edJEWcation

edJEWcation
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Judaism
  • Updated weekly

Your weekly dose of Jewish wit and wisdom. Each week Rabbi Abba Perelmuter, Chayaleah Sufrin, and Jay Covitz explore Jewish history, culture, and writings. Whether you're a relapsed Jew or an old pro there is something for us all to learn.

  1. 3 days ago

    Our Sins of Omission and Commission

    In honor of Yom Kippur, we talk about two kinds of sins we commit. Sins of omissionand sins of commission. Sins of omission are the things we should have done and didn’t, and almost nobody puts those on their list of things to repent for because, well, we may not have known we committed them. Sins of commission are the things we were aware did: the thing we said, the thing we took, the person we hurt. In this episode, we get into: Sins of omission: the Noda B’Yehuda, the widow at the edge of town, Bilaam’s “I have sinned, for I did not know,” and John Wooden coaching only the mistakes his players didn’t notice Sins of commission: why we ask forgiveness for traits God gave us, and the filter of Daat that is supposed to run passion, anger, and speech (a 25-year friendship can be destroyed in two minutes of talking) Whether your community owes you a correction, why nobody in America wants to give one, and the art of the well-timed apology (do not bring the flowers on Friday afternoon) Hannah, the mother of Samuel, what it means to pray “on” God instead of “to” Him, and why hope is not a plan Avinu Malkeinu: whether we want God as a king or a father, praying for money, and what fear does to free will Shifra and Puah, the Righteous Among the Nations, “please don’t test me,” and why Teshuva means return, not repentance If you are heading into Yom Kippur with a list of things you did wrong, this episode might convince you to add a second list: the things you didn’t do at all. Listen before the fast, and may we all be sealed for a good year Past Yom Kippur episode

  2. 9 Sept

    No Apologies: Antisemitism and Rosh Hashanah

    Jay has been doing some reading, and he opens this week with an essay he refuses to attribute until the Rabbi guesses. From there the Rabbi gets on a roll about Mark Ruffalo, Javier Bardem, and Hasan Piker (he calls him something else), and why the four in ten Jewish college students pulling back from Jewish life are a bigger threat than any of them. Then we hit the holidays, because Rosh Hashanah 5787 is a week away and ChayaLeah brought questions. In this episode, we get into: Jabotinsky’s “No Apologies” and why we should stop defending ourselves to people who already wrote the verdict When to fight antisemitism and when to let the buffalo be a buffalo Ben Shapiro’s “as Jewish as a ham sandwich” line, why the rabbis were right that he doesn’t get to decide, and why ChayaLeah thinks Bernie Sanders belongs in a category of his own Amalek, the first nation to attack us after Egypt, and the people who give everyone else cover How to walk into shul on Rosh Hashanah when you don’t know Hebrew, the tunes, or anyone in the room Whether parents should guilt their adult kids into coming home for the holidays (the Rabbi has a phone call script, and it involves a fake divorce) What to say to a young adult with no hope, no friends, and twelve hours a day of video games, from Elie Wiesel to Pirkei Avot to a Talmudic line about prisoners Why nobody is inviting the single mom or the divorced friend for Shabbat, and what to do about it Shanah Tovah from all three of us. Come sit with us for an hour, nobody is checking whether you know when to stand. Subscribe now Share Leave a comment

  3. 3 Sept

    Jonah Ghosted God. It Did Not Go Well.

    Jonah gets swallowed by a fish, and that is the part everybody remembers, but the real story is what happens after: Nineveh repents, Hashem forgives, and Jonah sits down under a plant and sulks about it. In this episode, we get into: The kikayon, the plant that grows over Jonah and dies overnight, and the question God closes the book with about 120,000 people Why justice and mercy are not opposites, and why the Rabbi says everyone alive needs some measure of both How a tzaddik does teshuvah when he has not sinned, and what unreached potential has to do with it A murder trial in the news right now, the insanity defense, and the Talmud’s category of a shoteh Whether the right answer for someone who is already suffering is prison, execution, or therapy Jonah the seer, who knew Nineveh would come back for us, and what that has to do with Israel and Yahya Sinwar Why the Yom Kippur Mincha haftarah sells for thousands of dollars, and why you should stay in shul for it If you usually go home after Musaf and come back for Neilah, this is the year to stick around for Mincha. Come sit with the hardest question in the machzor with us.

  4. 19 Aug

    Listener Questions: Elul, Damages, and Israel

    Some weeks we pick the topics. This week you picked them for us. The Rabbi opens by informing both of us that the frivolity is over, because Elul has arrived and we have thirty days to get our act together before Rosh Hashanah. Also, he would like an apology for being cut out of last week’s episode (an apology is not forthcoming). Then ChayaLeah tells us about a 6 am Uber ride in Jackson Hole that she was too tired to want, with a driver who would not stop talking about Hashem, trees, and energy, and who turned out to be saying exactly the thing she needed to hear. And then we open the mailbag. In this episode, we get into: Why Elul works like a thirty day notice before the tax bill, what gets added to the prayers, and why teshuvah is a terrible translation of “repentance” The year Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, no shofar on day one, and the headline about 9/11, COVID, and October 7th that nobody needed to see right now The five categories of damages in Torah law, and how a family divides one lump sum among kids who were all in the car but not all hurt the same Whether settlement money is blood money, from an insurance check in America to the fight in 1950s Israel over taking German marks Where you actually start if you want to engage more with Judaism, why Judaism is a religion of deeds before creeds, and why you will never understand kosher before you keep it What to say when a friend, a cousin, or a sibling drops “genocide” at dinner, who is worth engaging, and when to just walk away You ask, we answer, whether or not we know what we are talking about. Send us your questions and we will do this again.

  5. 12 Aug

    Planning a Chabad Wedding

    It is just CL and I this week, because we wanted to give her a chance to speak this week (sorry, Rabbi). Her oldest son got engaged a few weeks ago, there has already been an engagement party in Crown Heights and a second one on the West Coast, and the wedding is coming fast. So we thought people would be interested: what actually goes into planning a Chabad Hasidic wedding? The answer starts with a phone call where you plan a huge party with people you have never met, and it only gets more interesting from there. In this episode, we get into: Why dating stays a secret until the engagement is announced at the Rebbe’s grave, and why the whole thing takes weeks instead of years Who pays for what, the fifty fifty split, and the gifts each side is expected to give Takana weddings, the thirty thousand dollar all in package that makes sure every couple gets a beautiful wedding, and why the community treats that as everyone’s responsibility The seven days before the wedding when the bride and groom do not see or speak to each other, get escorted everywhere, and get treated like a king and a queen Fasting on your wedding day, why it is considered a mini Yom Kippur, and the Rosh Chodesh loophole The badeken, the completely opaque veil, and the moment the next morning when the bride covers her hair for the first time Sheva Brachos, a full week of parties, and why the wedding is really a celebration of the entire family Come for the logistics, stay for ChayaLeah whispering under her own chuppah asking if anyone was even out there.

  6. 7 Aug

    The Book of Deuteronomy: Moses' Last Words

    Moses has five weeks left. He starts talking on the first of Shevat, he dies on the seventh of Adar, and in between he delivers the longest, most repetitive, most urgent speech in the Torah. The traditional name for it is Mishneh Torah, the repetition of the Torah, and many commentators say this is the one book Moses spoke on his own behalf. So this week we skip the parsha by parsha treatment and take the whole book at once, because the themes only show up when you stand back far enough to see them. In this episode, we get into: Why Deuteronomy reads differently from the first four books, and what “Moses spoke on his own behalf” actually means The discrepancies with Numbers, starting with who really wanted to send the spies, plus the small differences in the Ten Commandments Who Moses is actually talking to: a generation born in the desert with no slave mentality and no memory of Egypt The warning that prosperity, not persecution, is what makes people forget, and how uncomfortably well that lands in America Why Moses was not allowed to enter, what God showed him from the mountain, and why he wanted in so badly in the first place The Shema line by line: hearing as integrating, why “one” and not “alone,” the two inclinations hiding in V’ahavta, and how anyone can be commanded to love We also end up on free will, the chocolate bar, and a sixth grade yearbook from 1992 that somehow ties the whole thing together.

  7. 29 Jul

    Parenting Adult Children: Boundaries & Grace

    Nobody warns you that the hardest parenting years might come after your kids are grown. We opened with a story Jay picked up in a Delta Lounge, a man quietly putting on tefillin who turned out to be a Soviet Jew that did not learn he was Jewish until his family reached America. That pulled us into the Rebbe and Soviet Jewry, quiet diplomacy versus loud demonstrations, and a father exiled to Kazakhstan whose wife made ink from berries so his Torah could survive. Then we turned to the question a lot of you have written in about: how do we stay parents to our kids once they are adults with lives, spouses, and kids of their own? In this episode, we get into: Why grown children still need their parents more than anyone expects, and what that means for us Where the boundary sits, and how to give feedback that lands from a place of love instead of criticism Protecting your spouse first, and why in-laws have to tread more carefully than parents Raising kids who become friendly with you without ever forgetting you are the parent Free choice, and how you can do everything right and still get a result you did not plan for Overbearing parents, helicopter moms, the Little League dad, and when to bring in a third party Whether you are the parent watching your kid make a call you would not make, or the adult child trying to keep the peace, come sit with us. There is grace in here for both sides.

  8. 22 Jul

    Lament This: The Book of Lamentations

    Tisha B’Av is coming, and before we sit on the floor with the lights low, we’re doing our homework. This week we open the Book of Lamentations, the scroll Jeremiah wrote as Jerusalem fell (or was about to fall, depending on which commentators you ask). It’s a book with a wild backstory: a king who burned the first draft, a scribe named Baruch who took dictation for round two, and an alphabet-shaped message hiding in the book. In this episode, we get into: Who Jeremiah was and why nobody wanted to hear his “doom and gloom” prophecies The scroll King Yehoyakim burned, and what Rashi says was in it Was Lamentations written before the destruction as prophecy, or after as eyewitness testimony? Why Jerusalem is described as a widow, and what that metaphor really means The Dubner Maggid’s parable of the needle-and-thread wagon: trading something real for nothing Whether Jews blame themselves too much for their own tragedies, from the Babylonians to October 7th Why we end our reading of Lamentation not on despair but on “bring us back to You, Hashem, and we shall return” It’s the heaviest book in Tanakh, but we promise this isn’t a stuffy seminary lecture. Come study with us before the fast.

See All (125)

Trailer

About

Your weekly dose of Jewish wit and wisdom. Each week Rabbi Abba Perelmuter, Chayaleah Sufrin, and Jay Covitz explore Jewish history, culture, and writings. Whether you're a relapsed Jew or an old pro there is something for us all to learn.

Information

  • Creator
    edJEWcation
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    125
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © edJEWcation
  • Show Website
    edJEWcation