Jewish learning Hebrew College’s
“Speaking Torah” Podcast
Welcome to the Speaking Torah podcast!
Hebrew College presents writers and readers thinking creatively about how Torah is relevant to today—and how it can inform and help us in a world in need of healing and hope.
Torah is one of the most profound sources of wisdom available to us. On this podcast, Jewish leaders from around the world read essays from Hebrew College faculty and rabbinical alumni, and Jewish leaders about how Torah can help us navigate the most pressing issues of our time.
Together, we explore the ways Torah can help us approach the world with creativity, healing, and hope. After listening to the podcast, we hope that you will be left feeling inspired, uplifted, and excited to engage with Torah in a modern, transformative way.
Season Nine
Ep #23: “Shiva” – Poetry of October 7
In the months following October 7th, Israeli poets responded to the tragedy through powerful verses that gave voice to the nation’s grief, rage, and despair. This episode explores selections from Shiva: Poems of October 7th, an anthology containing 59 Hebrew poems alongside English translations and examines how poetry serves as a distinctly Jewish response to catastrophe.
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Ep #24: In Miriam’s Footsteps: Jewish Women’s Leadership and the Pursuit of Justice
In this episode, Dr. Judith Rosenbaum, CEO of the Jewish Women’s Archive, explores the rich legacy of Jewish women’s leadership through the lens of biblical and modern examples. Through a careful examination of historical documents and personal letters, she reveals how Jewish women have creatively and courageously shaped their communities while pursuing justice.
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Rabbi Lavitt`12 shares insights from Jewish Studio Project‘s innovative approach, which combines Torah study with creative practice. Drawing from both ancient Jewish wisdom and modern neuroscience, he explains how creativity allows us to access deeper ways of knowing and understanding. This integration of traditional texts with artistic exploration opens new pathways for problem-solving and personal growth.
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Season Eight
Ep #20: Jewish Travel Learning with Tamid of Hebrew College
Discover how Tamid of Hebrew College is creating unique travel learning experiences that engage the head, heart, soul, and body. From meeting with civil rights leaders in the American South to imagining Jewish life in medieval Spain and Central Europs, these trips offer a chance to build community, challenge assumptions, and find renewed inspiration for building a more just world.
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Ep #21: Navigating the Israel Conversation with the Next Generation
Rabbi Dan Judson explores the historical context of Zionism, the impact of recent events on the younger generation’s views, and practical strategies for fostering open and honest dialogue within families. Whether you’re a parent, grandparent, or simply someone who cares deeply about the future of Israel and the Jewish people, this episode offers valuable insights into the changing landscape of the Israel conversation.
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Ep #22: Understanding Israel: The Power of Jewish-Christian Conversation
Discover how Rabbi Or Rose and his colleague, Reverend Rob Schenck, are modeling the kind of courageous conversations we need to build bridges of understanding across faiths. Learn about the importance of confronting difficult issues head-on, the demographic shifts happening within religious communities, and the urgent need for honest and informed dialogue.
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Season Seven
Learn how the Shul Lunch Cooperative at Hebrew College was formed, hear about the Jewish values that guide the three founders, Becca Heisler, David Mahfouda, and Chaim Spaulding, in their mission, and discover how they’re encouraging other communities to consider similar programs of service.
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Ep #19: Azara: A Scottish Yeshiva
Learn about Azara’s unique approach to cross-denominational tefillah. Discover how Jessica is guiding Edinburgh’s Jewish community through their first encounters with Talmudic texts. Among other things, Jessica shows us how the community makes meaning out of difficult or problematic texts in the modern day while making connections between the texts and their own lives.
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Season Six
Ep #15: The Women Are Waiting for Us To Speak
Rabbi Genevieve Greinetz weaves together the words of the Bavli, Ancient Greek Philosophers, contemporary literature, and her own thoughts on finding women’s voices in our ancient texts, and Rabbi Jane Kanarek discusses the importance of observing Talmud with an assumption of women’s presence, rather than an assuming their absence.
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A discussion between Hebrew College faculty member Rabbi Rachel Adelman and her Rabbinical Student Risa Dunbar, about the power of poetry as midrash: the stories that open our text to even more questioning, along with understanding. Both writers bring their individual voices and experiences into the conversation with the text, allowing the ancient words a new place in the modern era.
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Ep #17: Writing as Spiritual Practice
Discover creative interpretations of liturgical texts from Hebrew College’s talented rabbinical students. Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld is sharing the ethos behind her unique tefillah group, and her students are discussing how writing as spiritual practice has brought them closer in their relationship to God.
Season Five
Ep #13: You Shall Teach Your Children
Tune in for a dynamic talk between Rabbi Dan Judson and Dr. Jonathan Sarna, giving us deep insight into Hebrew College’s commitments to Jewish culture, Jewish leadership, and passing wisdom from generation to generation. They even glimpse into the College’s cultural curriculum 100 years ago.
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Ep #14:Educating for Hope Across Difference
Discover Hebrew College’s work in creating community and hope across difference. Our panelists discuss what hope means to them, practices to help identify common ground and acknowledge differences, and insights into building a world where all voices are heard.
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CENTENNIAL SEASON
Season Four
Tune in to discover two unique takes on contemporary Eastern European and Klezmer music. Hankus Netsky shares his inspiration and wealth of experience on the revival of Klezmer music, and how it has been evolving over the past 45 years. And Cantor Rebecca Khitrik discusses her influences and the musical melting pot that has brought Eastern European Yiddish music to where it is today.
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Ep #12: Hiddushim: Letters From the Front
Tune in for a unique insight into the experience of Jewish soldiers fighting in World War II. These letters contain heartwarming details of Hebrew College alumni eating challah on an unknown island in the Pacific, catching up with kibbutzniks in London, and reciting excerpts from the Haggadah in Fiji.
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Season Three
Ep #7: Challenging Destruction: We Speak Up Despite the Odds
Join us in this episode to discover the lessons from the ancient stories of Noah and the flood to Abraham’s intervention in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And in the post-sermon discussion, both reader Bill McKibben and Rabbi Shoshana Friedman share their thoughts about our role and responsibility to take action and speak up to encourage the collective consciousness needed to address climate change.
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Ep #8: Thank You Dean Thurman: Remembering an American Spiritual Master
Dr. Shively Smith reads us through and reflects on Rabbi Or Rose’s gratitude of Howard Thurman and the impact he had on the landscape of what is possible for interreligious harmony and cooperation — as well as how we can all carry on this work in our own religious practices.
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Ep #9: When the Walls of Metaphor Can’t Hold
Rabbi Jordan Braunig’s essay, read by Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, brings us into an unsettling and deeply personal story of love and fragility, giving us an account of a time when it’s so difficult to express the complexity of emotion, that even the walls of metaphor cannot hold.
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Ep #5: Squash with Egg and Cheese – Judith Rosenbaum reads us on a journey through Lydia Kukoff’s sensory memories and the product of combining her Italian heritage with her chosen Jewish faith, melding her experiences, creating new traditions for her family, and expanding the definition of Judaism while also connecting deeply with its traditions.
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Ep #6: Stop Making Sense – Anne Germanacos reads Rabbi Mónica Gomery’s d’var Torah, written in 2019, highlighting this piece’s ever-increasing relevance in a world of post-truths and “alternative facts”. Mónica shares with us how leaning into that which doesn’t make narrative sense highlights the greater truths that can fly under our rational mind.
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Season One
Ep #1: Two Ways to Tell a Story – Joy Ladin guides us through Rabbi Gray Myrseth’s work, Two Ways to Tell a Story, taking us on a powerful journey built equally upon continuity and disruption, from Moses shattering the 10 Commandments, to their own journey to find a self that they could inhabit fully, without fear.
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Ep #2: Vertical Ladders of Sky, Horizontal Ladders of Earth – Rabbi Jordan Schuster explores the connection between John Keats and the story of Jacob’s Ladder, and teaches that regardless of how fissured this world feels, ladders, like bridges, hold the possibility for connection and relationship. Read by Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, President of Hebrew College.
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Ep #3: Extending the Horizons of Our Hearts
– Jewish feminist poet, Alicia Ostriker, reads Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld’s essay on the Binding of Isaac, and invites us to think about the thicket of our own lives; the possibilities that we haven’t seen and the impacts of the stories that we tell ourselves.
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