Shais Taub: A Vulnerable Conversation About Shame, Selfhood, and Authenticity [Mysticism III 3/3]
December 23, 2025
AI Summary
5 min readA Vulnerable Conversation About Shame, Selfhood, and Authenticity
David Bashevkin arrived at Rabbi Shais Taub's studio on a bad day—existentially depleted after a string of fundraising rejections for his podcast, 18Forty. Instead of hiding it, he opened the conversation with raw honesty: "I'm having a terrible day." What follows is not a polished interview but a real-time conversation between two public Jewish figures wrestling with the gap between their inner selves and the personas the world sees.
The Pain of Being Seen Wrongly
Bashevkin's central question is deceptively simple: how does Taub preserve his humanity while building a large public platform? Taub has over 100,000 YouTube subscribers and a significant Instagram following, yet he doesn't come across as a performative influencer. Bashevkin wants to know what suffering allowed Taub to develop that authenticity—and why he himself still feels "performative" and "inauthentic" despite his own success.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Sponsor Break: Magen David Adom** - Host David Bashevkin delivers an ad for the Israeli emergency medical service, highlighting its history and volunteer ethos.
- 2 (04:19) **Opening: A Vulnerable Frame** - David Bashevkin introduces the episode as part of an Amudim fundraiser and sets an unusually raw tone.
- 3 (14:34) **The Core Question: Why Am I Still Struggling?** - David poses his central dilemma to Rabbi Shais Taub: how to preserve authenticity and humanity while operating in a public, viral space.
- 4 (20:19) **Shais’s Answer: The Pain of Masking** - Shais responds by sharing his deepest pain: the shame of not being able to be his true self.
- 5 (23:57) **Why Shais Pivoted from the Addiction Label** - Shais explains why he deliberately moved away from being known as the "addiction rabbi," despite his bestselling book *God of Our Understanding*.
- 6 (28:49) **The Problem with Manufactured Spirituality** - David laments that in a community saturated with content and resources, genuine spiritual awakening feels harder, not easier.
- 7 (31:24) **The Boulder of Fundraising** - David zeroes in on his specific pain point: the exhausting and demoralizing task of fundraising for 18Forty.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast—created in collaboration with Amudim—we speak with Shais Taub, the rabbi behind the organization SoulWords, about shame, selfhood, and authenticity.
In this episode we discuss:
- How are we to deal with the pain of embodiment and individuation?
- How does one uncover their mission in the world and align their life with the transcendent?
- How can we work to reorient our desires toward the right things?
Interview begins at 10:28.
Rabbi Shais Taub is a well-known figure in Jewish teachings and personal development and delivers Torah lectures and classes worldwide. He is renowned for his ability to make complex ideas accessible. He heads SoulWords.org and serves as scholar-in-residence at Chabad of the Five Towns in Long Island, New York.
References:
God of Our Understanding by Shais Taub
Sin•a•gogue: Sin and Failure in Jewish Thought by David Bashevkin
Top 5 by David Bashevkin
Seinfeld: “The Soul Mate”
"Eric Adams on Dyslexia, Trauma, and Fixing What's Broken in Politics”
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
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