In this edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts Josh Klausner, who, in addition to being Rabbi Yoshi's college roommate, is a screenwriter, playwright, and director.
Klausner's writing credits include Wanderland (2018), Date Night (2010), and Shrek Forever After (2010). He's also worked as a second unit director on Dumb and Dumber (1994), Kingpin (1996), There's Something About Mary (1998), Me, Myself, and Irene (2000), Shallow Hall (2001), and Green Book (2018).
While Klausner aspired to be an actor, his early interest in poetry and his dissatisfaction with the plays he read during his college years led him down the path to becoming a writer. His thesis advisor at Princeton wound up being none other than Tony Kushner, a four-time Oscar nominee who's won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, a Tony Award for Best Play, and has collaborated with Steven Spielberg on Munich (2005), Lincoln (2012), West Side Story (2021), and The Fabelmans (2022).
Fascinated by the immediacy and intimacy of theater and the moments just before sleep, and trying to process his own parents' divorce, one of his first works was a two-act play about divorce from the point of view of two brothers. A pre-ordination Rabbi Yoshi had a part in that play, Brothers of the Bearded Lady.
Using one's own written work to process is far from an alien concept for Rabbi Yoshi, who does so with many of his sermons. The two discuss how writing can be a powerful way to work through ideas, concepts, and emotions, and a way to see older ideas in a new light as they are revisited years later in a different context. Through this lens, they discuss regret, life choices, personal discovery, and more in a deeply personal and philosophical conversation.