Episodes
Sunday Aug 21, 2022
Eikev and the Torah of Ambivalence
Sunday Aug 21, 2022
Sunday Aug 21, 2022
In this d'var Torah, I discuss how parashat Eikev is the section of Torah most frought with ambivalences, from the text itself through the Rabbinic commentaries: blessing as bounty and overextension, independence and dependence, hardship and privilege, closeness and distance. I relate this to our lives directly in the examples of the college experience and of our relationship with God.
Sunday May 22, 2022
Ableism, Torah, and ”Greatness Comes from Being Lifted Up By Your Brothers”
Sunday May 22, 2022
Sunday May 22, 2022
How do we relate to the Torah's insistence that the kohanim who do the major rituals be without blemish or disability? Isn't that grossly ableist? I suggest the following. First, the Torah is not an idealistic description of a utopia of saints -- it forces us to recognize truths about human nature, and then create a society for real people like us, so it forces us to recognize our own prejudices and ableism, which are also active today. Second, there is a serious issue at stake involving the Offerings of Damaged Goods, which is a massive problem in our society today --which tells us a lot about ourselves and how we give. And third, I use the commentator Bartenura's commentary to offer a way the tradition is accepting human nature but leading us to how to refine it into inclusivity.
Tuesday May 10, 2022
Judaism and Abortion: The Process of the Decision IS Religion
Tuesday May 10, 2022
Tuesday May 10, 2022
In this presentation, I present the Talmudic sources on Judaism's discussion of the status of the fetus, and I argue that what's been missing from the discussion --including the discussion of Jewish views -- is the fact that Judaism leaves open what the status of the fetus is between 40 days and full viability, but importantly assigns the process to the mother. Men have no say in it. In other words, the issue is not freedom of religion in the sense of one denomination versus another, but rather the freedom of the prospective mother to have her own relationship with God, as considers that in-between state of the fetus she carries, and what it means to her and to God as she makes her decision, and not let others tell her what it is or not. (One issue I wish I had made a bit clearer: around the 11 minute mark, I talk about the fact that Tractate Niddah specifies that between 40 and 80 days, the miscarriage is more than a normal period, and there is an ontological leap again starting at 80 days. The specifics here are that the woman at these two sections remains in a state of ritual impurity following the miscarriage, as she would for giving birth, because after 80 days there is even clear evidence of sexual organs. In other words, the Talmud is acknowledging that the embryo is developing into a fetus, and while a fetus is not a baby, it is still not a "nothing." In addition, many consider this stigmazing the woman to say she is in "ritual impurity," but recall the ritual impurity functioned as "maternity leave" and thus the Talmud is giving the woman maternity leave to recover from the miscarriage, it's not stigmatizing her.)
Tuesday Apr 19, 2022
Believing in Miracles (or not) in 5 Minutes
Tuesday Apr 19, 2022
Tuesday Apr 19, 2022
One of my "standing on one foot while answering a humungous theological question" podcasts. "Rabbi, what do we mean by miracles? What is up with the Red Sea splitting?" I give my on-one-foot 5 minute answer, but we should all go and study (as Hillel famously said after answering his on-one-foot answer) afterward.
By the way, I refer to seeing a red butterfly in the answer: at a funeral and shivah I officiated at, it came up repeatedly that a butterfly would show up in their lives just at the time of remembering the widow's husband, who had a very special connection to butterflies.
Friday Mar 18, 2022
Friday Mar 18, 2022
At the same time as the Torah turns its pages to describe the creation and pattern of the Temple, with men, women, and children mixed together, and the haftarah describes the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem as the same, the Israeli government reneges on the Kotel Agreement to provide a separate space for mixed gender worship near the Wailing Wall, even while turning over the Wall officially to ultra extremist fundamentalist Jews who claim that the inclusion of women --or women leading prayer in the women's section-- is a fundamental affront to the original pattern (which is a lie). In this presentation, I quote extensively from three sources: the Haaretz article from 2020 called "What Yuval Noah Harari Thinks About Women’s Fight for Equal Rights at the Western Wall," David Golinkin's 2011 article "Is the Entire Kotel Plaza Really a Synagogue?" and Rabbinical Assembly's 2022 "Statement on Non-Implementation of Kotel Agreement."
Monday Feb 21, 2022
Self-Improvement, Judgment, and Seeing God’s Back
Monday Feb 21, 2022
Monday Feb 21, 2022
While Judaism demands that one does not judge oneself too harshly, nor live in a place of self-defeating criticism, nevertheless there's a vital role for self-judgment to play in our learning from the past to walk with God and expand our ability to channel holiness into the world. In fact, since God loves us as we are, and even provides a Shabbat that makes us feel that the world is made for us as we are, it is vital we judge ourselves, because that's not the job God wants, nor is it the job for others to do.
Monday Feb 14, 2022
Clothing God? Sewing as an Act of Lovingkindness
Monday Feb 14, 2022
Monday Feb 14, 2022
The Talmud tells us that the first great act of God's love (chesed, lovingkindness) was making clothing for Adam and his wife. Do we return the favor?
Saturday Jan 29, 2022
Does God Have a Plan for Us?
Saturday Jan 29, 2022
Saturday Jan 29, 2022
Joseph's dreams seem to predict the future and his role in it. So does God have a plan for us?
Monday Jan 17, 2022
Lecture: Halakhic Sources, the Fetus, and the Morality of Abortion
Monday Jan 17, 2022
Monday Jan 17, 2022
The source sheet I'm reading from is at:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R0Txiy6QvQiHo40hKSsHyafLernFjS8tXp0tJo7gPWA/edit?usp=sharing
This is a lecture to give the listener the Rabbinic sources that create distinctions and legal status for decisions around the criminalization of elective abortion, as discussed in the Supreme Court hearings.
Tuesday Dec 28, 2021
Patriarchy, Gaze, Voice and Intersectionality? Exodus and bell hooks
Tuesday Dec 28, 2021
Tuesday Dec 28, 2021
Here I tease out the following ideas of bell hooks: 1. Our society valuing power over others as the paramount value, and rooted in the psychology of men. 2. This value playing out in drama as "the protagonist" as the center around which others must revolve, and often the only one whose name counts. 3. Oppositional gaze: the one who owns their justice perspective is the one who has the power to gaze at injustice [like Moses having the privilege to "gaze" at the taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave]. 4. Intersectional identity: our society tries to have our identities of oppression divided up -- say, of black, immigrant, poor, and woman-- because that plays into the system rather than seeing them all at once, at the "intersectionality" of our identites. 5. Finding our voice as loving ourselves enough to feel that we are fully ready to put that full loved identify forward, rather than perpetuating the system by finding ourselves falling short. 6. When we love ourselves, we can love others --meaning holding their ability to change into their full self-love and changing selves-- rather than fall back into power contests. These are applied the first six chapters of Exodus as: 1) Pharoah's actions about power over men, so he declares genocide on male babies (since they are a threat to him); men beating each other and finding this normal, and even threatening Moses with turning him in to show their power over him since his superior power identity is what they see, not his trying to help them. 2) Who has a name besides Moses? Not Pharoah. Not the Pharoah's daughter. Not Moses' parents, nor his sister. Not the handmaidens. Chapter 3 is all about "What is God's name?" to teach us that rather than the protagonist structure (one is important not the others), we are all equal as characters in God's story, rather than ego driving our own story where others play their parts in relation to us. 3) Oppositional gaze: Moses first leaves the palace grounds as a bar-mitzvah age teen, and he GAZES at what is happening and sees injustice. He "looks this way and that" because, as the midrash tells us, he is wondering why others aren't gazing at the injustice as he is. 4) Intersectionality: Is Moses Hebrew or Egyptian? He's both, and splitting the two up allows others to deny his subjectivity and power. Are the midwives Hebrew or Egyptian? Is Pharaoh's daughter powerful (as nobility) or powerless (as a woman)? The parashah continually plays on these ambiguous and intersectional identities. 5) Finding one's voice: this is the parashah of Moshe claiming he is poor of speech so he cannot speak truth to power, and he overcomes it. 6) Are the signs, wonders, and plagues just another power contest --the value basis of patriarchal society-- or is God trying to give Pharaoh chances over and over again to change, the basis of love though one must leave the relationship if one is not being treated the same in exchange?