Berkley Center

Meir: The name that I grew up with is Mark, for the first 36 years of my life, and then as I made my journey towards this love of Judaism and moving towards becoming a rabbi, I spent a year living in Jerusalem, my first year of rabbinical school. As I was preparing to go to Israel, it occurred to me, a lot of people, a lot of Jewish people have this experience. I'll use my Hebrew name when I'm in Israel. So my Hebrew name is Meir. Me-ir. And as the year was winding down, now we're like fast forward to April, May of the year, the academic year, friends and I were, had a conversation about where are we going to go back to our English names when we come back to the States.

And someone said to me, "Meir, if you don't go back to Mark, and if you continue to use your name Meir, then every time you hear your name, you'll be reminded of who you want to be in the world." And the word meir in Hebrew is connected to the word or light, and you put a M or a mem in front of the Hebrew word, it generally means a doer, a bringer of, and so every time you hear your name, Meir, you can be reminded that your role in the world is to bring light. And at that moment, I was like, wow, I'm not going back to Mark.

Ibad: Nice.

Meir: Ibad, tell us about your [foreign language] Ibad.

Ibad: Yeah. So, day I graduated, I'm having a conversation with my mom about what am I doing next. This desire of being more religious or practicing my religion more was there, even since high school and in college as well. It kept growing a little bit, little by little. So I got the degree and I say, "Mom, I feel like I should study Islam. Like I should study the book of God. I should study the life of prophet Muhammad. Peace be upon him. What do you think?"

And she said, "Look, after all the struggle of coming from Pakistan and leaving a country which, there's a lot of difficulties that were happening there, and there's a lot of turmoil. And coming here and then starting from scratch and building myself up to have multiple businesses,I don't see anything for myself in the hereafter. I see all that I did and I see the product, I see the education, but there's more to life. There's more, and I feel like I've missed it. Do what you think is right. Do what you think you need to do to secure your state in the hereafter." And that was it. I never turned back since then.

Meir: Wow. It feels very connected to something you were saying, Ibad, about how you, when you began to observe a difference in people's peace and sense of, I don't know, the quality of their lives, religious people versus non. So after I left my lawyer life, I was living in Los Angeles with a very dear friend who was actually studying to be a rabbi. Because of him, no credit of my own, our home began to be filled with future rabbis and Sabbath dinners, Shabbat dinners on Friday night, lots of conversation about Torah, experience working with people as a chaplain in a hospital, and I began, now I'm realizing, I began to be very aware of the people who my dear, dear friend brought into our home. There was a feeling that was deeper and more grounded and more hopeful and more faithful than I felt in my world of lawyering and this very, I would say, much more materialistic focus. How do you feel about the comment your mom made and where your journey... I mean, do you feel like you have now insight or a piece of that hereafter?

Ibad: So I believe I have the tools, but how I use them, I can never... So a true believer in Islam can never be sure that they've secured the hereafter they're always in doubt. Right?

Meir: Yeah.

Ibad: Always in between hope and fear. The worst of mankind, the worst of the worst of mankind are the evil scholars. The best of the best of mankind are the good, righteous scholars. Right? So that's where the difficulty is. Finding yourself, making sure, and why are you doing it?