30 December 2021

2021: My Biggest Year of Podcasting

2021 was my biggest year of podcasting yet. This was likely due to the pandemic.

Granted, 2020 was a big year for podcasting, in general, and for me also, especially since 2020 marked the first full year of running my own podcast, which I had begun in the fall of 2019. What I think marks 2021 differently than 2020 is also appearing on more podcasts others published. The most numerous of these are my appearance on a podcast about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), although I appeared on others, as well.

Of the 48 podcast appearances on which I appeared in 2021, 31 of these were for my own podcast, The Jewish Drinking Show. While this was fewer than the 44 episodes I published in 2020, if one combines all of my appearances on podcasts, it still felt like more than 2020. 

In 2021, I appeared ten times on an MCU podcast

Having mentioned my ten appearances on an MCU podcast, it was largely driven by all of the new Marvel shows that are that have been coming out in Disney Plus, which has been really exciting and has really driven my fandom this year, vastly far surpassing my interest in Star Wars. My interest in Star Wars in recent years has been waning, in general, and certainly in comparison to the MCU. Although I did appear on a few Star Wars podcasts, it wasn't at the same level. 

I appeared a couple of times on Let There be Light

In the Jewish realm, I appeared on the American Israelite's podcast a couple of times in-studio as a sort of rabbi-in-residence for the podcast, Let There be Light. I also appeared on a couple of other podcasts, primarily to promote The Jewish Drinking Show. 

One other thing that also upped my podcasting game this year was getting a proper microphone for such endeavors. I was able to get this after someone had gifted me an Amazon gift card for a video-editing project that I did and I very much appreciated that token of their appreciation, which was just enough to get a Blue yeti microphone, which definitely elevated my audio quality for podcasting, whether appearing as a guest or for hosting.

Here is a listing of my podcast appearances in 2021:

Star Wars Podcasting:

MCU Podcasting:

Jewish Podcasting:

The Jewish Drinking Show (in reverse chronological order):

 

 


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22 December 2021

Attending the 2021 AJS Conference

Masks were required at AJS 2021
Having attended the 2021 Association for Jewish Studies conference these past few days, it was quite an experience. While it was my fifth time attending this conference,* it was the first conference I have attended since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

It was also different than previous Association for Jewish Studies (hereafter, AJS) conferences in that masking was required. (In fact, they updated the guidelines on Friday requiring even the speakers to remain masked when speaking.) It was also different in that many would-be attendees decided not to attend. As described in Rachel Kohn's JTA article on the conference, the conference was half the size that it usually had been, compared to in pre-pandemic years. Unfortunately, many of those who decided in the days leading up to the conference to not attend were people who had papers to read at the conference, which led to not only many papers being read by people other than their authors, it also led to many panels having to be either canceled in full or shifted around amongst their remnants. As such, the printed program booklet was not reliable, as it did not reflect the panels taking place. Fortunately, the website and the conference app were updated to reflect which panels were actually going to be happening and with which panelists, so that was helpful.

As with previous conferences, I found it intellectually engaging and very intellectually stimulating, not to mention I also learned a lot, as well as learning some aspects of contemporary scholarship, both within rabbinic literature and beyond. I definitely appreciated and enjoyed the sessions on Rabbinic literature, as I have in the past.  However, a few other panels that were beyond Rabbinic literature were certainly chock full of terminology and references to scholars with whom I was not familiar at all and it was an interesting to try to understand what I could amongst those.

Having started my podcast (The Jewish Drinking Show) in the fall of 2019, most of the guests I've had on the show have been recorded through either Skype or Zoom. As such, I have not met most of the guests on my show in-person and it was a delight to meet several of them there in-person. It was, of course, also great to reconnect in-person with a bunch of people and meet new ones, as well. Speaking of meeting people, since the conference was half as attended as it had been in pre-pandemic years, it also had a more intimate feel to it, which was great for chatting with people and for conversations, so it made the experience all that much more special.

I am very fortunate that my work paid for my conference attendance and I'm also very excited to bring back many of the learnings I experienced at the conference and share it with the residents of the senior living facility where I work as the Director of Pastoral Care. While it is out of the box thinking to bring back such content for this demographic, I think there will certainly be residents that will greatly enjoy this content being shared with them. In addition to bringing back insightful tidbits of knowledge and information from this conference to the residents of the senior living facility where I work, it was also a helpful for me for thinking about other such content I can provide to them, and possibly even guest speakers.

I greatly enjoyed the panel discussion on Deborah Romm

While I certainly enjoyed the panel discussions on Rabbinic Literature, perhaps the panel I enjoyed the most was "The Romm Printing and Publishing House in Vilna: Between Scholarly, Environmental and Gender Innovation", which featured Ada Gebel speaking on "'Shas Vilna' as a Maskilic Project in the Spirit of 'Mekitze Nirdamim'" and Mordechai Zalkin speaking on  "Deborah Romm: Innovative Publisher, Visionary Businesswoman and Cultural Agent" - these were so fascinating and enlightening, not only into Deborah Romm, who was largely responsible not only for the growth of the Romm printing house in the late 19th century, but particularly for the famous "Vilna Shas". What emerged from that session was that Deborah Romm was quite the impressive business lady and orchestrated the printing of the Vilna edition of the Babylonian Talmud, which is the printing of the Talmud that remains with us to this day.

My favorite paper was none other than the brilliantly sharp Christine Hayes (who delivered the absolute best response to papers I have ever heard (and about whom I also previously wrote here)), whose paper “'If all the seas were ink…': The Pre-modern Migrations of a Trope” was a fascinating textual exploration of the intellectual history of a phrase found not only in Rabbinic literature and the Qur'an, but also eastern literature.  Rounding out my top five are Jonathan Milgram's "The Mishnah and Ancient Near Eastern Law", Yael Wilfand's "Reconsidering Portrayals of Rabban Gamliel’s Travels in Light of the Journeys of Roman Emperors and Governors", Shira Shmidman's "Rami bar Hama: Historical Figure or Literary Construction of the Talmud’s Redactors?", and Orit Malka's and Ayelet Hoffman Libson's "The Concept of the חבורה in Early Rabbinic Literature".

If you were interested in checking-out my tweeting of these sessions, including my notes, you are welcome to do so here:

Sunday Sessions Monday Sessions Tuesday Sessions

 *Listing of previous posts on AJS Conferences:

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19 November 2021

Discussing My 2021 Trip to Israel on the Let There Be Light podcast

 
While I have unfortunately not shared much in this space on my trip to Israel this year, I did have the opportunity to discuss it a little bit on a recent episode of the Let There Be Light podcast, the official podcast of The American Israelite. Here is a video clip from that episode in which I discuss my trip (with regards to this article):

You can listen to the episode in its entirety here:

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30 September 2021

Considering a Couple of Essays from the Second Issue of the Sources Journal: Hartman & Hayes

Having previously read a couple of essays from the first issue of the Sources journal, I was excited to have come across newly-released essays a few weeks ago from Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman and Dr. Christine Hayes in the second issue of the Sources journal, I was curious to read them...and I did.

Dr. Hayes on Rabban Gamliel's and Rabbi Joshua's Conflicts
Having appreciated Dr. Hayes work (and having heard her give a phenomenal response at the 2016 AJS Conference), I was very curious to read her "Shaming, Disagreement & Purposeful Difference: A Talmudic Teaching". While I was, at first, curious why she would have published an essay in this journal, I appreciated her focus on Talmudic incidents between Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua/Joshua. She does a phenomenal job in this essay, in which she says she is "interested in slowing down the action in order to identify the inflection points, the moments when a different choice might have led to a different outcome or to the same outcome but without the psychic trauma."

She notes that a lot has been written on various themes involved in these incidents, although she focuses on the "analysis of the anatomy of conflict" in these stories, such as "the rush to narrate the actions and intentions of the other in a negative light", "the recourse to shaming and humiliation", and "the instrumentalization of one party by another to further a personal or political agenda." 

I have been bothered by Rabban Gamliel's actions and Dr. Hayes does a wonderful job fleshing out the various problematics involved in his actions. I highly recommend her analysis of these stories!

However, then she seeks to contemporize the lessons she has fleshed out, which is interesting, as she goes into vague territory: 

When shaming is adopted as a strategic move to hasten some desired result, it fuels the cynical belief that truth is not enough. At a time when purveyors of falsehood threaten democracies everywhere, trusting that truth is enough—indeed, insisting on it—is urgent. Finally, when the public square is policed by shame, it is quickly abandoned by all but the shameless. A society governed by those incapable of feeling shame is a society no one wants to inhabit.

While it's unclear what she is driving at, she then turns her ire on social media:

Resisting the urge to shame and humiliate may also mean disengaging from the technologies that encourage these habits. To realize the purpose of difference—asserted with such confidence by Mendelssohn—means cultivating practices of interaction that are currently disincentivized by modern technologies of communication. Any technology that “rewards” reflex responses to disembodied and faceless others entrenches the habits that fuel destructive conflict. Replace the amygdala-inflaming outrage machine known euphemistically as “social” media with the slower rhythms and deliberative exchanges of actual social encounters. Trade in the solipsistic performances of the inaptly named “Face”book for encounters with actual faces. 

It seems clear to me that Dr. Hayes not only does not use social media, but even worse, demonstrates that she does not even understand it. It comes across that she is seeking to demonize social media just by reading headlines about it. It lacks a deep and serious engagement with it. Moreover, despite what Dr. Hayes argues, Facebook does offer "slower rhythms and deliberative exchanges" of ideas-exchanging.

Another problem with what she wrote, especially "When shaming is adopted as a strategic move to hasten some desired result, it fuels the cynical belief that truth is not enough" is that sometimes, it offers an opportunity to expose bad behaviors in society. What immediately comes to mind is that of Eric Garner's killing. Sure, she writes, "You would not want to be denied an opportunity to give an account of yourself, to learn, to apologize, to change, to grow; and you would not want to be instrumentalized", so we should want those police officers to change and to grow, but social media can be a helpful way of changing these bad things in society. Shedding light on such immoral behavior is a good thing, even if Dr. Hayes seems to want to not allow that from this essay.

In sum, I like what she wrote about Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Joshua, but she should stick to what she knows, Talmud, and stay away from discussing social media, which she does not.
 

Rabb Dr. Hartman on Liberal Zionism in North America
While I have heard Rabbi Dr. Hartman before, I had not really known much about him, so I was curious to see what he had written in his "Liberal Zionism and the Troubled Committed: A Shifting North American Discourse".

He starts out by identifying that he is a “troubled committed Zionist”, which he describes as being "both unconditionally committed to Israel’s survival and deeply honored to be part of a generation of Jews who are building the homeland of the Jewish people." He continues:

I view Israel as one of the most exciting projects in Jewish history: to build our own country in accordance with the highest Jewish and liberal democratic values. To be a committed Zionist is to be invested in shaping the outcome of this project.
...
To be a Jew is to be troubled, to view one’s life, and one’s society, through an aspirational lens, always striving to be more. I’m troubled because this project is an ongoing process that requires constant revision. I’m troubled by the enduring gap between ideals and reality.

Today, I am troubled because something very wrong is going on in our country, because our commitment to human rights and equality, to treating all people as created in the image of God, is inconsistently applied in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. I’m troubled because Israel, however committed to peace, is no longer resolute in pursuing it. I’m troubled because our power has afforded us the ability to maintain the current political status quo while desensitizing us to the moral abuses it conceals and legitimizes. I’m troubled because we can—and must—do better, but many of us are no longer trying.

I found all of this to be fascinating. And he writes that 

As the majority of Israelis became the “untroubled committed,” most North American Jews remained “troubled committed” (even “hyper-troubled,” but as the Pew surveys demonstrated, still committed, nonetheless). At the same time, a segment of liberal Jews became “troubled un-committed."
...
Until recently, the “troubled uncommitted” were relatively marginal. The real fear in the American Zionist community, up to a few years ago, was to combat the growth in the “untroubled uncommitted”—those who simply had become disenfranchised and disinterested in Israel. The newfound fear, however, is the drift of the “troubled committed” toward the growing camp of the “troubled uncommitted.”

He goes through many fascinating aspects, including different arguments (which I highly recommend reading), ultimately coming to suggestions:

Liberal Jews in North America will not embrace Zionism unless it is a liberal Zionism, and will not embrace Israel unless Israel embraces liberal values. That does not mean that Israel needs to mirror American liberal values, or that it needs to embody the best of these values. Given our distinct geo-political realities, there will always be differences in both ideology and policy between Israelis and North Americans. In addition, as most liberal Americans and Jews have come to experience, America itself does not always embody these values; for that matter, no country on earth fully does. Liberal Jews must believe, however, that there exists a core affinity between Zionism, Israel, and basic liberal aspirations.

He then articulates six suggestions for this. I highly recommend this piece!

Looking Forward to Further Reading
Having read these two essays a few weeks ago, I am excited to continuing to read further essays in this issue.

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24 September 2021

Next Book Project?

Having published my most recent book prior to turning 40, some people have already began asking: “What will the next book be?” Although I do want to begin working on somewhat of a follow-up to this most recent book, that will most likely not be my next book project (but I will discuss that further).

Someone asked me this week if I would be writing a book on Jewish drinking and that is what the next one may be. While I composed weekly divrei Torah on the Torah portion for 17 Torah portions a couple of years ago, I am thinking about resuming that series this Torah reading-cycle, which I can then turn into a book in about a year from now.

Another possibility, that someone had asked me about this past spring is to compose a popular-oriented book on drinking in Jewish life. This would be focused on holidays and lifecycles primarily. For that work, I would have to start from scratch, but it’s doable.

Returning to what I had mentioned at the outset, having published a book of 30 essays on early rabbinic (Tannaitic) literature called Power at 30, drawing on Yehudah ben Tema’s age-based description of a man’s life, the next one would be something along the lines of Discernment at 40, which would be comprised of 40 essays on later rabbinic literature.

Fortunately, I have some essays I have written for Textual Insights that would work well for such a volume:

One piece that has been on my mind to write since 2006 is on Rabbi Zera’s reportage of Jewesses enstringing upon themselves, so that needs to happen (although I have posted a couple of little posts on this topic at Textual Insights here and here).

There are also few posts from Matters of Interest I am considering including in such a volume, as well (although they would need to be improved):

I clearly have a lot of researching and writing to go before that collection of essays is ready….

In the meantime, we shall see what I work on….

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