Judaism Unbound

If you say to David A.M. Wilensky that he "converted" to Judaism, he'll provide a gentle correction: "I underwent a conversion," he'll say. This may not seem like much of a distinction, but in this episode of Judaism Unbound, we explore a group of people who -- from some frames of reference -- converted to Judaism, but from other frames of reference, were Jewish from the second they were born. In short, Wilensky was born as a patrilineal Jew (his father was Jewish, and his mother at the time was not -- though she has since converted), and he made the choice in adulthood to undergo a "conversion," even though he had lived his whole life in Jewish community. This episode explores his story, and a wide variety of inter-related topics! This episode is the third in an ongoing Judaism Unbound mini-series, exploring conversion to Judaism.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about taking courses in Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Juan Mejia, a conservative rabbi who serves as Jewish educator for Emanuel Synagogue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation exploring how Judaism must -- in order to have its maximum positive impact on the world -- embrace converts as fully and authentically Jewish. This episode is the second in an ongoing Judaism Unbound mini-series, exploring conversion to Judaism.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about taking courses in Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Katie Kaestner-Frenchman is Judaism Unbound’s amazing Marketing, Communications, and Creative Maven! They join their colleagues Dan and Lex for the first conversation in an ongoing Judaism Unbound mini-series, exploring conversion to Judaism. What superpowers do converts often bring to Jewish life? What barriers do they continue to face in Jewish spaces? What on *earth* do we do with the fact that everyone on Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was so unbelievably mean to Astrid — the one character on the show who is a Jew-by-Choice? All these questions and more come up in this episode!Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about taking courses in Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

David Raphael and Ilene Vogelstein are leaders of the Jewish Grandparents Network, a national organization that educates, connects, and supports grandparents as essential partners in enriching Jewish life. They join Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about how, perhaps counter-intuitively, the voices of many Jewish grandparents have been sidelined in Jewish institutional life -- along with sharing some ideas about how to shift that reality moving forward. Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Melissa Klapper, author of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920, joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation serving as a "prequel" of sorts to our recent unit on the past, present, and future of Bat Mitzvah (and B Mitzvah in general). But it's also...kind-of a sequel? Klapper talks through the ways in which Jewish girls marked their entry into adulthood -- both within Jewish life and in secular contexts -- in the era directly preceding the emergence of Bat Mitzvah as a life-cycle ritual (hence "prequel!"). The sense in which this conversation is also a sequel is that it is focused on adolescents, largely between the ages of 13 and 20, which is the stage of life directly after many B Mitzvahs occur, at 12-13 years of age!Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!  

Sandra Fox, the Goldstein-Goren visiting assistant professor of American Jewish History at New York University, is the author of The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America. She joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about the history of Jewish summer camp, the ways in which it has influenced American Jewish life, and what it can teach us about amplifying the voices of young people as we study history.Purchase The Jews of Summer via this link! Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearing -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

B Mitzvah (a gender-neutral term for Jewish coming-of-age rituals, often but not exclusively associated with the age of 12-to-13) is an incredibly popular Jewish observance. Even in a landscape where many Jews do not spend much time in Jewish institutional contexts, they often carve out space for their family members to experience B Mitzvah. In this conversation, Dan and Lex explore what they believe B Mitzvah could be in the future, and how it could work in tandem with an expanded notion of Jewish rites of passage, across a wider variety of life-stages. This episode is the 7th in an ongoing mini-series of Judaism Unbound episodes, honoring Bat Mitzvah's 100th anniversary, and exploring the present and future of B Mitzvah.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearing -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Amichai Lau-Lavie is the co-founder and spiritual leader of Lab/Shul: an "artist-driven, everybody-friendly, god-optional, pop up, experimental community for sacred Jewish gatherings." He joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about B Mitzvah as a rite of passage -- not only for 12/13-year-olds, but for all ages!This episode is the 6th in an ongoing mini-series of Judaism Unbound episodes, honoring Bat Mitzvah's 100th anniversary, and exploring the present and future of B Mitzvah ("B Mitzvah" is a term for Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies, across the gender spectrum). Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearing -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

What if B Mitzvahs weren't so thoroughly associated with synagogues,  but were understood to take place in a rich diversity of other spaces in the world?Camp Tawonga, a summer camp located just outside of Yosemite National Park and based in the San Francisco Bay Area, offers a two-year B Mitzvah program that brings the magic of camp to the Bay Area (during the rest of the year), and gives students a unique way to approach this milestone moment through community, nature, and experiential learning. Meg Adler, Camp Tawonga's Associate Director of Bay Area Programs and facilitator of this B Mitzvah program, joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg to explore what their program looks like, and what it might be able to teach other communities.This episode is the 5th in an ongoing mini-series of Judaism Unbound episodes, honoring Bat Mitzvah's 100th anniversary, and exploring the present and future of B Mitzvah ("B Mitzvah" is a term for Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies, across the gender spectrum). Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Register for ShavuotLIVE: a 24-Hour Extravaganza of Jewish Learning (Friday May 26-Saturday May 27), by heading to bit.ly/shavuot23!

This bonus episode of Judaism Unbound is presented in partnership with Theatre Dybbuk. We are proud to feature their third season's fourth episode as a bonus episode here on Judaism Unbound's feed. In each episode, they bring poems, plays, and other creative texts from throughout history to life, all while revealing their relationships to issues still present today. Subscribe to The Dybbukast on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are found.---------------------------------------------In this fourth of our five-episode series in partnership with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, we explore The Book of Tahkemoni, a collection of tales written in Hebrew in the early 13th century. Authored by Yehuda Alharizi who was born in Toledo, Spain in the middle of the 12th century, the book uses the structure of the Arabic literary form known as maqama.Dr. Jonathan Decter, the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies, discusses the history of Jews in the region of The Book's creation and shares about the cultural influences and experiences present in Alharizi’s work.This episode is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.Read the transcription for "The Book of Tahkemoni."