J.J. and Dr. Paul Franks systematically consider Franz Rosenzweig in all his existential and idealistic glory. 

Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected] 

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Paul Franks is Robert F. and Patricia Ross Weis Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, Professor of German Languages and Literatures, Professor of Religious Studies, and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Yale University.  Before coming to Yale in 2011, he was the first occupant of the Jerahmiel S. and Carole S. Grafstein Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto.  
He was educated at Gateshead Talmudical College, at Balliol College Oxford, and at Harvard, where he earned his PhD in 1993.  He has also taught at Michigan, Indiana, and Notre Dame, and has been visiting professor at Chicago, Leuven, and Hebrew University. In addition to numerous articles on German Idealism and Jewish philosophy, Paul is the translator and annotator (with Michael L. Morgan) of Franz Rosenzweig: Philosophical and Theological Writings (Hackett, 2000), and he is the author of All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism (Harvard, 2005).  He is currently writing a book on the central concepts of post-Kantian Idealism in light of their kabbalistic roots, and with Michael L. Morgan  he is writing a history of Jewish philosophy from the 1490s to the 1990s.

J.J. and Dr. Samuel Brody assess the original ideas and monumental influence of this 20th century thinker and leader. 

Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected] 

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Samuel Hayim Brody is Associate Profesor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. He is the author of Martin Buber's Theopolitics (IUP, 2018), which received the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award from the Association of Jewish Studies. He is also the co-editor, with Julie E. Cooper, of The King is in the Field: Essays in Modern Jewish Political Thought (Penn, 2023).

J.J. and Gila Fine analyze the literary character of Talmudic women and uncover a counter history of Bruriah. 

Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates and insights!

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice.

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected] 

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Noam Zadoff is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck. He is the author of Gershom Scholem: from Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis, 2017) and many other scholarly works that deal with a wide array of subjects in recent Jewish History.

J.J. and Dr. Noam Zadoff methodically demistify Gershom Scholem's iconoclastic but influential views about Sabbateanism and its causal connection to just about every contemporary element of Jewish life. 

Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates about messiahs, true and false. 

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected] 

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Noam Zadoff is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck. He is the author of Gershom Scholem: from Berlin to Jerusalem and Back (Brandeis, 2017) and many other scholarly works that deal with a wide array of subjects in recent Jewish History.

J.J. and Dr. Pawel Maciejko conspire to bring you an episode about a small but mighty sub-sect of Sabbateanism. 

Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates about messiahs, true and false. 

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected] 

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Pawel Maciejko is an associate professor of history and Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Chair in Classical Jewish Religion, Thought, and Culture at Johns Hopkins University. Between 2005 and 2016 he taught at the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His first book, The Mixed Multitude: Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816, was awarded the Salo Baron Prize by the American Academy of Jewish Research and the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award by the Association for Jewish Studies. He also published a critical edition of Jonathan Eibeschütz’s tract And I Came This Day unto the Fountain.

J.J. and Dr. Maoz Kahana are at Altona-Hamburg-Wandsbek's biggest fight night. This Rabbinic brawl over Sabbateanism in the 18th century bruised Jewish leaders all over Europe. 

Follow us on Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates about messiahs, true and false. 

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected] 

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Maoz Kahana (PhD) is an associate Professor  in the Jewish History Department, Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on deciphering and elucidating rabbinical literature and Jewish law and legal cultures within the social and intellectual contexts of the early modern and modern European history as well as its minority Jewish culture.  His research and teaching integrates intellectual and social history; legal and cultural methods. Characteristic themes of his work are print and book history, the scientific revolution, magic, law, and the divine; Rabbi's allure to Sabbatian literature, Chassidic Halakhic writings, Jewish legal cultures and European romanticism,  the emergence of European coffeehouses, and others. His book: Halakhic Writing in a Changing World, from the ‘Noda B’yhuda’ to the ‘Hatam Sofer’, 1730-1839, based on his doctoral :dissertation, was published in the Zalman Shazar Publication House, Jerusalem (2015). A second book: “A Heartless Chicken and other Wonders: Religion and Science in Early Modern Rabbinic Culture”, was published (2021) in Bialik Institute Publishing House, Jerusalem. His newest

J.J. and Dr. Yaacob Dweck Introduce us to the critic-in-chief of the Sabbatean movement in the 17th century: Rabbi Jacob Sasportas. This is episode 2 or our mini-series about Sabbateanism and its afterlife. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod and Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates about messiahs, true and false. 

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected] 

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Yaacob Dweck is the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University. He is the author of The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice (2011) and Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas (2019) both published by Princeton University Press.

J.J. and Dr. Matt Goldish Introduce us to Shabbetai Tzevi and his cadre of prophets and promoters. This is episode 1 or our mini-series about Sabbateanism and its afterlife. 


Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod and Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social for updates about messiahs, true and false. 

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected] or just DM us. 

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Matt Goldish is the Samuel M. and Esther Melton Chair in History at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on the Sephardi diaspora after 1492, early modern Sephardic and Italian rabbinic culture, messianism, and Jewish-Christian intellectual relations. He is the author of several books, including, The Sabbatean Prophet (Harvard University Press, 2004) and Jewish Questions: Responsa on Jewish Life in the Early Modern Period (Princeton University Press, 2008). His newest book, having nothing to do with Jewish history, is Science and Specters at Salem (Routledge, 2025).

J.J. and Dr. Eliav Grossman bravely explore a new (old) frontier in Jewish thought. The mysterious time between the closing of the Babylonian Talmud and the rise of the Geonim. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod and Bluesky @jewishideaspod.bsky.social to discover new arenas for Jewish discourse. 

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected]

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Eliav Grossman is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. He studies Jews and Judaism in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and his research explores rabbinic literature as it developed from the product of a narrow class of provincial elites to the dominant cultural idiom for Jews across the eastern Mediterranean. Eliav’s dissertation, “The New Mishnah: Rabbinic Literature between Late Antiquity and Early Islam,” investigates an eclectic corpus of texts that have been neglected in modern scholarship but that share a defining feature: imitation of the Mishnah, the foundational text of the classical rabbinic corpus. Eliav’s research interests extend beyond antiquity and encompass medieval liturgical poetry, early modern intellectual history, and the history of 20th century Jewish scholarship. His scholarly writings have appeared in Jewish Studies Quarterly and Aramaic Studies, and he has written and lectured for many popular audiences. He has been awarded a Harold W. Dodds Honorific Fellowship and the Association for Jewish Studies Dissertation Completion Fellowship (honorary). Prior to beginning his studies at Princeton, Eliav completed a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion at Columbia University, an MPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University, and another MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History, also at Cambridge.

J.J. and Dr. Steven Zipperstein capture the essence and relevance of this elusive visionary. 

Follow us on Twitter (X) @JewishIdeas_Pod to see the realization of Ahad Ha'Am's pessimistic prophesies. 

Please rate and review the the show in the podcast app of your choice!

We welcome all complaints and compliments at [email protected]

For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Steven J. Zipperstein is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. His second book, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (University of California Press, 1993) won the National Jewish Book Award. In 1998, it appeared in Israel in a Hebrew translation published by the Ofakim series of Am Oved. Zipperstein has published more than fifty articles as well as many review essays in a wide range of journals, magazines, and newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post Book Review, Forward, The New Republic, Dissent, Partisan Review, Jewish Review of Books, New England Review, and The Atlantic. In spring 2022, he was awarded the Stanford Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Award for excellence in Graduate Teaching.  In 2023, Zipperstein was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His next book “Stung by Life. Philip Roth: A Biography” will appear in October 2025 in the Jewish Lives series at Yale University Press.