The College Commons Podcast

Guidance and provocations for finding meaning in ‘unprecedented’ times.

Torah in a Time of Plague: Historical and Contemporary Jewish Reflections, winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience.

This collection of essays uses Torah – broadly understood to include any canonical Jewish text or tradition – to illuminate, explore, bemoan, or grapple with our current moment of plague.

Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler is the Dean of Students and the Director of Spiritual Development at Yeshivat Maharat rabbinical school, where she teaches Hasidism and Pastoral Torah. She is also a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.

Erin earned both her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, and her BA from Harvard University. She was ordained by Yeshivat Maharat.

Erin previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there, as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jewish Week, and other publications. She recently won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience for her collection, Torah in a Time of Plague: Historical and Contemporary Jewish Reflections (Ben Yehudah Press).

Studying Jewish tradition as an expression of the Jewish purpose.

Rabbi Helen Plotkin is co-founder of the Beit Midrash at Swarthmore College, where she taught courses in Biblical Hebrew and classical Hebrew texts for 20 years. She is founder and director of Mekom Torah (pronounced McComb Toe-RAH), offering deep Jewish study opportunities for adults and teens that transcend the boundaries of the various Jewish movements. Mekom Torah is committed to a radically ancient vision of Judaism as a culture of learning in which study is not a preparation for Jewish life, it is Jewish life. Rabbi Plotkin also teaches in the Beit Midrash at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Rabbi Plotkin holds a BA from Swarthmore College in Philosophy and Linguistics, an MA from the University of Michigan in Ancient Chinese Language and Thought, and rabbinical ordination from Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She is editor and annotator of the recent book, In This Hour: Heschel's Writings in Nazi Germany and London Exile, and she writes for online journals including Tablet Magazine.

Major themes of Jewish life, reviewed, rethunk... remixed.

Roberta Rosenthal Kwall is the Raymond P. Niro Professor at DePaul University College of Law. Professor Kwall earned her JD from the University of Pennsylvania and received her undergraduate degree in Religious Studies from Brown University. She also has a Master's Degree in Jewish Studies.

Kwall is an internationally renowned scholar and lecturer and has published over 30 articles on a wide variety of topics including Jewish law and culture, authorship rights, and intellectual property. She is the author of several law casebooks that are used nationally as well as two monographs: “The Myth of the Cultural Jew: Culture and Law in Jewish Tradition” (Oxford U. Press, 2015) and “The Soul of Creativity” (Stanford U. Press, 2010). Currently she is working on a book for a popular audience about transmitting Jewish tradition in a diverse world.

Kwall also has written numerous Opeds, articles, and book reviews on topics of relevance to the Jewish community that have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Commentary Magazine, The Forward, The Jewish Week, The Jewish Journal, The Jewish News of Northern California (jWeekly) and eJewish Philanthropy. She has received numerous awards for teaching and scholarship and in 2006, was designated as one of the 10 Best Law Professors in Illinois by Chicago Lawyer magazine. She also founded DePaul Law School’s renowned Center for Intellectual Property Law and Information Technology.

At DePaul, Kwall teaches courses in Family Law, Property, Intellectual Property and Family Law and the Jewish Tradition. She has lectured about Intellectual Property law at law school across the county and also lectured about Jewish law and culture at many law schools, synagogues, and other venues in the United States and Israel. She has also taught at Tulane Law School and currently teaches a course on Jewish Law and the American Jewish Movements at the Radzyner Law School in Israel. Kwall maintains a Face Book blog under Professor Roberta Rosenthal Kwall that is devoted to illustrating the beauty of the Jewish tradition for a wide general audience.

Dig into the Jew­ish lit­er­ary land­scape with the Jewish Book Council’s intriguing and rich annual literary journal.

Becca Kantor is the editorial director of Jewish Book Council and its annual print literary journal, Paper Brigade. She received a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Becca was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to spend a year in Estonia writing and studying the country's Jewish history. She lives in Brooklyn.

Judaism's views on sex, sensuality, and intimacy within marriage.

Noam is now emeritus at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where since 1978 he has been a senior research fellow and educator. He earned a graduate degree in general philosophy at Columbia University and the Hebrew University, while studying Bible and Rabbinics at JTSA and the Hartman Beit Midrash.

His popular publications and worldwide lecturing have promoted Homemade Judaism - empowering families to create their own pluralistic Judaism during home holidays - Pesach, Hanukkah and Shabbat. His most popular publications include: A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah; A Different Light: The Big Book of Hanukkah; A Day Apart: Shabbat at Home; The Israeli Haggadah: Halaila Hazeh; and A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices (published together with his son).

His educational study guides for day school teachers include multidisciplinary analyses of family conflicts such as Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve, Hagar and Sarah, Abraham’s Calling, Rachel and Leah, Ruth and Naomi, and David and Batsheba. Each unit includes art, poetry, commentary and literary analysis.

His most recent academic research encompasses a trilogy on the intellectual history of philanthropy entitled Jewish Giving in Comparative Perspectives (2013)and a nine-part series on Talmudic Marital Dramas (2018). In 2021 Jewish Publication Society publishes Sanctified Sex: The 2000 Year Jewish Debate on Marital Intimacy.

Outstanding moments in his personal biography include: growing up as a rabbi’s kid in his father’s Conservative synagogue in Minneapolis (where the Coen brother’s film “A Serious Man” was filmed); going on a student mission to meet Soviet Jewry in 1968 (that ended with interrogation by the KGB and expulsion from the USSR); participating in the Columbia University protests (1968, 1970); and making aliyah during the Yom Kippur War (1973). His Dutch wife Marcelle, the Lamaze teacher, gave him her last name “Zion” (in place of Sachs) and five children and twelve grandchildren.

Civil litigation as a powerful tool against white supremacy.

Amy Spitalnick is the Executive Director of Integrity First for America, the civil rights nonprofit that spearheaded the successful landmark lawsuit against the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and hate groups responsible for the Charlottesville violence.

Amy has extensive experience in government, politics, and advocacy, including as Communications Director and Senior Policy Advisor to the New York Attorney General and Communications Advisor and Spokesperson for the New York City Mayor. She has also worked for a number of federal, state, and local officials, campaigns, and advocacy organizations.

Amy frequently appears in national media and has been awarded a number of fellowships and honors, including being named a Women inPower Fellow at the 92nd Street Y, a Truman National Security Project Fellow, and a City & State 40 Under 40 Rising Star. Amy graduated from Tufts University.

Advancing social justice through Torah.

Rabbi Barry H. Block serves Congregation B'nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas. A Houston native and graduate of Amherst College, Rabbi Block was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1991, and he received his DD, honoris causa, in 2016.

A member of the CCAR Board of Trustees, currently serving as vice president of organizational relationships, Block is the editor of The Mussar Torah Commentary (CCAR Press, 2020), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. He also contributed to several earlier CCAR anthologies, including Inscribed: Encounters with the Ten Commandments, The Sacred Exchange, The Sacred Encounter, Navigating the Journey, and A Life of Meaning: Embracing Reform Judaism's Sacred Path, and he is a regular contributor to the CCAR Journal.

Rabbi Naamah Kelman was appointed Dean of the Taube Family Campus of HUC-JIR in Jerusalem on July 1, 2009. Previously, she served as Associate Dean.

Ordained by HUC-JIR in Israel in 1992, Rabbi Kelman has devoted her career to strengthening the Reform Movement's outreach, community organizing, and Jewish education. She has been intensely involved in the emerging education system of the IMPJ and was among the founders of the first Progressive Day School, where she has overseen the development of curricular materials, teacher training programs, and family education. At HUC-JIR/Jerusalem, she has strengthened the Year-In-Israel Program for North American first-year rabbinical, cantorial, and education students, advanced professional development for the Israeli Rabbinical Program, and has been a catalyst for new and innovative programs in the areas of pluralistic Jewish education and pastoral counseling.

Kristine Henriksen Garroway was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Bible at the HUC-JIR's Skirball Campus in Los Angeles in 2011. She received her doctorate in Hebrew Bible and Cognate Studies at the HUC-JIR/Cincinnati in 2009. She has spent time studying and researching in Israel and has participated in excavations at Ashkelon, Tel Dor, and Tel Dan.Garroway’s scholarship focuses on children using archaeology and texts of ancient Israel and Mesopotamia. She has published in various scholarly journals, and is a regular contributor to thetorah.com. Garroway’s books include: Children in the Ancient Near Eastern Household (Eisenbrauns 2014) and Growing Up in Ancient Israel: Children in Material Culture and Biblical Texts (Society of Biblical Literature 2018), and The Cult of the Child: the Death and Burial of Children in Ancient Israel (Oxford, forthcoming). She is the recipient of the Biblical Archaeological Society’s 2019 Publication Award for Best Book Relating to Hebrew Bible.

Feminism, intertextuality and 3000 years of making sense of God.

Rabbi Kari Tuling received rabbinic ordination in 2004 and earned her PhD in Jewish Thought in 2013, both from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. She has served congregations in Connecticut, Indiana, New York, and Ohio, and has taught Jewish Studies courses at the University of Cincinnati and the State University of New York, Plattsburgh. She currently serves as the rabbi of Congregation Kol Haverim in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Recent publications include contributions to the CCAR Journal: Reform Jewish Quarterly, chapters in A Life of Meaning: Reform Judaism’s Sacred Path and Inscribed: Encounters with the Ten Commandments, both by the CCAR Press. Her first book, Thinking About God: Jewish Views, was published in 2020 by JPS/University of Nebraska Press.

Tension and compatibility in the long story of our Jewish and American identities.

Dr. Jonathan D. Sarna is University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, where he directs the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. He also chairs the Academic Advisory and Editorial Board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati and serves as Chief Historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

Author or editor of more than thirty books on American Jewish history and life, Dr. Sarna’s American Judaism: A History (Yale 2004), recently published in a second edition, won six awards including the 2004 “Everett Jewish Book of the Year Award” from the Jewish Book Council. His most recent books are (with Benjamin Shapell) Lincoln and the Jews: A History (St. Martin’s, 2015), and When General Grant Expelled the Jews (Schocken/Nextbook, 2012). Sarna’s annotated edition of Cora Wilburn’s previously unknown 1860 novel, Cosella Wayne (University of Alabama Press), has also just appeared.

Dr. Sarna is married to Professor Ruth Langer and they have two married children.

Controversy, confusion and confidence in God’s goodness, from antiquity to present.

After being graduated from New York University with a B.A. in philosophy and Phi Beta Kappa, Rabbi Wayne Allen, Ph.D. attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he earned a Masters degree in Rabbinics and went on to receive rabbinic ordination. He served as a congregational rabbi for 35 years, taking on postings in New York City, Los Angeles, and Toronto. The Jewish Theological Seminary conferred an honorary Doctor of Divinity upon him for his years of dedicated service. Rabbi Allen was awarded a Masters degree in Philosophy from York University in Toronto where went on to earn his Ph.D.

He has taught Jews and non-Jews of all ages in formal and informal settings including the American Jewish University, the University of Waterloo, the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, and Camp Ramah in California. Along with Harvey Haber he wrote Giving Thanks: Graces for All Occasions. Among his interests has been Jewish Law. As the author of Perspectives on Jewish Law and Contemporary Issues and Further Perspectives on Jewish Law and Contemporary Issues as well as editor of the first two volumes of Tomeikh keHalakhah, the responsa collection of the Union for Traditional Judaism, Rabbi Allen gained recognition as an authority on the application of Jewish legal principles in a modern context. He was a frequent panelist for Jewish Values On-line and has appeared on radio and television. Other interests include cantorial music – leading to the publication of his book on The Cantor: From Mishnah to Modernity – and mediating Judaism to inquiring minds, resulting in his book Prescription for an Ailing World.

The most comprehensive book on the topic, "Thinking about Good and Evil: Jewish Views from Antiquity to Modernity" traces the most salient Jewish ideas about why innocent people seem to suffer, why evil individuals seem to prosper, and God’s role in such matters of (in)justice, from antiquity to the present.