Stay ConnectedListen in as Lex Rofeberg and Rena Yehuda Newman analyze pressing issues for 21st century American Judaism. Mixing their own analysis with interviews of leading thinkers, practitioners, and even “regular Jews,” Lex and Rena Yehuda look to push past the bounds of what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century.
You can support Judaism Unbound at www.JudaismUnbound.com/donate.
Binya Kóatz, a "queer&trans/diasporic/arab-jewish/ashkenazi/god-loving/musical/femme/multilingual/ancestral-dreaming soul making joy and art and radical community," joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about transness, diaspora, Talmud, theology, and more, along how all of those topics flow into one another.
This episode is the seventh episode in a series that intertwines explorations of Judaism, through lenses of transgender experience, and explorations of gender, through lenses of Jewish experience.
If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!
To access shownotes for this episode, click here.
Ari Lev Fornari serves as senior rabbi at Kol Tzedek, a reconstructionist congregation in West Philadelphia whose name means "a voice for justice." He joins Dan and Lex for a conversation that weaves together his story of becoming a rabbi (and becoming a congregational rabbi in particular), political issues like prison abolition and white flight, and the upcoming sabbatical year ("Sh'mitah" in Hebrew).
This episode is the sixth episode in a series that intertwines explorations of Judaism, through lenses of transgender experience, and explorations of gender, through lenses of Jewish experience.
If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!
To access shownotes for this episode, click here.
This bonus episode of Judaism Unbound is presented in partnership with Theatre Dybbuk. Once a month, their podcast -- called The Dybbukast -- releases a new episode, and we are proud to feature episode eight of their podcast as a bonus episode here on Judaism Unbound's channel. In each episode, they bring poems, plays, and other creative texts from throughout history to life, all while revealing their relationships to issues still present today. Subscribe to The Dybbukast in Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are found.
Written in Italy in the 16th century by Jewish dramatist Leone De' Sommi Portaleone, who also wrote what is considered to be the oldest extant Hebrew-language play, the poem "In Defense of Women" touches on the role of women in drama and reveals a great deal about the cultural considerations and power dynamics of this time when women were coming to the fore on the theatrical stages of Northern Italy, Rome, and Venice in the professional world of the commedia dell’arte.
Intercut with selections from the poem and other works of the era performed by theatre dybbuk actors, scholar Erith Jaffe-Berg, PhD unpacks the text's meaning and its relevance to both historical and contemporary issues of equity and belonging. "In Defense of Women" was originally presented as a hybrid of theatre and live podcast at San Diego Repertory's JFEST and premiered at the festival as a YouTube event on May 20, 2021. The audio from that presentation has been adapted for distribution on The Dybbukast in this episode.
Rachel Gross, the John & Marcia Goldman Chair in American Jewish Studies at San Francisco State University and author of Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about delis, museums, children's literature, and other religious spaces that you didn't know were religious!
If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!
To access shownotes for this episode, click here.
Leiah Moser, author of Magical Princess Harriet and rabbi at Reconstructionist Beth Israel in New Jersey, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation that weaves together threads around transgender identity, fantasy fiction, conversion to Judaism, and more.
This episode is the fifth episode in a series that intertwines explorations of Judaism, through lenses of transgender experience, and explorations of gender, through lenses of Jewish experience.
If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!
To access shownotes for this episode, click here.
Mike Moskowitz is the scholar-in-residence for Trans and Queer Jewish Studies at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City. He joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about allyship, by cisgender Jews, toward transgender Jews.
This episode is the fourth episode in a series that intertwines explorations of Judaism, through lenses of transgender experience, and explorations of gender, through lenses of Jewish experience.
If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!
To access shownotes for this episode, click here.
Koach Baruch Frazier -- a musician, activist, audiologist, and rabbinical student -- joins Dan and Lex for a conversation that upends the dichotomy of prayer, on the one hand, and action, on the other. Frazier looks back at their own journey toward the rabbinate, and in doing so considers what drumbeats, the inner ear, and silence have to teach us. As it turns out, listening to what these vessels of sound have to say can help unlock many important concepts in contemporary Judaism, and in contemporary strivings for justice.
This episode is the third episode in a series that intertwines explorations of Judaism, through lenses of transgender experience, and explorations of gender, through lenses of Jewish experience.
If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!
To access shownotes for this episode, click here.
Dan and Lex were thrilled to transform from hosts into guests, in an episode of Contact Chai, "a podcast from Mishkan Chicago exploring down-to-earth Judaism in conversation," hosted by Lizzie Heydemann.
Heydemann is herself a past guest on Judaism Unbound, and you can listen to her appearance on Judaism Unbound here. We encourage you to subscribe to Contact Chai on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts!
Mishkan Chicago is a spiritual community in Chicago reclaiming Judaism’s inspiration and transformative essence. Not bound by a particular location, we create radically inclusive spaces for Jewish spiritual practice and community, engaging, educating, and empowering people across the spectrum of identity, background, age, and belief.
Jericho Vincent, a genderqueer and post-ultra-Orthodox writer and lecturer, is the author of the memoir Cut Me Loose and co-author of Legends of the Talmud. They join Dan and Lex for a conversation about being genderqueer, leaving ultra-orthodoxy, connecting to other religious traditions, and entering rabbinical school.
This episode is the second episode in a series that intertwines explorations of Judaism, through lenses of transgender experience, and explorations of gender, through lenses of Jewish experience.
If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!
To access shownotes for this episode, click here.
Becky Silverstein and Laynie Soloman, co-founders of the Trans Halakha Project, join Dan and Lex to kick off a series of conversations that will intertwine explorations of Judaism, through lenses of transgender experience, and gender, through lenses of Jewish experience.
If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!
To access shownotes for this episode, click here.
The Trans Halakha Project, housed at SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, aims to curate existing resources that have been developed for trans Jews and by trans Jews, identify new areas of halakha that have yet to be developed, and finally to create opportunities for developing new halakhic literature and practice guides that speak directly to these areas of need. Learn more at Svara.org/Trans-Halakha-Project.
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
