Between Two Shabbatot

Noam Fields-Meyer Gould
  • 5.0 (12)
  • Religion & Spirituality
  • Weekly

A weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California.

  1. 5d ago

    Episode 15: Set in Stone

    Where does a sanctuary take you? In this episode, Hazzan Noam looks at the faux-stone wall behind the bimah in Temple Etz Chaim's Paskow Sanctuary and finds himself back in the windowless old sanctuary at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles, singing V'shamru on Friday afternoons as a student at Pressman Academy. He follows the question through a sixteenth-century poem about how old Shabbat is, a melody from nineteenth-century Berlin, what we picture when we picture an old-fashioned Jew, and the literary scholar Svetlana Boym's two kinds of nostalgia. Plus a conversation with Hazzan Dr. Matt Austerklein, cantor at Congregation Anshai Torah in Plano, Texas, and a historian of the cantorate. He takes Hazzan Noam on a tour of three synagogues: a German village around 1400, Prague in 1679 and Vienna in 1830. Then the two of them trace where the melodies of TEC's Torah service come from, before the conversation ends with a game called the Cantorial Yearbook. Read Matt's weekly Substack, Beyond the Music: https://mattausterklein.substack.com/ Between Two Shabbatot is a weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California, hosted by Hazzan Noam Fields-Meyer Gould. Questions and thoughts welcome at noam@templeetzchaim.org.

  2. Oct 20

    Episode 14: Shulheimishkeit

    What language do you speak in shul? In this episode, Hazzan Noam looks at how much of Jewish life we learn without being taught, from the amen in the Kaddish to the words that fly around at kiddush, starting with one recent slip by Rabbi Ari. Plus a conversation with linguist Sarah Bunin Benor, professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and linguistics at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles and host of the Heritage Words podcast. She talks about Jewish languages most of us have never heard of, what makes the way American Jews talk a Jewish language of its own, and the Hebrew "infusion" of American Jewish summer camps. The conversation ends with a game called Shemanigans. Between Two Shabbatot is a weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California, hosted by Hazzan Noam Fields-Meyer Gould. Questions and thoughts welcome at noam@templeetzchaim.org.

  3. Oct 13

    Episode 13: Accompaniment

    Why is the Hashkivenu everyone loves so hard to sing without a piano? In this episode, Hazzan Noam tells the story of leading Craig Taubman’s melody at a shiva minyan in a backyard in Simi, and follows the question through camp songs, synagogue organists, the singers who once filled in the cantor’s pauses, and what happens to a congregation’s favorite tunes when the accompaniment drops out. Plus a conversation with musicologist Samantha Cooper, host of the Sounding Jewish Podcast, about growing up Jewish in the Toronto area and the question she asks every guest on her show: is there such a thing as a Jewish sound? She also discusses her new book on Jewish immigrants and the New York opera world, from the box office to the Met stage. The conversation ends with a game called Sounds Jewish to Me. Between Two Shabbatot is a weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California, hosted by Hazzan Noam Fields-Meyer Gould. Questions and thoughts welcome at noam@templeetzchaim.org.

  4. Oct 6

    Episode 12: Like This

    How does Lecha Dodi go? In this episode, Hazzan Noam plays a few possible answers, from the melodies sung most Friday nights at Temple Etz Chaim to one he wrote in high school and doesn't sing here. He follows the question through building a Shabbat playlist for the congregation, a crowded field of new Jewish music, and an essay asking whether we've composed enough new melodies, with help from Rabbi Ari Averbach and Chaplain Benny Sommerfeld. Plus a conversation with ethnomusicologist Rachel Adelstein about the tunes she calls "songs that go like this," why so few of them carry their composers' names, and how a new melody makes its way through a congregation one voice at a time. Listen to the Shabbat in Thousand Oaks playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4geYCvysYUnoy9bjtceiOd Between Two Shabbatot is a weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California, hosted by Hazzan Noam Fields-Meyer Gould. Questions and thoughts welcome at noam@templeetzchaim.org.

  5. Sep 29

    Episode 11: No Wrong Notes

    Why bring a three-string beginner's instrument up to the bima? In this episode, Hazzan Noam tells the story of the strumstick he first heard on a fifth-grade class trip and still plays today, and asks what an instrument with eight notes can offer that a piano with eighty-eight can't, with help from Psalm 150, a childhood Simchat Torah, and Rabbi Ari's Yom Kippur sermon. Plus a conversation with Joyce Bronstein, in her thirty-third year directing the religious school that now carries her name, about growing up around Fairfax, the Red Vines she trades for "I love religious school," shaking Golda Meir's hand at thirteen, and her father singing Ein Keloheinu. Between Two Shabbatot is a weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California, hosted by Hazzan Noam Fields-Meyer Gould. Questions and thoughts welcome at noam@templeetzchaim.org.

  6. Aug 5

    Episode 10: See You in Shul (Season 1 Finale)

    What counts as listening? For the Season 1 finale, Hazzan Noam looks back at a season that turned out to be about something other than what he planned, and asks what a room full of people can do that a voice in your ear can't. Plus, for the last week of the season, the microphones turn around. Three conversations with the people who hear more of this work than anyone: Kelly Fields-Meyer Gould on origami dragons, adaptive riding, and the four gaits of a horse; Irma Sommerfeld on a borrowed jacket at a singles dinner and what it's like to be married to a chaplain; and Vanessa Averbach on Schulweisian philosophy, homemade challah, and the Oxford comma. Between Two Shabbatot is a weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California, hosted by Hazzan Noam Fields-Meyer Gould. Questions and thoughts welcome at noam@templeetzchaim.org.

  7. Jul 28

    Episode 9: Come Back

    What if teshuvah isn't regret? In this episode, Hazzan Noam traces one verse across three days in July, from the floor of the Winer Chapel on Tisha B'Av to the end of a Shabbat morning Torah service, and finds the same sentence asking for two things at once. He looks at what he learned to do alone, the one sound of this season he has never been able to make himself, and the rehearsal that showed him the difference between being welcome and being needed. Plus a conversation with Carol and Buzz Schoenkerman, at Temple Etz Chaim six days a week by his count, about the Friday night a rabbi crossed the room to introduce himself to a stranger in the back row, the plants Carol hands to anyone who will take them, and the two of them finding each other again fifty years after Northwestern. Between Two Shabbatot is a weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California, hosted by Hazzan Noam Fields-Meyer Gould. Questions and thoughts welcome at noam@templeetzchaim.org.

  8. Jul 22

    Episode 8: Where Did the Time Go?

    Why does one week stay with us and the next one disappear? In this episode, Hazzan Noam asks what a wordless melody at 6:53 on a Friday night is actually for, and finds an answer in a single line of L'cha Dodi — and in the two very different kinds of coffee he drinks. Plus a conversation with our clergy assistant, Jill Rosenberg, about the forty-six years between her thirteenth birthday and her bat mitzvah, what the sanctuary sounds like from a hundred feet away, and five phone calls she never saw coming. Between Two Shabbatot is a weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California, hosted by Hazzan Noam Fields-Meyer Gould. Questions and thoughts welcome at noam@templeetzchaim.org.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

A weekly podcast from Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks, California.

Information

  • Creator
    Noam Fields-Meyer Gould
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    15
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Noam Fields-Meyer Gould
  • Show Website
    Between Two Shabbatot

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