The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

Latest Episodes:

27. Philo of Alexandria | Dr. Maren Niehoff Apr 04, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Maren Niehoff comment on Philo's ideas and attempt to weave him back into the fabric of Jewish history.
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Before joining the Dept. of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Maren R. Niehoff was a Junior Fellow at Harvard and received her doctorate and MA from Oxford University. Her BA studies were split between Berlin and Jerusalem. Today she is an elected member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Among her numerous publications are Philo of Alexandria. An Intellectual Biography (Yale 2018; Polonsky Prize 2019) and Homeric Scholarship and Biblical Exegesis in Alexandria (Cambridge 2011; Polonsky Prize 2011). Currently, she completes a translation and commentary of the Philonic treatise On the Freedom of Every Righteous Person (Brill). Her research interests include the New Testament and rabbinic literature in the Land of Israel.
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26. Declaring Israel | Dr. Neil Rogachevsky Mar 21, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Neil Rogachevsky skip down the winding (theoretical) road towards Israeli independence, and tell the story of the drafting of Ben Gurion's declaration of independence.
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Neil Rogachevsky is assistant professor and associate director at the Straus Center of Yeshiva University, where he teaches Israel studies and political thought. His commentary and essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Tablet, The Atlantic, Mosaic, Commentary, Jewish Review of Books, American Affairs, Ha’aretz and other publications. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge.
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25. Moshe Chaim Luzzatto | Dr. Jonathan Garb Mar 07, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Jonathan Garb march down the various paths of the Ram"chal's thought, and straighten out some mysteries of his life, thought, and reception.
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Jonathan Garb is the Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2014, he received the Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities’ Gershom Scholem Prize for Kabbalah Research. His latest book is: Does God Doubt? R.
Gershon Henoch Leiner’s Thought in Its Contexts (Brill, 2024).
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24. Copernicus and the Jews | Dr. Jeremy Brown Feb 29, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Jeremy Brown circulate some of the Jewish responses to Copernicus.
Jeremy Brown is the author of New Heavens and a New Earth; The Jewish Reception of Copernican Thought (Oxford University Press 2013) and Influenza; The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History (Simon and Schuster 2018). He is an emergency physician and Director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health. Jeremy is the author of over forty peer-reviewed papers and four books, including two textbooks of emergency medicine published by Oxford University Press. He and his wife, Erica live in Silver Spring, Maryland. They have four children, three more by marriage and two beautiful grandchildren.
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23. Tzimtzum | Dr. Christoph Schulte Feb 22, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Christoph Schulte contract a serious case of mystical curiousity, and diminish the mysteries around the idea of Tzimtzum.
Prof. Dr. Christoph Schulte is Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at the
University of Potsdam since 2001 and for many years head of the Department of Jewish and
Religious Studies. He studied Philosophy, Jewish Studies, Theology and Journalism in Heidelberg,
Berlin and Jerusalem, did his PhD at Freie Universität Berlin 1987 and was a fellow and Visiting
Professor in Jerusalem (1989-91), Montreal (1991), Paris (1992-93), Chicago (1995), Aix-en-
Provence (1997-98), Philadelphia (2009/10), Zurich (2014), Basel (2016), Haifa (2017/2023), and
Hamburg (2020). He received the Gleim-Preis (Halberstadt 2003) and the Inklusionspreis (Potsdam
2022). His most recent book publications are Von Moses bis Moses: Der jüdische Mendelssohn
(Hannover 2020), Mendelssohn-Studien (Hannover 2023) and Zimzum: God and the Origin of
the World (Philadelphia 2023).
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22. Jewish Apologetics | Dr. Samuel Lebens Feb 15, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Sam Lebens prove God?! (Or at least, they discuss the history of some Jewish arguments for God.)
Samuel Lebens is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa. He works in a wide array of philosophical fields including metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of fiction, and most centrally, the philosophy of religion. His recent books include, The Principles of Judaism (Oxford University Press), A Guide for the Jewish Undecided (Maggid Books), Philosophy of Religion: The Basics (Routledge) and (with Tatjana von Solodkoff) Thinking about Stories: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Fiction (Routledge). His website is www.samlebens.com
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21. Leo Strauss | Dr. Leora Batnitzky Feb 01, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Leora Batnitzky look for hidden truths in Strauss' thought.
Dr. Leora Batnitzky is the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish studies and professor of religion at Princeton University. She is the author of Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation and Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered (Princeton).
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20. The Zohar | Dr. Daniel Matt Jan 04, 2024

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Daniel Matt become wiser and gain understanding while discussing the Kabbalistic ideas of The Zohar .
Daniel Matt is a prominent scholar of Kabbalah and the Zohar. He has been featured in Time and Newsweek and on National Public Radio. His books include The Essential Kabbalah (translated into eight languages), Zohar: Annotated and Explained, and God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality (revised edition, 2016). In 2022, his biography of Elijah the Prophet (Becoming Elijah: Prophet of Transformation) was published by Yale University Press in their series Jewish Lives. This book was awarded the inaugural Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Book Prize, established by Yeshiva University. Some years ago, Daniel completed an 18-year project of translating and annotating the Zohar. In 2016, Stanford University Press published his ninth volume of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, concluding the Zohar’s main commentary on the Torah. For this work, Daniel has been honored with a National Jewish Book Award and a Koret Jewish Book Award. The Koret award hailed his translation as “a monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought.” Daniel received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and for twenty years served as professor at the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has also taught at Stanford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Daniel lives in Berkeley with his wife Hana. He currently teaches Zohar online. For information about these ongoing Zohar courses, see his website: danielcmatt.com
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19. Anti-Maimonides | Dr. Tamar Rudavsky Dec 21, 2023

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Tamar Rudavsky trace the responses to Maimonides among Medieval Jewish Philosophers.
T.M. Rudavsky is Professor of Philosophy at The Ohio State University. She specializes in medieval Jewish philosophy and has edited three volumes: Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Perspectives(1984), Gender and Judaism: The Transformation of Tradition (1995); along with Steven Nadler, she is co-editor of the Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century (Jan, 2009). Her volume Time Matters: Time, Creation and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy appeared in 2000, her recent book on Maimonides appeared in the “Great Minds” series with Blackwell-Wiley Press in 2010; and her most recent work Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Science, Rationalism, and Religion appeared in July 2018. The author as well of numerous articles and encyclopedia entries, her major research continues to focus on issues connected to philosophical cosmology in medieval Jewish and scholastic thought.
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18. The German Haskalah | Dr. Michah Gottlieb Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

J.J. and Dr. Michah Gottlieb shed light on the origins of the Haskalah in Berlin, and examine Mendelssohn's role in it.
Michah Gottlieb is Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy at NYU. An expert on the German Haskalah and its reverberations, he has authored several books and dozens of articles. His books include *Faith and: Moses Mendelssohn’s Theological-Political Thought* (Oxford University Press, 2011) and most recently *The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and Middle Class German Judaism as Spiritual Enterprise* (Oxford 2021, paperback 2023), which won the Dorothy Rosenberg Prize from the American Historical Association. His current research project focuses on Maskilic Musar literature.
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