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“Spinoza’s universe is crisscrossed by flows of power like tides that sweep into space before departing.” This sentence, from a talk Kenneth Novis recently gave about Gilles Deleuze and Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) frames our conversation about Spinoza’s theories of God-nature-substance, virtue and ethics, power, self-contentment, joy, sadness and especially desire. We begin with Kenneth’s education in Edinburgh and Oxford, his work on Spinoza, Simone Weil, Deleuze and Bayle. After briefly discussing the ideological stranglehold on the study of Marxism in the UK and the special brilliance of twelve-year-olds, we turn to Spinoza’s biography—his early life in the Sephardic Jewish community of Amsterdam, the writ of herem against him, and his subsequent life spent mostly in solitude in The Hague. We touch on the question of whether Spinoza was a theist, a pantheist, or an atheist and we query the influence of Maimonides and Kabbala on his thinking. In the second half of the conversation Kenny explains that for Spinoza, desire (which for him can be objectless!) is both one of the primary affects and our essence. We “undergo desire “but “it is also what we are, it is our essence.” Not only this, desire is also the essence of all things, from animals to trees to even chunks of granite! How might ethics or virtue derive from such a capacious understanding of desire and its status? This episode was recorded during the day before Yom Kippur. For this reason, we end with Ben playing Kol Nidre. Texts / scholars mentioned and discussed: A.W. Moore Caroline Warman A Philosopher and a Child: Does Infinity Exist? (Warning: if you click on this you might not be able to leave) Louis Althusser on Spinoza  Pierre Bayle, An Historical and Critical Dictionary  (pub date is 1697, not ‘99 as stated) Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks Steve Nadler René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy Alexander Douglas, The Philosophy of Hope: Beatitude in Spinoza Matthew Kisner Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Music by Ben Roberts : [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected]

In episode #38 I talk with painter, poet, and renowned scholar of philosophy and Jewish mysticism, Elliot Wolfson. We begin by touching on Elliot’s relationship with Kabbalah “beyond” the scholarship, even while he insists that no absolute division can be made between the practitioner and the scholar: “textual interpretation itself is a modality of ecstatic experience.” After acknowledging the short barrier of celebrity fascination with Kabbalah, Elliot offers a general history of Jewish mysticism, and defines some key Kabbalist terms: ein sof, sephirot, emanation, tzimtzum, reshimu, and the “breaking of the vessels.” We then move to a conversation about the concept of the infinite and the dynamic between the infinite and the finite, which includes questions about the relationship between good and evil and between judgment (din) and loving-kindness (chesed). Bob Dylan comes up (“there is violence in the eyes, girl”) as we think about the problem of desire. We touch on Elliot’s description of time as a “linear circularity,” and on the problem of speaking about what cannot be said except by un-saying. As Elliot has written on the first page of his newest book, Apophasis and Envisioning the Invisible: Unveiling Veils of Infinity, “Whatever scheme the inquisitive mind proposes to corroborate the contours of infinity, it is always at an infinite distance from the goal it seeks to achieve,” which is to say, this conversation is of necessity unfinished. We hope to continue. A note: towards the end of the conversation, we talk briefly about tikkun olam (to repair the world) and Jewish messianism. We did not have time to go into these important themes in any depth, but it should be said, as a corrective to my too quick summary, that the concept of tikkun olam is at the heart of the long traditions of Jewish commitments to social justice and is not the same thing as Jewish messianism, which itself has a wide range of interpretations and applications. For some past conversations that touch on these themes see episodes 33 with Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, 30 with Daniela Naomi Molnar, and 13 with Almút Shulamit Bruckstein Çoruh. Future conversations will return to these themes and their endlessly complex meanings and manifestations. Texts / authors mentioned and Discussed: Sefer Yetzirah at the Sefaria Library Moses Maimonides, The Guide to the Perplexed Translated and with Commentary by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman Plotinus, The Six Enneads The Zohar Daniel C. Matt Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbols Emmanuel Levinas, introduction to French editions of Nefesh ha-Hayyim, L'Âme de la Vie Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem Elliot R. Wolfson, a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many publications including most recently The Duplicity of Philosophy’s Shadow: Heidegger, Nazism and the Jewish Other(2018); Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiēsis(2019); Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality(2021); The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes: Between Nihilism and Hope(2023); Nocturnal Seeing: Hopelessness of Hope and Philosophical Gnosis in Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod(2025); Apophasis and Envisioning the Invisible: Unveiling Veils of Infinity(2026). His most recent work is Mystical Nihilism, Theopolitical Agnosis, and the Atheology of Faith: A Philosophical Defense of Nothing. Music by Ben Roberts: [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected]

In episode #37 I talk with scholar and poet Ben Meyerson about his research and writing surrounding “voice” in diasporic song. Ben researches three musical forms: Troubadour lyric, Sephardic Romanzas, and Flamenco song, all of which originate from the Iberian Peninsula, dating from the 11th century to the present. Ben addresses some of the problems in theories of “voice” from thinkers such as Deleuze and Adriana Cavarero, who, he argues, in seeking to universalize “voice” risk losing track of individual, historical, cultural and physical voices. Ben’s interest lies in the complex ways that the singing voice can both protest particular historical losses and draw listeners into its community. We discuss and read from an essay we both deeply revere, Nathaniel Mackey’s “Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol” and we talk about Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation as articulating how voice/voices can both be “in relation” while also maintaining “rootedness.” Finally, Ben reads one of his own poems and speaks about how his research is connected to his Jewish identity. In this poetics-enthusiast’s episode, we also touch on Kristeva, Doug Kearney, Lorca, and Moten. A special treat: we listen to a live recording of New York-based Flamenco singers Juan Pedro Jimenez, Barbara Martinez, and Jackson Scott, courtesy of Tara Laraway’s Salon of the Bittersweet. Listen to the end for that! Texts / authors mentioned and Discussed Adriana Cavarero, For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza Gilles Deleuze,Difference and Repetition Federico García Lorca,Theory and Play of the Duende Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation Douglas Kearney, Optic Subwoof Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language Nathaniel Mackey, “Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol” Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem Benjamin Meyerson, Seguiriyas Benjamin Meyerson, “Over-Abundance and Ineffability: Flamenco, Mysticism and the Joyful Language-Game” Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening Michel Serres, The Birth of Physics Steven J. Zipperstein, Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. Ben Meyerson is the author of the poetry collection Seguiriyas (Black Ocean, 2023) and five prior chapbooks: Near Enough (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023), After Boabdil (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2023), An Ecology of the Void (Above/Ground Press, 2019), Holcocene (Kelsay Books, 2018) and In A Past Life (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2016). He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and an MA in philosophy from the Universidad de Sevilla. He is currently a PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Toronto, where he studies oral poetries of the Iberian Peninsula and philosophies of material complexity.  INTRO Music by Ben Roberts : [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected]

In episode #36 I talk with Lebanese-American poet, author, and contemplative educator, Moudi Sbeity. His forthcoming memoir, Habibi Means Beloved, has many stories including foundational experiences of loneliness which become, for Moudi, sources of wisdom and belonging. Moudi talks about growing up in Lebanon, just after the civil war, as a gay kid who stuttered. He discusses what stuttering teaches him about the value and power of words, their ability to not just describe but to create our reality. We talk about his process of coming out in Lebanon and why he felt he had to “break up with God” in order to do so. At age 18, because of the 2006 Israel-Lebanese war, Moudi (an American citizen) was evacuated to live with family in Utah. We talk about Moudi’s complicated feelings about being a plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the case which brought marriage equality to Utah and the 10th circuit states. In 2020, Moudi found his way back to Islam through Sufism, and on his own terms. I ask him what God is to him (and he answers!). We end by asking whether “God-stuff” is “only” language, and if so, what does that actually mean? And then, we read each other some poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and by Moudi! Poems read or cited Wendel Berry, Our Real Work Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty John O'Donohue, Fluent Moudi Sbeity, Bread and Salt Moudi Sbeity, "My Country Is This Page" Music by Ben Roberts : [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected]

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 of 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 discussed Key figures in South Asian and Postcolonial Studies: Gayatri Spivak Partha Chatterjee Dipesh Chakrabarty Dalit Scholars: Chinnaiah Jangam M.S.S. Pandian Braj Raj Mani Hawai'i scholar and activist: Haunani-Kay Trask Indigenous 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 : [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected]

In episode #34 I talk with poet, artist, translator and scholar Jennifer Scappettone about her new book, Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism, in which she explores the power of a planetary, xenoglossic poetry of resistance—which is to say, a polyglot poetry that rejects mastery in favor of strangeness, a poetry that exposes how we are all outside of language, speaking and writing in waywardness and errancy. We begin with Jen’s multicultural and translingual upbringing on Long Island, her childhood obsession with the Statue of Liberty, and her time living in Japan as a young adult. We recall our years together as graduate students, and I take the opportunity to confess how I envied and was intimidated by Jen during that time, emotions that eventually transformed into admiration and love. We talk about the complexities of “contamination”: the powerful and necessary contaminations of all languages and cultures as they interact, counterposed against a literal contamination that forms one of Jen’s other obsessions, registered in her work on environmental injustice: the dangerous and often deadly contamination of the land. Jen reads us a poem by the Italian-Jewish poet and musician/musicologist Amelia Rosselli and speaks about Rosselli’s remarkable biography growing up in an antifascist Irish-English/Italian family. Along the way we (of course) speak of our mothers, ask how we might wrest a complicated and difficult beauty from the diseases of our time, and somehow arrive at Genesis I:2 (in multiple translations) and the question of the plurality (infinite) of God(s). Texts and people discussed: Etel Adnan Theodor Adorno, “On Lyric Poetry and Society” Don Mee Choi Lyn Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry Lyn Hejinian, The Beginner Amelia Rosselli: Locomotrix: Selected Poetry and Prose of Amelia Rosselli, a Bilingual Edition Sawako Nakayasu Jennifer Scappettone, The Republic of Exit 43: Outtakes & Scores from an Archaeology and Pop-Up Opera of the Corporate Dump Jennifer Scappettone works at the confluence of the literary, translational, visual, and scholarly arts, and is Professor of English and romance languages, gender studies, and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization at the University of Chicago, where she directs the Environmental Arts+Humanities Lab. She is the author of five full-length books, including the scholarly monographs Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascismand Killing the Moonlight: Modernism in Venice. Her chapbooks include SMOKEPENNY LYRICHORD HEAVENBRED: 2 Acts(The Elephants) featuring librettos for mixed-reality performance with Judd Morrissey and Ava Aviva Avnisan, and as curating poet, with Etel Adnan and Lyn Hejinian, Belladonna Elders Series #5: Poetry, Landscape, Apocalypse (Belladonna, 2009). Both are available for download, free of charge. Her current project devoted to the “copper lyre” subtending telecommunications networks, Pennies from Nether, was a finalist for the 2024 Creative Capital Award in Literature.  Music by Benjamin Roberts: [email protected] comments and questions: [email protected]

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: Essays poupeh missaghi, “When Bombs Fall: Saying Yes to Life” Aurora Levins Morales Susan 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 Year Rabbi 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 Ruins Music by Ben Roberts : [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected]

In episode #32 poet Rob Fitterman reads from and talks about two of his books: Holocaust Museum (Counterpath 2013), made entirely of captions from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s photo archive, and Creve Coeur (Winter Editions 2024), a “translation” of William Carlos Williams’ epic poem Paterson. Following Williams’ form line-by-line, Rob exposes the deep history of anti-Black racism in St. Louis, especially in regards to housing policy. Along the way we discuss his experiences growing up in a lower middle-class Jewish family in suburban St. Louis and his youthful (and continued) fascination with the poetry of “coterie” or group. We revisit the heated conversation around appropriation in poetry and art and consider the “empire-impulse” of some US conceptual poetry. How does “failure hallucinate repair” (Paul Chan’s line)? Why does some art about atrocities elicit a feeling of responsibility and not just empathy? And how might the “I” in a poem be just another “passenger on the bus” and not its driver? Texts, films, videos and people mentioned and discussed: Paul Chan Rob Fitterman reading from Holocaust Museum, Counterpath Denver, 2013 (video) Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States Jacques Ranciere The Emancipated Spectator Charles Reznikoff, Holocaust Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law Andrzej Wajda, Katyn (film) Frederick Wiseman films William Carlos Williams, Paterson 1917 East St. Louis Massacre (video) Music by Ben Roberts : [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected] Robert Fitterman is the author of 16 books of poetry. His most recent book, Creve Coeur, is a long poem published with Winter Editions (2024). Other titles include: This Window Makes Me Feel (Ugly Duckling Presse), No, Wait. Yep. Definitely Still Hate Myself. (UDP), Nevermind (Wonder Books) and Rob the Plagiarist (Roof Books). His long poem, Metropolis, was published in 4 volumes between 2000-2010: Sprawl: Metropolis 30A (Make Now Press, 2009), Metropolis 30: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edge Books, 2004), Metropolis 16-29 (Coach House, 2002), Metropolis 1-15 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000), He has collaborated with several visual artists, including Serkan Ozkaya, Nayland Blake, Sabine Herrmann, Natalie Czech, Tim Davis, and Klaus Killisch. He is the founding member of the artists-poets collective, Collective Taskwww.collectivetask.org. Fitterman's poetry has been described as reaching for a new lyricism by composing with found language reconstructed to articulate a subjective, “personal” relationship to social themes. His books are often single book-length poems with broad critiques of institutions: e.g., social media, online forums, museums, reviews, etc. He lives in New York City and teaches writing at New York University.

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 Democracy Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Religious Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children God and Country (film), directed by Dan Partland, written by Katherine Stewart The April Institute Andrew 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 Schmitt The Claremont Institute The Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, University of Colorado Boulder The 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 : [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected] Katherine 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 #30 with Daniela Naomi Molnar, we begin our wide-ranging conversation by discussing Daniela’s work with the media of “color, water, language, and place,” which is focused around both human and earth-based memory. We talk about and read from her book Protocols: an Erasure, an erasure of Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We discuss this source-text and its ongoing place in the history of antisemitism, and what it meant to engage it so deeply. We then move into the multi-modal project, “Memory of a Larger Mind.” Daniela speaks about her four grandparents, all of whom survived Nazi concentration camps, and how her very close relationship with her grandmother, Rosalie, pressed her to work directly with the land of former camps where she makes pigments from what is now found there— flowers, weeds, rocks, and bones. In recent projects, Daniela works with glaciers and former glaciers as material for pigments, poems and other artworks. Along the way we talk about two kinds of power, that which feeds on fear and leads to violence, and that which resides in the unknowable, the invisible, and the nothing (the ein sof) that is in and all around us. This leads to a conversation about mysticism and “justice” and how they might be entangled. Music by Ben Roberts : [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected] Links Rabbi Lawrence Kushner: “Kabbalah and Everyday Mysticism.” On Being podcast, May 15, 2014. Tilke Elkins Dany S. Adams, PhD “The Face of a Frog” (video) Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet and artist who creates with color, water, language, and place. Her art centers on memory — planetary, cultural, familial, and personal. She works with pigments she makes from plants, bones, stones, and specific waters such as rainwater and glacial melt. Poems and essays are created alongside the visual art; the practices overlap and influence each other. Her debut bookCHORUS won the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Poetry, followed by PROTOCOLS: An Erasure, currently shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award. Forthcoming books include Memory of a Larger Mind, a book written with glaciers (Omnidawn, 2026), Light / Remains, a book of visual art, poems, and essays, and The World is Full, a book considering love as a political, relational, and internal force. Her work has been published and shown widely, is in public and private collections internationally, and is featured in theLos Angeles Times,PBS Oregon Art Beat,Oregon Encyclopedia,The Creative Independent, andPoetry Daily. She founded the Art + Ecology program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2016 and helped start and run the backcountry artist residency Signal Fire from 2008-2023. Her work leads her to far-flung places but she loves orbiting back to her studio where the forest meets the city in Portland, Oregon. www.danielamolnar.com / Instagram: @daniela_naomi_molnar A note: In this episode I mention the murder of Renee Nicole Good, which had just occurred, though I fail to name her. May her memory be a blessing.

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 Meaning TransMaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings What Flashes Up: Theological-Political-Scientific Fragments Walter 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 International Chris Marker, Sans Soleil Kelly Reichardt, Certain Women Ava 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.

Episode #28 brings a special New Year’s treat: music! We peek behind the scenes as I talk with musician Ben Roberts, who happens to be my son, about the music for Return the Key. Ben talks about his passion for Irish folk music, what goes on in an Irish session, and what he learned playing Bach for people on their porches during the pandemic. We get into the relationship between emotions and music and the mystery of melody as we listen to and discuss four of our favorite RTK pieces. What is the difference between “fixing” and “exploring”? What happens when we orient toward the good? And what does it mean to feel “at home” in a music from another culture far away? At the end of the hour, Ben performs a Ukrainian folk tune on his cello, with a nod to our Jewish Ukrainian ancestors. Ben Roberts is a multi-instrumentalist and composer living in New York City. He has performed or recorded with Jon Battiste, MGK, Zoe Loyd, Esperanza Spalding, Flamenco dancer Tara Laraway and many others, and has led nearly every mainstay Irish session in New York and Boston. You can hear him on Tuesdays from 8-11 at Putnam’s Pub, 419 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn NY. https://www.instagram.com/benroberts447/

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 mentioned Moses Maimonides: The Guide to the Perplexed: a New Translation, Translated and with Commentary by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman Marc-Alain Ouaknin, The Burnt Book: Reading the Talmud Jeffrey Veidlinger, In the Midst of Civilzed Europe: The 1918-1921 Pogroms in Ukraine and the Onset of the Holocaust YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Music by Ben Roberts: [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected]

In episode 26, I talk with Anas Qutob and Dave Snyder of Minneapolis about their friendship and their work as leaders in the Minnesota chapter of Friends of Standing Together—a grassroots progressive organization of Israeli Jews and Palestinians dedicated to peace, justice, and social transformation. Anas speaks of his childhood growing up during the Israeli invasion of his home city, Nablus, in the West Bank, and about working his way through law school before becoming a labor organizer in Minneapolis. Dave, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and a longtime social justice organizer, speaks of his journey toward deep commitment to the Palestine justice movement. We talk what Standing Together means to us and about the sacred work of friendship grounded in listening, in mutual recognition of suffering, and in working relentlessly for change. We end by reading a section of one of Mahmoud Darwish’s final poems, “Mural,” in both Arabic and English. “One day I will be what I want” is a line from “Mural” in John Berger and Rema Hammami’s translation. Standing Together’s Theory of Change Mahmoud Darwish, Mural, trans. John Berger and Rema Hammami Music by Ben Roberts: [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected] Anas J. Qutob was born and raised in Nablus (Shechem), Palestine. The son of a repatriated refugee born in exile in 1969, his family returned from Jordan to the Old City of Nablus in 1974, where they lived until 2007. His father, a tailor, supported the family through years of political and social upheaval. Anas earned his law degree in 2017 and joined the Palestinian Bar Association in 2020, practicing civil and criminal law in the West Bank until moving to the United States in 2023. He now works as an Organizer with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa’s Member Action Center and is a Co-founder of Minnesota Friends of Standing Together (FoST–Israel/Palestine). He currently lives in Minneapolis with his turtle shell cat.  Dave Snyder grew up in Minneapolis, the grandson of Holocaust survivors who fled Austria in 1939. He has spent the last 30 years as a campus living wage activist, labor organizer with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union local 7, housing justice organizer and then deputy director of Jewish Community Action (JCA), convenor of the Minnesota Asset Building Coalition (MABC), then statewide program director for “Family Assets for Independence in Minnesota” (FAIM). Dave has served on the Board of Directors of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Unidos MN, and as co-founder of the MN chapter of Friends Of Standing Together (FOST) - Israel/Palestine. Dave lives in Richfield with his wife Kristy, plus two massive teens, two obnoxious puppies, and two persnickity cats.

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 Reckoning Peter Beinart and Angela Davis, “What a Lifetime of Struggle Taught Angela Davis” on The Beinart Notebook podcast Daniel Boyarin, The No State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky Marjorie N. Feld, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism Michael Gold, Jews Without Money Geoffrey Levin, Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978 Shaul Magid, The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint Myron Perlman and The Chutzpah Collective Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Black Power movement Music by Ben Roberts: [email protected] Comments and ideas to [email protected]