Research as a Spiritual Practice
A thoughtful, moving guest post by Rebecca Clarren
Welcome to a two-month series of guest posts on contemporary spiritual practices. I am so excited to begin with a piece by Rebecca Clarren, whom I was fortunate enough to meet in 2019 at the Tucson Festival of Books. Back then, she was promoting her debut novel KICKDOWN and I was just beginning publicity for BROWN WHITE BLACK; I was experiencing series imposter syndrome, and Becca was so kind and warm to me in the author’s waiting room. We became social media friends and have kept in touch since.
Rebecca’s latest is a book of nonfiction, THE COST OF FREE LAND, which has received well-deserved recognition as a powerful, timely read—I cannot recommend it enough. (Also, she narrates the audiobook, which adds so much to the listen.) Below, you’ll learn about how the spiritual practice of research has become integral to Rebecca’s identity as a writer, citizen, and Jew. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, friend!
More than a century ago, the United States gave my ancestors free land on the South Dakota prairie that was theirs to keep if they could tame the wild prairie by turning it into a ranch. For my Jewish immigrant great-grandparents, this opportunity to own land made them feel, they told their daughters, more American. And yet, the United States had promised by early treaty that this “free” land would be reserved for the Lakota Nation in perpetuity. What does it mean to survive oppression only to become part of the oppression of others? What is the responsibility for those of us who have inherited the benefits of great harm? A longing for answers to these questions propelled me to spend five years researching and writing an entangled history of my Jewish immigrant ancestors and their Lakota neighbors because only by telling these stories side by side and woven together is the depth of American injustice revealed. The result is The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota and an American Inheritance released last October with Viking/Penguin.
Clarren holds a photograph of her great-great Uncle Louie, standing in the exact spot where the original photo was taken—on Jew Flats, near Wall, South Dakota.Early in this project’s infancy, an Indigenous elder and judge told me that I should do more than simply describe the connective tissue between the history of immigrants and Native Americans; I needed, she said to grapple with how to respond to this history. To do this, she urged me to study my own culture for guidance.
Although I’ve had a bat mitzvah and belong to a synagogue, although I say prayers most Friday nights, lighting Shabbat candles and blessing my kids, I’d never studied Jewish text in a serious way before. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do it alone. My rabbi, Benjamin Barnett — who describes himself as part mystic, part skeptic, who I would describe as a mensch — agreed to meet with me regularly, to study together in an ancient practice called hevruta, or studying in pairs. Together, we read places in the Torah and the Talmud, ancient Jewish texts, that describe how to make amends. We looked at and discussed the sermons of other rabbis throughout the country who are looking to those old stories and laws for direction in their efforts for social justice.
What would immediately become clear is that Jews have spent centuries considering how to atone for their sins or the mistakes we make that estrange us from God and from one another. (The word for sin in Hebrew, chet, comes from an archery term that simply means to have missed the mark.) The concept of repair in the face of harm, of creating a more just world, is so central to our culture that there are daily prayers dedicated to it. Our most sacred time of year, the weeks leading up to the Jewish New Year, revolves around a practice called t’shuvah, which means “repentance” or more literally, “return.” Rabbi Benjamin likes to say it’s “about returning to the inherent goodness of your nature.” During this time of year, the Torah instructs us to seek forgiveness directly from anyone we have harmed or who has been negatively affected by our actions.
“Almost two thousand years ago, Jews would atone through animal sacrifice, but today I think the offering and the sacrifice is both economic and it’s truth-telling, and the truth-telling, that’s the harder part,” Rabbi Benjamin told me when we first started studying together in 2019. Over the course of the next three years, I’d come to understand just what he meant.
I threw myself at research, reading, conducting interviews, and travelling throughout the Dakotas and beyond to collect the stories and original documents that would help me understand not just stories we tell in America about immigrants and Native Americans, but also to learn what I wasn’t taught and in so doing, begin to see the white space at the edges of our stories. Threaded throughout my book, I weave the learning I gleaned from ancient Jewish texts, direction for how to consider my proximity to the theft of Native lands.
To grapple with the past and its legacy is inherently Jewish: the word Israel means “Godwrestler,” and Rabbi Benjamin has taught me that our culture and tradition has always implored us to face struggle and discomfort with cleareyed courage. Through our shared study, I learned that confronting the ways we’ve missed the mark isn’t a sign that we’re doing something wrong: we’re human, we can’t help but make mistakes. But how do we go on from here? That’s the question I now long to answer.
Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher and rabbi from the 16th century, laid out a blueprint for repentance, a series of steps to take for how to make things right after a wrong has been committed. The first one is to stop doing the harm, something I would argue we haven’t done yet in America in regards to Indigenous people. The second is to tell the truth out loud, publicly. My book is my effort to take this step. The conversations I’ve been honored to have with rabbis and Indigenous elders throughout the country have helped me to take the next steps: understanding what would be an appropriate and acceptable act of repair guided by those who have been harmed to my benefit. To that end, following the direction of Lakota elders, my family and I have created a fund that’s administered by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, a Native-led organization that has been working for decades to help Native Nations recover their traditional lands, including efforts to help the Lakota Nation to buy private land in the Black Hills, a place that for many Lakota is as central to their spirituality as Israel is for many Jews.
I’m certain that I’ve made mistakes while working on this project; I’m certain that I’ll make more. As much as I long to be a perfect mother and daughter, wife and friend, writer and reporter, I am constantly humbled by how often I miss the mark. There’s a fall in every step. But the vulnerability necessary to admit wrongdoing, and to step towards people we’ve hurt, is I think part of the risk required if we want to make the world a more just place.
photo credit: Shelby BrakkenAward-winning journalist Rebecca Clarren has been writing about the American West for more than twenty years. Her journalism has won a Whiting Nonfiction Grant, the Hillman Prize, an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship and ten grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Her debut novel KICKDOWN was shortlisted for the PEN/Bellwether Prize. Her latest book, THE COST OF FREE LAND, was named a Best Book of 2023 by Kirkus Reviews. She lives in Portland, Ore. with her family.
You can find her and follow her work here:
Facebook: @Becca.Clarren
Insta/Threads: @rclarren
Still to come in this series…
Week of March 18: Laura Stephens—End of Life Care as a Spiritual Practice
Week of March 25: Katie Vhay—Acts of Service as a Spiritual Practice
Week of April 1: Burke Butler—Sewing as a Spiritual Practice
Week of April 8: Shelly Taylor—Horseback Riding as a Spiritual Practice
Week of April 15: Amber Ambrose—Dreaming as a Spiritual Practice
Week of April 22: Preetha Narayanan—Music as a Spiritual Practice
Week of April 28: Vanessa Nickerson—Gardening as a Spiritual Practice
xoxo
Nishta