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 38: Bad Seeds in the Capitol

    1D AGO

    Episode 38: Bad Seeds in the Capitol

    “ Learning Talmud specifically was a spiritual practice designed to shape us into the kinds of morally sophisticated thinkers that can create a certain kind of world. So, at moments like this, it's not necessarily an odd thing to do.” - 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 do you do when the world feels like it’s on fire? This episode was recorded the day after the January 6th storming of the Capitol in 2021. Dan and Benay wrestle with a raw question: when democracy feels fragile, is studying Talmud an escape or a form of resistance? They argue that learning itself is a discipline of moral formation, a way of shaping people capable of building and re-building a just society. Returning to the text about the “wayward and rebellious son” from last episode, they push the conversation beyond ancient law into urgent territory: vigilance, social responsibility, systemic failure, and the danger of trying to “solve” society’s problems by simply eliminating the bad actors. Not easy punishment, but harder accountability. We ask what kind of people we must become when the flames are real, and we ask whether cognitive development is itself a civic act. This week’s text: (Sanhedrin 68b, 70a) 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.

    1h 3m
  2. Episode 37: Wayward Sons of a Certain Age

    FEB 23

    Episode 37: Wayward Sons of a Certain Age

    “The Talmud is giving you a toolbox of methodologies and mechanisms to use to write repugnant understandings of God’s will out of existence.” - 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 do you do with a sacred text that tells you to stone your own child? In this episode, Dan & Benay confront one of the Torah’s most disturbing passages: the law of the “wayward and rebellious son.” The Talmudic text we discuss - Sanhedrin 68b - is a masterclass in moral engineering, as the rabbis methodically dismantle a death sentence, while hiding what they are doing in plain sight. This episode dives deep into predictive justice, rabbinic power, and the spiritual technology of narrowing bad laws out of existence. It’s not just interpretation, it’s transformation. And it asks a question that still burns today: when adherence to tradition becomes dangerous, do we have the courage to rewrite the tradition? This week’s text: Sanhedrin 68b 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.

    59 min
  3. Episode 36: A One-Way Ratchet

    FEB 16

    Episode 36: A One-Way Ratchet

    “What you can't do is try to ratchet it backwards to the original law from the Torah. No, it does not have a special status because it was in the Torah. Once it's overruled, it's overruled. Period. End of story.” - 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.  In this episode of Oral Talmud, Benay and Dan continue to discuss a text about divorce, and they uncover a radical rabbinic principle hiding in plain sight: once the sages change Torah to reduce suffering, you don’t get to roll it back. No nostalgia. No appeals to “original intent.” Just a one-way moral ratchet toward dignity, toward protection, toward repair. This conversation traces a daring throughline: we don’t inherit justice, we practice it. If you’ve ever wondered whether religious tradition can evolve without losing its soul, this episode doesn’t hedge. It leans all the way in. This Talmudic text is an argument for moral courage: when tradition causes harm, repair isn’t optional. Moving from ancient divorce law to modern constitutional law, Dan and Benay ask, who gets to change the system, and what is the cost when nobody does?  This week’s text: Gittin 33a 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.

    1h 3m

  4. FEB 9

    Episode 35: Repairing the World Means Admitting It’s Broken

    “That is a point at which they're gonna say this is such a broken world that we can't let this stand. We're gonna have to repair the whole world to prevent people from falling into this category and that's going to mean overturning a Torah law.” - 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 episode is a new Talmud passage. It’s about divorce again – but not really. Dan & Benay begin by thinking about how the law can look orderly on the page while quietly unraveling lives in practice. This episode starts with pointing out a strange rabbinic habit: naming how things used to be, even when that past was unjust. Instead of smoothing over the damage, the rabbis deliberately expose it, which invites us to notice where the system itself is doing harm. From there, the conversation addresses the lives caught in the gap, the people who have slipped through the cracks, and suffering that cannot be fixed from within the rules. This episode lingers in the uncomfortable space where repair requires more than compassion. It requires changing the law itself, and asking whether we’re willing to do the same when our own systems break down. This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Gittin 32a & 33a) 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.

    1h 6m
  5. Episode 34: Our Way or the Highway

    FEB 2

    Episode 34: Our Way or the Highway

    “What's really important is not just that they're doing it, but they're showing you that they're overturning Torah with what their own svara tells them is a better take on how to be a human being and that's why I think this entire document of the Talmud is an instruction manual for us. I think they meant to teach us how to do it so that we could do 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.  This is the final part of Dan and Benay’s conversation about Tractate Ketubot, pages 2b and 3a, which is a case about conditional divorce that is really about showing us how to change the law when necessary to alleviate suffering. In this episode, we see the moment when the Talmud’s sages stop hiding their most radical move. The rabbis don’t just reinterpret the Torah – they openly claim the authority to override it. BUT, as the text unfolds, we watch that boldness collide with fear…fear of instability, fear of power…fear of what happens when moral intuition is taken seriously. Throughout this podcast Benay and Dan have argued that the Talmud is a manual for how to handle moments of crash. Here we see the rabbis showing us how tradition can be rebuilt but then they hesitate. Dan and Benay ask the unsettling question: when suffering is clear and the tools to alleviate it are in our hands, why do we so often hold back? This week’s text: Ketubot 2b & 3a 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.

    1h 1m
  6. Episode 33: It’s Svara All the Way Down

    JAN 26

    Episode 33: It’s Svara All the Way Down

    “It's always been that if we get to a point where svara tells us that this text is wrong, svara trumps the text.” - 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.  When we were recording this episode in November of 2020, it was feeling very much like we were living in a time of crash in America and in the world, just like the world at the time of the Talmud. That sense still feels true to today, as we release the podcast version five years later. In times like this, the systems we rely on reveal their cracks. This episode leans into that unease, asking what happens when a law that is meant to protect people instead traps them in unending suffering. Continuing the case we explored last week, from Tractate Ketubot, pages 2b and 3a, which is a text about divorce, we follow one rabbi’s willingness to do something pretty shocking about it: override the Torah itself in order to stop harm to human beings. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and a radical claim that responsibility doesn’t end with saying “sorry, that’s the rule.” This week’s text: Ketubot 2b & 3a 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.

    1h 3m
  7. Episode 32: Our Hands are Not Tied

    JAN 19

    Episode 32: Our Hands are Not Tied

    “ What this text is trying to say, as is the entire Talmud, is ‘my hands are tied’ is not how we do Jewish. It's never been how we do Jewish, ever since the rabbis at least, and can never be thought of as a legitimately Jewish response to any suffering ever.” - 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.  When this episode was recorded back in November of 2020 it was a moment of deep uncertainty surrounding the presidential election. The news felt unresolved, the ground unstable, and many of us were hovering between anxiety and numbness. Instead of rushing to conclusions, this episode slowed everything down and asked a different question: What does it look like to cultivate steadiness, moral clarity, and courage when the world won’t give us answers? Turning to a startling passage in the Talmud, we explore a moment when the rabbis openly admit they are changing the law. Not because a verse demands it, but because human suffering does. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and the refusal to say “my hands are tied.” This conversation pulls back the curtain on how Jewish law actually works and why uncertainty may be the very place where our deepest responsibility begins. This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Ketubot 2b and 3a) 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.

    1h 4m
  8. Episode 31: A Talmudic Stitch Sampler

    JAN 12

    Episode 31: A Talmudic Stitch Sampler

    “The big error is to imagine that a general principle of interpretation applies only to the case in which we learned it.” - 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 Dan & Benay work through to the end of the case of a person who is sick and needs to eat (and not fast) on Yom Kippur. We recognize this whole section of Talmud to be a sampler - a presentation of the many moves available to the clever sage who is dedicated to the work of changing the system, rather than letting people suffer.  Do we want Supreme Court justices who read and reinterpret text like the rabbis of this sugya? How do we react when people use otherwise liberatory tools in harmful ways? What might the results-oriented jurisprudence of this case indicate about the larger debates that our Talmud editors were dealing with in their time? Especially if we believe that by the time all of these defensive arguments were being spelled out, it was the established practice that people who need to should eat on Yom Kippur? What is the role of a constitution in protecting minorities? Recognizing and responding to suffering? When we’re suffering under a system now, what can we do? What can we utilize from our learning to help us? This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Yoma 82a & 83a - Part 3) 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.

    1h 11m
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4.5
out of 5
16 Ratings

About

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
    40
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2020
  • Show Website
    The Oral Talmud

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