Tradition Podcast

TRADITION’s most recent issue features a special section with short reflective essays on the events of October 7th and the ongoing war in Israel. In this episode, two of those authors meet to discuss the topics touched on in those very personal pieces of writing. Chaim Strauchler engages with Alex S. Ozar, who serves as a rabbi with the Orthodox Union’s JLIC and the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale University. Alex’s essay, “War in Israel, in New Haven” captures the raw emotions, trauma, and fear of last Simhat Torah. He wonders: Is the Golden Age of American Jewry, in fact, over? He shares reflections on the Jewish experience on the Yale campus over the past number of months and what that experience says about the future of American Jewry. Amidst many frightening anecdotes, he communicates optimism about his students and the prospects for future Jewish success. Chaim Strauchler, associate editor at TRADITION, in his essay, considers how we might make the best opportunities of the current crisis, to grow and improve from amidst its ashes. Locating in Maimonides’ teachings a call to accountability he suggests three arenas for discussion: a counter-narrative to the oppressor/oppressed duality; a renewal of Zionism; and ways to heal as a nation and a people. You can read both of these essays open-access in our newest issue.

Because TRADITION has always aspired to be more than a quarterly print journal and aims to help shape the conversation and have an impact in our religious community, about five years ago we broadened our reach by expanding our digital-direct offerings, producing shorter-form original content distributed on TraditonOnline.org and over social media—this includes the podcast, expanded coverage of books and cultural criticism, and a platform to feature new authors. Since December 2022 Yitzchak Blau has been producing “Alt+SHIFT”—that’s the keyboard shortcut allowing us quick transition between input languages on our keyboards. For many readers of TRADITION this is the move from English to Hebrew (and back again). Blau has shared his insider’s look into trends, ideas, and writings in the Israeli Religious Zionist world to help readers from the Anglo sphere gain insight into worthwhile material available only in Hebrew. This series is now heading off on hiatus and we thought it would be a good idea to talk with its author about what he’s accomplished in the 30 installments of the column. Yitzchak Blau, Rosh Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem’s Old City, is an Associate Editor of TRADITION. Later in the episode, we meet Moshe Kurtz, who will be stepping in with a new series, “Unpacking the Iggerot,” exploring themes and topics at the intersection of halakha and hashkafa as they arise from the Iggerot Moshe of R. Moshe Feinstein zt”l. He joins us now for a quick preview of what we can expect from that upcoming series. Kurtz is the Assistant Rabbi at Congregation Agudath Sholom in Stamford, CT, author of Challenging Assumptions, and host of the podcast Shu”T First, Ask Questions Later.

Yisroel Ben-Porat, a doctoral candidate in early American history at CUNY Graduate Center, is writing a doctorate on the Puritans’ use of the Hebrew Bible as a political text. In TRADITION’s recent Fall 2023 issue he offered a historical investigation of an enigmatic early eighteenth-century figure, “Rabbi” Judah Monis—the first known Jewish-born degree recipient and faculty member at Harvard, where he taught Hebrew for almost four decades. Monis converted in advance of his appointment, but seems to have maintained a complicated relationship with the Judaism he left (or tried to leave) behind. The Tradition Podcast spoke with Ben-Porat about this little-known chapter which opens very many questions about American Jewish identity and politics, Antisemitism, and even current events and conflict on the Harvard campus and the halls of Congress (in ways Ben-Porat could not have anticipated when he authored the essay months ago). Read Yisroel Ben-Porat, “Protestant Rabbi: The Conversion of Judah Monis in Colonial Massachusetts,” TRADITION (Fall 2023). Watch a video recording of this discussion.  

Listen to an introduction to TRADITION’s upcoming Winter 2024 issue, with special content related to the ongoing war in Gaza. Jeffrey Saks observes: The initial shock, horror, and trauma of October 7th have in no way abated and all thoughts remain fixed on the “matzav”—our most abnormal situation. Writing from Israel, our editor considers the challenges for our religious community, the heartening reality of Jewish unity, and some sharp questions it poses for our way forward. Listen to this Audio Editor’s Note accompanying the new issue, due to arrive in subscribers’ hands and online next week.

TRADITION’s Summer 2023 issue, recently made fully open access, contained a fascinating offering penned by Michael A. Shmidman, our distinguished editor emeritus, titled “Isadore Twersky’s Unique Contribution to the Study of The Guide of the Perplexed.” It is a presentation and analysis of five integral and interlocking components of Rabbi Professor Isadore (Yitzhak) Twersky’s understanding of Maimonides’ formulation of the relationship between the philosophic tradition and the Oral Law, particularly as expressed in the Moreh Nevukhim. Shmidman suggests that all of Maimonides’ works, as viewed by Twersky, “promote the integration, the blending, the fusion of law and philosophy. We should not bifurcate the most central Jewish figure of the medieval era into Rambam the halakhist and Maimonides the philosopher, but rather view his work as one united entity.” Because R. Twersky’s major scholarly focus was on the Mishneh Torah, his unique contribution to the study of The Guide of the Perplexed is, Shmidman suggests, sadly underappreciated—and that contribution is the focus of this essay. Michael A. Shmidman is Dean and Professor of Jewish History at Touro University Graduate School of Jewish Studies. This most recent essay originated as a lecture at a conference commemorating the 25th yahrzeit of R. Isadore Twersky convened at Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University (on September 11, 2022). We thought our readers would appreciate listening to Shmidman’s talk alongside reading his essay at TraditionOnline.org. The recordings of all the lectures at that daylong event, “Understanding Halakhah, History & Spirituality,” can be found on Revel’s YouTube channel—and we thank our friends at the Bernard Revel Graduate School for sharing this resource with our listeners.

As we continue to wrestle with the state of anxiety for what comes next at this troubling and traumatic time in Israel and around the Jewish world, we take strength from demonstrations of inspiring resilience and unity in our nation. We hope you’ve been following the content recently published on TraditionOnline.org responding to current events. In our upcoming Winter issue we hope to deliver some more substantive writing, tentative and initial as it may be, bringing the lens of Orthodox Jewish thought to bear on this war. In the meantime, as we try to make sense of things while navigating the maze we find ourselves in, we thought it would be useful to check in with TRADITION’s “elder statesman,” Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, whose wisdom, insights, and opinions cast useful light in the darkness—perhaps even more so as he enters the back end of his 10th decade with all the intellectual rigor readers of our pages have been accustomed to since his first early contribution in 1960. (Read all of R. Feldman’s TRADITION articles and columns here.) In this episode R. Feldman chats with our editor Jeffrey Saks about the current Gaza War in light of his memories of the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War; the challenges to Zionism and religious Zionism going forward; and his cautious optimism for a renewed Jewish spirit when the fog clears and we emerge victorious. They also talked about the role of TRADITION as a scholarly journal of ideas at a time such as this. Rabbi Emanuel Feldman served in the rabbinate in Atlanta for over 40 years before making his home in Jerusalem in 1991. He edited TRADITION from 1988 to 2001 and remains a valued counselor to our journal.

“The entire world is a very narrow bridge.” The world, all of life, is a “narrow bridge,” on either side of which is a gaping, terrifying abyss. Someone who does not live this experience cannot understand it. One needs to traverse the bridge, and it is clear from an objective perspective that he is capable of doing so. This is why “the main thing is not to fear at all.” Your greatest enemy is not outside of you, but, rather, inside of you. It is fear itself. So writes Prof. Shalom Rosenberg z”l in his essay “A Narrow Bridge: R Nahman of Breslov’s Faith in a World of Doubt” appearing in TRADITION’s recent Fall 2023 issue. Rosenberg was a distinguished professor of Philosophy and Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University and a widely-regarded public intellectual. He passed away in Jerusalem in March 2023. This essay was, of course, written and sent to press before our current traumatic moment in Israel — what all agree is a time in which we must find faith in a world of confusion and many are plagued by doubt. Because Rosenberg’s essay presents itself to us with such unexpected timeliness, we thought it would be instructive to discuss it with Rabbi Dr. Zvi Leshem, himself a student of Rosenberg. Leshem is the director of the Gershom Scholem Collection for Kabbalah and Hasidism at the National Library of Israel. Read “A Narrow Bridge: R Nahman of Breslov’s Faith in a World of Doubt” (TRADITION, Fall 2023).

During this time of worldwide Jewish unity, TRADITION is pleased to deliver an episode of our podcast co-produced with our friends at Matan: The Sadie Rennert Women’s Institute of Torah Study in Jerusalem. Our recently released Fall 2023 issue features an essay by Dr. Yosefa Fogel Wruble titled “Psalm 139: When God’s Presence Both Overwhelms and Eludes” which explores two exegetical prisms for Psalm 139 and the theological relevance in understanding this mizmor as a form of emotional struggle with God. Of course, when the essay was written, and when we went to press a few weeks ago, no one could have foreseen how its themes would become presciently relevant to our current moment—but that’s often how it is with Torah learning. We thought it would be appropriate to chat with the author about her essay in light of the events on Simhat Torah and the war. Dr. Yosefa Fogel Wruble is a Ramit in the Women’s Beit Midrash at Migdal Oz, a lecturer at Matan, and the host of the 1-on-1 Parsha Podcast from Matan which explores deep thematic points of the weekly Torah portion. For today’s we turn the microphone back on her, making her the guest of this episode, for which she is joined by TRADITION’s associate editor, Rabbi Yitzchak Blau. They discuss the feeling of being overwhelmed by God and the feeling of His absence. Wruble deepens her analysis and the conversation moves in some novel directions: How does the Psalmist’s self-expression compare to the prophetic ambivalence of Jonah and Jeremiah? What are possible responses to our paradoxical experiences of feeling both His presence and absence Which related issues have the current situation brought to the fore? Read “Psalm 139: When God’s Presence Both Overwhelms and Eludes” by Yosefa Fogel Wruble (TRADITION, Fall 2023).

TRADITION and the Rabbinical Council of America brought together authors from our recent issue on “The Yom Kippur War After 50 Years” as they discuss insights from their contributions to our pages and the sudden, tragic timeliness of that issue for events unfolding in Israel. Dr. Shlomo Fischer, Rabbi Jeffrey Saks, Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Sinensky and moderator Mrs. Mali Brofsky. TRADITION has made the content of our entire special “Yom Kippur War After 50 Years” issue (Summer 2023) open access as a special digital book: https://traditiononline.org/the-yom-kippur-war-after-50-years SUBSCRIBE TO THE TRADITION PODCAST Available on iTunes / Spotify / SoundCloud / Stitcher / Google Podcasts

TRADITION’s Fall 2022 issue featured a lengthy essay by Todd Berman exploring a 6-decade-old critique launched by R. Eliezer Berkovits on Dr. Abraham J. Heschel’s “Theology of Divine Pathos.” In brief, the debate centered on Heschel’s contention that a prophet reacts to God’s emotions, that the navi is guided by God’s own feelings. For Berkovits, Heschel errs by aligning himself with the wrong side of the anthropomorphism and anthropopathism debate. Berkovits was a significant figure in mid-century Orthodox Jewish thought and was an important contributor to the pages of TRADITION. A noteworthy curiosity of Berkovits’ critique of Heschel was its appearance with an editorial note expressing some reservation about this “controversial” offering, which “evoked sharp differences of opinion among members of our editorial board,” on which he served as a member at that time. Plus ça change. Berman’s essay, with its defense of Heschel, similarly evoked sharp differences of opinion among our readers. Todd Berman joins the TRADITION Podcast to discuss the underpinnings of the original debate between Berkovits and Heschel; how the Orthodox community’s reception of those ideas has evolved in perhaps surprising ways over the decades; and what aroused his interest in this old episode which turns out to be still quite relevant to contemporary Jewish thought. See Berman’s essay, “Berkovits, Heschel, and the Heresy of Divine Pathos,” with links to Berkovits’ original 1964 article, the array of reactions generated among our readers, and Berman’s response. Rabbi Todd Berman is the Director of Institutional Advancement and a Ram at Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi.