The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

J.J. and Dr. Lawrence Kaplan analyze the life and thought of Joseph B. Soloveichik through the lens of Halakha.The new edition of Halakhic Man (edited, annotated, and introduced by Dr. Kaplan) is available for purchase here: LinkIf you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsLawrence Kaplan is Professor of Rabbinics and Jewish Philosophy in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University, and a leading scholar in both medieval and modern Jewish Thought. He is best known for his studies of Soloveitchik and for his translation from the Hebrew of Soloveitchik’s classic Ish ha-Halakhah (Halakhic Man), lauded by scholars as the gold standard for Soloveitchik translations.

J.J. and Dr. Martin Lockshin discuss the (not so) plain and simple ideas of Rabbi Samuel ben Meir of Troyes, a leading Tosafist and grandson to Rashi. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsRabbi Dr. Martin Lockshin is University Professor Emeritus at York University and lives in Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University and his rabbinic ordination in Israel while studying in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav Kook. Professor Marty Lockshin ’s primary area of scholarly expertise and writing is the history of Jewish biblical interpretation, particularly the interplay between tradition and innovation. Most of his research has been centred on those medieval biblical commentators who valued tradition intellectually, who lived traditional lives and who still innovated unabashedly in their understanding of the Bible. The largest part of his scholarship has been about Samuel ben Meir (12th century Northern France), a traditionalist Bible commentator with an uncanny knack for offering new understandings of biblical texts—his conclusions are often strikingly similar to the “discoveries” of biblical critics seven or eight hundred years later. Marty has published a 4-volume English annotated translation of Rashbam’s major work and also a 2-volume annotated Hebrew edition. His interest in biblical interpretation has led him to study Jewish-Christian relations, since Jews and Christians over the ages had both competitive and (at times) cooperative approaches to the study of their sacred Scripture.

J.J. and Dr. Carson Bay crack open this recondite work of Jewish history and myth-making . If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsCarson Bay is a scholar of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian antiquity whose interests and expertise span across languages and literatures of the ancient Mediterranean and medieval Europe. Before joining UATX in 2025 he was a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and a post-doctoral fellow within the international project Co-Produced Religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. He was previously a post-doc at the University Bern, Switzerland, where he was part of the Swiss National Science Foundation research project Lege Josephum! Ways of Reading Josephus in the Latin Middle Ages. After a B.S. in Biblical Studies at Moody Bible Institute – Spokane and an M.A. in Theology & Religious Studies a John Carroll University, he completed an M.A. in Classics and a Ph.D. in Religions of Western Antiquity at Florida State University, during which time he spent a year as a Fulbright Graduate Fellow at the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum of the University of Münster, Germany. Grounded in the writings and methods of Classics and Biblical Studies, his research and teaching target broad questions of how texts, language, and concepts interact with individuals, society, and culture, historically and today. He specializes in the Greek writings of Flavius Josephus and their reception in Latin, Syriac, Hebrew, and other languages.

J.J. and Dr. Chaim Saiman compare the two dominant modes of Jewish legal transmission, and put them in conversation with global legal traditions. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsChaim Saiman is a scholar of Jewish law, insurance law and private law and published Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law with Princeton University Press. Saiman has served as the Gruss Visiting Professor of Talmudic Law at both Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, a visiting fellow at Princeton University and a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, Bar-Ilan, Hebrew University, IDC and Pepperdine University faculties of law. Saiman sits as a rabbinical court judge (dayyan) with the Beth Din of America and serves as an expert witness in insurance law and Jewish law in federal court. Saiman received his BS from Georgia State University and his JD from Columbia University School of Law. He also studied for a number of years at Yeshivat Har-Etzion (Gush) and Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh in Israel. Prior to joining the faculty at Villanova, he was an Olin Fellow at Harvard Law School a Golieb Fellow at NYU Law School, a law clerk to Judge Michael McConnell on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and worked as a corporate associate with the firm Cleary Gottlieb in New York. At Villanova, Saiman teaches contracts, insurance law, insurance coverage disputes, Jewish law and arbitration.

J.J. and Dr. Hindy Najman on authorship, authority, and the creation of the Jewish canon. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsHindy Najman (MA and PhD Harvard, NELC) is the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture and a fellow at Oriel College. She is the director and founder of the Centre for the Study of the Bible in Oriel College. In the University of Oxford, she is a member of the faculty of Theology and Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and member of the Sub-faculty Classics, and a member of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Prior to her joining the faculty in Oxford, she has held posts at the University of Notre Dame, University of Toronto, and Yale University. Her areas of research are entanglement of Ancient Culture; Reading Practices in Jewish Antiquity; Comparative Philology; Performance; Formation of the Self and the Subject; Collection and Canon; Authority and Author Function; Biblical Figures and Exemplarity; Practices of Pseudepigraphy and Pseudonymous Attribution; Revelation; Diaspora and Exile; Trauma Studies; and Nature and Law. Her major publications include Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014; Past Renewals: Interpretive Authority, Renewed Revelation, and the Quest for Perfection. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 53. Leiden: Brill, 2010.; Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 77. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Reissued in paperback by the Society of Biblical Literature in April 2009. She has published over 50 articles and has edited 20 volumes. She has contributed as editor and associate editor to a variety of journals and book series, among them are Journal of Biblical Literature from; Dead Sea Discoveries and the Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series. Her most recent monograph has appeared in December 2024 with Oxford University Press, Scriptural Vitality: Rethinking Hermeneutics and Philology. In current projects are on Pluriformity and hermeneutics, Metathinking in Ancient Judaism, and Aesthetics and Poetics in ancient Jewish Song.

J.J. and Dr. Shmuel Feiner tell tales of 1782 CE, a turning point in Modern Jewish History. This episode is sponsored by the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, a leading academic program in Jewish Studies. For information on admission and course offerings, including generous scholarships, please visit gsjs.touro.edu/history/ or get in touch by calling 212-463-0400, ext. 55580 or emailing karen.rubin@touro.eduIf you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at podcasts@torahinmotion.org 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsShmuel Feiner is Modern Jewish History Professor Emeritus at The Department of Jewish History, Bar Ilan University, Israel. He is the Chairperson of The Historical Society of Israel. Shmuel Feiner was born in Tel Aviv (1955) and studied at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (BA, 1980, MA, 1984, PhD 1990). After receiving the Alon scholarship he joined the Jewish History Department at Bar Ilan University, Jewish Studies Faculty. He is full Professor from 2001. Between 2001-2004 he served as Head of Department, and until 2023 as the Head of The Samuel Braun Chair for the History of the Jews in Germany. He retired from teaching in 2023. He published many books in Hebrew and English on the history of the Jewish Enlightenment in Central and Eastern Europe, on the origins of Jewish secularization, and on the Jewish Kulturkampf in the 19th Century. His biography of Moses Mendelssohn was published in Hebrew, English, German and Chinese. Recently he completed a two volume project: The Jewish Eighteenth Century, A European Biography (Indiana University Press).Shmuel Feiner is editor of “Zion” (Jewish History), served as the Chairperson of the Jerusalem Leo Baeck Institute, and the recipient of the Koret Jewish Book Award in History (2004), The Meyer Struckmann Prize (2007), the Shazar Prize, and the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (2011-2012).

J.J. and Dr. Jeremy Fogel reflect on the oneness of nature, the nature of oneness, and particularism vs. universalism in the thought of Benedict Spinoza, Moses Mendellsohn, and Hermann Cohen. This is the fourth episode in our miniseries about universalism and particularism in Judaism. Over the course of the series we will explore and complicate Jewish attitudes to these categories across the centuries. 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsJeremy Fogel is a senior faculty member in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel Aviv University. He is also the academic director of Alma Home for Hebrew Culture and a faculty member in the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture. In addition, Jeremy lectures on philosophy in a variety of public forums and records popular podcasts on cultural and academic topics. Among his books are "Tel Aviv is Water and Other Seasidian thoughts" (Haba Laor, 2019) and Jewish Universalisms (Brandeis University Press, 2023).

J.J. and Dr. Marc Hirshman dissect the schools of R. Akiva and R. Yishmael to understand the central rabbinic arguments about universalism and particularism. This is the second episode in our miniseries about universalism and particularism in Judaism. Over the course of the series we will explore and complicate Jewish attitudes to these categories across the centuries. 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsMarc Hirshman is Mandel Professor Emeritus at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a visiting professor at a number of leading American universities, including Columbia University, University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and the University of Notre Dame. Additionally, he was a Starr Fellow at Harvard, a Joyce Zeger Greenberg Fellow at University of Chicago and a Strauss Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity (1995) and The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture 100 C.E.–350 C.E.: Texts on Education in their Late Antique Context (2009).

J.J. and Dr. Michael Satlow offer an authentic account of this apocryphal book of wisdom literature. 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsProfessor Michael L. Satlow (Ph.D. in Ancient Judaism from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America) specializes in the history of Jews and Judaism in antiquity but also writes and teaches more broadly. His most recent authored book is How the Bible Became Holy and has recently edited two volumes, Judaism and the Economy: A Sourcebook and Strength to Strength: Essays in Honor of Shaye J. D. Cohen. He has held fellowships from the NEH, ACLS, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Fulbright program among others. He also directs several digital projects, including Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine.

J.J. and Dr. Shlomo Zuckier offer up some sweet-smelling insight into the history and future of sacrifices. 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsShlomo Zuckier is a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and will this coming year be the Igor Kaplan Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on ancient Judaism, and he has written extensively on matters of sacrifice and atonement, including in the article on “Sacrifice” for the Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy. Some of his other research relates to intersections between Judaism, Christianity and Islam in Late Antiquity and the early Medieval period, and to contemporary Jewish theology. Shlomo received his PhD from Yale University and rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University and has previously served as a postdoctoral fellow at McGill and Notre Dame Universities.

J.J. and Dr. Jeffrey Blutinger discuss the work and impact of the most influential Jewish Historian since Josephus. 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsJeffrey C. Blutinger is the inaugural holder of the Barbara and Ray Alpert Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Director of the Jewish Studies Program, an interdisciplinary major and minor established in 1999. He is the author of numerous articles on such varied topics as Holocaust education in Israel, post-Communist Holocaust memorialization, the reception of science in Hebrew-language Enlightenment newspapers, and the origins of the term “orthodox” as a denominational label among Jews. Most recently, he has published two articles: a study of Kevin MacDonald, one of the most influential anti-Jewish, white nationalist academics in contemporary America, and an examination of how Bruno Balz, a gay German lyricist persecuted by the Nazis, came to write the most popular songs of the home front during the last years of World War II. He has recently written an intellectual biography of the great nineteenth-century Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz and the book manuscript is undergoing peer review. He also has a chapter on leftwing academic antisemitism in the California State University system accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed volume.

J.J. and Dr. Adam Ferziger crisscross the Atlantic to better understand the influence of American Orthodoxy on Israel, and vice versa. Buy the book: Agents of Change by Dr. Adam FerzigerFollow 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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcastsAdam S. Ferziger holds the Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Chair in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University. He is coconvener of the Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism, University of Oxford. Ferziger is a scholar of Jewish religious culture in the U.S. and Israel. His research focuses on the history of Jewish religious responses to modern and contemporary life.He is the author or editor of eight books including: Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) and Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism (Wayne State University Press, 2015), which received the 2015 National Jewish Book Award. His new monograph, Agents of Change: American Jews and the Transformation of Israeli Judaism (NYU Press, 2025), will be available from July 2025.Ferziger received his B.A., M.A., and rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University, and, after moving to Israel in 1987, his Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan.