58th Century Judaisms
I believe that the world we live in is understood through words. I believe the more words we have the more we can be in this world. I feel lucky to have inherited a 3,000-year old Jewish tradition of expressing the world in words, and try to be a bridge between the old texts and where people are at today.I don't have so many answers to the fundamental questions of existence. I don't try to convince people about anything. But I like learning, I like to facilitate Jewish discussions, I like to help people explore how to be a Jewish human.
Episodes
19 episodes
Bread and Matza
Some post-Pesach thoughts.... if chametz is so bad, why does Jewish law require it? Why is chametz central to Shavuot, and to life? Rebbe Nachman gives us some clues. *Sources can be found here: www.sefaria.org/sheets/33290?lang=...
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18:39
New Faces
One text leads to another, faces are masks are words are invitations are interpretations. We go on a journey within Jewish law and lore, from wedding feasts to Purim costumes to heretical readings of the Torah. You can find all t...
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23:28
Called by Desire : 'Objet Petit a' and Vayikra
The introduction to Leviticus is strange: God calls Moses and only then speaks to him (what is the function of the calling? What does it mean to be called?) And the word for calling, 'Vayikra', is traditionally written with a little letter
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19:16
Wings of Desire: what is a 'cherub'?
I dug into the sources and commentaries, trying to find out what a 'cherub' looks like.Bull?Bird?Baby?Two lovers?Symbols of symbols of symbols...* You can see the texts I used here: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/380...
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14:16
When does Justice Begin?
A Torah exploration. Were the basics laws of justice given at Sinai, or after the crossing of the sea, or during slavery in Egypt, or to Noah, or to Adam, or even before creation itself?I'll tell you why I think it matters. The last two...
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15:15
God Sneezes Too
What blessing could be appropriate for COVID vaccinations? Using a Talmudic text as a starting point, we look at some little-known blessings for medical procedures, at the correct response for a sneeze, the creation of sneezes, and the spiritua...
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22:37
Beautiful God / Beautiful Me - Channukah Thoughts
This is my God and I will anvehu (Exodus 15)While the simple meaning of anvehu is probably a vague sense of worship or exaltation, it's been used as the base...
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21:34
Grafting Trees: Is the world perfect?
The Torah seems to be against mixing distinct things: meat and milk, holy and profane, and even grafting one kind of tree onto another. But why? The laws of grafted trees are extreme: some say the trees should be uprooted, others say that all o...
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27:26
Shmita Part Two: Celebrating Calendar Chaos
Looking into the sources of the Jewish calendar, we find more confusion than clarity. Different rabbinic texts propose different shemita calculations, putting everything in doubt. This class looks at the confusion, and tries to find - not the t...
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25:38
Shmita Part One: You Must Be Kind!
It's (supposedly) the shemita year this year, the Sabbatical year, when the land rests and debts are cancelled. The deeper we look at the laws of debt release, though, the more paradoxes and contradictions we find, until we (maybe) uncover the ...
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21:52
Half-Human Walls
We go on a bizarre halachic excursion through the sources on Sukkah building - specifically exploring the seemingly strange law: the walls of a sukkah can be made out of a person, as long as they don't know it. Knowing and not-knowing seem to b...
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16:24
The Creation of Creation
Rebbe Nachman brings a twist to the significance of Rosh Hashana: it's celebrating the creation of the world, of course, but that's something we do every moment. We just need to do it better. Turning raw potential into actuality, taking an idea...
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18:28
Before the Beginning
On Rosh Hashana, Jews celebrate the creation of the world (or of humanity, or something else..) If so, Elul marks the time before creation. What does it mean to be before creation? Why is answering that question forbidden in Jewish law? W...
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22:03
Beasts of Elul
Looking at the month of Elul as part of the wider framework of "days of judgement". Our model is a surprising detail in religious taxation, the "tithing of beasts". As usual, the deeper we explore the more peculiar it becomes, giving lots of fo...
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15:05
Children of Kings
"All of Israel are children of kings". This principle is often invoked in the Talmud, and often rejected. We look at the various examples and try and figure out what and when we can see ourselves as royalty. This gives us food for thought as we...
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20:40
Shaliach: The Responsibility of the Messenger
Looking at the legal definition of a 'shaliach' - an agent or messenger, we get a couple of principles which seem to extend much further, to the idea of what it is to be human at all. * You can find the sourcesheet with all t...
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16:33
Golems, wine, and Jewish prayer
Continuing the discussion on prayer as a focal point for understanding what it is to be human, we look at the category of speech, as expressed through laws on prayer and esoteric discussions about the status of a golem. * You...
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16:31
Minimal Consciousness in Jewish prayer
Rather than looking at the highest levels of mystical prayer, we try to explore what is it that differentiates a human prayer from a mechanical one. The idea of kavvanah, mental focus or attunement, seems to be key to understanding what it is t...
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13:44
What is kavvanah? Intention, attunement, alignment, truth...
Rambam / Maimonides is almost unique in Jewish philosophy in the importance he gives to states of mind. His extreme position on the necessary mind-state during prayer is almost impossible to achieve. But he sees it as crucial to becoming fully ...
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12:45