Holy Madness - The Show

We discuss free will, providence, intelligent design and evolution, chaos, lag ba'omer, and feature callbacks to episodes 8 and 9.

This is a more rambling episode, as Tzvi had a migraine during recording, and Meir Simcha carried the load here.

We would love for y'all to comment, critique, and share.

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Episode 16 starts with some ruminations on Israel's 70th birthday, specifically zooming in on Israel's marking of Memorial Day and Independence Day back to back and comparing it to the United States. We talk about our experiences of both, but continue on to discuss the difference between having something to die for versus having something to live for (an important distinction, indeed!).

This episode is an overview of Passover - what is being celebrated, why, and how.

We discuss the oddly universal celebration of our little nation's holiday commemorating its emancipation, the themes and imagery of the holiday, and we go back to place issues discussed in Episode 12b (freedom and liberty) in the Passover milieu.

Ultimately, this is a fantastic overview of the holiday's ubiquitous insistence on freedom through words. We discover a little bit of what that means, and set the stage for the coming episodes - where we will explore the Haggadah in depth and inside.

Sarah returns as a special guest. We discuss our personal connections with books in the bible, and segue into a conversation about education within religion.

We compare belief and ideology, talk about the effects of religious education on faith, and end with a discussion on the shortcomings of modern "classical liberal" ideology in giving a society a "why" to their lives, as well as something that connnects them all. Along the way, we compare orthodox and orthoprax, define what an "ummah" is, and highlight some of the real aims we ought to have in education.

We discuss randomness (with a meandering random way of getting to it), then explain how the random nature of the universe is what gives us choice. Choice is the bedrock of freedom, and liberty. We then discuss the differences between the two, the need for limitations, and end up back in different views of randomness - the postmodern version, and the Torah version. Along the way, we highlight these ideas within the Book of Esther and the holiday of Purim.

This is a fun episode, featuring some bad InfoWars Alex Jones impressions, ruminations on apophenia and libations, and some personal anecdotes.

Happy Purim!

In honor of the upcoming holiday of Purim...here is Episode 12a of the Holy Madness!

Join us as we explore a little bit about the holiday, and do a quick overview of the central book about it - the Book of Esther. We tease out the farcical tone it is written in, identify many of its comedic elements, and identify some of its main themes. (Those themes will be more fully explored in episode 12b.)

We humbly suggest you read the book along with us!

Join us as we explore the odd parallels between the postmodern "social justice" beliefs system and religion. We visit economics and financial markets, black swans, epistemology, facts and "alternative facts", how people form their beliefs, and sink our teeth into the difference between faith and love. We discuss Popper, Taleb, Wittgenstein, Tertullian, and Sartre, plus detour into language, antisemitism, and the difference between staying true to your beliefs and wanting to be proven wrong.

Happy Tu B'Shvat to those celebrating or not!

This epsiode takes a good look at Tu B'Shvat the holiday, tracing it from the Mishna to modern day. Along the way we discuss the halachot (Jewish Law) of produce, why Man likes tree metaphors so much, what the Tree of Knowledge actually was, means and ends (which justifies which?), Spinoza and Plato, and end off with a nice insight into the deeper meaning of the holiday.

Tzvi's daughters make a guest appearance in the introduction.

Why Tzvi won't convert to Christianity, Pascal's Wager, sin, salvation, the afterlife and the world to come, Christian music (again), community, prayers, and more.

It's Episode 8 as the Holy Madness continues, this time welcoming special guest Adam K into the studio to discuss happiness!

Listen in as we question, what is happiness? How do people find it? Is it worth looking for? Where would be a good place to start finding it? Why care about happiness at all? Can you be happy without G-d? Can you be happy with G-d? Is happiness an emotion, a choice, something else?

As always with a special guest, we adopt a conversational style. Come for the rambling, stay for the ambling, and walk away with some thought provoking points to consider.