The College Commons Podcast

Host Joshua Holo speaks with HUC-JIR educator, Michal Muszkat-Barkan, Ph.D. about her experiences on the ground in Jerusalem during the Israel-Hamas War. Michal Muszkat-Barkan, Ph.D., is a Professor of Jewish Education in the Parallel Track. She is the Director of the Department of Education and Professional Development at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem. Her fields of research include teachers’ professional development, teacher ideologies, multicultural teacher training, and pluralism in Jewish education. She heads the Rikma M.A. program specializing in Community and Pluralistic Jewish Education, in collaboration with the Melton Center for Jewish Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She spearheaded and is the academic head of the Teachers’ Lounge, in memory of Shira Banki, a professional development program for Arab and Jewish teachers.

Rabbi Barbara Symons challenges Reform Judaism to engage with often-neglected Prophetic books.

Host Joshua Holo speaks with HUC-JIR educator, Rabbi Talia Avnon-Benveniste about her experiences on the ground in Jerusalem during the Israel-Hamas War. Rabbi Avnon-Benveniste is Director of the Israel Rabbinical Program at HUC-JIR’s Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem. She was ordained after completing the Israel Rabbinical Program in 2009, and returned to HUC-JIR following her time as Director of the International School for Peoplehood Studies at Beit-Hatefutsoth, the Museum of the Jewish People, where she instilled an active connection to the Jewish people among Jews throughout the world and led public discourse on Jewish Peoplehood and identity in the 21st-century. She led a series of programs that supported Beit-Hatefutsoth’s cultural, community, and educational activities in Israel and around the world. Prior to her work with Beit-Hatefutsoth, Rabbi Avnon-Benveniste served as Head of the Education Department of Beit Daniel, the Center for Progressive Judaism in Tel Aviv, where she worked to promote a national, social, liberal, Jewish agenda, among state schools and in educational, cultural, and community frameworks, alongside fellow rabbis. Rabbi Avnon-Benveniste speaks in a variety of forums and events and is an expert on major issues in the new Jewish world.

Dr. David Mendelsson, Senior Lecturer in Israel Studies and Modern Jewish History at HUC-JIR’s Taube campus in Jerusalem, is an educator, historian, and author who sheds light on his experiences since October 7th as a father, mentor, and Israeli. Witnessing everything from shifts in both the literal and learning landscapes to moments inspired by Jewish peoplehood, Dr. Mendelsson offers perspective and wisdom on Israel today.

Rabbi Zoë Klein roots her new creations in the millennial tradition of Jewish Storytelling. Rabbi Zoë Klein serves Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles, California where she brings her unique blend of innovation and tradition. At Temple Isaiah since 2000, she has served as Associate Rabbi, Senior Rabbi and Director of Adult Education and Engagement. A Connecticut native, Rabbi Klein holds a degree in Psychology from Brandeis University, and a Masters in Hebrew Literature and Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and Jerusalem. She pursued the rabbinate out of a passion for ancient texts, mythology, liturgy, and poetry. Rabbi Klein is the author of the novel Drawing in the Dust (Gallery Books, 2009) of which Publishers Weekly wrote, “Insight into the world of biblical excavation in Israel raises Rabbi Klein’s debut novel from a Jewish Da Vinci Code to an emotionally rich story of personal and historical discovery.” Drawing in the Dust has been published in five countries. Rabbi Klein is also the author of the children’s story The Goblins of Knottingham: A History of Challah (Apples & Honey, 2017) and the collection of short stories, Candle, Feather, Wooden Spoon (CCAR Press, 2023). Rabbi Klein’s writing is included in The Women’s Torah Commentary, Teen Texts, Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation, The Sacred Exchange: Creating a Jewish Money Ethic and more. Her poems and prayers are used in houses of prayer around the world.

Stella Levi recounts her remarkable life on Isle of Rhodes, caught between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World, National Jewish Book Awards for Holocaust Memoir and Sephardic Culture Michael Frank’s essays, articles, and short stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Slate, The Yale Review, Salmagundi, The TLS, and Tablet, among other publications, and his fiction has been presented at Symphony Space’s Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story. He served as a Contributing Writer to the Los Angeles Times Book Review for nearly eight years. Frank is the author of What Is Missing, a novel, and The Mighty Franks, a memoir, which was awarded the 2018 JQ Wingate Prize and was named one of the best books of the year by The Telegraph and The New Statesman. Selected as one of the ten best books of 2022 by The Wall Street Journal, One Hundred Saturdays received a Natan Notable Book Award, two National Book Awards from the Jewish Book Council, and the Sophie Brody Award for outstanding achievement in Jewish literature. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, Frank lives in New York City and Camogli, Italy.

Jay Michaelson brings to life the charlatan and heretical Jewish leader Jacob Frank. The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jew­ish Mes­sian­ism to Eso­teric Myth - Winner, National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship. Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and a visiting scholar at the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion. He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination. His most recent book, The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Antinomianism to Esoteric Myth, was published by Oxford University Press and won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship. Dr. Michaelson’s scholarly work on Jewish mysticism and messianism has been published in journals including Theology and Sexuality, Modern Judaism, and Shofar, and anthologized in volumes including Queer Religion, Imagining the Jewish God, and Jews and the Law. Outside the academy, Dr. Michaelson is the author of nine books, including Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism and God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He directs the Hazon Jewish Meditation Retreat, and is authorized to teach in a Sri Lankan Buddhist lineage. He lives outside of New York City.

Tracing medieval women’s Biblical culture and how it differed from… the Bible. Bib­li­cal Women and Jew­ish Dai­ly Life in the Mid­dle Ages, winner of the 2022 JBC Award for Women’s Studies. Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten holds the Prof. Yitzhak Becker Chair for Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She teaches in the Department of Jewish History and the Department of History. She is a social historian who specializes in the history of the Jews in medieval Germany and Northern France. Baumgarten has published three monographs, a dozen edited volumes, and many articles. She has held fellowships from the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as EHESS in Paris. She is an awardee of the Michael Bruno Memorial Award (2016) for outstanding Israeli researchers and of a European Research Council’s Consolidator’s Grant (2016-2022).

Author Susan Wider discusses genre-bending artist Charlotte Salomon's work and how it survived the Shoah to capture a life and time. It’s My Whole Life: Charlotte Salomon: An Artist in Hiding during World War II, winner of the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for Young Adult Literature Susan Wider is the author of It’s My Whole Life: Charlotte Salomon: An Artist in Hiding during World War II, winner of the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for Young Adult Literature. It’s My Whole Life is the first biography for teen and young adult readers about the art and life of German-Jewish artist and modernist painter Charlotte Salomon (1917 Berlin—Auschwitz 1943). The book is also finding a strong audience among adult readers of art and biography. Charlotte Salomon is remembered for her painted memoir, Life? or Theater? where she combined her 33,000-word manuscript, nearly 800 paintings, and a musical soundtrack, all hinting at a film storyboard or graphic novel-style presentation. It is thought to be the largest single work of art created by a Jew during the Holocaust, and she produced it while confronting racism, genocide, psychological abuse, family suicides, and the strife of loving an older man. What she wanted most was to make a name for herself as an artist. Susan Wider’s articles, essays, and art reviews have been included in Orion, THE magazine, The Fourth River, and Wild Hope magazine among others. Before becoming a full-time author, she held senior management positions at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, The Santa Fe Institute, and Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute. Earlier in her career she taught English for the French Chamber of Commerce in Normandy, France and worked as a violinist in professional chamber and symphony orchestras. Susan lives outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, where she shares the land with an assortment of hawks, snakes, woodpeckers, bobcats, coyotes, and a husband.

Author Sacha Lamb discusses their YA romp from the shtetl to the New World, and the supernatural odd couple at its heart. When The Angels Left The Old Country, YA category National Jewish Book Awards finalist. Sacha Lamb is a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow in young adult fiction, and graduated in Library and Information Science and History from Simmons University. Sacha lives in New England with a miniature dachshund mix named Anzu Bean. Their debut novel, When The Angels Left The Old Country, has won a Printz honor, Stonewall and Sydney Taylor Awards, and is a National Jewish Book Awards finalist in the YA category.