Advertise on podcast: The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

J.J. and Dr. Persico study the origin and impact of the idea that humans were created in the Divine image.  Dr. Tomer Persico is a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and a Senior Research Scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Persico was the Koret Visiting Assistant Professor at the UC Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies for three years and has taught for eight years in Tel Aviv University. His fields of expertise include cultural history, the liberal order, Jewish modern identity, Contemporary Spirituality and Jewish fundamentalism. His books include The Jewish Meditative Tradition (Hebrew, Tel Aviv University Press, 2016), Liberalism: its Roots, Values and Crises (Hebrew, Dvir, 2024 and German, NZZ Libro, 2025) and In God's Image: How Western Civilization Was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea (Hebrew, Yedioth,2021, English, NYU Press,2025). Persico is a liberal activist in Israel and has written hundreds of articles on current events for the legacy media, including Haaretz and the Washington Post. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and two sons. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

Does this one really need a description? You know the man. Now learn some more about his ideas and impact.  This series is generously sponsored by Larry and Sarah Krauss in honour and gratitude to Larry's mother, Kato Krauss, and in loving memory of his father, Nathan "Noteh" Krauss. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Sarah’s father, Joe Casse. Yosef ben Zvi v’Koyna. Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum is Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS) where he holds the Rabbi Sacks Chair in Modern Jewish Thought, established by the Zandan family. He is also the Scholar in Residence at the Central Square Minyan in Hampstead. His recent book, Questioning Belief: Torah and Tradition in an Age of Doubt, was a Yeshiva University Prize finalist. Rabbi Zarum hosts the Big Questions of Jewish Belief podcast and travels the globe lecturing in Jewish communities and diverse institutions. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

J.J. and Dr. Miri Freud-Kandel on the twentieth century's most influential, interesting, and controversial Mancunian Jew.  This series is generously sponsored by Larry and Sarah Krauss in honour and gratitude to Larry's mother, Kato Krauss, and in loving memory of his father, Nathan "Noteh" Krauss. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Sarah’s father, Joe Casse. Yosef ben Zvi v’Koyna. Dr. Miri Freud-Kandel is Fellow and Lecturer in Modern Judaism in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. She is also affiliated with the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and is co-convenor of the annual Oxford Summer Institute on Modern and Contemporary Judaism. Her research interests include the development of Orthodox Jewish theologies, particularly concepts of a Modern Orthodox Judaism; the distinctive features of Judaism in Britain; and gender issues in modern Judaism. Aside from her varied contributions to journals and edited collections, she is author of Louis Jacobs & the Quest for a Contemporary Jewish Theology (Liverpool: Littman Library, 2023); Orthodox Judaism in Britain Since 1913: An Ideology Forsaken (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2006) and co-editor of Yitz Greenberg: Modern Orthodoxy and the Path not Taken (Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2019), and Modern Judaism, An Oxford Guide (Oxford: OUP, 2005). If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

J.J. and Dr. Benjamin Elton comment on one of Britain's most influential chief rabbis.  This series is generously sponsored by Larry and Sarah Krauss in honour and gratitude to Larry's mother, Kato Krauss, and in loving memory of his father, Nathan "Noteh" Krauss. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Sarah’s father, Joe Casse. Yosef ben Zvi v’Koyna. Benjamin Elton read history at Queens’ College Cambridge and has a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London in Anglo-Jewish religious history. He has written and lectured on Anglo-Jewish and Australian Jewish history and theology, on Jewish philosophy and architecture, and on contemporary challenges facing the Jewish world. He has Semicha from rabbis in the UK, the USA and Israel and is Rabbi of The Great Synagogue in Sydney. He holds honorary positions at the University of Sydney and the University of Notre Dame, Australia and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of London. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

J.J. and Dr. Edward Kessler progress through the history of Liberal Judaism and its promethian founder, Claude Montefiore.  This series is generously sponsored by Larry and Sarah Krauss in honour and gratitude to Larry's mother, Kato Krauss, and in loving memory of his father, Nathan "Noteh" Krauss. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Sarah’s father, Joe Casse. Yosef ben Zvi v’Koyna. Dr Edward Kessler, MBE is Founder President of the Woolf Institute and a leading thinker in interfaith relations, primarily, Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations. He was described by The Times Higher Education Supplement as 'probably the most prolific interfaith figure in British academia' and was awarded an MBE for services to interfaith relations. He has written or edited 13 books, including An Introduction to Jewish-Christian Relations (Cambridge, 2010), Jews, Christians and Muslims in Encounter (SCM, 2013) and Jesus (The History Press, 2016). His Documentary History of Jewish-Christian Relations was published by Cambridge in 2024. In 2024 he was awarded the Seelisberg Prize for his contribution to fostering Jewish-Christian relations. Kessler regularly appears in the media commenting on religion and belief issues of the day, such as the impact of October 7th 2023 attacks on Israel and the Gaza War on the Leading Podcast, and hosted the weekly podcast Naked Reflections (2020-23). Since 2015, he has been working with local actors in Israel, Palestine and Jordan to agree measures to safeguard Jerusalem's holy places. Kessler also explores the tensions, positive as well as negative, between religion and civil society.   If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

J.J. and Dr. David Ruderman open our series with a discussion about the unique character and interesting characters of the Jewish Enlightenment in England.  This series is generously sponsored by Larry and Sarah Krauss in honour and gratitude to Larry's mother, Kato Krauss, and in loving memory of his father, Nathan "Noteh" Krauss. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Sarah’s father, Joe Casse. Yosef ben Zvi v’Koyna.  David B. Ruderman is the Joseph Meyerhoff Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and the Ella Darivoff Director Emeritus of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books, articles, and reviews, and the recipient of the Koret Jewish Book Award and two National Jewish Book Awards in history. He was also awarded a lifetime achievement award for his work in Jewish history from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. You can access his most recent book for free here: degruyterbrill.com/the-making-of-an-anglo-Jewish-scholar If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

J.J. and Dr. Noam Oren bridge the gap between the analytic philosophical tradition and the Jewish one.  If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Dr. Noam Oren is the Gruss Scholar-in-Residence at the New York University School of Law. His research ranges across analytic philosophy of religion, modern Jewish thought—including the philosophy of Halakhah—and, above all, the points at which these fields converge. He concentrates on the rationality of religious belief and practice and on the dynamic interplay between the two. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

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: Link If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Lawrence 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. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

J.J. and Dr. Daniel Rynhold discuss lonely and halakhic men and minds.  If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Daniel Rynhold is Dean and Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, and director of the Revel doctoral program, having arrived on these shores from London, England, in August 2007. Educated at the universities of Cambridge and London, Dr. Rynhold had previously been a lecturer in Judaism in the department of theology and religious studies at King’s College London, a position he had held since 2001. This followed two years as a lecturer at the renowned Jews’ College of London. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

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  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Rabbi 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. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

J.J. and Dr. Vivian Liska border on the sublime in their discussion of the life and thought of this German-Jewish thinker.  If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Vivian Liska is a Professor of German literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She has published extensively on literary theory, German modernism, and German-Jewish authors and thinkers. Liska’s recent books include Giorgio Agamben’s Empty Messianism (2008), in German, translated into Hebrew (Resling 2010), When Kafka Says We. Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature (2008) and Fremde Gemeinschaft. Deutsch-jüdische Literatur der Moderne (2011). A Hebrew translation of this book is in the making with Hakibbutz Hameuchad. In 2012, she was awarded the Cross of Honor for Sciences and the Arts from the Republic of Austria. She is the (co-)editor of numerous books, among them the two-volume ICLA publication Modernism (2007), which was awarded the Prize of the Modernist Studies Association in 2008; Contemporary Jewish Writing in Europe: A Guide (2007); Theodor Herzl between Europe and Zion (2007); What does the Veil Know? (2009); The German-Jewish Experience Revisited (2015); and Kafka and the Universal (2016). She is the editor of the book series “Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts” (De Gruyter, Berlin), co-editor of the Yearbook of the Society for European-Jewish Literature, and arcadia. International Journal of Literary Studies. Her most recent book German-Jewish Thought and its Afterlife (Indiana University Press) was published in 2017.  If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

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  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Carson 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. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

J.J. and Dr. Alan Mittleman make meaning out of a moment (or two). How does the Jewish tradition handle the big existential question? What does this all mean? Why are we here?  If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Alan Mittleman is the Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Chair in Jewish Philosophy Emeritus at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. He is the author of eight books. His most recent is Absurdity and Meaning in Contemporary Philosophy and Jewish Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2023). His previous book, Does Judaism Condone Violence? Holiness and Ethics in the Jewish Tradition (Princeton, 2018) won the National Jewish Book Award for Modern Jewish Thought and Experience in 2018. Other works include Human Nature and Jewish Thought: Judaism's Case for Why Persons Matter (Princeton, 2015), A Short History of Jewish Ethics (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), and Hope in a Democratic Age (Oxford, 2009). He has edited six books, most recently Jewish Virtue Ethics (SUNY Press, 2023).Prof. Mittleman holds a B.A. (Magna cum Laude) from Brandeis University and an M.A. and Ph.D. (with distinction) from Temple University. He is the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship and served as Guest Research Professor at the University of Cologne (1994 and 1996). He has lectured widely in Germany in over fifty trips to that country. Mittleman received a Harry Starr Fellowship in Modern Jewish History from Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies (1997) and served as Visiting Professor in the Department of Religion at Princeton University (2007). He has received grants from the Herzl Institute and the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, both sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation. In 2020-21, he was a Visiting Fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. In 2023, he was a Senior Fellow at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Hamburg. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

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  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Chaim 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. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts

J.J. and Dr. David Moster take a trip deep down into the tradition of our tradition in search of the true text of the Bible.  If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Dr. David Z. Moster is the Director of the Biblical Hebrew Program at JTS.  He is the Director of the Institute of Biblical Culture (BiblicalCulture.org) and the author of Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Pivot, 2018). He received his Ph.D. in Biblical Studies from Bar-Ilan University, writing on the biblical tribe of Manasseh. He also holds an M.A. in Ancient Israel and Near Eastern History from New York University and a number of degrees (B.A., M.A., M.S., Semikhah) in Hebrew Bible, Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Education, and Rabbinics from Yeshiva University. If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  [email protected]  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 [email protected]  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts