Jewish Quest Jewish Quest

In a special podcast for Pesach, Professor Berel Dov Lerner discusses the central theme of covenant on Seder night and reflects on Israel’s enslavement and redemption in Egypt as a meditation upon temporality and human agency. 
Berel Dov Lerner was born in Washington D.C. and is a member of Kibbutz Sheluhot in Israel’s Beit Shean Valley. He received a BA in social and behavioral sciences from Johns Hopkins University, an MA in philosophy from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in philosophy from Tel Aviv University. He also studied Judaism at Yeshivat HaKibbutz HaDati.  Berel is currently an associate professor of philosophy at the Western Galilee College in Akko and also teaches at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. He is the author of many articles in philosophy and Jewish studies and of the book Rules, Magic, and Instrumental Reason (Routledge 2002). His latest book is Human-Divine Interactions in Hebrew Scriptures Covenants and Cross-Purposes (Routledge 2024). 

Geoffrey Stern asks how Metsorah is connected to evil speech and he discusses the importance of tsar'at in the Torah. 

Geoffrey Stern is founder of the podcast, Madlik, a disruptive Torah podcast, which is published on a weekly basis in an effort to insure that the spirit of Judaism continues to grow and flourish. He is a serial entrepreneur in the audio chip and self playing media playback product space. 

Rabbi Dr Wendy Zierler discusses the anthropological importance of skin and the unlikely connection between skin affliction and the messiah. 

Rabbi Wendy Ilene Zierler, Ph.D., is Sigmund Falk Professor of Modern Jewish Literature and Feminist Studies at HUC-JIR in New York. Prior to joining HUC-JIR she was a Research Fellow in the English Department of the University of Hong Kong. She received her Ph.D. and her M.A. from Princeton University; her B.A. from Stern College of Yeshiva University; and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. 

In June 2021, she received rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva Maharat. She is the author of Movies and Midrash: Popular Film and Jewish Religious Conversation (SUNY Press, Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, 2017) and of And Rachel Stole the Idols: The Emergence of Hebrew Women’s Writing (Wayne State UP, 2004), as well as many articles in the fields of Jewish literature, and Jewish Gender Studies. 

Miryam Margo-Wolfson asks what was the strange fire of Nadav and Avihu and just what are the lessons of their deaths for us today. 
Miryam Margo-Wolfson is an intern at Temple Adath-Or and a fifth year Rabbinic and Cantorial student at Aleph Ordination Program. 

Rabbi Adam Zagoria-Moffet discusses the sacrifices as psychological impulses and argues that we should reclaim the notion of fire as the primary symbol of the Divine. 

Dr Yitzhaq Feder uncovers the fascinating and unexpected relevance of the sacrificial laws. 

Dr. Yitzhaq Feder is a lecturer at the University of Haifa. He is the author of Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual: Origins, Context and Meaning (Society of Biblical Literature, 2011). His most recent book, Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible: From Embodied Experience to Moral Metaphor (Cambridge University Press, 2021), examines the psychological foundations of impurity in ancient Israel.