Overview of What if Being a Stranger Is Actually Your Superpower? | Better in Person
This episode is an interview between Stephen Dubner and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, the senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York City and author of Heart of a Stranger. The conversation centers on Buchdahl’s extraordinary life story, her understanding of Judaism as a tradition built around empathy and boundary-crossing, and the pressures that come with being a highly visible religious leader in a polarized age. They also discuss awe, death, Sabbath, anti-binary thinking, Israel, and what it means to turn “the heart of a stranger” into a source of strength.
Angela Buchdahl’s life story and calling
A boundary-crossing identity
- Buchdahl describes her life as one of crossing boundaries:
- Born in Korea to a Korean Buddhist mother and American Jewish father.
- Moved to the United States at age five.
- Grew up in Tacoma, Washington, in a small but historically rooted Jewish community.
- She emphasizes that being biracial and growing up between cultures shaped her sense of self from the beginning.
A lifelong pull toward the rabbinate
- She says she felt called to be a rabbi from a very young age.
- As a child, she sang to God and led prayers with her sister.
- Despite the “unlikely rabbi” label, she views the path as deeply natural and “pulled” rather than chosen casually.
The work of being a rabbi: awe, death, and meaning
“The awe business”
- Buchdahl frames rabbinic work as being in “the awe business.”
- She connects funerals and encounters with death to a heightened sense of meaning and perspective.
- In her view, death reveals what truly matters and can deepen one’s appreciation for life.
Awe as a human experience
- She cites researcher Dacher Keltner’s work on awe and identifies several sources:
- Nature
- Intellectual epiphany
- Art and design
- Spiritual experience
- Birth and death
- Music
- Collective effervescence
- Moral beauty
- For Buchdahl, the most important source is moral beauty: ordinary people doing extraordinary acts of kindness, bravery, and selflessness.
Fame, visibility, and the cost of prominence
Public attention has real downsides
- Dubner notes that Buchdahl has become unusually visible for a rabbi, in part because she is:
- Female
- Asian American
- A senior synagogue leader with a global platform
- Buchdahl says visibility brings both opportunity and risk:
- More influence and reach
- More scrutiny, threats, and targeting
Hostage crisis and public association
- The conversation revisits the 2022 Colleyville, Texas synagogue hostage crisis.
- Buchdahl explains that the attacker believed he could pressure the “chief rabbi of America” to intervene on behalf of Aafia Siddiqui.
- She was unexpectedly identified by the attacker because of her prominence and public profile.
- She credits Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker’s courage and decision to return to synagogue services as an example of choosing life.
Why she avoids public petitions
- Buchdahl says she no longer signs public letters or petitions.
- Her reason is that her name gets singled out and used as a proxy for broader debates.
- She worries that rabbis are often reduced to political props in public arguments.
Israel, Zionism, and the hope for peace
Rejecting simplistic narratives
- Buchdahl argues that Israel is often treated as uniquely subject to collective blame.
- She says people frequently conflate:
- A government
- A country
- A people
- She insists that criticism of government actions should not become a denial of a people’s legitimacy or humanity.
Her position on a Palestinian state
- She affirms both:
- Jewish self-determination in Israel
- Palestinian self-determination
- She says she wants to see steps toward a two-state solution, even though trust has broken down badly.
- She acknowledges that many people currently believe the solution is impossible, but she rejects that fatalism.
Hope through historical examples
- She points to Northern Ireland and postwar Germany as examples of political transformation that once seemed unimaginable.
- She believes de-radicalization and new leadership are necessary, including ensuring Hamas is not in charge of Gaza.
What Judaism offers: the “heart of a stranger”
Judaism as a people and a wisdom tradition
- Buchdahl says Judaism is both:
- A religion
- A peoplehood
- She argues that Jewish identity is often rooted in obligation to history, ancestors, and community, not only belief.
The stranger as a core Jewish experience
- The book’s title becomes the central idea of the discussion:
- Jews have historically lived as minorities, exiles, and boundary-crossers.
- “Hebrew” itself is linked to the idea of crossing over.
- She argues that the experience of being a stranger is universal, not just Jewish.
Turning marginalization into strength
- Buchdahl’s key claim is that the “heart of a stranger” can become a superpower:
- Empathy
- Creativity
- Resilience
- Grit
- Rather than building walls or demonizing others, she says people should use that shared feeling of outsiderhood as a starting point for connection.
Sabbath, time, and the anti-capitalist wisdom of Judaism
Shabbat as a radical idea
- Buchdahl calls the Sabbath one of Judaism’s greatest gifts to the world.
- The idea is radical because it says human life is not only about production and labor.
- Sabbath sanctifies time by setting one day apart for rest and being, not doing.
How to sanctify time
- Traditional Jewish practice includes:
- Not working
- Not using money
- Not using electricity
- Not being on phones
- She and her husband made their own family more observant about Shabbat and built a community around it.
Sabbath as a communal anchor
- For Buchdahl, Shabbat is not just a rule; it is a sustaining practice that strengthens family and community.
- She notes that Friday-night services do not feel like work to her—they feel like the most natural place of flow.
Beyond binary thinking
Judaism resists one-dimensional answers
- Dubner emphasizes that Jewish thought is often “allergic to binary thinking.”
- Buchdahl agrees and explains this through the idea of chevruta:
- Jewish learning happens in partnership and debate.
- Opposing views are not a bug; they are the mechanism for deeper insight.
The value of a third opinion
- She jokes that “two Jews, three opinions” reflects a tradition of productive disagreement.
- The point is not endless conflict, but arriving at a third idea neither person had alone.
Applying this to politics and public life
- She argues that the current political climate makes disagreement feel existential and threatening.
- Still, she believes people must engage with those they see as “the other side” rather than retreating completely.
Third spaces and practical peace-building
Start small, not with the hardest issue
- Buchdahl says people should not begin conversations with their deepest points of conflict.
- Better to start with common humanity and trust-building.
The importance of third spaces
- She laments the loss of places where people from different ideological backgrounds used to meet:
- Churches
- Synagogues
- Social clubs
- Bowling leagues
- These spaces made it harder to demonize one another.
Shared action creates human connection
- She says people who pray, sing, and serve meals together are less likely to see each other as enemies.
- Common service can create a foundation for harder conversations later.
Belief in God, but not simplistic theology
A flexible understanding of God
- Buchdahl says she believes in God, but not in a narrow, punitive, supernatural version.
- She points to the biblical idea of God saying, “I will be what I will be,” as an invitation to think of God in relational and dynamic terms.
Judaism can include doubt
- She says a person can be a good Jew without believing in God in a traditional sense.
- Judaism, in her view, is as much about action, tradition, peoplehood, and obligation as it is about belief.
Main takeaways
- Buchdahl’s life embodies crossing cultural, religious, and social boundaries.
- She sees rabbinic work as helping people recognize awe, moral beauty, and meaning.
- Fame has brought her influence, but also scrutiny, threats, and political weaponization.
- She argues for both Jewish and Palestinian self-determination and rejects zero-sum thinking.
- Judaism, for her, is a blueprint for turning outsiderhood into empathy and resilience.
- Sabbath and chevruta are presented as antidotes to nonstop production and polarized thinking.
- Her core message: shared strangeness can become the basis for connection, not division.