Welcome to Totally Booked Live here at the Whitby Hotel. We are so excited to welcome all of you here today to listen in person as I interview some fabulous authors, including Rabbi Angela Bookdall. And I am so excited that she is here. And we get to discuss her new book, Heart of a Stranger and Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith Identity and Belonging. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I have to admit, it sounds weird when you call me an author. I don't feel ready. I don't feel like I can own that title yet. I feel much more comfortable with rabbi than author, but I'm very excited.

You can definitely own it.

Thank you.

This book is amazing, and we learned so much about you, and it's just really fabulous.

Including that your family comes from the lumber industry?

Who know?

Woodworkers from Romania.

Yeah.

There you go.

You are famously the first Asian American rabbi since 2001. You have so much about you that is not about that, but about your background, about who you are, how you got here, and Judaism

itself. Why now for writing this? Why did you decide to write this book now?

I started this book, to be honest, five years ago.

It took me a very long time because I was on sabbatical.

I had a four-month sabbatical, and it was in the middle of the global pandemic,

and I had four months with nowhere I could go.

So I actually thought I've always wanted to write a book.

Let's see if I can do this.

I found an agent. I said, my dream is to write a book. Let's see if I can do this. I found an agent. I said,

my dream is to write a book that gives the wisdom of Jewish learning in an accessible way

to a wide audience. And she said, that sounds great. She goes, I'm not sure that that book is

going to sell. And I said, all these spirituality books that are out there, they're almost all from a Buddhist perspective. And they're beautiful, like Deepak Chopra and Eckertoll and Pima Chodran. These are beautiful books. And they are Buddhism for people who aren't Buddhists. I said, well, where is that Judaism book that for people who might not be Jewish and also for Jews. And so she said,

you know, why don't you write a memoir because you've got this interesting, unusual background,

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