Bad Rabbi Media
34 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 15 ratingsWhat does it mean to be a spiritual leader at this critical and chaotic moment in human history? Rabbi Charlie Buckholtz conducts intimate long-form interviews with other rabbis and culture-carriers, change-agents and court-jesters. On topics ranging from spiritual resistance to disorganized religion to Israel/Palestine to creativity to the possibility of individual and collective change, their lively journeys and conversations offer insight, humor, rare perspective and at times rank absurdity for its own sake--in the process sketching the contours of some compelling new possibilities.
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Episodes
"The Whole Book is Sort of a Meditation, a Prayer Designed to Protect the Person Who is Reading It": The Punk Rock Jewish Life of Author/Filmmaker Jeff Wengrofsky
February 19, 2024 14:20 - 52 minutes - 96.7 MB"The whole book is sort of a meditation, of a prayer designed to protect the person who is reading it." Jeff Wengrofsky, the most authentic punk-rock person I personally know, wrote a memoir, and you should buy it and read it. In some ways an unintentional pean to the Lower East Side, Jeff gets into what it was like to grow up feeling like an outsider ("The sensation of feeling like an outsider is not a pleasant one, so I was looking to find some new form of community, and let go of whatev...
"How Do We Move People to a Different Place?": Assessing the War While Dreaming Past It with Israeli Citizen Shawn Ruby
January 22, 2024 13:36 - 1 hour - 147 MBIt was both challenging and illuminating to speak with my old friend Shawn Ruby, an Israeli citizen who is deeply rooted in his Zionist identity (having originated in Canada and raised his family and made his life in Israel, one child a high-ranking IDF officer), firmly anchored in an unwavering pursuit of moral clarity, and overall one of the most thoughtful people I know. We spoke an hour past the time the last group of hostages was supposed to be let out, in the midst of what he described...
"It’s Not a Time for Dialogue. It’s Just a Time for Checking Up on Each Other": The Tragedy of Victim-ism and Other Casualties of War with Coexistence Activist Rabbi Shaul Judelman
December 19, 2023 18:53 - 1 hour - 97.4 MB"One of my Palestinian friends said, Everybody’s pro-Hamas right now. Cause they did something! On an internal level, hamas’ bid to take over leadership of the Palestinian struggle is very strong. On the other hand, I have another Palestinian friend saying, what do you mean — Hamas is a disaster for our people. It’s always been a disaster for our people. We’re all sitting around not working for a month now…" Whenever anything happens in Israel, the person I want to hear from the most is R...
POETRY BONUS EPISODE! "Do They Sing, or Repeat a Song?": Laws vs. Miracles & the "Jewish Voices Missing from the Gospels," with Poet Atar Hadari
December 01, 2023 15:01 - 57 minutes - 106 MBPoetry, right? I don't know about you but I'm feeling like I could use some poetry right about now. To that end! Right before the High Holidays started I had a conversation with one of my favorite Jewish writers, poet and translator Atar Hadari. The episode was slated for release on Monday 10/9, and of course intervening world events made it nearly impossible to think about poetry, much less listen to it read aloud, much less claim a moment of open-ended reflection to contemplate, assimi...
"I Just Couldn't Accept That That Was Something That Was Being Said": Contemplating Humanity & Inhumanity from "A Weird Place," with Joshua Leifer
November 14, 2023 16:15 - 1 hour - 122 MB"So now I'm in a weird place" is a sentiment many can relate to these days. Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, following the latter's barbaric 10/7 torture-rape-massacre of 1400 Israelis, and kidnapping of 240 more, has provoked some of the most acute fissures of my generation, with implications that can't be fully predicted except to say we will be living with them for generations more. Joshua Leifer experienced what he describes as an acute awakening about the nature of left-politics in t...
HIGH HOLIDAY MOVIE BONUS EPISODE with Daniel Zana from the Jews on Film podcast!
September 26, 2023 13:32 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MB“We are all characters in our stories, and we have to look internally, and hopefully at the end of 90 minutes we’ll become a better person. But sometimes the characters don’t change, and you’re just like, ‘Oh, you were offered the opportunity to grow and learn from your experiences, and instead you’re still being the same turd you started out as.’ ” Bonus episode! I've been wanting to interview the awesome Daniel Zana for a while because I'm such a huge fan of the Jews on Film podcast he ...
"What is the Purpose of a Synagogue?": Championing Compassion, Curiosity & Awe with Rabbi Angela Buchdal
September 18, 2023 13:34 - 45 minutes - 83.7 MBSince arriving at Central Synagogue almost two decades ago, Rabbi Angela Buchdal has transformed it into a sui generis experience of communal prayer: backed by a professional band and musical director, her own professionally trained singing voice, and a crew of clerical colleagues with similarly formidable vocal skills, not only is Central’s building packed, their livestream boasts an endless scroll of remote participants from around the country and across the world. This has all ...
"No One Has Screamed for Justice": Can We Summon the Moral Courage to Hold Epstein Abusers Accountable? with Nick Bryant
August 28, 2023 18:35 - 57 minutes - 105 MBFriends, I can't tell you enough how excited I am to share my most recent Bad Rabbi Media interview with Nick Bryant -- intrepid investigative journalist, author (The Franklin Scandal), interviewer (The Nick Bryant Podcast), and most recently, Director of epsteinjustice.com -- an organization dedicated to pursuing accountability for the scores of victims abused and traumatized by Jeffrey Epstein's government-backed child-trafficking ring. Nick has been investigating and uncovering similar op...
"Teaching From the Mud": Wandering, Witnessing, and Awakening with Melanie Landau
August 07, 2023 23:45 - 55 minutes - 128 MBEarly in my conversation with return guest Melanie Landau, I told her that she is one of my favorite wanderers, and she responded that I'm one of her favorite witnesses. Of course, it's an honor to witness such high-level wandering with the intensity of introspection and the commitment to translating insight into practice that Melanie brings to her wandering path. We talked a lot about the deep grief she has worked through since the breakup of her marriage, the host of realizations that emer...
“What’s the Jewish Future You Believe In?”: Systemic Strategies for Structural Change with Jordan Mann of the Jewish Liberation Fund
July 26, 2023 14:02 - 42 minutes - 78.2 MBI was pretty rapt listening to Jordan Mann articulate the Jewish Liberation Fund’s (JLF) vision for a progressive Jewish future – and not only because “power,” “systemic strategies,” and “structural change” are my love language. Jordan’s personal connection to the work, both the crackling passion he brings to it and the personal journey that brought him there – from his childhood as the son of a Jewish father and black mother in “very white and conservative” central Illinois (“The reform syn...
"We Need the Fantasy of a Destination and a Journey and a Path": Living Tangientially with Basya Schechter
May 17, 2023 14:39 - 50 minutes - 70.2 MB“I think this is such a great line for your podcast. It’s from my third album, Exile. ‘I am in exile in my own home. My real home is moving, it’s a wandering home. I give birth to contradictions, I give up in indecision, and worry.' ” Basya Schecter is one of my favorite wanderers. From a prolific early singer-songwriter career as the leader of Pharaoh’s Daughter, to her nine-year stint as the full-time musical director and then spiritual leader of communities in Manhattan and Brooklyn, t...
"How Does it Feel?": Arnoff on Dylan on Empathy as Everything
March 27, 2023 18:14 - 53 minutes - 123 MBDudes: please check out Stephen Daniel Arnoff’s podcast and book, Bob Dylan: On Man and God and Law. One of my favorite pop-culture rabbit-holes, the podcast delivers on so many levels: informative, illuminating, a ton of fun and at times breathtakingly insightful. I was super excited to talk to him about how he came to approach song lyrics as sacred text, how music “saves your life and keeps you company,” and his esteemed lineage of invaluably “weird” teachers (“Weird is good. I like weird...
"If It Doesn't Hit You in the Kishkes It's Worthless": Jon Madof's Universe of Grooves
February 06, 2023 19:26 - 1 hour - 174 MBOne of the things I love most about Jon Madoff is that on any given day in the midst of of numbly scrolling on my phone to avoid contemplating any number of personal and collective inevitabilities, I can run into a video of him JAMMING TF OUT on his guitar -- alone in his basement with headphones, in a venue backing up a friends band, on an internet show or a clip from a festival leading his own band -- and for a minute or two be reminded of the pure joy of the creative process. As a musican...
"I'm Not Going to Be Anybody's Disciple": Sacred Nonconformity, Sahara Blues, and the Coming Cantorial Revolution with Jeremiah Lockwood
January 10, 2023 16:10 - 36 minutes - 83 MBJeremiah Lockwood is not only the hardest working man in Jewish music, he is one of its truly great living visionaries and practitioners. In this great conversation he describes his journey growing up in a "cantorial family" with a grandfather who was a famous, record-selling star at the end of the "Golden Age" of Jewish cantorial music; to being a teenager obsessed with Southern Blues apprenticed to the great bluesman Carolina Slim; to starting his own band, The Sway Machinery, "singing haz...
BAD RABBI VS. BAD RABBI: The Yiddish Press and Lost Models of Jewish Identity with Eddy Portnoy
December 05, 2022 16:50 - 58 minutes - 135 MBCheck out this incredibly fun and lively live podcast recording I did with historian of Yiddish popular culture Eddy Portnoy. Appropriately enough, this episode, which deals with the lost forms of Jewish identity Eddy Excavated through his research in to the Yiddish Press, was itself temporarily lost. We recorded it in May 2020; in the interim, Eddy's insights about the lost and latent posibilities of Jewish culture and identity -- and the surprisingly moving and off-beat, often darkly hilar...
IMPOSTER STORIES with Hal Niedzviecki
November 10, 2022 23:49 - 49 minutes - 114 MB...the surprising things we learn about ourselves as we get older, the vast territories of unknown self suddenly exposed — eg, the ways our families’ immigrant histories impact our live and choices and relationships, every day — and how bracing and humbling it can be to realize we’ve labored under such partial understandings — was a recurring theme Niedzviecki reflected in with deep insight. The conversation had me revisiting some of my memories about his parents, jovial suburbanites who lov...
"There's a Difference Between Activists and People Working for Change": Rabbi Shaul Judelman on Hope, Despair, and Israel-Palestine PTSD
December 13, 2021 18:56 - 1 hour - 56 MBRemember Israel, Palestine, etc.? For a few weeks in May it led most news cycles, between the end of Bibi's 12-year reign and installation of a new leading coalition, to the renewal of Gaza hostilities and the ultra-disturbing flashpoints of violence between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis. If this all feels a bit fuzzy and distant, to be fair it was like, FIVE WHOLE MONTHS AGO. That's why it was so great to recently catch up with Rabbi Shaul Judelman, our first return guest! As co-founder a...
“We Will Mess Up, and That’s Okay”: Dasee Berkowitz on Becoming a Soulful Parent
May 07, 2021 19:05 - 1 hour - 44.3 MBParenting is one of those subjects where it always feels like there’s a reverse correlation between how much it’s talked about and how well it’s understood. Like, the more we talk about it, the dumber we get. This is why I was so happy to read Dasee Berkowitz’s new book, Becoming a Soulful Parent, and talk with her about it – because what she offers is a new way of talking about parenting that actually has the potential to make us wiser, and possibly even help us grow as people. Berkowitz, D...
"Oh My God, This is Very Real": Rabbi Zac Kamenetz's Book of EthneoGenesis
October 22, 2020 18:05 - 1 hour - 48 MB"How can we blend the sense that the ecstatic, the effervescent, the beyond, is our human birthright, and we can also be modern liberal people thinking about intersectionality and social justice?" We're stuck, dudes; it's no joke. That's why I needed to keep talking about the transformative potential of psychedelics to facilitate real healing, on both individual and collective levels. And that's why Rabbi Zac Kamenetz was the perfect person to talk to. As founder and CEO of Shefa, an organiz...
"Why Are We Serving Bourbon in Shul and Not Psilocybin Tea?": The Psychedelic Vision of Aaron Genuth
July 16, 2020 14:40 - 1 hour - 44.4 MBDudes. In the midst of a pandemic, deep economic crisis; shocking and mean-spirited governmental incompetence, abuse, and neglect; deep cultural malaise punctuated by eruptions of collective indignation and outrage at the systemic racial injustice embedded in U.S. society – what could possibly be worth talking about? What could possibly help? There’s only one thing I can think of: a shift – an expansion – of consciousness. That’s why I wanted to talk to my old friend Aaron Genuth, a psychede...
“Only the Left Can Defeat Anti-Semitism”: Raffi Magarik on the Real Crisis of American Judaism and Why the Only Real Solution is Solidarity (also, what “solidarity” means)
March 27, 2020 00:17 - 1 hour - 48.6 MBI really needed to talk to Raffi Magarik. Whenever the subject of anti-Semitism erupts into the news, the public discourse around it immediately and invariably become combative, contested, confusing, and confused. Are there different kinds of anti-Semitism or just one kind that shapeshifts through history, adapting to the parameters of its new host? If there are different kinds, should we call them all out equally, or are some inherently more evil and dangerous and merit greater vigilance an...
"There's No Such Thing as a Mistake": Improvisational Judaism with Rabbi Aaron Potek
December 21, 2019 02:40 - 1 hour - 43.8 MBAaron Potek is one of the only rabbis whose job is actually *being a rabbi* (shul, holidays, weddings, funerals, etc) who I still talk to on a regular basis. At least part of the reason for this is his deep investment in comedy. Aaron started doing standup in high school and then got into improv, which he still performs. We talk about how the mindset of improv has shaped his spiritual worldview and how it impacts his role as a communal rabbi. He get into how he thinks the "there's no such th...
The Rebbetzin
October 10, 2019 05:43 - 1 hour - 57.8 MBWhat's it like to serve a community in the role of the Rebbetzin, the Rabbi's wife? I was honored -- and at times deeply moved, at others deeply disturbed -- with the bracingly honest sharing of a women who spent forty years in this role, serving a traditional suburban Jewish community in the Midwest. There are stories of connection, and stories of abuse; stories of friendship and betrayal; stories of uplift, and stories whose implications are sobering to contemplate. It was an extremely edi...
"One Law for You and the Resident who Lives Among You": Throwing Spikes in the Wheels of Power with Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein
August 21, 2019 02:10 - 1 hour - 81.1 MBI really, really needed to speak with my old pal Aryeh Bernstein about how to participate LOCALLY in effective activism--both as a general practice, and specifically in this urgent moment organizing to oppose the concentration camps at the border and other insidious ICE actions around the country. What I loved about our conversation was that Aryeh both had tons of accumulated wisdom and practical advice to pass on, and offered both a) compelling Big Picture framing of the issues at stake and...
“Two Traumatized Peoples”: Yossi Klein Halevi, the Exhaustion of the Op-Ed Warrior and the Subversive Possibility of Feeling Each Other's Pain
July 18, 2019 21:39 - 1 hour - 42.1 MBI was SO PSYCHED to sit down with author Yossi Klein Halevi fresh off two solid months of touring and dialoguing around his super engaging and worthwhile book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Yossi describes his transformative experience, in the past year since it was published, of Inviting the voices and narratives of Palestinians into his home, head, and heart (as well as into the newly out paperback edition of the book, which features in-depth responses from some of the very neighbors ...
These Things Do Happen": Seeing Familiar Conflicts Differently with Dahlia Scheindlin
June 06, 2019 18:15 - 1 hour - 49.9 MBI REALLY wanted to speak with public opinion expert, political strategist, and writer Dahlia Scheindlin. The timing hardly could have been better: Dahlia has worked on 5.5 election campaigns in Israel and many more in countries across the world. Though a couple weeks before the latest wrinkle of Bibi's failure to form a coalition, triggering new elections, Dahlia's hard-earned, deeply observed insights about this moment of the Israel-Palestine Conflict -- especially around what kind of solut...
"Is That It?” - Josh Frank’s Life of Lost Stories
May 07, 2019 19:40 - 1 hour - 72.3 MBI caught author & pop culture archeologist Josh Frank in the midst of touring for his great new book Giraffes on Horseback Salad, a graphic novel that bills itself as the legendary unmade film collaboration between real-life friends and absurdist kindred spirits Salvador Dalí and Harpo Marx. Josh gives the fascinating background to how the project — his fourth in a series of ‘lost histories’ (the second of which was coauthored by yours truly) — came to be, and many times almost didn’t. He ge...
So Animal, So Human, So Cosmic, So Galactic": Power and Intimacy with Melanie Landau
April 03, 2019 20:08 - 1 hour - 65 MBMelanie Landau's story is a gripping illustration of what she now teaches as an intimacy coach, spiritual teacher, and group facilitator: how to approach "life as a constant opening and deepening to the presence of the existence of what is." From a deeply traditional, patriarchal upbringing in Australia to a life in Jerusalem embedded in the rhythms of religious ritual, spiritual growth, and political engagement as a group facilitator of "Deep Listening" around the Israel/Palestine conflict-...
Personal Resilience & Public History: Judith Rosenbaum Takes Women's Stories Stories Seriously
March 06, 2019 02:27 - 1 hour - 58.6 MBJudith Rosenbaum – historian, educator, Executive Director of the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) – discusses the critical work of JWA in collecting and showcasing Jewish women’s stories, and her own path to becoming an activist-historian and public thinker. We get into what it means to talk about feminism as spiritual leadership, the power of knowing our stories to enhance personal and collective resilience, and her mission to enable people to bring the fullness of who they are to the communit...
Eric Kaplan's Comic Wanderings "If You Change Your Life, Angels Will Give You Cookies"
February 07, 2019 04:47 - 1 hour - 53.4 MBEric Kaplan's career as a TV writer (Big Bang Theory, Simpsons, Drinky Crow), book author (Does Santa Exist? A Philosophical Examination) philosopher (Ph.D, U.C. Berkeley), and religious seeker spans decades and at times seemingly lifetimes. In this episode we follow the fascinating and multiple expressions of his lifelong quest to grasp and navigate the space between the embodied (subjective/finite) and "free" (objective/eternal) dimensions of human life--including his definition of spiritu...
How to Come Alive: Hazzanit Basya Schechter's Journey Stories
January 08, 2019 02:06 - 1 hour - 62.5 MBFrom a childhood in ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn to a deep discography as singer-songwriter-composer Pharoah's Daughter to leading a community through the alchemy of liturgical song, Hazzanit Basya Schechter shares her many inner- and international journeys through creative loopholes, constructive ruptures, indigenous cultures, motherhood and more. She brings up Abraham as a role-model of wandering totally unprompted by me, and shares living snapshots from the path of moving forward while always ...
Shefa Siegel - Amateur of Prayer - Shefa Siegel's Dream Mode
November 24, 2018 17:48 - 1 hour - 76 MBShefa Siegel spends most of the year far removed from Jewish life - teaching and writing about the history, morality, and politics of humanity's relationship with natural resources. But once a year he steps back into synagogue to do the thing he cares about most: praying for, before, and on behalf of a Jewish community. We talk about how this idiosyncratic existence came to be, about the High Holiday melodies that came to him in a dream after visiting a Florence shul, and the encompassing pr...
“How Do Human Beings Learn, and How Do we Change?” - Ariel Burger, author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Weisel’s Classroom
September 09, 2018 02:58 - 1 hour - 38.5 MBRabbi, Artist, Musician Ariel Burger discusses his nearly lifelong relationship with Elie Weisel—as a sensitive, searching teenager navigating a life of Talmud and comic books; an undergraduate jostling between college and rabbinical studies; as his Teaching Assistant while pursuing a doctorate on an approach to conflict resolution based on Hasidic spirituality; and finally as a student-colleague and teacher-artist forging his own pathways of activism, identity, and the ethics and metaphysic...
“The Hard Work Of Holding Multiple Narratives” - Rabbi Shaul Judelman - Co-Founder & Co-Director of Roots-Shorashim-Judur
August 07, 2018 03:13 - 1 hour - 54.5 MBRabbi Shaul Judelman traces his journey from WTO protester in search of his own indigenous culture, to Orthodox rabbi doing local peace work with Israelis and Palestinians in the Territories and beyond as co-founder and -director of Roots/Shorashim/Judur. Shaul talks about the hard, hard work of holding the truth and legitimacy of multiple narratives while living a life deeply committed to one in particular. In short, we get INTO IT.