"Better an Apikores Than an Am Haaretz": Rav Meni Even-Israel on Rav Steinsaltz's Vision (292)
About this episode
This episode features a conversation with Rav Meni Even-Israel about his father Rav Adin Steinsaltz's vision of Judaism and the complexities of his intellectual and spiritual life.
Check out Orthodox Conundrum Commentary on Substack and get your free subscription by going to https://scottkahn.substack.com/ - and paid subscribers get this and other episodes of the Orthodox Conundrum Podcast ad-free and with early access and additional bonus content! Most people know Rav Adin Steinsaltz as the scholar who transformed access to the Talmud. But beneath the translations, commentaries, and publishing projects was a much larger, richer, and more complicated vision of Judaism itself. In this episode, I speak with Rav Meni Even-Israel, Rav Steinsaltz's son and the director of the Steinsaltz Center, about the worldview that animated his father's life and work. Rav Steinsaltz believed Torah should produce intellectually serious, spiritually alive, deeply curious human beings who were unafraid of complexity, unafraid of difficult questions, and unafraid of the broader world. He resisted a Judaism that was narrow, insulated, or intellectually fragile. At the same time, he was deeply committed to tradition, profoundly shaped by Chassidut, and fiercely loyal to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. That creates a fascinating tension running through this conversation. How did someone so…
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