of being in the classroom and teaching? Is that something that you miss? 

Well, I think one of the reasons that I never left the school and didn’t want to go to work in a district office or work at central [office of the DOE] was because I feel like when you’re based in the school, you can still be connected to the classrooms. I’m clearly not a teacher anymore, but I feel like the best principals think of themselves as teachers in some ways and spend a lot of time in classrooms, and I really enjoy that time. And so I think that’s one of the reasons I wouldn’t have left the school because I think if I had then I would really miss it. 

You said in an interview that having that foundation, having that experience as a teacher, informs the work of the best principals out there. 

Look, the heart of the school — there are a lot of things that make a school great — but the teachers are with the kids all day. Having great teachers and understanding how central that is, that as a principal you have to be able to support the teachers and also, you know, work on helping them improve, whether it’s by setting up collegial relationships and having many opportunities for intervisitation for people working together, providing really high quality professional development. But I think if you haven’t been a teacher, it’s hard to understand how central that is to the success of any school.

I was sifting through all these online comments about the school, and whether it was posted six months ago or 14 years ago, the word “community” came up over and over again. I can see that that’s such an important buzzword as to how you view yourself here. What makes this a distinct community and how do you work to keep it bonded and cohesive and collaborative? 

I think that there are a lot of things and I will say, you know, we’ve had in this school very consistent leadership. The previous two principles each were here 10 years. So in the last 40 years, there have only been three principals in this school, and both of the previous principals who I’ve worked under, both of them were principals who really respected teachers. I think there’s been a sense of this school as a place where teachers can take risks, can grow, want to be part of the community. You know, a lot of what I try to set up in terms of structures, are structures that allow that. We build grade meetings into the school day, last period so that the kids are in a grade recess. So teachers can meet together. I go to all those meetings. Often principals don’t go to grade meetings, but I feel like this school is really big, and that’s another thing. I mean very few elementary schools have over 1400 students and, you know, nine classes in a grade. And so I feel like it’s really important, in terms of building the community, for me to be in tune with what’s going on across every grade. We put a lot of emphasis on professional development that not only teaches certain, you know, pedagogic skills or content areas, but that builds community. For example, Monday professional development. All teachers work an extra 80 minutes on Monday for professional development, and our first one, which is this Monday, given the holidays we’ve had, is a community-building professional development. Really the main goal of it is for people to get to know each other better in smaller groups. We’re always thinking about how can we do that. We also have tremendous parent involvement. So a lot of it is also figuring out ways to work with parents effectively, figuring out ways to balance, you know, all the different needs, needs of teachers, needs of parents, to work collaboratively to do that. We have many “friend-raising” events which, you know, a potluck supper which we have in a week, which is for mainly families, but a lot of teachers come, too. So I mean I just, I think you can set structures into place that, that focus on the importance of community.

I imagine that a lot of these things are ways to combat the issue that the school has had with overcrowding, as you mentioned. 

I will say that it’s more to combat the school being a big school than overcrowding. We actually are not overcrowded… but we’re big. [Laughs] Because we have both our main building and the mini school in the backyard. So we have enough rooms. That’s not the issue. There are some schools that genuinely cannot fit their kids. That’s not our problem. But we a very big school. For both the children and the teachers and also the parents, that means you have to, I think, be more deliberate about community building because you know, you can’t just all be together. There are nine first grades, and nine teachers can’t plan together all the time. So I do think that yes, because of the size, I know principals at schools that are much smaller where it doesn’t have to be quite as deliberate because it happens more naturally. 

I know you’re famous here for your very active parent population, so where is that balance between encouraging them to be involved but then drawing the line so it doesn’t become too much?

Yes. And I am very aware of that part — I’ve been doing this a long time. When parents come to me with ideas, my first thought is always what’s the impact of this on the teachers? This is an example from many years ago. Parents wanted more enrichments, you know, chess, arts, music. We have a lot that are DOE sponsored, but that wanted even more. Teachers felt they had enough enrichments and they didn’t have enough time with their kids. So how do you balance that? So what I did at that point is I brought it to the school leadership team — we have a really effective school leadership teams of eight parents, eight staff members — and I tried to steer it towards doing afterschool programs where parents would feel their kids have an opportunity to have more enrichments, but teachers wouldn’t feel the school day was being taken over. And so we started what’s now called Kid’s Club, where we have all these different kinds of, it could be puppet making, theater, and we have some enrichments during the school day, but to be careful… When I mentor new principals, that’s what I’m always saying. Yes, you want parent involvement, but you do have to sometimes draw limits. And as the principal, think about what’s best for the school as a whole. I will say that we have amazing parents, and I spend a lot of time, probably more time than many principals, meeting with them. But I feel like it pays off because I feel like we’ve established really great relationships, and that the parents are respectful and understand that things have to be run by me, and that there are certain things that aren’t necessarily going to happen, that we’re going to compromise. Even something like volunteering in the classroom, we have very specific times when it works for parents, you know, kindergarten choice time, or helping at lunch recess, or certainly going on trips. But it’s not like, oh you can come and volunteer any time you want in the classroom. So, you know, I think putting structures in place that allow parents to feel welcomed, like Family Fridays, which was something that I started even before, when I was the early childhood coordinator. I went to the principal with this idea which has now taken often is in schools around the city, where the first Friday of every month, we open up the whole school to all parents. So there are thousands of people in the building, and they’re in the kids’ classrooms, and they’re either reading with kids, or playing math games, or doing a project. So it’s an organized way of parents getting to see the classroom. I think parents want to see what their kids are doing, but in a controlled way that isn’t like just, oh, I want to drop in and help out with reading time.

You were so outspoken at the time for not evaluating teachers based on test scores, and then to see that move into a moratorium, did that sense of getting involved, successfully in impacting policy ever give you the desire to become more involved in the political angle of the job? outfit or was that just need to step up? 

No, I feel like there have been many times since I’ve been principal that I have been outspoken about things. Many years ago after 9/11, I wrote an article about the pledge of allegiance. And I think there were things, whether it’s about immigration and protecting kids in school, about not having guns in school, you know, armed security guards — forget about teachers, that’s just ludicrous. Those are things that directly affect the school. I am sensitive to the fact that whatever my own personal political beliefs are as a school leader, for things that are outside of education, I might get involved when I’m out of school, but I think all kids need to feel supported in school. Even with standardized testing, that can get tricky because there are parents who are so anti-testing, and talk to their kids. So kids could tease another kid for taking a test. So when we have our testing meeting in March, which we always do, I always start by saying, look, you know, we believe in being a respectful school. We’re a no place for hate school, and that carries over to how we talk about, you know, different political perspectives on something like testing, and we have to respect that different parents and different kids — and kids are mainly reflecting their parents — are going to have different points of view on it. And I feel like it is possible to be outspoken about things that you really feel are detrimental to the school and to children and still maintain an atmosphere where different perspectives are allowed. 

What’s next for you and P.S. 321? It seems like you still feel invigorated and empowered by the work. 

I do, I do. People are like, are you going to retire? [Laughs] I’m not really interested in that right now. I’m having a good time. I’m enjoying this amazing community. I will say that for the last few years, one of the energizing parts of my job has been mentoring others and I’m very proud of the fact that my last maybe five APs [assistant principals] are now principals. One just became a principal a few weeks ago, and that feels really great. Also, Carmen Fariña started a Learning Partners Project. You could apply to be a host school, which is what we were, if you had practices you wanted to share, and then other people could apply to be partners. We were part of this for four years in different configurations, but at one point we had actually eight partner schools in Sunset Park and Brownsville and Park Slope and one year in far Rockaway. And that was an opportunity for not just principals but teachers to do intervisitation and learn from each other. I really enjoy that part of the job. Last year I facilitated a District 15 group of assistant principals who had the potential to be principals. I really feel like, you know, that’s very sustaining to me to feel like, as I’ve been doing this for a long time and some of it is easier than it is for a first year principal, to be able to share best practices. But I also feel like, you know, as I said when we started, each year is a new beginning. Each year has its own challenges and it’s, you know, and I enjoy that. I feel like as a successful school, it’s not like, oh, we have brand new things coming, we take what’s been successful and we modify it and we make it better. So math is an area right now we’re paying a lot of attention to. And so that’s a little new, you know, social emotional learning is something we’ve always been committed to, but now figuring out even better ways. We started a peace path, and it’s just a method of helping kids resolve their own conflicts. That’s new. So every year there are a few new things. I believe as a principal, you have to be growing, you have to do something new, but you can’t like throw in 20 new initiatives. It’s not effective. 

 

The Reader Profile: Zellnor Myrie

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A Sneakerhead Runs for State Senate

Zellnor Myrie would like to introduce himself to you, Central Brooklyn. Zellnor — just Z, if you’d prefer — is the progressive challenger for Jesse Hamilton’s District 20 State Senate seat, and though his campaign only began in earnest in February, when he quit his full time job at global law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, he’s already covered considerable ground in the district, greeting commuters at train stations, marching in parades, attending church services, speaking at bars and banquets and high school graduation ceremonies, and, of course, knocking on doors. 

Canvassing held him up for our interview at a cafe off of Crown Heights’ Franklin Avenue, and though I’d met him only in passing at a fundraising event at Gotham Market, the energetic 31-year-old greeted me with a hug. Train delays. “There are parts of the district where it takes me longer to get to than it would for me to get to the city,” he told me with a laugh. I had to hand that to him, District 20 is indeed an odd one, horseshoeing narrowly around Prospect Park and encompassing swaths of Bed-Stuy, Fort Greene, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Sunset Park.

On a recent 90 degree evening, in the tiny stretch of Park Slope, in his district, I met up with him and his aide Godfre — who joined the campaign by way of a Twitter DM — and despite it being the first dreadful day of summer, Myrie looked cool as ever in his typical uniform: button-up, tie, dress pants. Loafers were the one irregularity for the unabashed sneakerhead. (“I take great pride in the fact that I wore Jordans and listened to Migos in the elevator of my former law firm,” he recently tweeted in a thread linked with #Vote4TheCulture. “Let’s show people that we can be fly and civically engaged at the same time.”)

Godfre also serves as an occasional hypeman, gently coaxing Z to knock again, a daunting task when there’s so much to say, and when one of the main topics on your agenda — the IDC — is a tough concept to convey period, let alone in the time your average New Yorker is willing to give a stranger. 

The Independent Democratic Conference, or IDC, is a faction of Democratic state senators who vote with Senate Republicans, giving them the power to pass legislation despite the Dem’s 32 – 31 majority. Formed by Jeffrey Klein in 2011, when Republicans briefly held a majority, members claim the coalition is a bipartisan effort to move legislation forward. Anti-IDC groups paint another picture, one of kickbacks in the form of committee chair positions (complete with salary increases) and a chokehold on progressive legislation, including bills on comprehensive health care, anti-LGBTQ discrimination, and reproductive rights.

In early April, Governor Andrew Cuomo brokered a deal to reunify the IDC with mainstream Senate Democrats, but the move inspires tepid confidence, and progressive challengers, including Myrie, still consider the strange political games a need-to-know for all Brooklynites. “We’re at a time in our country where we cannot afford to have Democrats not be Democrats,” the candidate, usually mild-mannered, stressed, “It’s just why people hate politics. Because you have people that come before you and give you lip service and they say, this is what I’m fighting for, and it’s all surface level stuff.” 

Hamilton, who ran in 2014 and took office in 2015, pledged himself to the IDC just before election day in 2016. “When it comes to the substance and when you peel the curtain back,” Myrie continues, “you see that nothing is there, and meanwhile we have tens of thousands of families being kicked out of their rent stabilized apartments because we don’t have the right laws on the books. Meanwhile we’ve got people in jail because they are poor. Meanwhile we have schools that are owed tens of millions of dollars all within this district because people have decided to play politics.”

Myrie’s quick to point out the different fundraising styles between his and Hamilton’s campaign as well. To date, Hamilton has taken tens of thousands from real estate special interest groups, including The Real Estate Board of New York. Myrie, by contrast, boasts that 100 percent of his first quarter donations came from individuals. Only time will tell if this grassroots approach will pay off, though; incumbents historically bank wins on name recognition and larger coffers. Add to that New York State’s infamously low voter turnout, even for presidential elections, and it’s a far cry from an easy victory. 

But this isn’t Myrie’s first foray into politics. After graduating with a bachelor’s in communications and master’s in Urban Studies from Fordham University, Zellnor worked as Legislative Director for City Councilman Fernando Cabrera. While earning his JD at Cornell, he served as president of the Cornell Law Student Association.

And he’s confident about his odds because he’s been talking to the people. 

Myrie is both plagued and inspired by the problems that lie behind the many doors of the district, like the senior citizens who don’t know how they’re going to make rent or low-income housing fallen into disrepair. “I’ve had people in NYCHA facilities bring me into their apartments and show me the ceilings coming down in their bathrooms. They’ve shown me the insects that have gathered in the kitchen,” he recounts. “When all of the other challenges of running and being a candidate surface, I remember people I’ve spoken to who really need help.”

As he often does, Z brings up his mother, Marcelina, a Costa Rican immigrant who came to the city four decades ago on the promise of a mattress and a factory job and built a life for herself and her son in Prospect Lefferts Gardens thanks in no small part to affordable housing. “That stability, my mom being secure in the fact that she knew that her rent would only go up by a certain percentage,” he shared, “I think allowed her to flourish in the other areas of her life.” Like keeping a watchful eye on her son, sending him to P.S. 161 and Brooklyn Technical High School, making sure he was home by 7 p.m. sharp and his homework was done. 

Myrie isn’t shy about expressing gratitude and love for the community that raised him, and it’s this pride and concern that brings him back, Ivy League law degree in hand, to legislate for social change. “I do not consider myself exceptional,” he is quoted in his post-grad, pre-campaign “success story” on the Cornell Law School website. “I have just been in the right place, at the right time, around the right people. My job, outside of work, is to provide those things — the place, time, and people — to those who do not have them.” He echoed a similar sentiment when we spoke, his campaign now a reality, and well underway. “You gotta change the law,” he said. “That’s how you change the arc of our community.”

When one of the last doors we knocked on opened, a kitten darted out and Myrie put out his foot to gently block the animal’s bound down the stairs. As the woman brought the kitten in, he turned around grinned. Did you see that save? The woman poked her head back out with a slightly bothered air, but as he started his spiel, faint recognition dawned. “Oh, you’re running against…” she searched. Jesse Hamilton, Z offered. “Who’s part of that bad group…” The woman again let Myrie fill in her blank. The IDC, yes. “Oh yes,” she concluded, grabbing his outstretched flyer. “I’ll vote for you.” 

If only it were always that easy. 

But election day is months away, and he’s still gathering signatures to get his name on the ballot. Then there’s voter registration. Endorsements continue to roll in, including from the Working Families Party, Independent Neighborhood Democrats, and Lambda Independent Democrats, but Myrie’s still out and about, morning to night. 

 That evening, he stood on the steps of a building with no conceivable entry system — the last building of the night — and scrolled through a calendar on his iPhone. It wasn’t even 9, a mercifully early end to the night’s work, given the thunder that rumbled ominously overhead. “At the end of the day, I like to check and see what the first thing I have to do the next morning is,” he said. Trains. 7:30 am. 

“It’s day by day, you know. It’s a war of attrition kind of thing,” Myrie reflected with a smile when I asked how he keeps his energy up. “But that makes it exciting because then you look back and you’re like, ‘Oh wow. Over this time period, look at what we’ve been able to accomplish.’” 

For Myrie, there’s no time to consider defeat and little time to even consider his opponent Hamilton, who so far has done little to engage with the progressive upstart. There’s only time to lace up his sneakers, keep his eyes on September, and just keep running.

 

 

Spirituality, Social Activism and Spare Time

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A RABBI’S SEARCH FOR BALANCE

In 2015, Timoner relocated her family from Los Angeles, where she served as associate rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple, to take a position as senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform Jewish congregation that traces its roots to the late 19th century and, since 1910, has gathered on the corner of Garfield Place and Eighth Avenue. In her brief time in Brooklyn, the long-time progressive activist and grassroots organizer has become a central force in not only the spiritual but political life of Park Slope, making headlines for her arrest protesting President Trump’s travel ban in February of 2017 and kindling the resistance movement #GetOrganizedBrooklyn with councilmember Brad Lander, among many other actions both within the congregation and in the wider community. 

As we sat in her cozy, book-filled office tucked behind CBE’s sanctuary, the rabbi engaged with off the cuff eloquence about relocating from the west coast, following the teachings of the Torah, and what to do about millennials. A theme of our conversation was the complexity of the human experience, and how challenging it can be to not only live with but try to embrace contradiction.

Perhaps we can look to Timoner as a model for such duality. She is commanding yet compassionate, emotional and intellectual. She is endlessly active, yet — this struck me most of all — she listens, carefully, thoughtfully. When you speak with Rabbi Timoner, you feel heard. Understood. Though this writer’s spiritual search continues, I left my conversation with the rabbi — as I did last time we spoke about her work — emboldened by another dialectic: spurred on to action and anchored by the great wisdom that exists in our own backyard. 

 

What makes your congregation such a unique and special place, one that would draw you to Park Slope all the way from California?

There’s a question right now in the Jewish world about what the future of the synagogue is going to look like. A lot of a lot of young Jews think about the synagogue as something that their parents or their grandparents were part of, and there’s a question of like, can and will the synagogue reinvent itself? And how? This congregation has been engaged in that for some time and really is open to experimentation. To engaging the larger neighborhood, not just the Jewish community. To being right there and relevant on whatever the pressing questions are at the time. And that’s the kind of congregation that I most wanted to serve. One where we could be talking about what’s most important in our society and in our lives. And one where we are having a really open boundary, like just really open to the rest of the community and looking actively for partnerships across lines of race, across lines of faith. And also one that is willing to be bold, and willing to try new things and willing even to fail in the pursuit of the kind of change that meets people where they are. 

It seems that a huge part of your life is defined by your commitment to social justice. Do you ever feel that there’s tension between that role and your role as a rabbi? Or does anyone from the congregation ever give you the idea that there might be tension there? 

In any congregation this big, we have like 900-something households, there’s diversity there. And there are a lot of people who really prize the role that we’re playing around social justice. It’s one of their primary points of connection. And there are other people who don’t want to see that here. Who feel like a synagogue should be mostly a place that feels calm and peaceful, where we don’t really talk about political questions. Where we don’t talk about things that are upsetting. There are people who feel that way. Or who feel like the direction our country is going in is OK, there are those. It’s a very small minority of people here, but there are some people who feel that way. So, the way that I feel about that is when I am aware of somebody being uncomfortable with the direction we’re taking, I really want them to know that I want to hear from them and I want to sit with them. I want to hear what’s been uncomfortable and want to hear, you know, I want to hear their perspective. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not going to do what I’m doing or that I’m not going to lead the way I’m leading because I do feel like this moment requires that of us. I actually feel, beyond this moment, I feel that Torah and Judaism requires of us that we take a stand on the moral questions of our time. And then we take the political questions. Torah is actually a political text. It’s about society. It’s about how to create a just society. That’s what Torah is. So in my eyes, if I were to be silent or inactive on the injustices of our time, I would be betraying Torah. In order to fulfill Torah and be true to it, I have to speak. I don’t have a choice. 

As a society, we want to move beyond this idea of, “as a Democrat, I could never be friends with a Republican” and vice versa, but it sometimes feels like we’re creating divisions that are insurmountable. But we have to be able to reach across and have a dialogue…

Because we have more in common than we realize. One of the things that we’ve been doing this year, actually for the last two years, is creating a dialogue series here specifically hoping that people will come who don’t agree with each other. This year our focus is Israel. Within the Jewish community, there’s a really big range of feelings about Israel, and within this congregation there are. So we have a 12-part series we’ve been doing this year in which each time we meet, one of the hours is study, where we actually learn some history about Israel and Palestine and Jewish history and get grounded in some knowledge. And then the other hour is dialogues. So we have trained a group of congregants to be facilitators, and we have small groups and people come together and really are encouraged to open up and talk about how they feel and what they think and to disagree with each other. And to grow our capacity to be uncomfortable, to grow our capacity to listen to views we don’t agree with, to take a deep breath, to stay open, to stay curious, to see if there’s something we might learn. None of us has the answers. To develop a humility that, I need you and you need me and we need each other to be able to create a society together. And so I think that what that requires is two parts of the whole. One part is being able to speak and act with clarity on the things we are clear about. You were asking about social justice. So there’s a lot of things that are very clear from Torah about what should happen in a just society. When we see injustice, we must speak about it, we need to protest it, we need to stand for what’s right. Meanwhile, we also have to have the ability to listen to people who don’t agree and to be humble in that conversation and to be open and to be curious and to expect that we might have something we don’t know. And that’s a very challenging combination. Two different modes of being. But I’m trying to make both those modes of being happen here, both myself and my own leadership and for the congregation to have opportunities to do both things at the same time.  

It wasn’t that long ago that you joined the rabbinate, receiving s’micha from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2009. Since then, how have you grown in your spirituality? In your idea of what it means to be a rabbi?

I feel like my growing edge, the part that I’m always learning about is the relationship between spirituality and social justice, between having an active relationship with God, the source of life. Having an active relationship with the aspects of being alive that are more subtle and internal and with the part of my leadership that has to do with crying out for the role that should be. And those in some ways really obviously dovetail with one another and other ways can sometimes feel far apart from each other. Sometimes the work we do, when we are advocating for policies or doing community organizing or protesting things, can feel really secular. Really, really secular. I think that the integration of those two things, always remembering where the motivation comes from. I don’t just care about this as an American. I care about this as a Jew. I care about this as a rabbi. Where does that come from? It comes from Torah. Where in Torah does it come from? And where does Torah come from? Where does that feeling in us that pulls us to say, wait, I believe in us as, as human beings, I believe that we can do better than this. I must speak about this thing that’s wrong. Where does that pull come from deep within us? My feeling is that that comes from something beyond us. It’s also in us, and so just always connecting those two pieces. I feel like it’s possible to be praying and not thinking about the world or be in the world and not be thinking about God, and I’m always wanting to reconnect those two things to each other and integrate them. That is, for me, it has always been a very present challenge for me, and it continues to be. 

You also aren’t afraid to put yourself on the front lines of social justice. I know you’ve engaged in civil disobedience and written and spoken about that work. I was struck by something in a piece you wrote about the Muslim ban. You said that civil disobedience is what privilege should be used for. Could you take me back to that moment and elaborate on that sentiment? 

There were a group of rabbis, 19 of us, who blocked the road by Trump Tower in Manhattan, the Trump hotel on Central Park West and Columbus Circle. I was aware that night about how safe I felt, sitting in the dark in the middle of the road. I knew that the cars weren’t going to hit me because there were police there blocking them. I knew that the police weren’t going to beat me up. I knew that I wasn’t going to get locked up for days with no one coming to help me. I knew that if there was bail I could pay it. I knew that I wasn’t going to get put in Rikers Island. Given that I was doing something risky, I felt remarkably safe. And that is because of a lot of things. I have white skin. I have lots of contacts, lawyers who could help me. We organized this in a way where we made sure that we had what we needed to be safe. I think one of the interesting dynamics as white people become more and more aware of our privilege and more and more aware of systemic racism is to think about what to do with it. Because it’s not useful to sit around feeling guilty that you’ve gotten a leg up on everyone, all people of color around you, that you’ve gotten advantages that other people haven’t gotten. It doesn’t do anything to feel guilty about that. So, ok, instead, I’ve got this privilege, I’ve benefited from this privilege. I would like to dismantle this system, but in the meantime, what do I do with this privilege and the power that it gives me? If I can put my body on the line in a visible way that gets media attention for people who might be behind bars or might be in detention, or might be at risk of deportation or are being barred from this country because of their religion, et cetera. If I can do that, that is a great way to use my privilege. Whereas if I didn’t have these privileges, taking that risk is something that I still might do, but it would be much riskier. And so I do feel like for those who have privilege, I think one of the questions we ought to ask ourselves is: what is this privilege good for? What can I use it for, given that I have it, and how do I use it with tremendous humility? How do I make sure that I am acting in a way that supports the leadership of people who are targeted and oppressed that never brings attention to myself at their cost or expense, but that is strategic and makes that privilege useful.

Given all that you do and these different roles you play, how do you not only find time for yourself, but also for your family?

I think that people who aren’t involved in synagogues or churches often don’t have any idea how clergy schedules are. 

And I imagine in many cases, people need you, they don’t just want to chat. 

Yeah. So my schedule, like I tend to be completely booked, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day without a break. I’m booked six weeks out, for six weeks solid. And then if you go six weeks ahead, you can find that opening. I right now have kind of found my groove. When I started in this job, it was overwhelming to me. When I started in my last job, it was overwhelming to me, but in time you kind of get to know the rhythm, the game of Tetris that is the calendar [laughs]. And in terms of time with my family, I don’t have enough time with my family. I don’t. I just was away with them this weekend and really, really soaked up that time and enjoyed it. But in general, I don’t have as much time with my family as I would like. We make sure to have Shabbat dinner together every Friday night and make sure to have, you know, little snippets here and there late at night and sometimes on the weekends. But it’s part of what I agreed to when I decided to be a rabbi. I took that on, and I hope, I think that my children and my family are getting what they need. But yeah, it’s definitely a lot to balance. In terms of not going crazy or not getting too exhausted, I do keep my eye on that. Like I definitely work hard to find ways that I’m going to get enough rest, have some time when I’m not here, have some time when I have some days off. Because I would love to be doing this work for a really long time.

To make it sustainable. Well, to come full circle, there are various reports that say millennials are less inclined to believe in organized religion. What you make of that? Do you notice that in your own congregation? 

Well, one thing that’s incredible here at CBE is that we have this thing called Brooklyn Jews, which is for millennials, and it is thriving. There are hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of people in their twenties and thirties who are coming to things and who are connected to each other and making community. I think the issue is, if it looks like the older generation’s thing, like, who wants to be part of that? If it looks like it’s willing to adapt to meet you where you are, then it starts to become intriguing. Brooklyn Jews has Shabbat services, it has Shabbat dinners, it has holiday parties. It has all kinds of different things out and about in Brooklyn and at CBE. Increasingly we are combining things, with Brooklyn Jews and the general congregation doing things together. And it turns out that a lot of the 

people in their twenties and thirties, they really want to be an intergenerational environment, as long as it’s not just that they’re supposed to fit into what the older generation wants. It should be about them also. And we’re ready to do that. And we do that. And it’s really incredible. I would say that the polling data about millennials, I am not seeing that. I think that it’s overstated. 

I’m someone who is still figuring out my own path, but we all need community. There also are statistics that people are lonelier than ever and more addicted to substances than ever.

Yes. Yes, I think that millennials are very much looking for community.

And in real time. 

Yes, with other people, laughing, talking, eating, singing, being together. You know, I think millennials very much are spiritual. They might not think of themselves as religious, but they’re spiritual. They’re curious about, they’re wanting to engage with questions of meaning and questions of life purpose. I think I’ve talked to a lot of people who feel that they kind of are connected to something larger than themselves, and it’s mysterious, and they don’t know what that is, but they want to be able to pursue that and explore it. And so I don’t think really fundamentally millennials are different than everybody else. 

We just have a lot more confusing content to sort through. 

Yeah. And our world is… looking at our world right now could lead one to despair. And I think coming of age in this time is harrowing. So having other people to do that with, having people to do that with who will also be willing to talk and think about what makes you hopeful and what we could do together and where we could come together and are willing to laugh. I think everybody needs that.

 

Come On In, The Water’s Fine – at cityWell

By Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: , , , , ,

Of all the apartment compromises we make in this city, our poor excuses for bathrooms may be the most egregious. I mean, honestly, where are all of the claw foot tubs? Thankfully, a needed respite from the too-cramped bathroom blues lies off the R train in Gowanus, where Liz Tortolani welcomes you into her boutique bathhouse, cityWell, with open arms and extra fluffy towels. 

 

There was still snow on the ground on the Sunday afternoon scheduled for my hydrotherapy session, two hours set aside for full use of the townhouse-turned-bathhouse’s wet and dry saunas, hot tub, and showers. I turned down a quiet block of President Street past Third Avenue towards the canal as a nearby church bells tolled three, and lo! a eucalyptus branch signaled the way. Soon I was standing in a small entryway, enveloped in a blend of ginger, peppermint, and tobacco, a signature cityWell scent.

“I bet you weren’t quite sure where you were going!” Tortolani’s boomed as I stepped inside. The creator and sole owner of the spa is a vigorous, constant presence in the space, greeting guests, fiddling with steam valves, spritzing aromatherapy here and there, toweling off a slippery spot on the cork floor. She escorted me in, and, after a quick tour of the space, I swapped my parka and sweatpants for a swimsuit and was soaking in an outdoor hot tub, observed only by (no doubt jealous) empty balconies of the surrounding townhouses.

Liz in the backyard, photograph by Jessica Miller.

Tortolani opened cityWell in late 2015, but her quest for alternative healing began long ago, stemming from a Chron’s Disease diagnosis at age 13. While abroad in Sydney, Australia during college, she had a formative first experience at a Korean bathhouse. Years later, while studying massage therapy in Seattle, she began visiting Hothouse Spa, a women-only space that helped cement her belief in the benefits of regular hydrotherapy and proved an important influence on cityWell. “It really saved me,” says Tortolani. “I found that place incredibly healing to my body.”

When Tortolani moved to New York City in 2005, she wanted to find a Hothouse equivalent, but was nonplussed by what she saw as crowded, remote, or male-centric options. “I had just moved to one of the best cities in the world, and yet it didn’t have any facility like I was lucky enough to have in Seattle. A place I could walk to, that was in my neighborhood, that was accessible, that was affordable,” she shares. So she set out to build it herself.

Tortolani credits the Business Outreach Center Network as integral in her path to entrepreneurship because of their wealth of free resources and guidance for aspiring business owners. ““They keep asking you,” she recalls, “What are your next steps?” Her mentors there also introduced her to the Brooklyn Public Library’s Annual PowerUP! Business Plan Competition, which served as “a catalyst for propelling me forward.” The competition also motivated her to put together an extensive plan, which in turn helped Tortolani connect with architect Deborah Mariotti of MariottiStudio, who would remain by her side for the next five years as they dealt with both the excitement of planning and disappointment of setbacks and spaces falling through.

 

 

But eventually, Tortolani tapped the vein of two trends. First, she kept her eye on Gowanus, a neighborhood she’d lived in since moving to the city and loved for its grit and industrial feel. “As an entrepreneur you want to go into a place before it blows up. I was able to sense that this place was going to change.”

Working as a holistic health coach, a massage therapist, and a yoga instructor, Tortolani also saw the way wellness practices — on both an individual and organizational level — were the first to go when the recession hit, but watched as there was a refocusing on self-care in recent years. With cityWell, she hopes to encourage wellness as routine. “That was part of my concept,” she shares, “making self-care and wellness a part of everyday life, not just a luxury.

 

 

CityWell is not without luxury, though, catering to any number of boutique experiences. A la carte massages and body scrubs are offered, as well as elaborate packages such as the Mini Retreat, which includes private use of the space, a yoga session, a full body massage, a clay mask, and more.

But during open hours, which are currently offered four days a week, with two community hour time slots priced at only $20 for a two hour session, those with a limited budget are also free to escape from, as Liz puts it, “the fire of the city.”

Most open hours are all-gender, but on Sunday’s women-only hours, I and about a dozen other women roamed the space, pausing from our ablutions to sip tea or flip through books on yoga and meditation. Tortolani has picked each and every element of the simple, curvaceous space with care, from the deep blue of the rain showers, to the custom-built cement sink, to natural bath products (and the aforementioned entryway candle) from Brooklyn-based Apotheke. “This place came from my brain,” says Tortolani with pride. “I was a part of every single part of that place being built. Down to the fact that we picked out every single material on our own, my architect and I.”

As the clock ticked past 5 and I reluctantly prepared to leave my newfound sanctuary and venture back out into the cold, Liz was animatedly discussing massage with another open hour attendee who had inquired about sports massage. No, Tortolani wasn’t a sports therapist… but could she just offer the woman five minutes of deep-tissue massage, free of charge?

Tortolani has a staff of four, including two massage therapists, and spends four days of the week tending to the wellness of grateful urbanites. “As a massage therapist, you work on one person at a time,” she says. “You can’t tend to as many people as you’d like. I felt like if I built cityWell, I could create a space where one can come and take care of their body. I don’t have to actually physically be there.” That certainly won’t stop her from trying, though. Tortolani hopes to hold open hours on every day of the week and she has her sights set on cityWell Paris in 2020.

New Yorkers, bathtime just got a whole lot better.

 

 

 

Visit cityWell brooklyn online: http://citywellbrooklyn.com

#GetOrganizedBK

By Filed Under: Persisting in Park Slope Tagged With: , , , , ,

“Here’s the first of many flyers you’ll get tonight,” smiles a bookish white man, extending a sheet of paper as I approach Congregation Beth Elohim’s Temple House, located across the street from their majestic but under-repair sanctuary in Park Slope. It’s a humid, mid-September evening, and, as I pass through the open doors, an older woman hands me another page. “Unrelated,” she explains.

 

A Progressive Movement Grows Strong in Brooklyn 

In the time it takes to climb the stairs and claim a folding chair in the steadily filling ballroom, I have, indeed, run a gauntlet of progressive politics. I now have flyers for organizations that fight voter suppression and are working to end solitary confinement; reminders to bring my own bag to the grocery store and get involved with participatory budgeting; invitations to an Indigenous People’s Day Celebration and town hall meetings on climate change and the NYS Constitutional Convention. I’ve signed letters to Governor Cuomo and Senators Gillibrand and Schumer urging them to defend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “This letter is different. It’s for the carbon-tax,” encourages a casually dressed white-haired woman as she approaches my seat with a clipboard and pen.

In the front of the room, a slideshow asks in black and white: “Race: does it affect where you choose to live? To eat? To socialize? To send your children to school?” Above the din of warm greetings and exchanged hugs floats the accompaniment to the projections, a recording of the rally cry, “Whose streets? Our streets!”

It’s hard to find a simple way to encapsulate the multifaceted, nonhierarchical, community-based resistance movement that is #GetOrganizedBK (sometime hashtag-less, sometimes abbreviated as #GOBK). “It doesn’t exist in any typical structure you can think of,” Rabbi Rachel Timoner tells me, as she, New York City Councilmember Brad Lander, and I huddle, post-meeting, in a ballroom-adjacent children’s playroom piled high with playmats and primary-colored toys. Formation? Gathering space? The two debate. “It’s a set of people who want to do this work together and want to get better at doing it together,” says Lander. “And that is powerful.”

 

Rabbi Rachel Timoner addresses at group meeting of #GetOrganizedBK

 

Timoner, Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim since 2015, and Lander, Mayor DeBlasio’s successor as representative of Brooklyn’s 39th District, are well-connected and trusted local leaders with decades of collective experience in community organization. In the immediate wake of Donald Trump’s election, as people reached out to them in confusion, anger, and fear, they met at Dizzy’s, put their heads together, and set a date to take action. Tuesday, November 15, exactly one week after the election, #GetOrganizedBK met for the first time in CBE’s sanctuary. The first meeting, which drew close to 1,000 attendees, offered a collective space to grieve, but also spurred those congregated to ask, as Timoner recalls, “In what ways do we think people are going to be impacted, and how do we think we can start to defend people and protect civil liberties.”

Early meetings set a template moving forward; notable speakers and panelists, often from city-based nonprofits, discuss salient topics. Afterwards, breakout groups gather in classrooms, nooks, playrooms and basements to delve deeper into specific issues. In the year since the election, Get Organized Brooklyn has mobilized en masse many times, including rallies in opposition to Trump’s travel ban and a “die-in” in opposition to the proposed Obamacare repeal, but the bulk of the work — letters written, phone calls and donations made, events organized — is done by these issue oriented working groups. Arts as Activism, Combatting Antisemitism & Islamophobia, Free Press, Women’s Health, Solidarity With Immigrant Neighbors, and at least eight other subgroups form the backbone of #GOBK and carry the torch of activism from day to day and week to week in coffee shops, bars, and living rooms.

And that was really the point all along. As Lander puts it, they wanted to “just provide some room for people to self-organize and get started doing things.” “One of the key parts of the model,” Timoner adds, “is that we realized pretty early on that we’ve just gotta get out of the way. There are so many people and so much energy and so many issues that if we try to control it or direct it, we’ll just slow it down.”

 

In the Ballroom of Congregation Beth Elohim, Councilmember Brad Lander makes opening remarks.

 

Timoner also expresses amazement at how the working groups have blossomed. “There are often so many efforts within Get Organized Brooklyn,” she says, “that we can’t even keep track of all of them. We’ve often been surprised — we’ll see something fully formed out in the world and say, oh, that came out of this?! And we didn’t even realize. It’s very cool.”

The evening’s meeting, “After Charlottesville, what must we do?” was orchestrated by #GetOrganizedBK’s Racial Justice working group almost exactly a month after a white-nationalist rally resulted in the murder of counter-protester Heather Heyer. In the time since, Trump cancelled DACA, a program which aided 800,000 immigrants. Then came hurricane Harvey. And hurricane Irma. “We’re not, as human beings, built for this level of chaos,” Lander remarks. “A peculiar feature of these times is not just that there’s hate, but that it’s chaos in our minds.” The benefit, then, of the working group structure, is that people can lovingly tend their own patch of grassroots.

Wendy Viola joined Indivisible BK, a working group connected to Indivisible groups nationwide, after the first #GOBK meeting. “I really appreciated the concreteness and discreteness of the actions and goals,” she shares. The group meets every other week to work on “keeping folks engaged and taking manageable actions to keep the pressure on our elected officials,” but they also collaborate with other working groups. “#GetOrganizedBK put me in much closer and more frequent contact with the people in my neighborhood, which I’m very grateful for.”

The night’s meeting doesn’t start on time, but by the time things kick off, the 300-seat space is filled to capacity. The vast majority of the audience is white and over 50, but there is a self-awareness to the homogeneity. They are there to learn and fortify one another for the fight ahead. “When you see people up there who are working on these different efforts and campaigns with such clarity and intention and great analysis and dedication, it’s so hopeful,” says Timoner. “And when you see the room full, it’s so hopeful.”

After introductory remarks by Timoner, Lander, and the co-leaders of the Racial Justice group, Eric Ward, the Executive Director of the Western States Center, gets up to speak. In a little under 15 minutes, he outlines a history of white supremacy in America. “The best defense,” he concludes, “is visible, unapologetic unity.” Later, Timoner echoes the sentiment. “I 100 percent believe what he says. What we can actually do is convene around our shared vision of democracy. When we do that, that is not only our best defense, but also moves us toward the city and country we dream of.”