Tradition Podcast

Rabbi Prof. Joshua Berman, professor of Bible at Bar-Ilan University joins the TRADITION Podcast to discuss his recent book, Ani Maamin: Biblical Criticism, Historical Truth, and the Thirteen Principles of Faith (Maggid Books).

In our forthcoming issue, our reviewer, R. Hayyim Angel writes: “Berman’s book is vital for understanding the relationship between faith and academic Bible study, where we can benefit from those texts as useful tools in learning and appreciate the staggering revolution of the Torah within its ancient context. Berman’s book is an important contribution to scholarship, and to our religious pursuit of truth in the context of Tanakh study. He challenges readers to examine critically the assumptions they bring to the text, provides a fresh perspective, and expands our horizons in learning, methodology, and religious growth.”

Berman joins TRADITION’s editor, Jeffrey Saks, to discuss issues of biblical criticism, the relationship of his identity as a leading academic with his role as a person of faith, how being trapped in certain modern assumptions prevent us from properly understanding Tanakh’s unique message as a religious text, and educational challenges that we face if bolstering belief in revelation and the divinity of the Torah. A major theme in the book is the historicity of the Bible, and especially of the Exodus. Readers can access an excerpted chapter introducing this topic in TRADITION (Winter 2020): “But Is It ‘History’?: The Historical Accuracy of Tanakh”

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Among the troubling phenomenon to which we are witness at this most difficult time of COVID, is the appearance of anti-Semitic attitudes and actions – hearkening back to medieval accusations of blood libels well poisonings, and up to contemporary anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric, Jews have often borne the blame of plagues which affected their host societies (even as they themselves were afflicted with black plague, cholera, or today’s coronavirus, in equal, or sometimes greater, numbers).

In light of these disturbing trends, and in the hopes that we might learn something about our current crisis from the study of history, we turned to Dr. David Berger, Dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University, and a longtime member of TRADITION’s editorial board. Dr. Berger has dedicated decades of his distinguished academic career to the study of anti-Semitism and Jewish-Christian interactions. His writings on these topics have recently been gathered in Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue: Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations (Academic Studies Press).

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PODCAST: Reading in a Time of COVID

How does literature serve as both an escape from reality as well as a lens back onto ourselves and the challenges we face in difficult days? TRADITION’s editor R. Jeffrey Saks discusses these questions with Sarah Rindner, an instructor of literature at Lander College who recently relocated to Israel with her family. She writes frequently on the intersection of English and Hebrew literature with Jewish life and Torah study.

Saks references an article in the TRADITION Archives: “The Best That Has Been Thought and Said by R. Lichtenstein About the Role of Literature in Religious Life”

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In this short podcast episode R. Jeffrey Saks talks with Rabbi Mark Smilowitz, a veteran educator in North America and Israel, about his newly released song, “Ki Lekha.” The words are taken from the Monday and Thursday Tahanun prayer, and speak of our beseeching God in times of distress, peril, and plague:

Salvation is Yours, Lord. Our Father, our King, our Refuge, do not act with us according to our evil deeds. Remember, Low, Your tender mercies and Your love. Save us in Your great goodness, and have mercy on us, for we have no other god but You, our Rock. Do not abandon us, Lord our God, do not be distant from us, for we are worn out by the sword and captivity, pestilence and plague, and by every trouble and sorrow. Rescue us, for in You lies our hope. Put us not to shame, Low our God. Let Your face shine upon us. Remember for us the covenant of our ancestors and save us for Your name’s sake. See our troubles and heed the voice of our prayer, for You heed the prayer of every mouth (Sacks translation).

Before debuting the song right here on the podcast, they spoke about music’s power to channel emotion, the challenge of finding meaning in prayer, and the importance of creativity as religious expression. Smilowitz has been slowly composing the song off and on for over twenty years. It should not be surprising that coronavirus provided new insight to the tefilla, and provided the impetus to complete the project and issue the recording.

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As our listeners by now know we’ve been producing these mini-episodes of our podcast—chatting with our editors and authors about matters of Jewish thought to gain some insights which might guide us through these troubling times of coronavirus.

In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc across the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast of the United States, inflicting the brunt of its damage in New Orleans. Up to 1,800 people are estimated to have lost their lives; $125 billion dollars in damage was inflicted. Within the Jewish community we saw incredible acts of resilience and kindness to our co-religionists and to fellow citizens at large. And yet, we were also witness to a variety of rabbinic prognosticators who thought they could intuit God’s plan in destroying the “Big Easy.” During this current pandemic, we are similarly searching for answers, and the temptation to read the Divine mind must be resisted. That being said, how are we to make sense of the period we are living through, with its suffering and fear? We thought it would be instructive to talk with Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, whose essay in the wake of Katrina, “Plunging Into Mighty Waters and Emerging With a Broken Shard: New Orleans and the Mind of God” (TRADITION, Spring 2007) asked “How did it come about, this delusion that we know the secret workings of the mind of God?”

Rabbi Emanuel Feldman served as the editor of TRADITION from 1988 to 2001. He is the Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth Jacob in Atlanta, and has maintained an active writing career in retirement from his home in Jerusalem.

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This is another special episode of the TRADITION Podcast in which we check in with our authors and editors to hear how they are managing through the corona crisis. In this installment, R. Jeffrey Saks talks with Dr. Erica Brown about her recent thoughts concerning the Avinu Malkenu, recited on public fasts and the Days of Awe—times of introspection, repentance, and spiritual stock-taking. These certainly seem to be appropriate themes for our current circumstance. Dr. Brown focuses on the line “Our Father, Our King, remember that we are but dust” as a statement of humility in the face of uncertainty. 

Dr. Erica Brown, a consulting editor at TRADITION, is the director of the Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership and an associate professor at The George Washington University. Her most recent book is Esther: Power, Fate and Fragility in Exile (Maggid Books).

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In this special coronavirus episode of the TRADITION podcast, our editor, Jeffrey Saks, talks with Yitzchak Blau about his Winter 2009 essay whose titled asked the rhetorical question: “Is Courage a Jewish Value?” 

We have all been thinking about courage these days, especially in light of the many acts of resilience (spiritual and otherwise) in the face of Covid-19 to which we’ve been witness. Blau suggests that courage is a concept which lurks in the background of many Jewish texts. Why isn’t it more in the foreground? How do traditional Jewish sources explicitly endorse and emphasize the virtue of courage? Need courage rooted in religious values such as faith and trust in God entail an absence of fear?

Rabbi Yitzchak Blau is the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem’s Old City, and an associate editor of TRADITION.

[The conversation, and Blau’s original essay, reference Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s “Redemption, Prayer, Talmud Torah” (TRADITION, Spring 1978), available in our archives.]

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Hershel Schachter on Hilkhot Covid-19

As part of their important role in servicing rabbis and Jewish communities throughout North America and the world, the Rabbinical Council of America, publisher of TRADITION, convened a special conference call with Rav Hershel Schachter for the organization’s member rabbis on March 16, 2020. During the call Rav Schachter, Rosh Yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University, fielded questions on an array of topics concerning halakha in a time of coronavirus—from pre-Pesach preparations, to communal prayer, to mikva observance, and more. Listeners will recognize and appreciate Rav Schachter’s renowned erudition, and his deep concern for the supreme importance of protecting human life and health as a central value in Judaism’s moral and legal tradition. 

The conference call was meant to serve as a resource for communal rabbis who are facing unprecedented challenges in leading their synagogues and pastoring their flocks, and we thank the RCA for sharing it with readers of TRADITION and listeners of the podcast. Obviously each individual should consult with his or her own halakhic authority concerning specific questions. The conversation was convened and moderated by Rabbi Mark Dratch, executive director of the Rabbinical Council of America (www.rabbis.org).

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On May 22, 2019, Rabbi Daniel Korobkin and Imam Abdullah Antepli sat down at the annual convention of the Rabbinical Council of America, in Stamford, CT, to discuss the current state of Muslim-Jewish relations. Instead of dancing around the hot-button issues, they directly addressed the issues of Zionism and Israel and the parallel and opposing narratives harbored by Muslim and Jewish communities regarding the past 70+ years in the Middle East. They also discussed Imam Antepli’s work for the Muslim Leadership Initiative of the Shalom Hartman Insititute, which brings out a cohort of Islamic leaders every year to Jerusalem to discuss the Zionist narrative and provide a deeper understanding of both sides. The Imam and the Rabbi further explored what progress is currently taking place in North America in improving relations between Muslims and Jews and what further are necessary for the future.

Imam Abdullah Antepli is on the faculty at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and at Duke’s Divinity School, where from 2008-2014 he served as the university’s first Muslim chaplain, one of only a handful of full-time Muslim chaplains at U.S. colleges and universities. He is also a Senior Fellow on Jewish-Muslim Relations at the Shalom Hartman Institute and Co-Director of its Muslim Leadership Initiative. 

Rabbi Daniel Korobkin is the rabbi of the BAYT, Beth Avraham Yoseph of Thornhill, Ontario, and is the President of the Rabbinical Council of America.

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A common theme through TRADITION’s recent symposium on Haym Soloveitchik’s “Rupture and Reconstruction: On the Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy” is how the encounter with the essay in 1994 caused readers to understand transitions within the Orthodox world to which they were witness in their own lifetimes. For a change, we thought it would be interesting to hear the voice of youth—the “Generation Z” members of Modern Orthodoxy; people who were born into a world where Soloveitchik’s insights were already accepted as a given. Jeffrey Saks recently spoke with three American students from Midreshet Amudim who are studying in Israel for the year after high school – Elisheva Ezor of West Hempstead, NY; Shayna Lopatin of Detroit; and Ruthie Vogel of Silver Spring, MD. These bright young women were born into a world that had been ruptured and reconstructed long before they were born, yet one which they seem to intuitively understand is always undergoing some form of transformation.

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