The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

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47. Abraham Ibn Ezra's Philosophy | Dr. Tzvi Langermann Oct 31, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Tzvi Langermann enumerate many of the Ibn Ezra's most fascinating philosophical ideas. This is episode 1 of our series on the ideas of Abraham Ibn Ezra.
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Y. Tzvi Langermann, is Professor Emeritus of Arabic at Bar Ilan University, He has published extensively on medieval science and philosophy, especially basing his research on unpublished manuscript materials. His most recent book is Before Maimonides: A New Philosophical Dialogue in Hebrew (Brill, 2024).
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46. Hermann Cohen | Dr. Shira Billet Oct 10, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Shira Billet make sense of this remarkable Jewish idealist.
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Shira Billet is Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics at JTS. She completed a PhD in the Department of Religion at Princeton University in 2019 with a dissertation on Hermann Cohen. Prior to joining the faculty at JTS, she was a postdoctoral associate in Judaic Studies and Philosophy at Yale University. Her most recent publication is "'Let the Historian be a Philosopher!': Hermann Cohen's Methodological Critique of Spinoza," in Spinoza in Germany: Political and Religious Thought Across the Long Nineteenth Century (OUP, 2024).
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45. Rabbis & Christians | Dr. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal Sep 19, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal meditate on Talmudic responses to Christianity.
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Michal Bar-Asher Siegal is a faculty member at the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Vice President for Global Engagement. Her work focuses on aspects of Jewish-Christian interactions in the ancient world, and compares early Christian and rabbinic sources. She was an elected member of the Israel Young Academy of Sciences, and served as visiting professor at both Harvard Law School and Yale. Her first book is Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2013; winner of the 2014 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award). Her second book is Jewish-Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretic Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2019; finalist, National Jewish Book Award, 2019).
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44. The Rebbe | Dr. Yosef Bronstein Sep 12, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Yosef Bronstein resurrect some of the most fascinating ideas that animated the thought of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the 7th Lubavitcher Rebbe. This is part three of our mini-series on the intellectual history of Chabad Hasidut.
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Rabbi Dr. Yosef Bronstein received rabbinic ordination and a PhD in Talmudic Studies from Yeshiva University. He is the Rosh Bet Midrash of Machon Zimrat Ha’aretz, a community learning center and rabbinical training program in Efrat, Israel, and also teaches Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University’s Isaac Breuer College. He is the coauthor of Reshimot Shiurim al Masekhet Kiddushin (Rabbi Joseph b. Soloveitchik’s Talmud lectures on tractate Kiddushin) and the author of Engaging the Essence: The Torah Philosophy of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Maggid Books, 2024) and of The Authority of the Divine Law: A Study in Tannaitic Midrash (Academic Studies Press, 2024).
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43. Chabad’s Bridge Figure | Dr. Reuven Leigh Sep 06, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Reuven Leigh finally bring Chabad into the 20th century! They inspect the life and thought of the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe–Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn. This is part two of our mini-series on the intellectual history of Chabad Hasidut.
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Dr. Reuven Leigh is an affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, UK, and is the director of Chabad of Cambridge. He studied at religious academies in Manchester and Montreal and upon graduating in 1999, he assumed a rabbinic internship in New Haven, Connecticut. He subsequently received his Rabbinic Ordination from the Central Lubavitch Yeshiva in 2001 and was appointed as a lecturer in Hassidic philosophy. His main research interest is the relationship between Theology, Philosophy & Modernity and he was awarded his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2020.
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42. The Father of Chabad | Dr. Eli Rubin Aug 29, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Eli Rubin revel in the traditional and rebellious thought of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, author of The Tanya, and first Rebbe of the Chabad Hasidic sect.
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Eli Rubin, a contributing editor at Chabad.org, is the author of Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism (forthcoming from Stanford University Press). He was a co-author of Social Vision: The Lubavitcher Rebbe's Transformative Paradigm for the World (Herder and Herder, 2019), and received his PhD from the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London.
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41. Ethics of the Fathers | Dr. Yair Furstenberg Aug 22, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Yair Furstenberg contextualize the ethical teachings of the Tannaim.
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Yair Furstenberg is associate professor and currently serving as head of the Talmud Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on the history of early rabbinic literature and law within its Greco-Roman context. In his publications he examines the emergence of Jewish legal discourse during the Second Temple period and its later transformation by the Rabbis. His current project "Local Law under Rome" funded by the European Research Council aims to integrate rabbinic legal activity into its Roman provincial context. Among his publications: Purity and Identity in Ancient Judaism: From the Temple to the Mishnah, University of Indiana Press 2023; Jewish Martyrdom in Antiquity: From the Books of Maccabees to the Babylonian Talmud, CRINT, Brill 2023 (with J.W. van Henten and F. Avemarie); “The Rabbinic Movement From Pharisees to Provincial Jurists”, Journal for the Study of Judaism 55 (2024): 1-43; and particularly relevant to this talk: ‘Rabbinic Responses to Greco-Roman Ethics of Self-Formation in Tractate Avot’, M. Niehoff and J. Levinson (eds.), Self, Self-Fashioning and Individuality in Late Antiquity, Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen, 2020, 125-148.
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40. The Tosafists | Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel Aug 08, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel comment on the happenings in Medieval Ashkenaz and add their spin on to the era of the Tosafists.
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Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel is the E. Billi Ivry University Professor of Jewish History, Literature and Law at Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. Among his books are Jewish Education and Society in the High Middles Ages (1992); Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (2000); The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz (2013); and Brothers from Afar: Rabbinic Approaches to Apostasy and Reversion in Medieval Europe (2021), all published by Wayne State University Press. In addition, he is the author of more than one hundred articles in the fields of medieval Jewish intellectual history and rabbinic literature. Professor Kanarfogel is a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, and he serves, along with Prof. Jay Berkovitz, as Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Jewish History. He has been a long-term fellow at the Center for Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and he has held visiting appointments at Penn and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Professor Kanarfogel has won the National Jewish Book Award for scholarship, the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Medieval Jewish History from the Association of Jewish Studies; and the prestigious Goren-Goldstein International Book Award for the Best Book in Jewish Thought, 2010-2013.
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39. Free Will | Dr. Aaron Segal Aug 01, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Aaron Segal freely choose to wade through the murky medieval and contemporary debates over the existence of free will.
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Aaron Segal is Associate Professor of Philosophy and John and Golda Cohen Chair in Jewish Philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His publications include Do We Have a Soul? A Debate (Routledge, with Eric Olson), the edited volumes, Jewish Philosophy Past and Present (Routledge), Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age (Oxford), and Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed: A Critical Guide (Cambridge), and numerous articles in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and Jewish philosophy. His website is https://aaronsegal.huji.ac.il/
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38. Athens in Jerusalem | Dr. Jacob Howland Jul 18, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Jacob Howland round up a storm of fascinating comparisons between Talmudic and Platonic methods of discourse.
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Jacob Howland is Provost and Dean of the Intellectual Foundations Program at the University of Austin. He is the author of five books on Plato, Kierkegaard, and the Talmud. His articles have appeared in The New Criterion, Commentary, Newsweek, the Claremont Review of Books, the Jewish Review of Books, City Journal, Mosaic, Tablet, the New York Post, UnHerd, Quillette, Forbes, and The Nation, among other venues.
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