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. Episode 47: The Maidservant’s Moral Power

    1 DAY AGO

    Episode 47: The Maidservant’s Moral Power

    “This story raises the questions of who's in our community, who can be in our community, and who’s svara should we be listening to? The answer is much broader on all of those questions than we typically think. She changed the entire tradition. She changed how we think about prayer and life and suffering and our role vis-a-vis God and what should happen in the world because we listened to her, we listened to her svara.” - 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 most powerful rabbi in the world is dying and everyone around him is fighting to keep him alive. Prayers are flying, desperation is rising, and no one is willing to let go. No one, that is, except the one person who sees what’s actually happening. In this episode, Benay and Dan dive into a story that flips everything: authority, compassion, even what it means to do the “right” thing. A nameless maidservant dares to break ranks, not out of rebellion, but out of clarity. In doing so, she exposes a deeper truth that the sages can’t see. This isn’t just a story about death. It’s about who gets to decide what mercy looks like and whether moral courage sometimes means going against the very tradition you’re trying to honor. This week’s text: Ketubot 104a 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.

    1hr 3min
  2. Episode 46: Sweet Little Lies

    27 APR

    Episode 46: Sweet Little Lies

    “  We're meant to be profoundly, deeply, intimately, radically empathic with one another. My understanding should be influenced by what I know is in your mind. I need to get into your head and I need to get into your heart, and I need to understand how this is gonna land for you. And I need to intertwine my consciousness with yours before I know what the right thing to say is.” - 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.  A wedding. A fragile moment. A question no one wants to answer honestly: what do you say when the truth might wound? The rabbis don’t dodge it. They stage a collision between two instincts we all recognize: tell the truth no matter what… or protect someone’s dignity at all costs. In this episode, Benay and Dan crack open a deceptively simple dilemma that turns explosive fast. Can kindness justify a lie? Can empathy override Torah itself? What emerges isn’t just a ruling, it’s a radical claim: morality isn’t about rigid truth-telling, it’s about learning to feel your way into someone else’s reality. And once you see that, everything changes. This week’s text: Ketubot 16b-17a 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.

    58 min
  3. Episode 45: The Svara Torah

    20 APR

    Episode 45: The Svara Torah

    “ I think the value that's being privileged here is relieving suffering. It's not fiscal responsibility, it's not caution, it's not never making a mistake in giving to an undeserving person. Those are values, but making sure someone who's suffering isn't suffering, even if it's gonna cost us more money, that's a more fundamental value. And that's the Svara that wins.” - 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.  In this episode, a community collects its money, lines form, and the demand is always greater than the supply. Some people are hungry. Some are exposed. Some are lying. And someone has to decide—right now—who gets helped and who gets turned away. Benay and Dan dive into a brutal rabbinic argument about triage: Do you check up on the claims of the hungry and risk their suffering, or trust them and risk being fooled? Beneath the surface, the question cuts deeper, what matters more: preventing abuse, or preventing pain? And who gets to decide when those values collide? This week’s text: Bava Batra 9a 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.

    1hr 4min
  4. Episode 44: When Tradition Fights Back with Menachem Fisch

    13 APR

    Episode 44: When Tradition Fights Back with Menachem Fisch

    “ I now read the Talmudic literature as a paradigm of rationality, where you realize that to be rational you have to be self-critical. But you can't be fully self-critical merely by talking to yourself.” - Menachem Fisch 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.  A philosopher of science walks into a Talmud conversation and everything shifts. In this episode of Oral Talmud, Dan & Benay sit down with Menachem Fisch, who didn’t grow up inside the Talmudic world and that outsider lens changes the read. What he sees isn’t a tradition handing down answers, but rather a system designed to generate argument, doubt, and transformation, where truth emerges not from agreement, but from friction. But the story doesn’t stay clean. As Menachem Fisch traces this radical, dialogic vision, cracks begin to show. Some voices are welcomed in, even radically different ones. Others are shut out completely. The same tradition that thrives on disagreement also draws hard boundaries around who gets to speak. We follow that tension all the way through: between openness and exclusion, evolution and control, courage and comfort. This episode doesn’t tie it all up. It leaves you inside the argument, exactly where the Talmud wants you. Menachem Fisch is the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor of History and Philosophy of Science Emeritus, and Director of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies at Tel Aviv University. He has published many books including Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture, which serves as a launching point for this conversation. 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.

    1hr 7min
  5. Episode 43: Black Mold

    6 APR

    Episode 43: Black Mold

    “ The rabbis would acknowledge that's not the reading that is closest probably to the original intent. It's nevertheless a justifiable reading because the ends is justifiable. And we're using our reading as a way of not completely breaking the chain. We still wanna have some connection to the past, even though we know this is the most strained connection possible to the past. And that actually feels like a more laudable reason to do misreadings than one in which you're trying to fool people.” - 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.  The rabbis don’t just read the text, they bend it on purpose. In this episode, Benay and Dan pull back the curtain on one of the Talmud’s boldest moves: deliberate misreading in service of a better world. From constitutional debates to ancient law, they trace a throughline — sometimes the reading isn’t the goal. The outcome is. And the text gets stretched just far enough to carry it. Then the stakes get real. A city must be destroyed. A house must be torn down. The rabbis refuse both, twisting the text, again, until violence becomes impossible. But just when it feels clean, controlled and resolved the tradition interrupts itself again. Just like what we saw in the case of the wayward and rebellious son: yes, it did happen. Cities did fall. Houses were destroyed. This episode lives in that tension, between moral imagination and moral memory, and asks again what it takes to change a system without lying about the harm it once caused. This week’s text: Sanhedrin 71a 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.

    1hr 6min
  6. Episode 42: But I Sat on His Grave!

    30 MAR

    Episode 42: But I Sat on His Grave!

    “ The power of the methodology that is modeled over and over and over in the Talmud is that it makes very clear that we are not limited by the original intent or the obvious meaning of a text. So even if a text actually does mean what it looks like, it means, and we find it difficult, we are not bound to continue perpetuating that norm in the tradition.” - 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.  In this episode of Oral Talmud, Dan & Benay bring the “wayward and rebellious son” text to its end game. After spilling so much ink to narrow the law into absurdity, the rabbis finally say the quiet part out loud: this law was never real. No one was ever executed. No one ever will be. So why is it in the Torah at all? Because the purpose all along has been transformation. Dan and Benay surface one of the Talmud’s most radical claims: some texts exist in order to be argued out of existence. Not to follow them, but to outgrow them. But just when the tradition seems ready to erase its past, another voice interrupts: it did happen. People were harmed. And you don’t get to rewrite history just because you’ve evolved. This episode is a gut-punch — a blueprint for moral courage that refuses both blind obedience and convenient amnesia. This week’s text: Sanhedrin 71a 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.

    56 min
  7. Episode 41: Goldilocks and the Wayward Son

    23 MAR

    Episode 41: Goldilocks and the Wayward Son

    “The whole myth of ‘God wrote this,’ which I don't believe the rabbis bought into, is necessary in order to make these rationales convincing. It isn't so much intended to guarantee people's compliance and observance. What if that myth, ‘God wrote this’ is necessary to justify the hyper literal interpretations away from the text?” - 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 purpose of a question isn’t the answer, it’s how the question teaches you to think? In this episode, Benay & Dan keep tightening the screws on the “wayward and rebellious son,” a harsh law the rabbis seem determined to make impossible to put into action. The pre-requirements stack up: exact food, exact timing, exact circumstances, exact parents. Until the whole thing starts to feel less like law and more like a deliberate unraveling. But then the real twist hits. The digressions, the absurd scenarios, the hyper-literal readings. They’re not mistakes. They’re the method. Then, Dan & Benay crack open a deeper claim: maybe the Talmud isn’t just solving problems or offering answers, it’s training a mind. Teaching us to follow threads, question assumptions, and even outgrow the text itself. This episode turns from legal analysis into something sharper: a theory of how traditions evolve, not by blind obedience, but by people learning how to think their way beyond what they inherited. This week’s text: Sanhedrin 71a 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.

    59 min
  8. Episode 40: Consciousness of Guilt

    16 MAR

    Episode 40: Consciousness of Guilt

    “That’s one of the reasons there's a crash because it's dealing with a new reality where everybody has the potential to know everything. And so there's no more hiding. And so what we have to do is to reinvent a Judaism that is palatable to everybody who's expected to participate.” - 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.  What happens when the crowd finally says stop? In this episode, Dan and Benay stay with the case of “wayward and rebellious son” as they unpack a charged Talmudic scene: a rabbi abuses his authority, a colleague is publicly humiliated, and the people shut the whole thing down. Not leadership. Not procedure. The community. It’s a moment of collective refusal that feels startlingly contemporary. This conversation asks questions like:  Who controls the mic? What happens when hidden reasoning becomes public? And what changes when people gain access to the inner logic of power? They connect ancient rebellion to modern deplatforming, open information, queer inclusion, and the collapse of elite gatekeeping. This episode is about the hard truth that systems don’t change themselves. People do. This week’s text: (Sanhedrin 71a) Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (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.

    1hr 4min
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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.”

Information

  • Creator
    Institute for the Next Jewish Future
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    49
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2020
  • Show Website
    The Oral Talmud

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