Episodes

  • 51. The Binding of Isaac | Dr. Aaron Koller

    51. The Binding of Isaac | Dr. Aaron Koller
    Dec 13 2024
    J.J. and Dr. Aaron Koller tremble in fear of this awesome Biblical episode, but they still manage to discuss fascinating theological and historical interpretations of the story.

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    Aaron Koller is professor of Near Eastern Studies at Yeshiva University. Aaron has held research positions at Cambridge University and in the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, he has been a visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and was a fellow at the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in East Jerusalem and the Hartman Institute in West Jerusalem. He is the author of Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Unbinding Isaac: The Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought (JPS/University of Nebraska Press, 2020), among other books, the editor of five more, and is currently working on a cultural history of the alphabet. He lives in Queens, NY with his partner, Shira Hecht-Koller, and their children.
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • 50. The Haskalah Reconsidered | Dr. Olga Litvak

    50. The Haskalah Reconsidered | Dr. Olga Litvak
    Dec 5 2024
    J.J. and Dr. Olga Litvak take the express from Berlin to Eastern Europe in search of the real Jewish enlightenment.

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    Olga Litvak is the Roth Professor of Modern European Jewish History at Cornell University. The author of Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry (2006) and Haskalah: The Romantic Movement in Judaism (2012), she is currently working on a book about M. L. Lilienblum and the origins of Zionism in late imperial Russia.
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    1 hr and 8 mins
  • 49. Emmanuel Levinas | Dr. Sarah Hammerschlag

    49. Emmanuel Levinas | Dr. Sarah Hammerschlag
    Nov 21 2024
    J.J. and Dr. Sarah Hammerschlag encounter a phenomenal high-school principal and genius: Emmanuel Levinas.

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    Sarah Hammerschlag is the John Nuveen Professor of Religion and Literature, Philosophy of Religions and History of Judaism at the University of Chicago. Sheis a scholar in the area of Religion and Literature. Her research thus far has focused on the position of Judaism in the post-World War II French intellectual scene, a field that puts her at the crossroads of numerous disciplines and scholarly approaches including philosophy, literary studies, and intellectual history. She is the author of The Figural Jew: Politics and Identity in Postwar French Thought (University of Chicago Press, 2010) and Broken Tablets: Levinas, Derrida and the Literary Afterlife of Religion (Columbia University Press, 2016) and the editor of Modern French Jewish Thought: Writings on Religion and Politics (Brandeis University Press, 2018). The Figural Jew received an Honorable Mention for the 2012 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, given by the Association of Jewish Scholars, and was a finalist for the AAR’s Best First Book in the History of Religions in 2011. She has written essays on Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot which have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Jewish Quarterly Review and Shofar, among other places. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled “Sowers and Sages: The Renaissance of Judaism in Postwar Paris. Her most recent book is Devotion: Three Inquiries in Religion, Literature and Political Imagination (2021), co-written with Constance Furey and Amy Hollywood.
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    53 mins
  • 48. Abraham Ibn Ezra's Commentary | Dr. Sara Labaton

    48. Abraham Ibn Ezra's Commentary | Dr. Sara Labaton
    Nov 17 2024
    J.J. and Dr. Sara Labaton dive into the mysteries of Ibn Ezra’s revolutionary commentary on the Bible. This is episode 2 of our series on the ideas of Abraham Ibn Ezra.

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    Dr. Sara Labaton is Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. She was a member of the inaugural cohort of North American David Hartman Center Fellows. Sara received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Columbia University and a doctorate in Medieval Jewish Thought from the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. Her doctoral thesis focused on the relationship between the esoteric and peshat hermeneutics in the commentaries of Abraham ibn Ezra, particularly with regard to ibn Ezra’s understanding of biblical cultic rituals. Sara was a founding faculty member of Yeshivat Hadar, where she developed a Bible and Exegesis curriculum. She has taught in a variety of Jewish settings, most recently as a history instructor at the Frisch School. Her research interests include the intersection of ritual and relevance, ritual experimentation, and overcoming the binary of halakhic–non-halakhic/insider-outsider in Jewish ritual practice. As part of her participation in the Religious Worlds Seminar at the Interfaith Center of New York, Sara researched ways of integrating comparative religion into Jewish educational contexts.
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • 47. Abraham Ibn Ezra's Philosophy | Dr. Tzvi Langermann

    47. Abraham Ibn Ezra's Philosophy | Dr. Tzvi Langermann
    Oct 31 2024
    J.J. and Dr. Tzvi Langermann enumerate many of the Ibn Ezra's most fascinating philosophical ideas. This is episode 1 of our series on the ideas of Abraham Ibn Ezra.

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    Y. Tzvi Langermann, is Professor Emeritus of Arabic at Bar Ilan University, He has published extensively on medieval science and philosophy, especially basing his research on unpublished manuscript materials. His most recent book is Before Maimonides: A New Philosophical Dialogue in Hebrew (Brill, 2024).
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • 46. Hermann Cohen | Dr. Shira Billet

    46. Hermann Cohen | Dr. Shira Billet
    Oct 10 2024
    J.J. and Dr. Shira Billet make sense of this remarkable Jewish idealist.


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    Shira Billet is Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Ethics at JTS. She completed a PhD in the Department of Religion at Princeton University in 2019 with a dissertation on Hermann Cohen. Prior to joining the faculty at JTS, she was a postdoctoral associate in Judaic Studies and Philosophy at Yale University. Her most recent publication is "'Let the Historian be a Philosopher!': Hermann Cohen's Methodological Critique of Spinoza," in Spinoza in Germany: Political and Religious Thought Across the Long Nineteenth Century (OUP, 2024).
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    1 hr and 24 mins
  • 45. Rabbis and Christians | Dr. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal

    45. Rabbis and Christians | Dr. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal
    Sep 19 2024
    J.J. and Dr. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal meditate on Talmudic responses to Christianity.

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    Michal Bar-Asher Siegal is a faculty member at the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Vice President for Global Engagement. Her work focuses on aspects of Jewish-Christian interactions in the ancient world, and compares early Christian and rabbinic sources. She was an elected member of the Israel Young Academy of Sciences, and served as visiting professor at both Harvard Law School and Yale. Her first book is Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2013; winner of the 2014 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award). Her second book is Jewish-Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretic Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2019; finalist, National Jewish Book Award, 2019).
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • 44. The Rebbe | Dr. Yosef Bronstein

    44. The Rebbe | Dr. Yosef Bronstein
    Sep 12 2024
    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!

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    Rabbi 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).
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    1 hr and 7 mins