The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

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/donateFollow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to argue with fellow listeners about Hasidic philosophies of language and perception. Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsRabbi 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).

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/donateFollow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to argue with fellow listeners about Hasidic philosophies of language and perception. Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsDr. 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.

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! If you would like to support us directly please shoot us an email or visit torahinmotion.org/donateFollow 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 your choice!We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsEli 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.

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. Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsYair 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.

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. Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsDr. 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.

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. Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsAaron 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/

J.J. and Dr. Jacob Howland round up a storm of fascinating comparisons between Talmudic and Platonic methods of discourse. Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsJacob 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.

J.J. and Dr. David Myers scientifically examine the thought and legacy of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement. Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!We welcome all complaints and compliments at podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsDavid N. Myers is Distinguished Professor of History and holds the Sady and Ludwig KahnChair in Jewish History at UCLA, where he serves as the director of the UCLA Luskin Center forHistory and Policy. He also directs the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate. He is the author or editor ofmore than fifteen books in the field of Jewish history, including, with Nomi Stolzenberg, AmericanShtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, a Hasidic Village in Upstate New York (Princeton, 2022), whichwas awarded the 2022 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish studies.

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. Don't forget to rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!Please send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsDr. Secunda is a religious studies scholar who has taught at universities in Israel and the United States, including the Hebrew University and Yale University, where he was the Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellow. He previously served as a member of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and lecturer in the university’s comparative religion and Hebrew literature departments. His academic interests range from rabbinic and Middle Persian literature to classical Jewish history, the Babylonian Talmud in its Sasanian context, Zoroastrianism, and critical approaches to the study of religion, including gender and religion.Professor Secunda is the author of The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context (2014) and The Talmud’s Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and Its Sasanian Context (forthcoming with Oxford University Press); and editor of Shoshannat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian Studies in Honor of Yaakov Elman (with Steven Fine, 2012) and Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations between Jews, Iranians, and Babylonians in Antiquity (with Uri Gabbay, 2014). He has also contributed book chapters to the Wiley-Blackwell History of Jews and Judaism, and Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism. He is a member of the Association of Jewish Studies and the International Society of Iranian Studies. Professor Secunda has taught at Bard since 2016.

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. Don't forget to rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!Please send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.orgFor more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsJoanna Weinberg is Professor Emerita in Early Modern Jewish History and Rabbinics at the University of Oxford where she taught rabbinic literature and medieval and Jewish literature and history. She has translated and edited the works of the major Jewish Renaissance scholar Azariah de’ Rossi. More recently, she collaborated with Anthony Grafton (Princeton University) on the Hebrew studies of the great Huguenot scholar Isaac Casaubon (Harvard University Press, 2011) Together with Anthony Grafton  she has recently completed a book on the major German Reformed Hebraist Johann Buxtorf and his paradoxical approaches to Jews and Jewish literature. With Michael Fishbane she edited  and contributed to Midrash Unbound. Transformations and Innovations (Littman Library, 2013). With Scott Mandelbrote she edited and contributed to Jewish Books and Their Readers; Aspects of Jewish and Christian Intellectual Life in early modern Europe , Leiden: Brill, 2016. Together with Piet van Boxel and Kirsten Macfarlane  she had edited the volume The Mishnaic Moment: Jewish Law among Jews and Christians in Early Modern Europe  Oxford University Press in the Oxford-Warburg Studies at the end of May 2022.