The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

Latest Episodes:

7. Second Temple Sectarianism | Dr. Malka Simkovich Jul 06, 2023

Show notes

In this episode J.J. and Dr. Simkovich dig into the differences between the Pharisees and the Saducees, and air some more second temple laundry.
Dr. Malka Z. Simkovich is the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies and the director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies program at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She is the author of The Making of Jewish Universalism: From Exile to Alexandria (2016), and Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism (2018), which received the 2019 AJL Judaica Reference Honor Award. Simkovich’s articles have been published in the Harvard Theological Review and the Journal for the Study of Judaism, as well as on online forums such as The Lehrhaus and the Times of Israel. She is involved in numerous local and international interreligious dialogue projects which help to increase understanding between Christians and Jews.
If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!
Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.
We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

6. Herzl's Ideas | Dr. Derek Penslar Jun 22, 2023

Show notes

In this episode J.J. and Dr. Derek Penslar get into the evolution of Zionism, and the ideas (or lack of ideas) of Theodore Herzl.
You can find more fantastic Jewish content like this at torahinmotion.org
Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History. He takes a comparative and transnational approach to Jewish history, which he studies within the contexts of modern capitalism, nationalism, and colonialism. Penslar’s books include Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (2001), Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (2006), The Origins of the State of Israel: A Documentary History (with Eran Kaplan, 2011), Jews and the Military: A History (2013), Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (2020/German ed. 2022), Zionism: An Emotional State (2023) and Unacknolwedged Kinships: Postcolonial Theory and the Historiography of Zionism (co-edited with Stefan Vogt and Arieh Saposnik, 2023). He is currently writing an international history of the 1948 Palestine War. Penslar is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy for Jewish Research and is an Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford. At Harvard, Penslar is a resident faculty member at The Center for European Studies and as of July will be the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies.
If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!
Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.
We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

5. The Bible as Literature | Dr. Robert Alter Jun 01, 2023

Show notes

In this episode J.J. and Dr. Alter explore the literary approach to the Bible, Dr. Alter's magnificent translation, and the impact of both of these works on the study of Bible in the university and the yeshiva. Also typescenes and how Dr. Alter met his wife at a modern-day well.
Robert Alter is Professor of the Graduate School and Emeritus
Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of
California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He is a
member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
American Philosophical Society, the Council of Scholars of the
Library of Congress, and is past president of the Association of
Literary Scholars and Critics. He has twice been a Guggenheim
Fellow, has been a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the
Humanities, a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in
Jerusalem, and Old Dominion Fellow at Princeton University. He has
written widely on the European novel from the eighteenth century to
the present, on American fiction, and on modern Hebrew literature.
He has also written extensively on literary aspects of the Bible. His
twenty-eight published books include two prize-winning volumes on
biblical narrative and poetry and award-winning translations of
Genesis and of the Five Books of Moses. He has devoted book-
length studies to Fielding, Stendhal, Nabokov, and the self-reflexive
tradition in the novel. Books by him have been translated into ten
different languages. Among his publications over the past thirty
years are Necessary Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka,
Benjamin, and Scholem (1991), Imagined Cities (2005), Pen of
Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible (2010),The Art of
Bible Translation (2019), and Nabokov and the Real World 2021).
His completed translation of the Hebrew Bible with a commentary
was published in 2018 in a three-volume set. In September 2023 his
biography of Amos Oz will appear.
In 2009 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles
Times for lifetime contribution to American letters and in 2013 the
Charles Homer Haskins Prize for career achievement from the
American Council of Learned Societies. In 2019 the American
Academy of Arts and Letters conferred on him an award for literature.
He has been given honorary degrees by Yale, Northwestern, the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and three other institutions.
If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!
Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.
We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

4. Rabbis and Karaites | Dr. Miriam Goldstein May 18, 2023

Show notes

In this episode J.J. and Dr. Miriam Goldstein dig into the ideas the animated the Rabbis (and Karaites) of the early Islamic period.
For more thoughtfull Jewish content like this, visit torahinmotion.org.
If you enjoyed the episode, please rate and review the podcast in your app of choice.
Miriam Goldstein is a professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A specialist in medieval Judeo-Arabic texts, she focuses on interreligious relations in the medieval Arabic-speaking world as well as Judeo-Arabic Bible exegesis. She is author of A Judeo-Arabic Parody of the Life of Jesus: The Toledot Yeshu Helene Narrative (Tübingen, in press) and Karaite Exegesis in Medieval Jerusalem (Tübingen, 2011) and is editor of Authorship in Mediaeval Arabic and Persian Literatures (Jerusalem, 2019) andBeyond Religious Borders: Interaction and Intellectual Exchange in the Medieval Islamic World (Philadelphia, 2011), as well as numerous articles on Arabic and Judeo-Arabic literature. Her current major project is a critical edition and translation of the Judeo-Arabic commentaries of the Baghdadi Karaite scholar Ya‘qub al-Qirqisani, currently focusing on the books of Genesis and Exodus.
If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!
Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.
We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

3. Dogma and Heresy | Dr. Marc Shapiro May 04, 2023

Show notes

On this episode JJ and Dr. Shapiro get into the limits of Orthodox theology, as well as The Limits of Orthodox Theology.
Marc B. Shapiro holds the Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Scranton. A graduate of Brandeis (BA) and Harvard (PhD), he is the author of numerous books, articles, and reviews and is a popular scholar in residence at synagogues around the world. He has written Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy and The Limits of Orthodox Theology, both of which were National Jewish Book Award Finalists. Other books of his include Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox, Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters, and Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History. In 2019 he published Iggerot Malkhei Rabbanan which contains more than thirty years of correspondence with some of the world's most outstanding Torah scholars. He regularly publishes widely read scholarly articles on the Seforim Blog and is currently writing a book on the thought of Rav Kook. Dr. Shapiro leads a number of the Torah in Motion Jewish history trips.
If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!
Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.
We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

2. Theodicy and Job | Dr. Jon D. Levenson Apr 19, 2023

Show notes

In this episode Dr. Jon Levenson and JJ get into questions about good, evil, and the Book of Job.
_____________
Jon D. Levenson, Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies, began teaching at Harvard in 1988, having previously taught at the University of Chicago and at Wellesley College. His work concentrates on the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, including its reinterpretations in the "rewritten Bible" of Second Temple Judaism and rabbinic midrash. In addition, one of his courses deals with the use of medieval Jewish commentaries for purposes of modern biblical exegesis, and another focuses on central works of Jewish theology in the twentieth century. Levenson has a strong interest in the philosophical and theological issues involved in biblical studies, especially the relationship of premodern modes of interpretation to modern historical criticism. Much of his work centers on the relationship of Judaism and Christianity, both in antiquity and in modernity, and he has long been active in Jewish-Christian dialogue. His book Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (Yale University Press, 2006) won a National Jewish Book Award and the Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award in the category of Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible published in 2005 or 2006. Choice, a publication of the American Library Association, listed Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton University Press, 2012) as one of the Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013. His latest book is The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism (Princeton University Press, 2016). In all his work, Levenson's emphasis falls on the close reading of texts for purposes of literary and theological understanding.
If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!
Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.
We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

1. Hasidut | Dr. Ariel Mayse Mar 22, 2023

Show notes

In this episode J.J. and Professor Ariel Mayse of Stanford get into the major ideas that set early Hasidism apart, and how those ideas inform Hasidism to this day.
_______
Ariel Evan Mayse joined the faculty of Stanford University in 2017 as an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies, after previously serving as the Director of Jewish Studies and Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts, and a research fellow at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Michigan.
Mayse holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from Harvard University and rabbinic ordination from Beit Midrash Har’el in Israel. His current research examines the role of language in Hasidism, manuscript theory and the formation of early Hasidic literature, the renaissance of Jewish mysticism in the nineteenth and twentieth century, the relationship between spirituality and law in Jewish legal writings, and the resources of Jewish thought and theology for constructing contemporary environmental ethics.
If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!
Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.
We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

0. Prologue Mar 13, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to The Podcast of Jewish Ideas!!
In this episode JJ introduces himself, the podcast, and what we hope to do together in the coming episodes, we do hope you enjoy.
If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!
Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.
We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected