9 MAY 2024 · Dr. Rebecca Goldstein and J.J. communicate the story of Spinoza's herem and outline the radicalism of his Ethics.  Our first mini-series!! Welcome to the first episode of our three-parter covering friend of the pod, Benedict "Barukh" Spinoza. Please send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit https://www.torahinmotion.org/podcasts Rebecca Newberger Goldstein graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College and immediately went on to graduate work at Princeton University, receiving her Ph.D. in philosophy. She then returned to her alma mater as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy, where she taught the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of mathematics. She has also been a Professor or Fellow at Rutgers, Columbia, Trinity College, Yale, NYU, Dartmouth, the Radcliffe Institute, the Santa Fe Institute, and the New College of the Humanities in London. Goldstein is the author of six works of fiction, the latest of which was Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, as well as three books of non-fiction: Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel; Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity; and Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away. In 1996 Goldstein became a MacArthur Fellow, receiving the prize which is popularly known as the “Genius Award.” In 2005 she was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  In 2006 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Radcliffe Fellowship. In 2008, she was designated a Humanist Laureate by the International Academy of Humanism. Goldstein has been designated Humanist of the Year 2011 by the American Humanist Association, and Freethought Heroine 2011 by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. In that year she also delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Yale University, entitled "The Ancient Quarrel: Philosophy and Literature," which was published by University of Utah Press. In September, 2015, Goldstein was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama in a ceremony at the White House. The citation reads: "For bringing philosophy into conversation with culture. In scholarship, Dr. Goldstein has elucidated the ideas of Spinoza and Gödel, while in fiction, she deploys wit and drama to help us understand the great human conflict between thought and feeling.”

18 APR 2024 · J.J. and Dr. Eric Lawee comment on Rashi's astounding career, and refuse to gloss over his contentious journey to join the Jewish canon.    Please send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit https://www.torahinmotion.org/podcasts Eric Lawee is a professor in the Department of Bible at Bar-Ilan University, where he teaches the history of Jewish biblical scholarship. His Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic (2019; paperback 2021), published by Oxford University Press, won the 2019 Jewish Book Award in the category of Scholarship of the Jewish Book Council and was finalist for a Jordan Schnitzer Book Award of the Association for Jewish Studies. He holds the Rabbi Asher Weiser Chair for Medieval Biblical Commentary Research and has just completed a six-year term as director of Bar-Ilan's Institute for Jewish Bible Interpretation.

11 APR 2024 · J.J. and Dr. Menachem Fisch decided that this is the time for studying the philosophy of the book of Qohelet, and they don't study it in vain.   Please send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit https://www.torahinmotion.org/podcasts Menachem Fisch is the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science at Tel Aviv University and Co-Director of the Frankfurt-Tel Aviv Center for the Study of Religious and Interreligious Dynamics. He has published widely on the history of 19th century British science and mathematics, on rationality and agency, and the philosophy of Talmudic legal reasoning. His recent work explores the limits of normative self-criticism, transformative dialogue, rabbinic literature’s dispute of religiosity, the rationality of scientific framework transitions, Jewish resources for a pluralist political liberalism, the theo-political roots of Israel's retreat from political Zionism, and reflexive emotions.

4 APR 2024 · J.J. and Dr. Maren Niehoff comment on Philo's ideas and attempt to weave him back into the fabric of Jewish history.  Send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Before joining the Dept. of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Maren R. Niehoff was a Junior Fellow at Harvard and received her doctorate and MA from Oxford University. Her BA studies were split between Berlin and Jerusalem. Today she is an elected member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Among her numerous publications are Philo of Alexandria. An Intellectual Biography (Yale 2018; Polonsky Prize 2019) and Homeric Scholarship and Biblical Exegesis in Alexandria (Cambridge 2011; Polonsky Prize 2011).  Currently, she completes a translation and commentary of the Philonic treatise On the Freedom of Every Righteous Person (Brill). Her research interests include the New Testament and rabbinic literature in the Land of Israel.

21 MAR 2024 · J.J. and Dr. Neil Rogachevsky skip down the winding (theoretical) road towards Israeli independence, and tell the story of the drafting of Ben Gurion's declaration of independence.  Send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Neil Rogachevsky is assistant professor and associate director at the Straus Center of Yeshiva University, where he teaches Israel studies and political thought. His commentary and essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Tablet, The Atlantic, Mosaic, Commentary, Jewish Review of Books, American Affairs, Ha’aretz and other publications. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge.

7 MAR 2024 · J.J. and Dr. Jonathan Garb march down the various paths of the Ram"chal's thought, and straighten out some of mysteries of his life, thought, and reception. Send any complaints or compliments to podcasts@torahinmotion.org For more information visit torahinmotion.org/podcasts Jonathan Garb is the Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2014, he received the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities’ Gershom Scholem Prize for Kabbalah Research. His latest book is: Does God Doubt? R. Gershon Henoch Leiner’s Thought in Its Contexts (Brill, 2024).

29 FEB 2024 · J.J. and Dr. Jeremy Brown circulate some of the Jewish responses to Copernicus. Jeremy Brown is the author of New Heavens and a New Earth; The Jewish Reception of Copernican Thought (Oxford University Press 2013) and Influenza; The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History (Simon and Schuster 2018). He is an emergency physician and Director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health. Jeremy is the author of over forty peer-reviewed papers and four books, including two textbooks of emergency medicine published by Oxford University Press. He and his wife, Erica live in Silver Spring, Maryland. They have four children, three more by marriage and two beautiful grandchildren.

22 FEB 2024 · J.J. and Dr. Christoph Schulte contract a serious case of mystical curiousity, and diminish the mysteries around the idea of Tzimtzum. Prof. Dr. Christoph Schulte is Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam since 2001 and for many years head of the Department of Jewish and Religious Studies. He studied Philosophy, Jewish Studies, Theology and Journalism in Heidelberg, Berlin and Jerusalem, did his PhD at Freie Universität Berlin 1987 and was a fellow and Visiting Professor in Jerusalem (1989-91), Montreal (1991), Paris (1992-93), Chicago (1995), Aix-en- Provence (1997-98), Philadelphia (2009/10), Zurich (2014), Basel (2016), Haifa (2017/2023), and Hamburg (2020). He received the Gleim-Preis (Halberstadt 2003) and the Inklusionspreis (Potsdam 2022). His most recent book publications are Von Moses bis Moses: Der jüdische Mendelssohn (Hannover 2020), Mendelssohn-Studien (Hannover 2023) and Zimzum: God and the Origin of the World (Philadelphia 2023).

15 FEB 2024 · J.J. and Dr. Sam Lebens prove God?! (Or at least, they discuss the history of some Jewish arguments for God.) Samuel Lebens is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa. He works in a wide array of philosophical fields including metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of fiction, and most centrally, the philosophy of religion. His recent books include, The Principles of Judaism (Oxford University Press), A Guide for the Jewish Undecided (Maggid Books), Philosophy of Religion: The Basics (Routledge) and (with Tatjana von Solodkoff) Thinking about Stories: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Fiction (Routledge). His website is http://www.samlebens.com

1 FEB 2024 · J.J. and Dr. Leora Batnitzky look for hidden truths in Strauss' thought. Dr. Leora Batnitzky is the Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish studies and professor of religion at Princeton University. She is the author of Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation and Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered (Princeton).