The College Commons Podcast

How has American Judaism developed in the context of American Protestantism, and what have we learned from one another? Benjamin Sommer is Professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz described Sommer as “a traditionalist and yet an iconoclast – he shatters idols and prejudices in order to nurture Jewish tradition and its applicability today” and characterized his thought as “a synthesis of intellectual acuity, clarity, deep knowledge of classical Jewish texts along with contemporary Christian theology and ancient Near Eastern literature.” His book, Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition, received the Goldstein-Goren Prize in Jewish thought for 2014–2016 and was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Publishers Weekly selected it as a “recommended book” in religion, describing it as a “groundbreaking work . . . clearly written and broad in application.” His earlier books, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel and A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66, also received multiple awards. Sommer frequently teaches rabbinic and lay groups in the United States and Israel. He and his wife, Jennifer Dugdale, are members of Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey. His children, Avraham, Sarah, and Eliana have attended Solomon Schechter Schools and SAR High School.

Examining the special relationship American Jews have had with the law, and tackling some of the thorniest controversies about the separation of Church and State. Dahlia Lithwick is a senior editor at Slate, and in that capacity, has been writing their "Supreme Court Dispatches" and "Jurisprudence" columns since 1999. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Commentary, among other places. She is host of Amicus, Slate’s award-winning biweekly podcast about the law and the Supreme Court. She was Newsweek’s legal columnist from 2008 until 2011. In 2018 Lithwick received the American Constitution Society’s Progressive Champion Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, Lithwick was the recipient of a Golden Pen Award from the Legal Writing Institute; the Virginia Bar Association’s award for Excellence in Legal Journalism; and the 2017 award for Outstanding Journalist in Law from the Burton Foundation for a distinguished career in journalism in law. Lithwick won a 2013 National Magazine Award for her columns on the Affordable Care Act. She has been twice awarded an Online Journalism Award for her legal commentary. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October, 2018. Lithwick has held visiting faculty positions at the University of Georgia Law School, the University of Virginia School of Law, and the Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem. Ms. Lithwick has delivered the annual Constitution Day Lecture at the United States Library of Congress in 2012 and 2011. She has been a featured speaker on the main stage at the Chautauqua Institution. She speaks frequently on the subjects of criminal justice reform, reproductive freedom, religion in the courts. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has called her “spicy.” Lithwick was the first online journalist invited to be on the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. She serves on the board of the Jefferson Center for Free Expression. Ms. Lithwick has testified before Congress about access to justice in the era of the Roberts Court. She has appeared on CNN, ABC, The Colbert Report, the Daily Show and is a frequent guest on The Rachel Maddow Show. Ms. Lithwick earned her BA in English from Yale University and her JD degree from Stanford University. She is currently working on a new book, Lady Justice, for Penguin Press. She is co-author of Me Versus Everybody (Workman Press, 2006) (with Brandt Goldstein) and of I Will Sing Life (Little, Brown 1992) (with Larry Berger). Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies including Jewish Jocks (2012), What My Mother Gave Me: Thirty-one Women on the Gifts That Mattered Most (2013), About What was Lost (2006); A Good Quarrel (2009); Going Rouge: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare (2009); and Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary (2008).

In order to uncover the power and mystery of the Bible, we have to read it first. In this episode of the College Commons Podcast, learn some surprising and fascinating places where you can start. Marc Brettler is the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University. He has also taught at Brandeis University, Yale University, Brown University, Wellesley College and Middlebury College. His has written God is King, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel, The Book of Judges, and Biblical Hebrew for Students of Modern Israeli Hebrew. He is co-author of The Bible and the Believer, and co-editor of the New Oxford Annotated Bible, The Jewish Study Bible, and The Jewish Annotated New Testament, and has contributed to all ten volumes of My People’s Prayer Book. In 2017, he was one of 100 scholars and leaders asked to participate in the “American Values Religious Voices” project. He is currently at work on part of Psalms commentary for JPS, a book on the Jewish reception of critical biblical scholarship, and a co-authored volume with Amy-Jill Levine on passages from the Hebrew Bible that are prominent in early Christianity. He has published and lectured widely on metaphor and the Bible, the nature of biblical historical texts, Psalms, and gender issues and the Bible. He is a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Council of the Society of Biblical Literature, and has written for The Forward and The Jerusalem Report, has appeared on the Television series “Mysteries of the Bible,” was heard on the National Public Radio show “All Things Considered,” and was interviewed on “Fresh Air” by Terry Gross.

A frank and lively conversation between unlikely partners in the work of religious thinking and living. Gregory Mobley is Visiting Professor of Hebrew Bible and Congressional Studies at Yale Divinity School. Previously he taught at Union Theological Seminary (NY) and Andover Newton Theological School in the Boston area. His books in Hebrew Bible include The Return of the Chaos Monsters—and Other Backstories of the Bible (2012) and The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel (2005). Active in Interfaith Learning, he is a co-editor (with Or Rose and Jennifer Peace) of My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation (2012).

Religion and the religious experience through the lens of social sciences and evolutionary biology. Dr. Melvin Konner, MD, Ph.D. is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor at Emory University, where he teaches Anthropology, Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology, and Jewish Studies. He attended Brooklyn College, CUNY, and his MD and PhD are from Harvard. Konner's books include: Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews and The Jewish Body (Nextbook “Jewish Encounters”; An American Library Association Brody Award “Honor Book”), The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit; Becoming a Doctor; The Evolution of Childhood (one of The Atlantic’s Five Best Books of 2010), Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy, among other books. In addition to his many books, Konner has had regular columns in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and has written for Newsweek, The Forward, Nature, Science and The New England Journal of Medicine. He has also translated the African poems of the great Yiddish poet Avraham Sutzkever. Konner has visited Israel 13 times and lectured around the country as a Fulbright Senior Specialist for six weeks in 2011. In 2016 he was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and past fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

With a growing divide between Israeli Jews and American Jews, can we utilize humor to find something compelling and deep about our shared experience? Natalie Marcus is a highly-acclaimed, award-winning, screenwriter based in Tel Aviv. For the past 10 years, Marcus has been in charge of some of Israel's top-rated shows. She is the creator and head writer of the acclaimed historically-themed sketch show, The Jews are Coming, winner of the Israeli Academy Award for the best entertainment show. Marcus is also the creator and head writer of the TV show, Crowded, that won the "Best Kids' Comedy" award in the Israeli Kid's Choice Awards and a special award for contribution to the public discussion from the Minister of Communication.  Marcus is currently writing and show running a new comedy called The Estate for Keshet 12, due to air in 2019, as well as writing a new fourth season of The Jews are Coming. Marcus teaches comedy writing and lectures about writing and Jewish history all over the world.  She lives in Tel Aviv with her husband and two kids. Asaf Beiser is a screenwriter based in Tel Aviv. For the past 15 years, Beiser has been a writer and showrunner in Israel’s highest-rated comedy, satire and drama shows. Beiser is the co-creator and head writer of Israeli Academy of Film and Television award winning show (best satire and entertainment show) The Jews are Coming,  and a  writer in the acclaimed Israeli Academy of Film and Television award winning show (best drama) Fauda, currently airing on Netflix. The children’s sitcom Beiser created, Elisha, has won The Israeli Academy of Film and Television award for best children's program for three years in a row.     Beiser had a writing role in many other acclaimed shows, including The Good Cop, a comedy recently remade by Netflix, and the psychological thriller The Gordin Cell (titled "Allegiance" in the NBC remake). He also was a staff writer in ERETZ NEHEDERRET ("What a Wonderful Country", the Israeli version of SNL), and the co-creator and showrunner of the sitcom Crowded. A recipient of a personal Israeli Academy award for best screenplay, Beiser was also awarded the generous British BI-Arts scholarship, with a winning script for a 40-minute comedy film.   A Captain (ret.) in the Israeli Defense Forces, Beiser served as a military attorney in the IDF Military Advocate General’s Unit, and holds an LLB degree from Tel Aviv University.

Our brains are not scientists, they’re lawyers. So, how do we view truth and evidence from a scientific perspective? Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman is the Founding Director of Sinai and Synapses, an organization that bridges the scientific and religious worlds, and is being incubated at Clal – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. His work has been supported by the John Templeton Foundation, Emanuel J. Friedman Philanthropies, and the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, and his writings about the intersection of religion and science have been published in the books Seven Days, Many Voices and A Life of Meaning (both published by the CCAR press), as well as on The Huffington Post, Nautilus, Orbiter, Science and Religion Today, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and My Jewish Learning. He has been an adjunct professor at both the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion and the Academy for Jewish Religion, and is an internationally sought-out teacher, presenter, and scholar-in-residence. He was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where he received the Cora Kahn Prize from the Cincinnati faculty for the most outstanding sermon delivery and oratory. An alumnus of Princeton University, he received multiple prizes for outstanding scholarship in Biblical and Judaic studies. He was selected to be a member of the first cohort of Clal’s prestigious Rabbis Without Borders fellowship, a national program that seeks to position rabbis as American religious leaders and spiritual innovators who contribute Jewish wisdom to the American spiritual landscape. Additionally, he was chosen to be in the first group of the Balfour Brickner Rabbinic Fellowship, a a joint program with Clal and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism that aims to integrate Jewish textual tradition with modern social and political issues. He is on the advisory board of several organizations, including the 92nd St. Y’s “7 Days of Genius” Festival, as well as the URJ’s 6-Points Sci-Tech Academy. From 2007 to 2014, he served as Assistant and then Associate Rabbi of Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester, and he appeared on Jeopardy! in March 2016. He lives in Westchester County with his wife Heather Stoltz, a fiber artist, with their daughter and son.

Are we engaging religious tradition to explore pathways toward holiness and to illuminate human possibility—or are we using it as a tool to do the opposite? Rabbi Sharon Brous is a leading voice in reanimating religious life in America, working to develop a spiritual roadmap for soulful, multi-faith justice work in Los Angeles and around the country. Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, which was started in 2004 and has become a model for Jewish revitalization in the US and beyond. With the goal of reinvigorating Jewish practice and inspiring people of faith to reclaim a moral and prophetic voice, IKAR quickly became one of the fastest growing and most influential Jewish congregations in the country. Today it is credited with sparking a rethinking of religious life in a time of unprecedented disaffection and declining affiliation. Brous’s 2016 TED talk, “Reclaiming Religion,” has been viewed by more than 1.3 million people and translated into 20 languages. In 2013, she blessed President Obama and Vice President Biden at the Inaugural National Prayer Service, and Mayor Eric Garcetti at his inauguration in LA in 2017. She spoke at the Women’s March in Washington, DC in 2017, and at the national launch of the Poor People’s Campaign and the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in 2018. Brous was named number one on the Newsweek/The Daily Beast list of the most influential Rabbis in America, and has been recognized by The Forward and the Jerusalem Post as one of the fifty most influential Jews. She was featured on the cover of TIME magazine in 2018 based on Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms. She is a graduate of Columbia University, was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

Dr. Weiss' art and life are deeply grounded in Israel where she explores themes of femininity, holiness and Judaism. Dr. Ruhama Weiss is Parallel Associate Professor of Talmud and Spiritual Care, and Director of the Blaustein Center for Pastoral Care & Counseling, on the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Dr. Weiss is also a poet, artist, and public intellectual.

From peace within to the glass ceiling, Rabbi Rabbi Amy Eilberg leads a thoughtful discussion on a life of service. Rabbi Amy Eilberg is the first woman ordained as a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She serves as the Coordinator of Jewish Engagement for Faith in Action Bay Area, a multi-faith, multi-racial social justice organization in the San Francisco Bay Area. She previously served as the director of the Pardes Rodef Shalom (Pursuer of Peace) Communities Program, teaching Jewish civil discourse to rabbis, synagogues and Jewish organizations. Rabbi Eilberg also serves as a spiritual director and interfaith activist. Her book, From Enemy to Friend: Jewish Wisdom and the Pursuit of Peace, was published by Orbis Books in March 2014. She received her Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in 2016.