Judaism Unbound

Tivona Reith and Holly Smith are two of Judaism Unbound’s most dedicated and longstanding listeners. They join Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about becoming Jewish as adults, and whether we might benefit from shifting our terminology from “conversion” to “integration.” This episode is the 7th in an ongoing mini-series exploring conversion to Judaism.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.And a reminder: Elul Unbound is back! Our annual exploration of the final month of the Jewish year, which serves as an on-ramp into Rosh Hashanah, is here. Register for Elul Unbound (almost all components of it are free!) via this link!And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Elul is the 12th and final month of the Jewish calendar year. Elul Unbound is a Judaism Unbound initiative all about making Elul meaningful, through creative digital modalities. In this second bonus episode of Elul Unbound 2023, Lex Rofeberg and Wendie Bernstein Lash explore the power of the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet -- Bet!This Elul bonus episode is the second of four that will be released as part of Elul Unbound 2023 (our 18th-21st Elul episodes overall). For a 3-session Elul mini-course, which will help you take your Elul observance to the next level, you can register for Elul: Your On-Ramp Into Rosh Hashanah -- which will be taught by Wendie Bernstein Lash, longtime facilitator of Elul Unbound! To check out our previous Elul bonus episodes, released through Elul Unbounds of the past five years, click here. Join our bi-weekly journey through Elul Unbound 2023, by signing up at this link, and sign up for our second Elul Unbound Shabbat gathering (Friday, September 1st), where we will be exploring

Israel has played a central role in American-Jewish life for quite some time. Eric Axelman and Sam Eilertsen, co-directors of a new documentary film entitled Israelism, join Dan and Lex for a conversation about their film, which explores a movement of young American Jews fighting to redefine Judaism’s relationship to Israel-Palestine. Learn more about Israelism by heading to IsraelismFilm.com. The film debuted at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, won Best Documentary at the Arizona International Film Festival, and garnered a Spirit Award at the Brooklyn International Film Festival. It also won the Audience Award at the 2023 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the oldest and largest Jewish film festival in the world. To explore bringing a screening of Israelism to your community, email Contact@IsraelismFilm.com. Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.And a reminder: Elul Unbound is back! Our annual exploration of the final month of the Jewish year, which serves as an on-ramp into Rosh Hashan

Elul is the 12th and final month of the Jewish calendar year. Elul Unbound is a Judaism Unbound initiative all about making Elul meaningful, through creative digital modalities. In this first bonus episode of Elul Unbound 2023, Lex Rofeberg, Wendie Bernstein Lash, and Micah Sandman launch their month-long exploration of the power of twos/seconds!This Elul bonus episode is the first of four that will be released as part of Elul Unbound 2023 (our 18th-21st Elul episodes overall). For a 3-session Elul mini-course, which will help you take your Elul observance to the next level, you can register for Elul: Your On-Ramp Into Rosh Hashanah -- which will be taught by Wendie Bernstein Lash, longtime facilitator of Elul Unbound! To check out our previous Elul bonus episodes, released through Elul Unbounds of the past five years, click here. Join our bi-weekly journey through Elul Unbound 2023, by signing up at this link, and sign up for our first Elul Unbound Shabbat gathering (Friday, August 25th), where we will be ex

Lisa Rappaport is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel, in Chico, California, and in just a few months (January 2024) she will be ordained as a rabbi! She joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for the 6th episode in an ongoing mini-series exploring conversion to Judaism.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.And a reminder: Elul Unbound is back! Our annual exploration of the final month of the Jewish year, which serves as an on-ramp into Rosh Hashanah, is here. Register for Elul Unbound (almost all components of it are free!) via this link!And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Chris Bartlett, the Executive Director at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia, isn't Jewish. But...he's attended Queer Talmud camp, hosts Shabbat gatherings at his organization's building, attends many Jewish holiday gatherings, and has Jewish friends of all ages! He joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about notions of "Jewish-adjacent" and "Ger Toshav" -- two terms in different languages that refer to folks who are not Jewish, but/and are absolutely part of the Jewish community. This episode is the fifth in an ongoing Judaism Unbound mini-series, exploring conversion to Judaism.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.There's a 3-week mini-course coming up from the UnYeshiva, beginning Wednesday, August 30th! Taught by Wendie Bernstein Lash, and entitled Elul: Your On-Ramp Into Rosh Hashanah, you can learn more about it (and register!) via this link.And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Suppo

Marques Hollie (he/they) is a theatre artist, storyteller, classically trained musician, and ritualist. They join Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about how Madonna, along with the book Judaism for Dummies, combined forces to catalyze a journey from "regular at a Nebraskan Pentecostal church" to "studying to become a rabbi." This episode is the fourth in an ongoing Judaism Unbound mini-series, exploring conversion to Judaism.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about taking courses in Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Laura Yares is the author of a brand-new book, entitled Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. She joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about her book -- in some ways about Sunday Schools, to be sure, but in other ways a chance to explore the broader question, "What even is religion?" , through the history of Sunday Schools in the 19th century. They also ask what the book can help us learn, today, about our 21st century Jewish landscape.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here! 

If you say to David A.M. Wilensky that he "converted" to Judaism, he'll provide a gentle correction: "I underwent a conversion," he'll say. This may not seem like much of a distinction, but in this episode of Judaism Unbound, we explore a group of people who -- from some frames of reference -- converted to Judaism, but from other frames of reference, were Jewish from the second they were born. In short, Wilensky was born as a patrilineal Jew (his father was Jewish, and his mother at the time was not -- though she has since converted), and he made the choice in adulthood to undergo a "conversion," even though he had lived his whole life in Jewish community. This episode explores his story, and a wide variety of inter-related topics! This episode is the third in an ongoing Judaism Unbound mini-series, exploring conversion to Judaism.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about taking courses in Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by head

Juan Mejia, a conservative rabbi who serves as Jewish educator for Emanuel Synagogue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation exploring how Judaism must -- in order to have its maximum positive impact on the world -- embrace converts as fully and authentically Jewish. This episode is the second in an ongoing Judaism Unbound mini-series, exploring conversion to Judaism.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about taking courses in Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Katie Kaestner-Frenchman is Judaism Unbound’s amazing Marketing, Communications, and Creative Maven! They join their colleagues Dan and Lex for the first conversation in an ongoing Judaism Unbound mini-series, exploring conversion to Judaism. What superpowers do converts often bring to Jewish life? What barriers do they continue to face in Jewish spaces? What on *earth* do we do with the fact that everyone on Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was so unbelievably mean to Astrid — the one character on the show who is a Jew-by-Choice? All these questions and more come up in this episode!Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about taking courses in Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

David Raphael and Ilene Vogelstein are leaders of the Jewish Grandparents Network, a national organization that educates, connects, and supports grandparents as essential partners in enriching Jewish life. They join Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about how, perhaps counter-intuitively, the voices of many Jewish grandparents have been sidelined in Jewish institutional life -- along with sharing some ideas about how to shift that reality moving forward. Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Melissa Klapper, author of Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920, joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation serving as a "prequel" of sorts to our recent unit on the past, present, and future of Bat Mitzvah (and B Mitzvah in general). But it's also...kind-of a sequel? Klapper talks through the ways in which Jewish girls marked their entry into adulthood -- both within Jewish life and in secular contexts -- in the era directly preceding the emergence of Bat Mitzvah as a life-cycle ritual (hence "prequel!"). The sense in which this conversation is also a sequel is that it is focused on adolescents, largely between the ages of 13 and 20, which is the stage of life directly after many B Mitzvahs occur, at 12-13 years of age!Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things

Sandra Fox, the Goldstein-Goren visiting assistant professor of American Jewish History at New York University, is the author of The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America. She joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about the history of Jewish summer camp, the ways in which it has influenced American Jewish life, and what it can teach us about amplifying the voices of young people as we study history.Purchase The Jews of Summer via this link! Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearing -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

B Mitzvah (a gender-neutral term for Jewish coming-of-age rituals, often but not exclusively associated with the age of 12-to-13) is an incredibly popular Jewish observance. Even in a landscape where many Jews do not spend much time in Jewish institutional contexts, they often carve out space for their family members to experience B Mitzvah. In this conversation, Dan and Lex explore what they believe B Mitzvah could be in the future, and how it could work in tandem with an expanded notion of Jewish rites of passage, across a wider variety of life-stages. This episode is the 7th in an ongoing mini-series of Judaism Unbound episodes, honoring Bat Mitzvah's 100th anniversary, and exploring the present and future of B Mitzvah.Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearing -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time

Amichai Lau-Lavie is the co-founder and spiritual leader of Lab/Shul: an "artist-driven, everybody-friendly, god-optional, pop up, experimental community for sacred Jewish gatherings." He joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about B Mitzvah as a rite of passage -- not only for 12/13-year-olds, but for all ages!This episode is the 6th in an ongoing mini-series of Judaism Unbound episodes, honoring Bat Mitzvah's 100th anniversary, and exploring the present and future of B Mitzvah ("B Mitzvah" is a term for Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies, across the gender spectrum). Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearing -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

What if B Mitzvahs weren't so thoroughly associated with synagogues,  but were understood to take place in a rich diversity of other spaces in the world?Camp Tawonga, a summer camp located just outside of Yosemite National Park and based in the San Francisco Bay Area, offers a two-year B Mitzvah program that brings the magic of camp to the Bay Area (during the rest of the year), and gives students a unique way to approach this milestone moment through community, nature, and experiential learning. Meg Adler, Camp Tawonga's Associate Director of Bay Area Programs and facilitator of this B Mitzvah program, joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg to explore what their program looks like, and what it might be able to teach other communities.This episode is the 5th in an ongoing mini-series of Judaism Unbound episodes, honoring Bat Mitzvah's 100th anniversary, and exploring the present and future of B Mitzvah ("B Mitzvah" is a term for Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies, across the gender spectrum). Access full shownotes

This bonus episode of Judaism Unbound is presented in partnership with Theatre Dybbuk. We are proud to feature their third 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.---------------------------------------------In this fourth of our five-episode series in partnership with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, we explore The Book of Tahkemoni, a collection of tales written in Hebrew in the early 13th century. Authored by Yehuda Alharizi who was born in Toledo, Spain in the middle of the 12th century, the book uses the structure of the Arabic literary form known as maqama.Dr. Jonathan Decter, the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies, discusses the history of Jews in the region of T

Open Tent Be Mitzvah is a two-year experience, offered by the organization Judaism Your Way, that is focused on a student’s coming-of-age journey within a Jewish context. It culminates in a distinctive, meaningful "Be Mitzvah" ceremony that helps a student find their unique Jewish leadership voice. Amy Atkins and Amanda Schwartz, two of Open Tent Be Mitzvah's lead educators, join Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation. They explore together what it looks like when B Mitzvah (or, in their nomenclature, "Be Mitzvah!") is a process that is customized to align with each student's interests and passions -- empowering them to shape Judaism for themselves in the process.This episode is the 4th in an ongoing mini-series of Judaism Unbound episodes, honoring Bat Mitzvah's 100th anniversary, and exploring the present and future of B Mitzvah ("B Mitzvah" is a term for Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies, across the gender spectrum). Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.Register for ShavuotLIVE: a 2

The Bagel Report: The Bagel Report is a pop-culture entertainment podcast featuring award-winning culture and entertainment writers Esther D. Kustanowitz and Erin Ben-Moche. Each episode, these entertainment junkies discuss all things Jewish in the arts & entertainment world while exploring how Jewish identity is portrayed on the big and small screen. Follow them on social @estherk and @ebenmoche, and on Twitter and Facebook @TheBagelReport.----------------------------------Episode Notes:Esther D. Kustanowitz and Erin Ben-Moche finally dive into The Mandalorian's Jewish themes with the help of two guests who love Jewish identity, Star Wars and popular culture: J. Editor David A.M. Wilensky and Rabbi Howard Tilman.What is a Mandalorian and does it matter? Why is this show resonating with Jewish viewers? And is a homeland a place or state of mind? Even if you're like Erin, who is new to the fandom, there is something for everyone in this episode, like MCU Easter Eggs, Fiddler on the Roof nods and Harry Pott