The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

J.J. and Dr. Hindy Najman on authorship, authority, and the creation of the Jewish canon. 

If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  podcasts@torahinmotion.org 

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Hindy Najman (MA and PhD Harvard, NELC) is the Oriel and La...

J.J. and Dr. Adena Tanenbaum unravel the dynamics of late medieval and early modern Jewish intellectual life in Yemen. 

This episode is sponsored by the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, a leading academic program in Jewish Studies. For information on admission and course offerings, including generous scholarships, please visit gsjs.touro.edu/history/ or get in touch by calling 212-463-0400, ext. 55580 or emailing karen.rubin@touro.edu

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 @jewi...

J.J. and Dr. Shmuel Feiner tell tales of 1782 CE, a turning point in Modern Jewish History. 

This episode is sponsored by the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, a leading academic program in Jewish Studies. For information on admission and course offerings, including generous scholarships, please visit gsjs.touro.edu/history/ or get in touch by calling 212-463-0400, ext. 55580 or emailing karen.rubin@touro.edu

If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  podcasts@torahinmotion.org 


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J.J. and Dr. Alon Goshen-Gottstein stay current. They discuss 21st century Jewish thinkers like Jonathan Sacks, Irving Greenberg, and Goshen-Gottstein himself. 

This is the fifth and final episode in our miniseries about universalism and particularism in Judaism. Over the course of the series we explored and complicated Jewish attitudes to these ideas across the centuries. 

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Duration: 00:56:53

J.J. and Dr. Jeremy Fogel reflect on the oneness of nature, the nature of oneness, and particularism vs. universalism in the thought of Benedict Spinoza, Moses Mendellsohn, and Hermann Cohen. 

This is the fourth episode in our miniseries about universalism and particularism in Judaism. Over the course of the series we will explore and complicate Jewish attitudes to these categories across the centuries. 

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We welcome all com...

J.J. and Dr. Menachem Kellner pitch Maimonides against Judah HaLevi and explore the extremes of Jewish universalism and particularism in the middle ages. 

Thank you to Kestenbaum and Co. for sponsoring today's episode!
Click here to see the auction catalogue and place your bids on rare Judaica and Hebraica. 

This is the third episode in our miniseries about universalism and particularism in Judaism. Over the course of the series we will explore and complicate Jewish attitudes to these categories across the centuries. 

Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insi...

J.J. and Dr. Marc Hirshman dissect the schools of R. Akiva and R. Yishmael to understand the central rabbinic arguments about universalism and particularism. 

This is the second episode in our miniseries about universalism and particularism in Judaism. Over the course of the series we will explore and complicate Jewish attitudes to these categories across the centuries. 

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...

J.J. and Dr. Ethan Schwartz explore the categories of religious universalism and particularism in the Bible.

This is the first episode in our miniseries about universalism and particularism in Judaism. Over the course of the series we will explore and complicate Jewish attitudes to these categories across the centuries. 

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...

J.J. and Dr. Michael Satlow offer an authentic account of this apocryphal book of wisdom literature. 

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Professor Michael L. Satlow (Ph.D. in Ancient Judaism from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America) specializes in the history of Jews and Judaism in antiquity but also writes and te...

J.J. and Dr. Lital Levy explore the Jewish Nahda, and the border-ignoring breadth of the Haskalah. 

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Lital Levy is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where she teaches literature, critical theory, and intellectual history, with specializations in Hebrew, Arabic, Jewish studies and Middle Eastern st...

J.J. and Dr. Shlomo Zuckier offer up some sweet-smelling insight into the history and future of sacrifices. 

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Shlomo Zuckier is a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and will this coming year be the Igor Kaplan Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of To...

J.J. and Dr. Tzvi Novick talk prayer, poetry, homily, and some very-old-fashioned exegesis. 

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Tzvi Novick is the Abrams Professor of Jewish Thought and Culture at the University of Notre Dame.  His first monograph, What is Good, and What God Demands: Normative Structures in Tannaitic Literature (2010), traces foundational str...

J.J. and Dr. Jeffrey Blutinger discuss the work and impact of the most influential Jewish Historian since Josephus. 


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Jeffrey C. Blutinger is the inaugural holder of the Barbara and Ray Alpert Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Director of the Jewish Studies Program, an interdisciplinary ma...

J.J. and Dr. Sarah Pessin overflow with curiosity about the poetic philosophy of the Medieval Jewish Neoplatonists. 


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Sarah Pessin is Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Thought. She holds an Interfaith Chair, and works in areas of phenomenology, existentialism, Neoplatonism, interfaith civics, philosophy of religion, ethics, an...

J.J. and Dr. Adam Ferziger crisscross the Atlantic to better understand the influence of American Orthodoxy on Israel, and vice versa. 

Buy the book: Agents of Change by Dr. Adam Ferziger

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Adam S. Ferziger holds the Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair in the Israel and Gol...

J.J. and Dr. Alon Shalev discuss the iconoclastic ideas and character of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. 

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Alon Shalev is a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, where he explores profound questions about meaning in life within the context of Jewish thought and philosophy. With a do...

J.J. and Dr. David Novak hike through the forest of Natural Law, and stop to examine some (Jewish) trees therein. 

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David Novak is a Jewish theologian, ethicist, and scholar of Jewish philosophy and law. He is an ordained Conservative rabbi and is Professor Emeritus and J. Richard and...

J.J. and Dr. Talya Fishman whip themselves up into a frenzy over the thought and influence of the pietists of the Medieval Rhineland. 

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Talya Fishman is Associate Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Intellectual and
Cultural History in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Middl...

J.J. and Dr. Elliot Wolfson are just two beings talking about being, time, and Jewish mysticism in the thought of Martin Heidegger. 

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Elliot R. Wolfson, a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the Marsha and Jay Gla...

J.J. and Dr. Marina Zilbergerts study the birth of modern Hebrew for its own sake. 

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Dr. Marina Zilbergerts is a scholar of Jewish literature and thought. From 2016 to 2023, she served as the Lipton Assistant Professor of Jewish Literature and Thought at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She re...

J.J. and Dr. Rachel Elior make sharp distinctions between mysticism, Hasidism, and Sabbateanism. 

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Rachel Elior is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish Philosophy in the Department of Jewish Thought at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has written nine books on various periods of...

J.J. and Dr. Abigail Gillman interpret the ideas and impact of the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible translation. 

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Abigail Gillman is a Professor of Hebrew, German, and Comparative Literature in the Department of World Languages and Literatures.  She teaches courses on modern German literature; Hebrew literature; Israeli Cinema; and Rel...

J.J. and Dr. Paul Franks systematically consider Franz Rosenzweig in all his existential and idealistic glory. 

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Paul Franks is Robert F. and Patricia Ross Weis Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Professor of German Languages and Literatures, Professor of Religious Studies, and Chair of the Department of Ph...

J.J. and Dr. Samuel Brody assess the original ideas and monumental influence of this 20th century thinker and leader. 

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Samuel Hayim Brody is Associate Profesor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Martin Buber's Theopolitics (IUP, 2018), which received the...

J.J. and Gila Fine analyze the literary character of Talmudic women and uncover a counter history of Bruriah. 

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Noam Zadoff is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck. He is the author of Gershom Scholem: from Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis, 2017) and many ot...

J.J. and Dr. Noam Zadoff methodically demistify Gershom Scholem's iconoclastic but influential views about Sabbateanism and its causal connection to just about every contemporary element of Jewish life. 

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Noam Zadoff is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck. He is the aut...

J.J. and Dr. Pawel Maciejko conspire to bring you an episode about a small but mighty sub-sect of Sabbateanism. 

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Pawel Maciejko is an associate professor of history and Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Chair in Classical Jewish Religion, Thought, and Culture at Johns Hopkins Uni...

J.J. and Dr. Maoz Kahana are at Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek's biggest fight night. This Rabbinic brawl over Sabbateanism in the 18th century bruised Jewish leaders all over Europe. 

Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates about messiahs, true and false. 

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Maoz Kahana (PhD) is an associate Professor  in the Jewish History Department, Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on de...

J.J. and Dr. Yaacob Dweck Introduce us to the critic-in-chief of the Sabbatean movement in the 17th century: Rabbi Jacob Sasportas. This is episode 2 or our mini-series about Sabbateanism and its afterlife. 

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Yaacob Dweck is the Philip and Beulah Rol...

J.J. and Dr. Matt Goldish Introduce us to Shabbetai Tzevi and his cadre of prophets and promoters. This is episode 1 or our mini-series about Sabbateanism and its afterlife. 


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Matt Goldish is the Samuel M. and...

J.J. and Dr. Eliav Grossman bravely explore a new (old) frontier in Jewish thought. The mysterious time between the closing of the Babylonian Talmud and the rise of the Geonim. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod and Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social to discover new arenas for Jewish discourse. 

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Eliav Grossman is a visiting assistant professor in the Dep...

J.J. and Dr. Steven Zipperstein capture the essence and relevance of this elusive visionary. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to see the realization of Ahad Ha'Am's pessimistic prophesies. 

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Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. His second book, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zi...

J.J. and Dr. Aaron Koller tremble in fear of this awesome Biblical episode, but they still manage to discuss fascinating theological and historical interpretations of the story. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to sacrifice time on the altar of scrolling. 

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Aaron Koller is professor of Near Eastern Studies at Yeshiva University. Aaron has held research positions at...

J.J. and Dr. Olga Litvak take the express from Berlin to Eastern Europe in search of the real Jewish enlightenment. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to challenge the intellectual geography of other listeners. 

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Olga Litvak is the Roth Professor of Modern European Jewish History at Cornell University.  The author of Conscription and the Search for Mod...

J.J. and Dr. Sarah Hammerschlag encounter a phenomenal high-school principal and genius: Emmanuel Levinas. 

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Sarah Hammerschlag is the John Nuveen Professor of Religion and Literature, Philosophy of Religions and History of Judaism at the University of Chicago. Sheis a scholar in the area of Religion and Li...

J.J. and Dr. Sara Labaton dive into the mysteries of Ibn Ezra’s revolutionary commentary on the Bible. This is episode 2 of our series on the ideas of Abraham Ibn Ezra. 

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Dr. Sara Labaton is Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Har...

J.J. and Dr. Sara Labaton dive into the mysteries of Ibn Ezra’s revolutionary commentary on the Bible. This is episode 2 of our series on the ideas of Abraham Ibn Ezra. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to converse with other listeners about secret hermeneutics.

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Dr. Sara Labaton is Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Har...

J.J. and Dr. Sara Labaton dive into the mysteries of Ibn Ezra’s revolutionary commentary on the Bible. This is episode 2 of our series on the ideas of Abraham Ibn Ezra. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to converse with other listeners about secret hermeneutics.

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!

We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.org

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Dr. Sara Labaton is Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Har...

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. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to get into spats with other listeners about Arithmology or Astrology. 

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Y. Tzvi Langermann, is Professor Emeritus of Arabic at Bar Ilan University, He...

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...

J.J. and Dr. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal meditate on Talmudic responses to Christianity. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to get into arguments with other listeners about Monks, The Talmud, and Kabbalah. 

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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. He...

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.

Thank you to Rabbi Gary Huber for sponsoring this mini-series! 

If you would like to support us directly please shoot us an email or visit torahinmotion.org/donate

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to argue with fellow listeners about Hasidic philosophies of language and perception. 

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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. 

Thank you to Rabbi Gary Huber for sponsoring this mini-series! 

If you would like to support us directly please shoot us an email or visit torahinmotion.org/donate

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to argue with fellow listeners about Hasidic philosophies of language and perception. 

Please rate and revie...

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. 

Thank you to Rabbi Gary Huber for sponsoring this mini-series! 

If you would like to support us directly please shoot us an email or visit torahinmotion.org/donate

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to argue with fellow listeners about Hasidic philosophies of language and perception. 

Please rate and revie...

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. 

Thank you to Rabbi Gary Huber for sponsoring this mini-series! 

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Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to argue with fellow listeners about the Hasidim of Vitebsk vs. the Hasidim of Horodok. 

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of...

J.J. and Dr. Yair Furstenberg contextualize the ethical teachings of the Tannaim. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to get into arguments with other listeners about Seneca and Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai. 

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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 hi...

J.J. and Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel comment on the happenings in Medieval Ashkenaz and add their spin on to the era of the Tosafists.
 
Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to get into arguments with other listeners about Rabbeinu Tam or the Rash MiSchantz. 

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Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel is the E. Billi Ivry University Professor of Jewish History, Literature an...

J.J. and Dr. Aaron Segal freely choose to wade through the murky medieval and contemporary debates over the existence of free will. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to get into public arguments about Crescas and Spinoza. 

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Aaron Segal is Associate Professor of Philosophy and John and Golda Cohen Chair in Jewish Philosophy at The Hebrew Un...

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 R...

J.J. and Dr. David Myers scientifically examine the thought and legacy of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. 


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David N. Myers is Distinguished Professor of History and holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn
Chair in Jewish History at UCLA, where he serves as the director of the UCLA Luskin Center for
History and Policy. He also directs the UC...

J.J. and Dr. Shai Secunda set Talmudic discourse ablaze. They put the Talmud in its Zoroastrian and Sasanian context, and have bloody good discussion about how Judaism interacted with its socio-religious environment in the first few centuries of the Common Era. 

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Dr. Secunda is a religious studies scholar who has taught at universities in Israel and the United S...

J.J. and Dr. Joanna Weinberg make their way back to sunny 15th century Italy and the surrounding centuries to visit some of the more interesting Jewish characters of the Italian Renaissance. They weave their way through cross-cultural influences and intra-cultural tensions during this remarkable era of rebirth. 

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Joanna Weinberg is Professor Emerita in Early Modern Jewish History and R...

J.J. and Dr. Martin Goodman go antiquing! They discuss the most important Jewish historian of the Roman period–Josephus Flavius. What did he write? Who was he writing for? And what ideological framework motivated his histories? 

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Martin Goodman is Emeritus Professor of Jewish Studies in the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He has written extensively on Jewish and Roman history. His books inc...

J.J. and Dr. Susannah Heschel survey the fascinating life and brilliant ideas of Abraham Geiger. This guy was flagrantly influential. A practicing rabbi, a leader in the Wissenschaft das Judentums movement and a founder of Islamic studies in Europe, he was on the intellectual vanguard of the 19th century Reform movement, so strap in for a great conversation. 

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Susannah Heschel is the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and chair of t...

J.J. and Dr. Daniel Schwartz examine the convoluted legacy and enduring relevance of Spinoza.

Our first mini-series!! Welcome to the second episode of our three-parter covering friend of the pod, Benedict "Barukh" Spinoza.

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For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts


Daniel B. Schwartz is a professor of modern Jewish European and American intellectual and cultural history at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is the author of two monographs: The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (Pri...

J.J. and Dr. Yitzhak Melamed untangle Spinoza's famed Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and assess the religiosity of its author, a supposed atheist. 

Our first mini-series!! Welcome to the second episode of our three-parter covering friend of the pod, Benedict "Barukh" Spinoza.

Please send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Yitzhak Y. Melamed is the Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He holds an MA in philosophy and the history of science and logic from Tel Aviv University, and a PhD in philosophy fr...

Dr. Rebecca Goldstein and J.J. communicate the story of Spinoza's herem and outline the radicalism of his Ethics. 

Our first mini-series!! Welcome to the first episode of our three-parter covering friend of the pod, Benedict "Barukh" Spinoza.

Please send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.org
For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College and immediately went on to graduate work at Princeton University, receiving her Ph.D. in philosophy. She then returned to her alma mater as an Assistant Professor of Phi...

J.J. and Dr. Eric Lawee comment on Rashi's astounding career, and refuse to gloss over his contentious journey to join the Jewish canon. 
 
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Eric Lawee is a professor in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, where he teaches the history of Jewish biblical scholarship. His Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic (2019; paperback 2021), published by Oxford University Press, won the 2019 Jewish Book Award in the category of S...

J.J. and Dr. Menachem Fisch decided that this is the time for studying the philosophy of the book of Qohelet, and they don't study it in vain.
 
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Menachem Fisch is the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science at Tel Aviv University and Co-Director of the Frankfurt-Tel Aviv Center for the Study of Religious and Interreligious Dynamics. He has published widely on the history of 19th century British science and mathematics, o...

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 n...

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...

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 Thou...

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...

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), P...

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...

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).

J.J. and Rabbi Dr. Art Green explore the nature and spirit of Neo-Hasidut.


Dr. Arthur Green was the founding dean and is currently rector of the Rabbinical School and Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College. He is Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University, where he occupied the distinguished Philip W. Lown Professorship of Jewish Thought. He is both a historian of Jewish religion and a theologian; his work seeks to form a bridge between these two distinct fields of endeavor. Educated at Brandeis University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where...

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...

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...

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 Am...

J.J. and Dr. Noah Feldman attempt uncover what Maimonides was really trying to do in his halakhic and philosophical works.


Noah Feldman is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Chairman of the Society of
Fellows, and founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli
Law, all at Harvard University. He specializes in constitutional studies, with particular
emphasis on power and ethics, design of innovative governance solutions, law and
religion, and the history of legal ideas. Feldman is the author of 10 books, including his latest forthcoming title, Bad Jew: A Perplexed Guide...

J.J. and Dr. Naomi Seidman wonder why Jews want to claim Freud so badly, and if that claim has merit.

Dr. Naomi Seidman is the Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow. Her publications include Faithful Renderings: Jewish—Christian Difference and the Politics of Difference (Chicago, 2006), The Marriage Plot, Or, How Jews Fell in Love with Love, and with Literature (Stanford, 2016), and Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Na...

J.J. and Dr. Simon Goldhill try to nail down exactly what Midrash really is and try to place the classical Rabbis in their historical context.




Simon Goldhill is a Professor in Greek Literature and Culture and Fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at King's College. His latest book is Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity: Art, Opera, Fiction, and the Proclamation of Modernity. Previously, Professor Goldhill was Director of CRASSH from 2011-2018. CRASSH is dedicated to interdisciplinary research, with 16 faculty research groups, Humanitas Visiting Professors, and longer term interdisciplinary research projects.

J.J. and Dr. Ruth Wisse unpack the world or modern Yiddish literature from its beginnings with Rav Nachman of Breslov through Chaim Grade and the contemporary state of Yiddish studies.


Ruth R. Wisse is professor emerita of Yiddish literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University and senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund. Her books on literature include The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey through Literature and Culture (2000); No Joke: Making Jewish Humor (2013); A Little Love in Big Manhattan: Two Yiddish Poets (1988); The Schlemiel as Modern Hero (1971). On politics, Jews and Power (2007, 2020); If I am Not for...

J.J. and Dr. Yonatan Brafman define philosophy of halakha and discuss the competing halakhic philosophies of Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Eliezer Berkovits.



Yonatan Brafman is an assistant professor of Modern Judaism in the Department of Religion and a member of the Program in Judaic Studies. He is a scholar of modern Jewish thought and a philosopher of religion. His research focuses on the intersection of Jewish thought, Jewish law, and contemporary moral, legal, and political philosophy. He also studies the implications of religious ritual for critical social theory and praxis.
Previously, he was assistant professor...

J.J. and Dr. Shaye Cohen go deep into the world of the mishnah and try to mark the boundaries between the world of the mishnah and the world of history.



Shaye J. D. Cohen is the Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University, one of the oldest and most distinguished professorships of Jewish studies in the United States. Before arriving at Harvard in July 2001, Prof. Cohen was for ten years the Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at...

In this episode J.J. and Dr. Miriam Feldmann-Kaye get into the nature of postmodernism and how it relates to Judaism. Also, meta-narratives and mega-narratives.


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Dr. Miriam Feldmann Kaye is a Lecturer in Jewish Philosophy at Bar-Ilan University. A graduate of the Universities of Cambridge, London and Haifa, Miriam is Editor of the international St Andrews University Encyclopaedia of Jewish Theology. Her fields of thought, teaching and research are: Modern Continental Philosophy of Religion, Jewish Theology...

In this episode J.J. and Peter Cole discuss Jewish poetry, aesthetics, and why Samuel ibn Naghrillah would probably make an excellent rapper.

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Born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1957, Peter Cole is the author of six books of poems—most recently Draw Me After (FSG, November 2022) and Hymns & Qualms: New and Selected Poems and Translations (FSG, 2017)—as well as many volumes of translation from Hebrew and Arabic, medieval and modern. Praised for his “prosodic mastery” and “keen moral intelligence” (The American...

In this episode J.J. and Dr. Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg try to figure out what exactly we mean when we say "the Early Modern Period", also legal codes, and the scientific revolution.




Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg is Assistant Professor of Jewish History. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and the Humanities from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania.
Tamara is a historian of the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Jewry. Her research deals with the transmission of Jewish religious knowledge in early modern Europe, especially...

In this episode J.J. and Dr. Lenn Goodman discuss Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed, and the challenges of a brand new translation. Also: What Strauss, Pines, and the UChicago school of interpretation got wrong.

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Lenn E. Goodman is Professor of Philosophy and Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He was honored with the Baumgardt Prize of the American Philosophical Association, and with a volume in Brill Library of Contemporary Jewish Philosophy. He is a rare hu...

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 th...

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.

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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 t...

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...

In this episode J.J. and Dr. Miriam Goldstein dig into the ideas the animated the Rabbis (and Karaites) of the early Islamic period.

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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...

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...

In this episode Dr. Jon Levenson and JJ get into questions about good, evil, and the Book of Job.


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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...

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.


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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...

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.