The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

Torah in Motion
  • 4.7 (49)
  • JUDAISM
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

A space for exploring the great ideas at the heart of the Jewish tradition.

  1. 6D AGO

    89. The Rashbam | Dr. Martin Lockshin

    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  podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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.

    59 min

  2. MAR 20

    88. Walter Benjamin | Dr. Vivian Liska

    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  podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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.

    1h 8m

  3. FEB 26

    87. Sefer Yosippon | Dr. Carson Bay

    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  podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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.

    1h 3m

  4. FEB 19

    86. The Meaning of Life | Dr. Alan Mittleman

    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  podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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.

    1h 10m

  5. JAN 29

    85. Halakhic Codes & Responsa | Dr. Chaim Saiman

    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  podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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.

    1h 10m

  6. JAN 15

    84. The Mesorah & the Masoretes | Dr. David Moster

    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  podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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.

    59 min

  7. JAN 9

    83. The Biblical Canon(s) | Dr. Hindy Najman

    J.J. and Dr. Hindy Najman on authorship, authority, and the creation of the Jewish canon.  If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Hindy Najman (MA and PhD Harvard, NELC) is the Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture and a fellow at Oriel College.  She is the director and founder of the Centre for the Study of the Bible in Oriel College.  In the University of Oxford, she is a member of the faculty of Theology and Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and member of the Sub-faculty Classics, and a member of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.  Prior to her joining the faculty in Oxford, she has held posts at the University of Notre Dame, University of Toronto, and Yale University.  Her areas of research are entanglement of Ancient Culture; Reading Practices in Jewish Antiquity; Comparative Philology; Performance; Formation of the Self and the Subject; Collection and Canon; Authority and Author Function; Biblical Figures and Exemplarity; Practices of Pseudepigraphy and Pseudonymous Attribution; Revelation; Diaspora and Exile; Trauma Studies; and Nature and Law.  Her major publications include Losing the Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of 4 Ezra. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014; Past Renewals: Interpretive Authority, Renewed Revelation, and the Quest for Perfection. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 53. Leiden: Brill, 2010.; Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 77. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Reissued in paperback by the Society of Biblical Literature in April 2009.  She has published over 50 articles and has edited 20 volumes. She has contributed as editor and associate editor to a variety of journals and book series, among them are Journal of Biblical Literature from; Dead Sea Discoveries and the Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement Series. Her most recent monograph has appeared in December 2024 with Oxford University Press, Scriptural Vitality: Rethinking Hermeneutics and Philology.  In current projects are on Pluriformity and hermeneutics, Metathinking in Ancient Judaism, and Aesthetics and Poetics in ancient Jewish Song.

    1h 6m

  8. 12/25/2025

    82. Zechariah al-Dhahiri | Dr. Adena Tanenbaum

    J.J. and Dr. Adena Tanenbaum unravel the dynamics of late medieval and early modern Jewish intellectual life in Yemen.  This episode is sponsored by the Touro Graduate School of Jewish Studies, a leading academic program in Jewish Studies. For information on admission and course offerings, including generous scholarships, please visit gsjs.touro.edu/history/ or get in touch by calling 212-463-0400, ext. 55580 or emailing karen.rubin@touro.edu If you or your business are interested in sponsoring an episode or mini-series, please reach out at  podcasts@torahinmotion.org  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 podcasts@torahinmotion.org  For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Dr. Adena Tanenbaum is an associate professor in the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at THE Ohio State University. Her research focuses on medieval Jewish intellectual history with a special emphasis on literary works from Islamic lands. She has a long-standing interest in philosophical themes in Hebrew poetry from Spain, and has published a book entitled The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2002). Before coming to OSU, Dr. Tanenbaum spent twelve years in England as a Member of the Oriental Studies Faculty of Oxford University, a Senior Associate of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and a Visiting Lecturer at University College London.

    1h 9m
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4.7
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About

A space for exploring the great ideas at the heart of the Jewish tradition.

Information

  • Creator
    Torah in Motion
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    90
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Torah in Motion
  • Show Website
    The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

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