A Conversation with Rabbi Ariel Burger

From the ALONG THE SEAM podcast

Last week I shared a new episode from the ALONG THE SEAM podcast; it was a conversation with educator and leadership expert Shaunta D. Scroggins. In that conversation, Shaunta takes us from her childhood in Texas, to her relationship with faith and church, to finding her passion studying the complexities of toxic leadership and transformational leadership. When talking about storytelling and the role of biblical storytelling particularly, one of my favorite things she said was, “There have to be layers of story. There have to be. Because the absolutes are dangerous. And we lose people in the crevice of absolute.”

I met Shaunta a few years ago when we both were in the same cohort for a fellowship with The Witness Institute, an organization dedicated to continuing the work of Elie Wiesel. For 15 months, Shaunta and I gathered with eight others from around the world to study moral leadership. I learned about the fellowship from Ariel Burger, who leads the program and joined me on the Along The Seam podcast back in 2022.

I had invited Ariel onto the show after being completely taken by his book Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom. Ariel was a lifelong student of Elie Wiesel, the esteemed Nobel Peace Prize Winner who most famously authored the memoir Night. (Night was released in 1956 and is one of the first published accounts by a Holocaust survivor. I highly recommend this 2011 video where he speaks about writing the book and first publishing it. You will hear a quote from this video at the end of the podcast episode.)

Ariel is a Boston-based rabbi, writer, and artist, but I know him best as a talented teacher whose work integrates education, spirituality, the arts, and strategies for social change. In the conversation I am sharing, we talk about the integration of creativity into stories from the past, and about memory as an educational tool which is something that occupied both Elie Wiesel and Ariel in their shared commitment to teaching.

You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts by searching ALONG THE SEAM, or right here. The transcript for our conversation is below. (Please note: these transcripts are edited for brevity and clarity, and for paid subscribers. But the podcast episodes are always free for all. You can find a full list of episodes at www.alongtheseam.com)

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Art by Ariel Burger. See more here: www.arielburger.com/art/