Latest Jewish studies Podcast Episodes
Introducing 72 Miles til Kentucky
Modern Torah - February 12, 2024 16:00 - 6 minutesThis is a bit of a break from the regular Modern Torah feed, but I want to share a new, limited-series podcast with you that I've just released. It's called 72 Miles til Kentucky, and it's a storytelling podcast all about Jewish life in my home state. Here's the quick blurb. You can check out th...
Moses Benjamin Ezekiel
Modern Torah - December 21, 2023 15:00 - 9 minutesThis week, I was reading about the final stages of the plan to remove the Confederate Veterans Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The memorial, if you’ve never seen it, is atrocious. It’s the tallest structure in the cemetery, for starters, and it’s covered with racist, apologist imagery t...
Elvis & Wisdom
Modern Torah - December 15, 2023 12:00 - 8 minutesSometimes, when I'm feeling bored in shul I flip to the back of the book, and read Pirkei Avot. There's a particular passage, in the fifth chapter, that I often find myself turning to, especially in weeks that I'm feeling old. Like this week. Because this year, and this week's Torah portion Mike...
An Israelite in Egyptian Clothing
Modern Torah - December 08, 2023 13:00 - 7 minutesI went to graduate school at Brandeis University, and if I hadn't, I would've gone to law school at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, in Louisville, KY, where the first Jewish justice to sit on the Supreme Court was born, and raised. But what if I told you that story was almost wildly differe...
The Two Obadiahs
Modern Torah - November 30, 2023 21:00 - 8 minutesObadiah, Ovadiah. Obadi-ah. However you pronounce it, you might not remember it, but Obadiah is the name of the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible, and the Haftorah portion the rabbis chose to pair with this week's Torah portion, Vayishlach. Music Courtesy of Chillhop Records: Leavv, Maduk - Co...
Chapter 10: Aftermath
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - November 23, 2023 06:34 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsIn this final chapter of “Remembering Vilna,” several of the survivors whose stories we’ve featured tell of their journeys to safety and new beginnings, even as the traumas they experienced remained ever present.
Chapter 9: Judgment and Revenge
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - November 15, 2023 20:26 - 31 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsAt war’s end, Vilna’s survivors struggle to regain their health, look for missing family members, and search for ways to leave Europe for the United States or Palestine. But a small group join an effort to seek revenge in Nuremberg, where an international tribunal is underway.
Two Nations Under Cucumbers
Modern Torah - November 14, 2023 14:00 - 10 minutesThis week, I'm all about cucumbers. This humble vegetable, which the Talmud calls a delicacy of kings, became an internet craze a few years ago when Macka B released his "Cucumber Rap." Check it out in my source sheet for this episode. The Talmud has a lot to say about cucumbers, including a di...
Repost: Choosing Choiceless Choices
Modern Torah - November 13, 2023 14:00 - 8 minutesI updated my phone this week, which made it a great time to repost this episode, from two years ago. What does it mean to actually have choice? Are the choices we see the actual choices that we have? Are we supposed to pick a path through the woods, or turn around, or just sit in the mud and cry...
The Life of Sarah...The Death of Pearl
Modern Torah - November 10, 2023 01:00 - 14 minutesThere's a poem I've been reading recently, a long form epic poem originally written in Yiddish, about a Jewish blacksmith who settles down in rural Kentucky, in the mid-19th century. It's part of a project called 72 Miles, which I'm about to release, but this week I couldn't get away from a scen...
Chapter 8: Nazi Defeat
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - November 09, 2023 06:40 - 38 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsJuly 1944. For nearly two weeks, the Nazis and the Soviets fight for every street and block in Vilna. When the smoke clears, Jews hiding in the sewers emerge into daylight while other survivors and Jewish partisans filter back into the devastated city.
Chapter 7: Liquidation
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - November 02, 2023 20:53 - 40 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsWhen the Nazis liquidate the Vilna ghetto, they send thousands of Jews to their deaths or to forced-labor camps. Others escape to the forest to join the partisans. Very few manage to hide. The Nazis also try to eliminate evidence of their efforts to murder Vilna’s Jews.
Prayers & Kids
Modern Torah - November 02, 2023 18:00 - 12 minutesThis might be a bold statement, but there are probably few things in the world that cause people to pray more than children. We pray for their health, their safety, their growth, that they’ll find their place in this chaotic world. Even if you don’t have kids, you’re probably praying for them, a...
Isaac and Ishmael: A West Wing Special
Modern Torah - October 26, 2023 14:00 - 10 minutesIt took me a while, these past few weeks, overseas, In Israel, and here at home. It took a while to figure out what was going on and why I felt so strongly, feelings that seem to move, strangely, in too many directions at once. It wasn’t until President Biden’s speech in Israel, and his warning...
Chapter 6: The Underground
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - October 26, 2023 12:05 - 28 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsYoung people in the ghetto organize an underground group with the hope of leading an uprising against the Nazis. They risk their lives to build an arsenal, but when it becomes clear most Jews in the ghetto don’t support them, many escape to the surrounding forest to join the partisans.
Great in Goodness
Modern Torah - October 20, 2023 17:00 - 9 minutesI thought long and hard about whether or not I wanted to weigh in on the current crisis in Israel. In the end, I couldn't not, and I found myself turning as I often do to the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Shabbat Shalom. -- Music Provided by Lofi Girl: Promise Due - Kinissue & A...
Chapter 5: Ghetto Life
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - October 19, 2023 05:44 - 30 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsLife in the Jewish ghetto demands vigilance and adaptation. Families improvise spaces for hiding. Food is smuggled at the risk of execution. And while young people start to organize a resistance, cultural and sporting events prove to be a much needed diversion.
Chapter 4: The Ghetto
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - October 10, 2023 18:52 - 33 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsThey are given minutes to pack. A suitcase, a sheet-wrapped bundle, whatever they can carry. Thousands of the city’s Jews are marched at gunpoint to the newly enclosed Jewish ghettos, where the previous inhabitants have already been murdered.
Chapter 3: Nazi Invasion
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - October 05, 2023 06:30 - 25 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsWhen Germany attacks the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis occupy Vilna and begin imposing their harsh antisemitic rule, banning Jews from sidewalks, requiring the wearing of an identifying yellow star, and worse. “Within just a few days,” Mira Verbin recalls, “they started kidnapping Jews.”
Chapter 2: In the Shadow of War
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - September 28, 2023 07:29 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsWith the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the country is split between the Nazi invaders and the Soviet Union. Vilna winds up in the hands of the Soviets, then the Lithuanians, then the Soviets again, who set about seizing property and businesses, and arresting and deporting perce...
Chapter 1: Childhood Memories
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - September 20, 2023 22:05 - 27 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsRecollections of life before 1939 evoke the rich diversity of Vilna’s thriving Jewish community, including its multiple synagogues and political and social organizations. The impact on daily life of rising antisemitism foreshadows far darker times to come.
Introduction: Remembering Vilna
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - September 20, 2023 00:00 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratings“Those Who Were There” co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus introduce a few of the voices that, over the course of 10 episodes, will bring to life the once-vibrant Jewish community of Vilna, Poland (present-day Vilnius, Lithuania) and chronicle its destruction during World War II.
Preview: Into the Stacks at the YIVO
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust - September 21, 2022 10:30 - 22 minutes ★★★★★ - 127 ratingsJoin co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus on a research trip to the YIVO Institute in preparation for the upcoming season of Those Who Were There that focuses on the city of Vilna—a once thriving center of Jewish life and culture. Their guide on this exploratory dive into YIVO’s archives is...
Emerging Backwards – Achrei Mot 5782
Modern Torah - April 15, 2022 16:00 - 8 minutesIt's a critical question that the rabbis debate, partially in response to last week's Torah portion, and partially in response this week's parsha. "Is emerging backwards still emerging?" "Well no," says Rabbi Shmuel, "and here's why." "I agree that the answer is no, but not with how you got t...
I Don't Know? – Metzora 5782
Modern Torah - April 07, 2022 19:00 - 6 minutesWe're still on leprosy this week in the Torah portion. There's beauty in things that peel, as we see in nature. I ordered some trees this week that shed their bark in beautiful curls of golden and orange, because I want to bring that beauty into my yard, even if it looks to some like the trees h...
Excelsior!
Modern Torah - March 18, 2022 16:00 - 9 minutesIn this week's Torah portion, Aaron is invested as high priest, as are his sons, in a lavish ceremony before the entire Israelite community. It's a high moment for Aaron, a week before his world will fall apart. I don't know why the rabbis segmented the Torah portions this way, but perhaps its a...
Excelsior! – Tzav 5782
Modern Torah - March 18, 2022 16:00 - 9 minutesIn this week's Torah portion, Aaron is invested as high priest, as are his sons, in a lavish ceremony before the entire Israelite community. It's a high moment for Aaron, a week before his world will fall apart. I don't know why the rabbis segmented the Torah portions this way, but perhaps its a...
Asking & Listening – Vayikra 5782
Modern Torah - March 11, 2022 14:00 - 3 minutesIt's been a long wait, but shows are starting to pop up in my media stream again. One of my favorites returned after a long hiatus (what else is new?) for it's 5th and final season. Watching the first few episodes, I couldn't escape its relationship to this week's Torah portion, and the work of ...
Moving Forward, Slowly
Modern Torah - November 12, 2021 13:00 - 9 minutesWe're halfway through November, which means the end of 2021 is coming up quickly. With a few weeks left in the year, I took a moment this week to reflect on some goals I'd set at the start of the year, how much progress I've made towards them, and where I find myself as the year wraps up. The T...
Moving Forward, Slowly – Vayetzi 5782
Modern Torah - November 12, 2021 13:00 - 9 minutesWe're halfway through November, which means the end of 2021 is coming up quickly. With a few weeks left in the year, I took a moment this week to reflect on some goals I'd set at the start of the year, how much progress I've made towards them, and where I find myself as the year wraps up. The T...
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