Tradition Podcast Tradition Online

Three decades following the passing of the Rav zt”l his legacy endures and his teachings still inspire – but how do we communicate his Torah to a generation “which did not know Yosef” (R. Yosef Dov Halevi Soloveitchik, that is)? This is a question that is explored from a few different angles in TRADITION’s recent expanded issue on the thought of the Rav. 

Readers of the special issue will discover that one of the many insightful perspectives on this particular question is offered by Mali Brosky, whose essay “The Rav’s Enduring Pedagogical Relevance” takes up the challenge of how we can best convey R. Soloveitchik’s thought, hashkafa, and philosophy to students born over a decade after his death and almost a generation after he left the public stage. It is indeed complex, but crucial, and Brofsky makes a compelling case for why it’s more important than ever, offering some lessons from her many years of teaching. She recently discussed her essay on the podcast she co-hosts, RZ Weekly, which surveys issues facing the Religious Zionist community in Israel and worldwide. It’s an engaging weekly roundtable conversation between Mali and her educational colleagues, Johnny Solomon and Reuven Spolter. We thank them for allowing us to share the segment of this episode over our feed  – search for RZ Weekly on all podcasting platforms to subscribe. 

Subscribers can access the  essay alongside some open-access content available to all at https://traditiononline.org/rabbisoloveitchik120issue where the issue can be purchased as well.

Mali Brofsky is a senior faculty member at Michlelet Mevaseret Yerushalayim, teaches for Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Hebrew University, and runs a clinical social work practice in Gush Etzion.

Our editor, Jeffrey Saks, offers this audio version of his Editor’s Note introducing TRADITION’s special issue on the thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt”l. In Saks’ essay, “We Read the Rav to Know We Are Not Alone in Loneliness” (open access here), he shares his own personal encounter with the Rav’s writings at a pivotal moment in his own religious development, and discusses the important role the Rav played in the American Orthodox scene and in the pages of our journal. 

Click here to see the contents of the new issue, sample open-access content, and order your copy. 

Here we are, days before the arrival of Passover. If we are not drowning in cleaning products, chances are we’re doing the equally important work—perhaps more important work—of reflecting on the Exodus story in advance of Seder night. A highlight of this week’s observances is the recounting of the biblical Ten Plagues. In an interesting new book, Dr. Jeremy Brown considers the Eleventh Plague, a kind of catch-all phrase he uses to explore how Jews as a people and Judaism as a religious tradition have encountered and responded to plagues, disease, and pandemics from the Bible right up to our own days of COVID-19.

Dr. Jeremy Brown, Director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health, is a physician and historian of science and medicine. TRADITION’s Winter 2021 issue featured his essay “The Plague Wedding,” which was republished as a chapter in his most recent book, "The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19" (Oxford University Press).

The TRADITION Podcast recently caught up with Brown to talk about his work, traditional Jewish responses to plague and disease, and, more generally, his assessment of how Jewish thought and halakhic tradition have responded over time to such occurrences—and how we fared during the most recent pandemic. Jeremy considers the long arc of history and does so through the prisms of theology, halakha, ritual, and folk custom (some admittedly bizarre—including the so-called shvartse khasene or plague wedding, about which he wrote in our pages). He balances this with the insights and wisdom drawn from history, epidemiology, medical science, sociology, and public policy. 

The host for this episode is Jeffrey Saks, editor of TRADITION.

Watch a video recording of this conversation.

 

 

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg is an internationally recognized teacher and lecturer around the English-speaking world and, each week, in multiple settings in Jerusalem, where her unique style of integrating keen readings of the weekly Torah portion with the commentaries of midrash, classical meforshim, Hasidic interpretation, and more, are supplemented by the insights she draws from philosophy, psychoanalytical readings, literature, and culture at large – the “best that’s been thought and said,” as it were. Her work has inspired generations of students, and has produced a very rich body of six volumes on biblical books and themes. 

TRADITION’s Winter 2021 issue featured her essay “On Love, Holiness, and the Other,” and, channeling the work of psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear and R. Aharon Lichtenstein, explored the “command to aspire” as an ethical imperative. That essay has now appeared as part of a larger chapter in her most recent book, The Hidden Order of Intimacy: Reflections on the Book of Leviticus (Schocken).

As the Jewish world commences our annual reading of Leviticus this week the TRADITION Podcast spoke with Zornberg about her new book, the unusual way it came about, and the intellectual “atmosphere” she breathes in order to produce works of Torah scholarship that bring together such wide-ranging voices. We also discussed the troubling state of the study of the humanities in the world today and within Jewish learning in particular. The host for this episode is Jeffrey Saks, editor of TRADITION.

Watch a video recording of this conversation.

Recording of Rabbi Chaim Brovender and Mrs. Mali Brofsky in conversation to mark the 120th birthday of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt"l. Hosted by TRADITION and WebYeshiva.org (12 Adar/March 5, 2023).

Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein and R. Jeffrey Saks in conversation to mark the 120th birthday of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt"l. Hosted by TRADITION and WebYeshiva.org (12 Adar/March 5, 2023).