Judaism Unbound Institute for the Next Jewish Future

It’s almost time… for Shavuot! Dan, Lex, and Miriam come together for a conversation about what Shavuot will look like this year at Judaism Unbound. They explore the connections between Shavuot and conversion, renewing our commitment to Judaism through ritual, and how we can meaningfully experience Shavuot in new and ancient ways.

Shai Held, one of the most influential Jewish thinkers and leaders in America, is president and dean of the Hadar Institute in New York City. Held received the prestigious Covenant Award for excellence in Jewish education, and has been named multiple times to Newsweek’s list of the most influential rabbis in America and to the Forward's list of the most prominent Jews in the world. He is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (2013) and The Heart of Torah: Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion (2017). In this conversation, Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg welcome him to the show to explore his newest book, entitled Judaism is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life.

Elliot Kukla (he/they) is a rabbi, author, and activist. Elliot has worked at the intersection of justice and spiritual care to those who are ill, dying and bereaved since 2007. They are currently on the faculty of SVARA, where they also direct the Collective Loss Adaptation Project (CLAP). Elliot joins Lex Rofeberg and Dan Libenson for a conversation about justice-based radical spiritual care, and what both the experience of chronic illness and the Jewish tradition offer our world as we contend with grief, loss, and the need for rest.

This bonus episode of Judaism Unbound is presented in partnership with Theatre Dybbuk. We are proud to feature their fourth season's fourth episode as a bonus episode here on Judaism Unbound's feed. In each episode, they bring poems, plays, and other creative texts from throughout history to life, all while revealing their relationships to issues still present today. Subscribe to The Dybbukast on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are found.

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In this episode, presented in collaboration with Hebrew College, we begin by exploring two poems from the second half of the 19th century by prominent American poets. One, "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is generally thought to have been written during a visit to Newport in 1852 and was then published in 1854. The other, a response to that work by Emma Lazarus, called "In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport," was likely written in 1867 and then published in 1871.

Rabbi Dan Judson, Provost of Hebrew College, discusses how the poem by Lazarus both builds upon and deviates from Longfellow's poem. He also shares about the artistic and ideological journey that Emma Lazarus, as a Jewish American writer, took over the course of her career, using her poem "The Banner of the Jew," published in 1882, as an entry point to understand this journey, and touches on the ways in which her evolution speaks to Jewish identity in America and the American experience overall.

Support for this episode is provided in part by A More Perfect Union, a project of The Tides Center.

Jess Belasco is the founder and director of The Disability Justice Torah Circle, a space in which Jews with disabilities can build community around Torah, engage Jewish text through a disability justice lens, and nurture and amplify their voices to impact the broader Jewish community. They join Lex Rofeberg and Dan Libenson for a conversation about what disability has to say about Torah and what Torah has to say about disability.

Chava Shapiro is the founder of the Jewish Zine Archive, an archival collection of Jewish zines and a digital Jewish cultural space. They join Lex Rofeberg and Dan Libenson for a conversation related to their upcoming UnYeshiva mini-course, Unraveling Jewish Zines: From Rashi to the Haggadah to Instagram, which will explore the intersection of Jewish identity, DIY ethos, and artistic innovation through the lens of zine culture.