The Oral Talmud

Institute for the Next Jewish Future
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An exploration of the Talmud through the “traditionally radical” lens pioneered by Benay Lappe. Whether you are a beginner to Talmud study or a long-time learner, by listening in on Benay Lappe’s study partnership with Dan Libenson as they explore foundational stories and material from the Talmud, you will discover the how-to manual that the ancient Rabbis left behind for future generations to help us re-imagine a new version of Judaism after the previous version “crashes.”

  1. vor 2 Tagen

    Episode 59: Is Dignity Greater than Torah?

    “It is preferable to break, violate a prohibition in the Torah, anything the Torah says don't do, you can actually go ahead and do it if by not doing it you would cause someone significant indignity or disrespect.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  What if the most radical idea in the Talmud has been hiding in plain sight? A tiny legal principle expands into a sweeping claim: human dignity may override the Torah itself. Suddenly the conversation is no longer about funerals, ritual purity, or wool and linen. It's about whether preserving human beings matters more than preserving the rules. But the rabbis seem nervous about their own conclusion. One generation opens the door to a breathtaking vision of dignity, while another works frantically to narrow it, qualify it, and explain it away. We follow an argument from ancient mourning rituals to modern constitutional law, asking whether Judaism's most expansive ideas survive precisely because they were never completely erased. This week’s text: Berakhot 19b Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

    Episode 59: Is Dignity Greater than Torah?

  2. 20. Juli

    Episode 58: Living After the End of the World

    “That's what Rabbi Yitzchak is saying, once the temple is destroyed, we are all in a state of unhealthy living, and our desires can only be satisfied in forbidden ways.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  The rabbis began with a thought experiment about a lovesick man, which we discussed last week, and they end their analysis with something far stranger: the suggestion that the entire world has been broken ever since the Temple fell. Maybe that man wasn’t sick with love at all. Maybe he’s simply human. His desires are disordered, his longings are misplaced, and his inability to find satisfaction becomes a mirror for everyone else. What starts as a legal argument about one troubled man gradually turns into a meditation on what it means to live after a catastrophe. Along the way, we stumble into questions far beyond sex. What if the rabbis understood themselves to be living after the end of the world? What if our deepest desires are shaped by loss? And what if the work of tradition is not inventing new values, but discovering the old values that were hidden there all along? The conversation moves from forbidden desire to human dignity, from constitutional law to climate change, and from a broken Temple to our own broken age. This week’s text: Sanhedrin 75a Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

    Episode 58: Living After the End of the World

  3. 13. Juli

    Episode 57: The Lovesick Man

    “ The issue here isn't sex. The issue here is objectification. So that can take place in a sexual context, but it can also take place in other contexts. So this potentially gives us the opening to say in a case where you have a disease that you're going to die where the cure would require the treating of another person as an object, that is not permitted. That's a much larger category. ” - Dan Libenson Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This week’s conversation begins with a lovesick man, a woman he barely knows, and a rabbinic ruling that seems almost impossible to understand. The doctors insist the man will die unless he has the woman. The rabbis refuse. They refuse when sex is proposed. They refuse when the doctors suggest she merely stand before him. They even refuse when all that’s required is a conversation from behind a fence. Again and again, they choose to let him die. What unfolds is far larger than an ancient argument about desire or modesty. We discover a hidden crack inside the rabbinic system itself: a moment that’s in conflict with a principle we thought we had established: saving a life trumps everything. But here, saving a life is not the highest value. The conversation moves from misogyny and objectification to feminism, queer liberation, systemic injustice, and the possibility that every tradition contains the tools needed to remake itself. If the rabbis could add new values to Torah, what values might we be called to add today? This week’s text: Sanhedrin 75a Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

    Episode 57: The Lovesick Man

  4. 6. Juli

    Episode 56: Children of Prophets

    “ There's no question in my mind that retelling, reshaping the contours of the Jewish story is what you do. That's the most Jewish thing of all Jewish things.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This episode begins with a surprisingly modern question: are we discovering the truth, or are we making it? We begin with myth, storytelling, and the uneasy feeling that every generation reshapes Judaism even while claiming to preserve it. The rabbis may have left us only a few scattered hints, but those hints point toward a dangerous possibility: perhaps the people themselves carry the wisdom needed to guide the future. By the end, our conversation gets to an even more radical place. Hillel forgets the law, the experts lose their certainty, and ordinary Jews become “children of prophets.” The future, the Talmud suggests, does not arrive through leaders protecting the past. It arrives through leaders humble enough to notice what the people are already becoming. In a moment when authority feels fragile and communities are changing faster than institutions can respond, this ancient story asks a startling question: what if the people already know what God wants? This week’s text: Pesachim 66a Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

    Episode 56: Children of Prophets

  5. 29. Juni

    Episode 55: The Wisdom of Crowds

    “The rabbis ultimately see us being the Rabbi Akiva character, that everyone is an innovator, an upgrader, a potentially radical rewriter. That's the story that they're telling over and over and over and over in the Talmud. That's the message that they're trying to tell one another, to empower one another.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  What happens when the people start changing Judaism before the rabbis are ready? This episode begins with a tiny legal question about the blessing over water and the width of an eruv beam, but it quickly explodes into something far bigger: who actually shapes Jewish law: the authorities at the top or the ordinary Jews already living differently? As Benay and Dan unpack the rabbinic principle of puk chazi, which translates as “go out and see what the people are doing,” the conversation turns radical. The rabbis aren’t just tolerating the behavior of everyday people. In some cases, they’re treating it as revelation. Which means the future of Judaism may not emerge first from rabbinic rulings or institutions, but from the people already stretching, resisting, and quietly remaking the tradition from below. This week’s text: Eruvin 14b Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

    Episode 55: The Wisdom of Crowds

  6. 22. Juni

    Episode 54: Who Owns Torah?

    “ People who learn the tradition own that tradition and therefore can do with it what an owner can do with what an owner owns. If you own your house, you can knock down walls, you can build an extra story, completely change it. You can knock down the whole thing.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  Who owns tradition? God? The rabbis? Your teachers? Or you? This episode begins with a strange Talmudic argument about whether rabbis can “give up” the honor owed to them. But underneath that legal debate is a far more explosive question: who actually has authority over Torah once it enters human hands? As Benay and Dan trace the argument deeper, the text starts to crack open. A verse from Psalms gets reread in real time. A rabbi changes his mind mid-argument. And suddenly the rabbis seem to be saying something breathtaking: Torah begins as God’s Torah, but through study, struggle, and deep internalization, it becomes yours. Not to preserve behind glass. To wrestle with. To reshape. Maybe even to save. This week’s text: Kiddushin 32a Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

    Episode 54: Who Owns Torah?

  7. 15. Juni

    Episode 53: What's the Point?

    “You’re really wasting your time, you’re doing the wrong thing if you think that your job is to receive the tradition, protect it, preserve it, and hand it off exactly as you got it.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  What if the point of tradition isn’t preserving it, but changing it? This episode begins with an obscure Talmudic line just three words long: “agra, de shmata, svara” or “The reward for tradition: svara,” and spirals into a radical argument about what Judaism is actually trying to produce. Not perfect obedience. Not perfect memory. But people capable of moral courage, intuition, and transformation. Along the way, Benay and Dan unpack a series of strange rabbinic aphorisms about weddings, funerals, fasting, and study, each one overturning what you thought the “point” was. The real reward for learning might not be knowledge. The real reward for mourning might not be comfort. And the real reward for engaging tradition might not be preserving it exactly as you received it… but bringing your full self to it so completely that the tradition itself changes in your hands. This week’s text: Berakhot 6b Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

    Episode 53: What's the Point?

  8. 8. Juni

    Episode 52: Raw Material

    “ God only gave you raw materials. God always wanted you to mess with this. The story of the wise servant who turns the flour into bread, you could equally imagine him turning it into pita or challah or donuts or pancakes. I don't think any of those would've been the wrong answer. Anything that is healthy and nutritious and useful that you make out of it is okay. [This story] should shape how we view Torah. It gives a lot of permission to innovators at a time like now, when I think we've got to roll up our sleeves and really start messing with this thing.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This episode starts with a heretic on the side of the road — and turns into a radical argument about what Torah actually is. Benay and Dan unpack a strange rabbinic parable where God gives two servants raw wheat and flax. One preserves it exactly as he received it. The other grinds, kneads, bakes, weaves, and transforms it. And according to the rabbis, only one of them understood what God really wanted. From there, the conversation spirals into some of the biggest questions imaginable: Was Judaism always meant to evolve? Did the rabbis secretly know Torah was human interpretation all the way down? And what happens when the myths that once held a tradition together start breaking under the weight of history, archeology, and modern consciousness? This episode isn’t just about oral Torah versus written Torah. It’s about whether faithfulness means protecting the inherited details or protecting the timeless purpose. This week’s text: Tanna Debei Eliyahu Zuta 2 Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

    Episode 52: Raw Material
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An exploration of the Talmud through the “traditionally radical” lens pioneered by Benay Lappe. Whether you are a beginner to Talmud study or a long-time learner, by listening in on Benay Lappe’s study partnership with Dan Libenson as they explore foundational stories and material from the Talmud, you will discover the how-to manual that the ancient Rabbis left behind for future generations to help us re-imagine a new version of Judaism after the previous version “crashes.”

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    Institute for the Next Jewish Future
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    2025 - 2026
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