The College Commons Podcast

Yogi, podcaster, and passionate Jew, Lauren Taus has a different take on being culturally Jewish. With decades of experience as a licensed clinical therapist and yoga teacher, Lauren Taus guides people in embodied healing to alchemize personal and intergeneration pain. She works with the body, the mind and the spirit to transform lives, and guide individuals into their highest, most authentic expression. Lauren works with cutting edge technology in her approaches, most recently certified by MAPS to use MDMA for treatment resistant complex trauma cases. Praised in magazines like USA Today, Self, Men's Health, Wanderlust, Yoga Journal and more, Lauren has worked with celebrity clients, hedge fund managers and entrepreneurial giants as well as at risk youth and the American prison system. Most recently, Lauren launched a deeper investigation into the divergent communities of the Holy Land, and she launched her podcast Inbodied Life to showcase the journey. Inbodied Life includes rich conversations around community, healing, and connection from. Her podcast includes rich conversations around community, nonviolence and connection from the lens of Israelis and Palestinians.

Reform liturgy in Israel, where Hebrew content has a whole new meaning. Rabbi Dalia Marx, Ph.D., is the Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Professor of Liturgy and Midrash at the Taube Family Campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, and she teaches in various academic institutions in Israel and Europe. Marx, tenth generation in Jerusalem, earned her doctorate at the Hebrew University and her rabbinic ordination at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem and Cincinnati. She is involved in various research projects and is active in promoting liberal Judaism in Israel. Marx writes for academic and popular journals and publications. She is the author of When I Sleep and When I Wake: On Prayers between Dusk and Dawn (Yediot Sfarim, 2010, in Hebrew), A Feminist Commentary of the Babylonian Talmud (Mohr Siebeck, 2013, in English), About Time: Journeys in the Jewish-Israeli Calendar (Yediot Sfarim, 2018, in Hebrew) and the co-editor of a few books. Marx lives in Jerusalem with her husband Rabbi Roly Zylbersztein (PhD) and their three children.

Take a gripping glimpse behind the bars of the American criminal prison system from a Jewish social activist who's done time on the inside. Evie Litwok is the Founder and Executive Director of Witness to Mass Incarceration (WMI). WMI’s mission is to end mass incarceration by placing formerly incarcerated women and LGBTQIA+ experiences at the center of the fight for alternatives to mass incarceration. Evie works to change the narrative from invisibility and victimization to empowerment through documentation, leadership training, organizing and advocacy. Litwok walked out of prison homeless, jobless, and penniless. Despite the lack of resources, she began speaking about her experiences in prison and formed WMI. She has added the goals of eliminating sexual violence, pushing for emergency evacuation of incarcerated people during times of national disaster and her newest initiative, the Suitcase Project, gives newly released people a suitcase filled with much needed items and a potential community. Her hard work has led to a growing network. Litwok is a part of the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group who meets regularly with the Bureau of Prisons to discuss increasing safety and dignity for LGBTQ prisoners. WMI is also apart of the Raising the Bar Coalition and attends regular meetings with the Justice Department’s PREA Management Office. In 2016, Evie discussed greater participation by formerly incarcerated people in the Justice Department’s PREA implementation efforts with then- Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason. Evie continues to interview formerly incarcerated women and LGBTQIA+ people on their experiences. It is her hope that educating the public and developing initiatives will result in policy reform, a radical change in conditions of confinement, and provide meaningful re-entry.

“Unorthodox” Podcast host takes questions on American Judaism and Jewish culture. Author and freelance writer, Mark Oppenheimer, wrote the “Beliefs” column for The New York Times from 2010 until the summer of 2016. He now hosts a weekly podcast "Unorthodox," produced by Tablet magazine. On iTunes’s #1 Jewish-themed podcast, he delivers the News of the Jews to the world, and interviews guests (Jewish and non-) from Roxane Gay to Simon Doonan, from Transparent’s Kathryn Hahn to Dan Savage. His magazine journalism and reviews appear in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Believer, and elsewhere. He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Yale and has taught at Yale, Stanford, Wesleyan, Boston College, and NYU. He has written two studies of religion and popular culture. The first, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, describes how the tumult of the 1960s affected Protestants, Catholics and Jews in America. The second, Thirteen and a Day, tells the story of my cross-country trip in search of unique bar and bat mitzvahs, from the Ozark Mountains to rural Louisiana to Alaska. He gives a lot of talks, mostly on faith, community, media, and politics, and he appears on TV and hosts on the radio. He has given NPR commentaries about Quaker summer camp and the demise of the hippie and was featured in an NPR segment about Portnoy’s Complaint. He has also made appearances on CBS Early Show and CBS Sunday Morning. Mark has won awards for his writing and scholarship, including the Hiett Prize, the Koret Young Writer on Jewish Themes Award, the Connecticut Book Award, and the John Addison Porter Prize from Yale University. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife, four daughters, one son, two dogs, and cat. He is currently writing Squirrel Hill, the definitive study of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh and how a neighborhood came together to support each other in the aftermath (to be published by Knopf in 2021).

Poetry and prose from the pen of Yermiyahu Ahron Taub transport us from the world of Orthodox Judaism to the libraries of modern America. Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of the collection of short stories Prodigal Children in the House of G-d (2018) and six books of poetry, including A Mouse Among Tottering Skyscrapers: Selected Yiddish Poems (2017). Preparing to Dance: New Yiddish songs, a CD of nine of his Yiddish poems set to music by Michał Gorczyński, was released in 2014. Taub was honored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage as one of New York’s best emerging Jewish artists and has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. With co-translator Ellen Cassedy, he is the recipient of the 2012 Yiddish Book Center Translation Prize and the 2014-2017 Modern Language Association’s Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies for Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories by Blume Lempel (2016). His short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Hamilton Stone Review, Jewrotica, Junto Magazine, Oyster River Pages, Marathon Literary Review, Second Hand Stories Podcast, and Verdad Magazine.

Exploring the therapy of angels and past lives to understand the soul and the self. Doris E. Cohen, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned clinical psychologist and psychotherapist and has been in the private practice for more than 30 years. Her unique approach uses psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, Past-Life Regressions and Dream analysis.

Exploring the value, ritual, and tradition of storytelling while straddling different Jewish worlds. Pearl Gluck’s work has been part of the Sundance Lab, played at the Cannes Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and PBS. The Turn Out is her first fiction feature film. Her first documentary feature film, Divan (2004) opened theatrically at Film Forum in NYC, was broadcast on the Sundance Channel and played across the country and internationally at festivals. Pearl’s first narrative short, Where is Joel Baum (2012), won prizes such as Best Actor at the Starz Denver Film Festival and Best Film at the Toronto Female Eye Film Festival. She continues to make both documentary and narrative films that explore themes of class, gender, and faith. Pearl teaches Screenwriting and Directing at Penn State University and is currently developing a documentary project exploring specialty courts that offer an alternative, treatment-oriented approach for victims of sex trafficking. Ten years after leaving her native Borough Park, Brooklyn, Pearl Gluck received a Fulbright grant to collect oral histories from Yiddish speakers in areas of Hungary once home to thriving Hasidic communities. At heart, she is a zamler, Yiddish for collector, an ethnographer. Gluck directed a one-hour TV documentary, Soundwalk: Williamsburg, (2007) broadcast on Paris Premiere, and the audio tour for Soundwalk which was nominated for a 2007 Audie Award. She is co-writer on Goyta (2007) which premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival as part of Cinefondation. Her first film, Divan (2004), is a Hasidic tale five years in the making which was developed in part at the Sundance Institute, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, opened theatrically at the Film Forum in NYC (2004) and broadcast on the Sundance Channel. Gluck continues to draw from her rich Hasidic heritage and through her current work seeks to provide both a bridge to the past and a form of cross-communal dialogue through the arts. Gluck co-directed the award-winning short, Great Balls of Fire (6 mins; 2001) which is a homeless man's response to September 11. The short continues to screen worldwide at venues such as Transmediale, Oberhausen, Walker Center for the Arts, New York Video Festival, and in competition at the Globalica 10th International Media Art Biennale in Wroclaw, Poland. Gluck has spearheaded community arts programs, curated literary and film events from Hungary to Israel to New York City, including an artist residency at the Paideia Institute in Stockholm. As part of her ongoing commitment to educational outreach, she has appeared on numerous college and university campuses, and acted as writer/mentor at the MacArthur-granted program, The Harlem Writers Crew. Her first involvement with documentary film was in A Life Apart: Hasidism in America (1998; Oren Rudavsky and Menachem Daum). Her appearance in the film has encouraged grass-roots organization for an ex-Orthodox creative alliance.

This episode of the College Commons Podcast explores how music can be a powerful tool for bringing people together, and examines empathy's role in the core of Judaism. Senior Rabbi at Stephen Wise Temple, Yoshi Zweiback was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. He graduated from Princeton University in 1991 and was ordained as a Rabbi by the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in 1998. He trained as a Jewish Educator at HUC’s Los Angeles campus, where he received a M.A. in Jewish Education. He served Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, California, as Rabbi and educator for eleven years, until moving to Israel with his family in 2009 to become the Director of HUC’s Year-in-Israel program. In addition to overall management of the graduate level program, he served as an instructor in Jewish Liturgy. Rabbi Zweiback is a lecturer at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, and a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He is also the volunteer Executive Director and Founder of Kavod, a non-profit tzedakah collective which is dedicated to protecting human dignity. Rabbi Zweiback is also an author, musician and composer. His publications include the teacher’s guide to Shalom Ivrit II; Day of Days; and Days of Wonder, Nights of Peace: Family Prayers in Song for Morning and Bedtime. As part of Mah Tovu, he has released three albums, published two books, and performed across the United States. He is married to Jacqueline Hantgan and, together, they are the proud parents of three daughters.

Is the Two-State Solution for Israel and Palestine the best solution for a persistent conflict? David Makovsky is the Ziegler distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute and director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process. He is also an adjunct professor in Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In 2013-2014, he worked in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of State, serving as a senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations. Author of numerous Washington Institute monographs and essays on issues related to the Middle East Peace Process and the Arab-Israeli conflict, he is also coauthor, with Dennis Ross, of the 2009 Washington Post bestseller Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East (Viking/Penguin). His 2017 interactive mapping project, "Settlements and Solutions," is designed to help users discover for themselves whether a two-state solution is still viable. His commentary on the peace process and the Arab-Israeli conflict has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and National Interest. He appears frequently in the media to comment on Arab-Israeli affairs, including PBS NewsHour. Before joining The Washington Institute, Mr. Makovsky was an award-winning journalist who covered the peace process from 1989 to 2000.

How can we move past fear to find respect and acceptance in our differences? And what does it mean to think about others when we have power? Dr. Marcie Lenk has devoted her intellectual life and career to organizing educational programs and teaching Jews and Christians (and people of other faiths) to understand and appreciate the basic texts, ideas, history and faith of the other. She lives in Jerusalem, where she currently serves as the Academic Director of Bat Kol: Christian Institute for Jewish Studies. She teaches patristics at the Studium Theologicum Salesianum at Ratisbonne Monastery, and Jewish and Christian texts at Ecce Homo Convent, and the Tantur Ecumenical Institute. For the last six years she served as director of Christian leadership programs at the Shalom Hartman Institute. She received her Ph.D. at Harvard University in 2010 with a dissertation entitled, The Apostolic Constitutions: Judaism and Anti-Judaism in the Construction of Christianity, and earned an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, as well as an M.A. in Bible and B.A. in Mathematics and Jewish Studies from Yeshiva University. Dr. Lenk has lectured in Europe, Israel, and the United States, and has taught Early Christianity, Hebrew Bible, and Rabbinic Literature at institutions such as Boston University and City College of New York, as well as at Jewish and Christian seminaries in Israel and the United States.