Return the Key: Jewish Questions for Everyone

In episode #35 I talk with ethnic studies scholar Nishant Upadhyay about their book, Indians on Indian Lands: Intersections of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity. Together, we dig into the complexities around “settler colonial frameworks,” thinking about what the category of settler means in cases of forced migration, or migration based on ecocide, genocide, or extreme need. We talk about writing history with a focus on one’s own positionality, how that has been important to both of us. Nishant speaks specifically about Brahminism and Hinduism in India and how these violently hierarchical structures have in some ways migrated with Indian immigrants in Canada and the US, and even within post-colonial and transnational feminist studies. We ask what real solidarity with indigenous struggles (across Turtle Island, South Asia, Palestine, and beyond) might look like in the contexts of our hyper-capitalist societies and the rise fascism across the globe, and we locate pockets of optimism in our everyday intimacies, acknowledging that we must fight for our right to be together.People and groups mentioned or discussedKey figures in South Asian and Postcolonial Studies:Gayatri SpivakPartha ChatterjeeDipesh ChakrabartyDalit Scholars:Chinnaiah JangamM.S.S. PandianBraj Raj ManiHawai'i scholar and activist:Haunani-Kay TraskIndigenous nations of the Toronto area include: the Mississaugas of the New Credit, Anishinaabe, Chippewa, Haudenosaunee, Wendat, Métis peoples, and many other diverse Indigenous communities.Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.comComments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com

In episode #33 I talk with Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg about two terms that have been central to her lately: “collapse” and “entanglement.” We read from and discuss Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World, a book that helps think through these themes. Rabbi Jessica talks about what it’s been like on the ground in Minneapolis this winter, how confronting state violence and authoritarianism in real-time by caring for her neighbors has been both terrifying and profound in how it’s changed her sense of what “entanglement” really means. We discuss how accepting that we are in a time of collapse (of institutions, structures, and climate) might paradoxically help us get out of bed in the morning, rather than paralyzing us with fear. I bring up my obsession with “Longtermism” (not a fan), and Rabbi Jessica shares her thinking around “spiral time” in the context of the Jewish calendar, insisting that we can think long term while “holding the collective liberation of all people on the planet right now in our minds and hearts.” We end by talking about what both personal and collective grief can teach us, awakening us to the now. Texts and people discussed:Ross Gay, Inciting Joy: Essayspoupeh missaghi, “When Bombs Fall: Saying Yes to Life”Aurora Levins MoralesSusan Raffo with Kelly Hayes, “‘Minneapolis Community Defense Is “Riding on the Learning Edge of a Whirlwind’” (Interview)Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, For Times Such as These: A Radical’s Guide to the Jewish YearRabbi Jessica Rosenberg, “Spiral Time in Collapse: Dvar for Erev Rosh Hashana 5786”Émile P Torres, “Against Longermism” (Note: I mistakenly credited this essay to Sam Dresser. Dresser edited it, but It was authored by Torres in 2021.)Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist RuinsMusic by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.comComments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com

In episode #31 I speak with author and investigative journalist Katherine Stewart about her new book, Money Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy. What is Christian Nationalism (and what is it not)? What are the true anti-democratic goals of the “new right” and what are their strategies? How do misogyny and anti-trans rhetoric/policy serve these goals? And are they really trying to take away women’s right to vote? Katherine delineates five categories of actors in the nihilistic war against democracy: the funders, the thinkers, the sergeants, the power-players, and the foot soldiers. She exposes how “the thinkers” frequently rely on the ideas of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, and Julie dips into “the thinkers” who have worked towards these goals on her own campus (remember John Eastman?). A note: This conversation is shorter than many. Because of time constraints we were not able to talk about all of the major topics in this book. I highly recommend listeners read the book to learn more. Texts, institutes, and people mentioned and discussed:Katherine Stewart, Money Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American DemocracyKatherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious NationalismKatherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Religious Right's Stealth Assault on America's ChildrenGod and Country (film), directed by Dan Partland, written by Katherine StewartThe April InstituteAndrew Perez, Andy Kroll and Justin Elliott, “How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to the Architect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts” (article on Barre Seid, Leonard Leo and the Marble Freedom Trust)Carl SchmittThe Claremont InstituteThe Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, University of Colorado BoulderThe National Organization for Marriage (editorial note: they are still going after Disney)Doug Wilson, Christian Nationalist pastor (Wall Street Journal video)Abby Johnson, anti-abortion activist on head-of-household voting (tweet)Joseph Porter and Adam Gibbons, “Existential Risk and Equal Political Liberty” Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.comComments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.comKatherine Stewart’s latest book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, is one of Foreign Affairs magazine’s Best Books of 2025. Her previous, award-winning title, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, formed the basis of the documentary feature God & Country, produced by Rob Reiner. She has covered the intersection of faith and politics for over 17 years; her work appears in The New York Times, Religion News Service, New Republic and others. Find her at @katherinestewart.bsky.social, @kathsstewart, substack.com/@katherinestewartbooks, and katherinestewart.me. 

In episode #29 I speak with multidisciplinary artist Ava Aviva Avnisan about their film, installation, music and performance work. We begin by talking about Aviva’s young childhood in Jerusalem as the descendant of Iraqi, Iranian and Eastern European Jews, and she traces the influence of her father, a professional photographer, on her own development as an artist. We discuss a collaboration we did with the poet Amaranth Borsuk many years ago, even without knowing each other (Real Life: An Installation). We get into the technology Aviva uses in much of her work, lidar scanning, and how it helps her create “a visual vocabulary of haunting.” Digging into two of Aviva’s recent projects, “Among Relatives: Indigenous Voices in the Cuyahoga Valley” (with Leila Khoury), an immersive audio visual installation, and “Specters of Home: Prologue” (with Doug Rosman) a ten-minute film, we discuss the legacy of settler-colonialism in Israel-Palestine and North America, the gender binary, and the very painful ways in which contemporary politics tear families apart. Aviva talks about her own struggles with members of her family who are unable to accept her gender transition or her anti-Zionism. She speaks throughout about her spiritual development and her gender transition, and how these transformations have changed her work and its motivations, opening and softening toward greater compassion and receptivity. We end with a short dip into the collaborative project Nobo’s Muse, a two-person art-pop band with Judd Morrissey, and we listen to one of their (fantastic) songs, as we disappear into the divine/work. Other artists, writers and projects mentioned:Karen River Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and MeaningTransMaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political ImaginingsWhat Flashes Up: Theological-Political-Scientific FragmentsWalter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” (Theses on History)Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New InternationalChris Marker, Sans SoleilKelly Reichardt, Certain WomenAva Aviva Avnisan (she/they) is a multidisciplinary, research-based artist whose work integrates installation, performance, film, writing, sound, and emerging technologies to create embodied, time-based encounters. Working with tools such as 3D scanning, augmented and virtual reality, and generative AI, Ava’s practice explores how language, technology, and lived experience shape meaning and memory.Recent highlights include the international festival circulation of Specters of Home—Prologue, a short film selected for the 10th Beyond Borders | Kastellorizo International Documentary Festival in Greece and screened at the 8th Independent Film Festival of Mexico City as part of the CINE X MUJERES program. In 2025, Ava also presented new work created in collaboration with Judd Morrissey at SAIC Galleries in Chicago, debuting a large-scale, site-specific installation that expanded her practice into recorded music alongside photography, poetry, and 3D imaging.Ava is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at San Diego State University, with a co-appointment in the School of Journalism and Media Studies.

In episode 27, I talk with poet Susan Gevirtz about her childhood growing up in Los Angeles, within the two “religions” of Hollywood and Freudian psychoanalysis. We talk about her early experiences in the world of Hollywood films through her grandfather’s work as the musical director for Universal, and her sense, even as a young person, that the world that was presented to her was a made place, invented and therefore radically open to inquiry. We dig into her ongoing project, Guide School, a multi-faceted blended-genre manuscript that interrogates the longing for a “homeland,” and the unsatisfiable and therefore motivating desire for “origins” of all kinds - epistemological, historical, textual, and spiritual. Susan talks about her travels in Eastern Europe, the phenomenon of “the guide schools” in which tour guides are trained to present particular versions of history, and her encounters with the YIVO archive for Jewish Research of both Vilnius Lithuania and New York City. We end by discussing our somewhat vexed curiosity about Kabbalah, and mystical traditions in general, thinking together about how reading/writing as a practice of unknowing and infinite encounter might itself be a mystical tradition. Books and institutions mentionedMoses Maimonides: The Guide to the Perplexed: a New Translation, Translated and with Commentary by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. LiebermanMarc-Alain Ouaknin, The Burnt Book: Reading the TalmudJeffrey Veidlinger, In the Midst of Civilzed Europe: The 1918-1921 Pogroms in Ukraine and the Onset of the HolocaustYIVO Institute for Jewish ResearchMusic by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.comComments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com

In episode 25, I speak with Benjamin Balthaser about his new book, Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left, just published by Verso. Benjamin tells me about his beloved communist grandparents and his own background as a labor activist and longtime member of Jewish Voice for Peace. We discuss the historical precedents to the current eruption of anti-Zionism among U.S. Jews on the left as we dig into the history, especially from the 1970s, of Jewish diasporism as a political identity. Benjamin shows us how diasporism grew out of the practical politics of the 1970s in response to the collapse of the New Left, the Jewish institutional turn towards Zionism, and the emergence of “identity politics.” We end by talking about the challenges of intersectional solidarity then and now, asking what we can learn from these earlier generations about maintaining our commitments to the liberation of all people, even when contradictions arise.This episode was recorded in two sections; you will notice a shift in sound quality after the musical break. We reference a future episode on the history of the red scare and its effects on Jewish institutions. Stay tuned! Books, movements and groups mentioned or discussed:Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A ReckoningPeter Beinart and Angela Davis, “What a Lifetime of Struggle Taught Angela Davis” on The Beinart Notebook podcastDaniel Boyarin, The No State Solution: A Jewish ManifestoJudith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of ZionismAbraham Cahan, The Rise of David LevinskyMarjorie N. Feld, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of ZionismMichael Gold, Jews Without MoneyGeoffrey Levin, Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978Shaul Magid, The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a DistancePhilip Roth, Portnoy’s ComplaintMyron Perlman and The Chutzpah CollectiveStudents for a Democratic Society (SDS)Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)Black Power movement Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.comComments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com

In episode 23, I speak with Lee Medovoi about his astounding new book, The Inner Life of Race: Souls, Bodies, and The History of Racial Power (Duke UP, 2024). Lee traces the histories of racialization, surveillance, policing, and carcerality from late Medieval Spain, through the development of racial-liberalism and capitalism to the present, asking how these deep histories help us to think of color-line racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia as operating with similar logics, the logic of security/threat or friend/enemy. After a brief foray into Trump’s deployment of the “snake story” and the role of white womanhood in racist fear mongering, we dive into Lee’s main arguments. We discuss the racialized figure of the “converso,” (forcibly converted Jews) and how mistrust and surveillance of the conversos, and also the “mariscos” (forcibly converted Muslims) in the Iberian Peninsula in the 1400s was connected to the rise of the Ottoman Empire and a prelude to the colonization of the Americas. We unpack Lee’s use of the term “ensoulment” as a way to describe how power projects enmity and threat onto certain populations, justifying increased uses of violent policing and political control, such as we saw in the War or Terror and see now under Trumpian fascism. Finally, we turn to nonviolence and abolitionism as the necessary answer to these entrenched systems that target and deeply harm vulnerable populations and our collective hopes for living-with and belonging together. Books mentioned and recommended:Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the PrisonJoshua Cohen, The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous FamilyTo access Lee’s work, go HERE.Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.comComments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.comLee Medovoiis a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Arizona and Founding Chair of the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Social, Cultural and Critical Theory. Lee is the author of Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity (Duke 2005) and of The Inner Life of Race: Bodies, Souls and the History of Racial Power (Duke 2024). He has published widely on global American studies, biopolitical theory, critical race studies, and the environmental humanities. He has also co-edited  a special issue of the journal Social Text with Keith Feldman (UC Berkeley) on the topic of “Race/Religion/War.”Between 2013 and 2016 he was the Principal Investigator for a three-year international Mellon Grant that explored the changing vectors of religion and secularism’s imbrications in political life across the globe. This project resulted in a collection co-edited with Elizabeth Bentley titled  Religion, Secularism and Political Belonging  (Duke, 2021). In 2020, Lee was also the Principal Investigator for a Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar titled Neoliberalism at the Neopopulist Crossroads that explored the social, economic and cultural underpinnings of the rise of far-right populist movements around the world. In 2021-22, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He is currently developing plans for a new book on the environmental unconscious of far-right politics of populist racism. He is also actively involved in the University of Arizona’s Environmental Humanities Consortium.

In episode 21, I speak with writer, musician, and PhD student dena harry saleh. We discuss their father’s childhood experience in the Nakba, their own childhood growing up queer and Palestinian in Denver, and their young-adulthood in New York City. We then turn to two books that take up queer Palestine studies, Decolonial Queering in Palestine, by Walaa Alqaisiya, and Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, by Sa’ed Atshan, and dena talks about their own research goals surrounding queer and trans decolonial praxis in Palestine and in the Palestinian diaspora. We think together about the challenges surrounding decolonial imagining in this time of horrific unspeakable violence in Gaza. dena reads two of their poems as our conversation turns toward both grief and radical hope. We end on the beauty and difficulty of the idea of “utopia” (now and always) and on the concept of “oneness”—how it ties into both Judaism and Islam for us, and how it might offer us a way to think about complicity, responsibility, solidarity, repair and above all, mercy.—Books and other media mentioned or discussedWalaa Alqaisiya, Decolonial Queering in PalestineSa’ed Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of CritiqueSa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor, The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, PalestiniansPeter Beinart, The Beinart Notebook (substack)José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futuritydena harry saleh, “The Intersection of Disability and Genocide”Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman and Julie Carr “The First Principle is the Principle of Lostness” (RTK podcast)

In episode 19, Jennifer Pap and I talk with American-French poet, novelist, and playwright, Leslie Kaplan (born in 1943), whose revolutionary writing we have been translating. As a student, Kaplan participated in the occupation of French factories in ‘68 and the May uprising and general strike that followed. Several years later she resided and worked at La Borde, a radical non-hierarchical psychiatric clinic directed by Jean Oury. Oury was a leading figure in the psychothérapie institutionnelle movement. La Borde attracted major thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Frantz Fanon who were forging meeting places between anti-fascism, revolutionary politics, and psychoanalysis. We read from and talk with Leslie about her first book, Excess-The Factory, about her experience working in the factories, and her third, The Criminal, set at La Borde, both of which we translated into English. Along the way we discuss Leslie’s close relationship with an Auschwitz survivor, the entwining of justice and love, the relationship between the “limit” and the “infinite,” Leslie’s interest in theater and “play,” and the multiple and necessarily unfinished revolutions demanded by our time.We want to acknowledge the very sad passing of writer and revolutionary thinker Joshua Clover (1965-2025), whose press Commune Editions (with Juliana Spahr and Jasper Bernes) published Excess-The Factory in 2018. We remember Joshua with great respect and gratitude.Books and other texts mentioned or discussedLeslie Kaplan, Excess—The Factory, translated by Julie Carr and Jennifer PapLeslie Kaplan, The Book of Skies, translated by Julie Carr and Jennifer papLeslie Kaplan, Ms. Nobody Knows, translated by Jennifer PapLeslie Kaplan, Mathias et la RévolutionJean Oury, “The Hospital is Ill” (interview in Radical Philosophy 143 (May /June 2007)More on Jean Oury and La Borde“Jean Oury and Clinique de La Borde: A Conversation with Camille Robcis”La clinique psychiatrique de La Borde (1971) (Film)—Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.comComments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com

In episode 17, I talk with writer and podcast host David Naimon about his vexed relationship with listening, his childhood experiences of antisemitism, and his decision to leave medical practice behind. Digging into three episodes of his acclaimed literary podcast, Between the Covers, that have deeply affected me—his conversations with Isabella Hammad, Anne de Marcken, and Daniel Mendelsohn—we talk about the ethics of encounter, the stranger within the self, the “others” at the heart of Judaism, and language itself as an other that makes us and is not ours. Along the way we wind ourselves through many writers and topics, from Derrida to Pádraig Ó Tuama, from Edward Said to Judith Butler, from Hélène Cixous to Lyn Hejinian. What Jewish stories might guide us toward an ethical response to Palestine now? What is it to face our own wrongness? Is there such thing as a radical humanism? How are our wounds also our genius? And how might we find ourselves less alone?Texts, interviews and events mentioned and discussedMartin Buber, I and ThouJudith Butler, “Violence, Mourning, Politics,” in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and ViolenceJulie Carr, Real Life: An InstallationHélène Cixous and David Naimon, “Rêvoir” in Between the Covers podcastAnne de Marcken, It Last Forever and then it’s OverJacques Derrida, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation and “Tympan” in Margins of PhilosophySigmund Freud, Moses and MonotheismNatasha Gill, “The Original “No”: Why the Arabs Rejected Zionism and Why it Matters”Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and NarrativeIsabella Hammad and David Naimon, “Recognizing the Stranger” on Between the Covers podcastEdmond Jabès, in Rosemary Waldrop’s Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond JabèsNaomi Klein and David Naimon, “Doppelganger: Part Two” on Between the Covers podcastUrsula K. Le Guin, “Telling is Listening”Emmanuel Levinas, “Ethics and Politics” in The Levinas Reader, edited by Sean HandDaniel Mendelsohn, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and FateDavid Naimon, “Let’s Feel the Pain Together”Pádraig Ó Tuama and Glenn Jordan, Border and Belonging: The Book of Ruth: A Story for Our TimesPádraig Ó Tuama and David Naimon, “In the Shelter * Borders and Belonging” on Between the Covers podcastEdward Said, Freud and the Non-European—“A Middle East Mediator’s Murder in Palestine 1948” video from UN StoryOperation Cast Thy Bread (Wikipedia)“Israel Poisoned Palestinian Land To Build West Bank Settlement in 1970s” in HaaretzMartin Buber’s cultural Zionism—Music composed and performed by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.roberts447@gmail.comComments and ideas to: juliealicecarr@gmail.com

In episode #15 I talk with writer Magdalena Zurawski about her research into her great-grandfather, Czeslaw Kowalczyk’s, story. Arrested by the Nazi’s during the Warsaw Uprising, he was taken to a concentration camp. Magdalena spent 2022-23 on a Fulbright Scholarship in Warsaw, tracking what happened next and growing obsessed with twentieth-century avant-garde Polish writer Miron Białoszewski. We discuss the uprising, which led to the Nazi destruction of Warsaw and the killing of 250,000 Polish people in just two months. We also discuss the earlier Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the burning of the ghetto that followed. Where do history and the imagination meet? What is the nature of truth? And how can you get older Polish women to talk to you on buses? Maggie reads from her powerful (and very funny) work-in-progress.People and histories mentioned and discussedMiron Białoszewski, Poems and SongMiron Bialoszewski, A Memoir of the Warsaw UprisingThe Warsaw Ghetto UprisingThe Warsaw UprisingCzeslaw Milosz, Campo dei FioriIlya Kaminsky, We Lived Happily During the War—Original music by Benjamin Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com

In this final episode of the season, Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman and I talk with Professor Almút Shulamit Bruckstein Çoruh, beginning with her years in the Neo-Hasidic movement studying with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (the founder of Jewish Renewal) and her decades of study in Jerusalem with Talmudic scholar Rabbi HaRav Zev (Walter) Gotthold. We discuss the power and importance of names, the founding of psychoanalysis, and Shulamit’s English translation of, and commentary on, Hermann Cohen’s Ethics of Maimonides (1908). Cohen finds in Maimonides a “non-foundational, anarchic thinking of origin,” in which justice, lovingkindness, and goodness are demanded of us, in which ethics precedes being. Can we still stand-in for this diasporic Jewish humanist tradition, given the relentlessness of genocidal violence in Gaza (and beyond) now? Can Israel (the people) ever divest themselves of Israel (the state)? Is it still possible to “anticipate” human goodness, when humanity is so defiled? We come finally to an extreme hopefulness, turning to art, community, action, and study as pathways toward a re-occupied non-foundational, non-territorial tradition. Again (and again), says Shulamit, we must find the courage to “switch beginnings.”Individuals and texts mentioned and discussed:Almút Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh, “Talmudic War Machine & a Shadow’s Dream”Prof. Almút Sh. Bruckstein Çoruh, “The Talmudic Bride and her Shadow’s Dream, A Letter to the Psychoanalyst of my Beloved” (2022)Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childood around 1900, Translated by Howard EilandRabbi Zalman Schachter-ShalomiRabbi HaRav Zev (Walter) GottholdThe complete correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham (1907-1925). Translated by Caroline SchwarzacherHermann Cohen, Ethics of Maimonides (1908). Translated with commentary by Almut Sh. Bruckstein, (2004)Joseph Sassoon SemahJalal Toufic, The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (2009)Susan Buck-Morss, Revolution Today, (2019)Emily Jacir & Susan Buck-Morss: 100 Notes, 100 Thoughts: Documenta Series (13), (2011)Prof. Almút Sh. Bruckstein ÇoruhTheory artist, writer, founding artistic director of House of Taswir, curator of international exhibitions and artistic research; various professorships in (Jewish) philosophy, visual theory, Taswir studies in Jerusalem, Berlin, Basel, Frankfurt a. M. Founder of the TISCH University (2020) in Berlin and Istanbul (2022). Artistic director of the art and think space Meine Kleine Mnemosyne. Author and editor of numerous publications. Most recent books and exhibitions: Freud. Talmud. Taswir (2019), Wednesday Society. The Couch of Meret O. (Istanbul Biennial/Art Unlimited Istanbul, 2019/2023), Lady Dada Kalam (2017), Fragments From our Beautiful Future (2017), The Red Gaze (2016), House of Taswir. Doing and Undoing Things, Munich: W. Fink, 2014, Taswir. Islamische Bildwelten und Moderne (Gropius Bau Berlin, 2009-2010) among many.Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman (b. Philadelphia 1986) helps make interventions, essays, performances, poems, films, and installations with/in overwritten and denied places and materials, tracing local experience to and from entangled catastrophes. His contributions establish difficult situations for durational contemplation and vernacular rites, manifesting a quiet language of intense proximity over time by tending accidents, anxieties, and memory. Works include Lost in Jüdischer Friedhof Weißensee (2016-19); Night Herons (2018-21), recipient of the 2024 ING Polish Art Foundation Main Prize, created with Joanna Rajkowska; Wierzba Estery / Esther's Willow (2018- ) created with Katarzyna and Marta Sala; and يان الصعود الى السماء Flight Manifesto (2019-2024) created with Dirar Kalash. Listen to Return the Key with Robert here.

Julie talks with Rabbi Caryn Aviv of Denver’s Judaism Your Way. We read and discuss Nelly Sach’s poem “When Day Grows Empty,” talk about how our ancestors leave a “soul-trail” for us to follow, about Jewish Mysticism and Process Theology, about the philosophy of Judaism Your Way, and about Caryn’s book-in-progress Unlearning Jewish Anxiety. Caryn roots American Ashkenazi Jewish anxiety in the early 20th-century when many Jewish immigrants strived to assimilate to whiteness in a violently white-supremacist society, citing works by Jud Brewer, Eric Goldstein, Avery Gordon, and Resmaa Menakem. Caryn offers alternatives to the “persecuted-yet striving” “virtue narrative” in embodied Jewish practices. In a final question we talk about the difficulty of the High Holidays in this year of terrible violence and pain. Caryn emphasizes the need to take responsibility for harm and repair and the imperative that we learn how to forgive.Because Caryn had to run off to officiate a wedding, we conducted our final question over zoom. The closing music is Kol Nidre by Max Bruch, performed by Benjamin Roberts.Texts and authors mentioned and discussed:Jud Brewer Unwinding Anxiety, 2022Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity, 2008Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, 1997, 2008Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies, 2017Rabbi Sheila Peltz WeinbergWhen day grows emptyWhen day grows emptyat dusk,when the imageless time begins, the lonely voices combine—the animals are hunters only or hunted—the flowers mere fragrance—when everything becomes nameless as at the beginning—then you go beneath the catacombs of timethat open for those nearing the end—there where the heart has its inception—down into dark inwardnessyou sink—already past deaththat is only a windy passage—and freezing with exityou open your eyesin which a new staralready has left its reflection—- Nelly Sachs, 1949Rabbi Caryn Aviv (she/her/hers) serves as Rabbinic and Program Director at Judaism Your Way. Caryn loves to create and facilitate transformative Jewish experiences that spark joy and meaning for Jews and loved ones. Prior to becoming a rabbi, Caryn earned a PhD in sociology from Loyola University Chicago in 2002. She taught, mentored students, and published research in Jewish Studies and sociology at University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Denver from 2003-2013 before entering the ALEPH Ordination Program.