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An introduction to the Talmud through the “traditionally radical” lens pioneered by Benay Lappe. We will explore key stories and other material from the Talmud that was left there by the early Rabbis as a how-to manual for re-imagining Judaism after the previous version “crashes.” In alternating weeks, we will interview leading scholars of and thinkers on Talmud to understand the Talmud more deeply from the perspective of contemporary academic study and creative re-interpretation.
Episode 1: “Give me Yavneh and its Sages” (Tractate Gittin 56b)
Episode 2: Is the Torah a Non-Binding Contract? (Tractate Shabbat 88a)
Episode 3: Misquoting God (Bava Metzia 59b, Part 1)
Episode 4 (with guest David Kraemer of JTS, Benay’s Talmud teacher, and author of “A History of the Talmud”)
Episode 5: Jewish (ex)communication (Bava Metzia 59b, Part 2)
Episode 6 (with guest Barry Wimpfheimer of Northwestern University, author of “The Talmud: A Biography”)
Episode 7: Impeachment and Removal (Berakhot 28a, Part 1)
Episode 8: Letting Everybody In (Berakhot 28a, Part 2)
Episode 9: Let’s Do the Time Warp (Menachot 29b)
Episode 10: The Obligation to Protest (Shabbat 54b-55a)
Episode 11: It’s the Bystanders’ Fault (Gittin 55b-56a)
Episode 12: Judaism’s Ideal Person (Sanhedrin 17a-17b)
Episode 13: Purifying the Impure (Eruvin 13b)
Episode 14 (with guest Ruth Calderon, Ketubot 77b)
Episode 15: Gemara and Svara (Eruvin 13a, Sotah 20a)
Episode 16 (with guest Daniel Boyarin)
Episode 17 (with guest Shai Secunda of Bard College, author of “The Iranian Talmud”)
Episode 18 (A Conversation on the 9th of Av)
Episode 19: Why Hillel? (Eruvin 13b)
Episode 20 (Teaching Talmud, with guest Jane Kanarek)
Episode 21 (Debating Daf Yomi, with guest Ilana Kurshan)
Episode 22: Humble Enough for You? (Eruvin 13b)
Episode 23: Rabbinic Values (Yoma 85a-85b)
Episode 24: The Torah Is Not a Suicide Pact (Yoma 85b)
Episode 25: NItza’s Attic (Sanhedrin 74a)
Episode 26: Narrowing the Exceptions (Sanhedrin 74a)
Episode 27: A Fate Worse than Death (Sanhedrin 74a-b)
Episode 28: Public Responsibility (Sanhedrin 74a-74b)
Episode 29: I Have to Eat! (Yoma 82a and 82b)
Episode 30: Distinguishing Cases (Yoma 82b)
Episode 31: First, Do No Harm (Yoma 82b)
Episode 32: Getting Out of Jail Free (Ketubot 2b)
Episode 33: It’s Svara All the Way Down (Ketubot 2b-3a)
Episode 34: Our Way or the Highway (Ketubot 3a)
Episode 35: The Mailbox Rule (Gittin 32a and 33a)
Episode 36: A One-Way Ratchet (Gittin 33a)
Episode 37: Wayward Sons of a Certain Age (Sanhedrin 68b)
Episode 38: Bad Seeds in the Capitol (Sanhedrin 68b, 70a)
Episode 39: A Glutton for Punishment (Sanhedrin 70a, 71a)
Episode 40: Consciousness of Guilt (Sanhedrin 71a)
Episode 41: Goldilocks and the Wayward Son (Sanhedrin 71a)
Episode 42: But I Sat on His Grave! (Sanhedrin 71a)
Episode 43: Black Mold (Sanhedrin 71a)
Episode 44 (with guest Menachem Fisch of Tel Aviv University, author of Rational Rabbis)
Episode 45: The Svara Torah (Bava Batra 9a)
Episode 46: Sweet Little Lies (Ketubot 16b-17a)
Episode 47: The Maidservant’s Moral Power (Ketubot 104a)
Episode 48 (with guest Richard Primus, professor of Constitutional law at the University of Michigan)
Episode 49: Passover in the Talmud (Pesachim 116b and Mishnah Pesachim Chapter 10:4)
Episode 50: Ultimate Questions (Shabbat 31a)
Episode 51: Reading Between the Lines (Shabbat 31a)
Episode 52: Raw Material (Tanna Debei Eliyahu Zuta 2)
Episode 53: What’s the Point? (Berakhot 6b)
Episode 54: Who Owns Torah? (Kiddushin 32a)
Episode 55: The Wisdom of Crowds (Eruvin 14b)
Episode 56: Children of Prophets (Pesachim 66a)
Episode 57: The Lovesick Man (Sanhedrin 75a)
Episode 58: The Fourth Exception (Sanhedrin 75a)
Episode 59: Is Dignity Greater than Torah? (Berakhot 19b)
Episode 60: The Bottom of the Toolbox (Berakhot 19b)
Episode 61: Thinking Like a Jewish Lawyer (Berakhot 19b)
Episode 62: The Rabbis and Gender (with guest Gwynn Kessler of Swarthmore College)
Episode 63: Calculating Damages (Bava Kamma 83b)
Episode 64: Showing Their Hand (Berakhot 19b) (with Menachem Fisch of Tel Aviv University)
Episode 65: Attractive Instability (Bava Kamma 83b)
Episode 66: Rules of Interpretation (Bava Kamma 83b)
Episode 67: Sleight of Hand (Bava Kamma 83b)
Episode 68: Thou Doth Protest Too Much (Bava Kamma 83b)
Episode 69: Juggling Arguments (Bava Kamma 83b)
Episode 70: Cultivated Common Sense (Bava Kamma 83b)
Episode 71: Hard Cases Make Bad Law (Bava Kamma 84a)
Episode 72: When Comedy Becomes Tragedy (Bava Kamma 84a)
Episode 73: Taking It Too Far (Bava Kamma 84a)
Episode 74: Bad Arguments (Bava Kamma 84a)
Episode 75: Bodies of Law (Bava Kamma 84a)
Episode 76: Traditionally Radical (Bava Kamma 84a)
Episode 77: Turning the Tables (Nedarim 20a-20b)
Episode 78: Fish Stories (Nedarim 20b)
Episode 79: Bad Sex and Good Sex (Nedarim 20b)
Episode 80: Students in the Bathroom (Berakhot 62a)
Episode 81: Rabbis Under the Bed (Berakhot 62a)
Episode 82: Abraham Lincoln and the Talmud (with Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School)
Episode 83: The Man in Black (Kiddushin 40a)
Episode 84: Talmudic Comedy (with Jeremy Dauber of Columbia University)
Episode 85: Sometimes a Sword Isn’t Only a Sword (Bava Metzia 84a)
Episode 86: Hurting the One You Love (Bava Metzia 84a)
Episode 87: Yes Men Need Not Apply (Bava Metzia 84a)
Episode 88: Out of the Mouths of Babes (Taanit 9a)
Episode 89: Don’t Make Trouble! (Bava Kamma 117a)
Episode 90: Impulse Control (Bava Kamma 117a)
Episode 91: Intersectional Otherness (Chagigah 15a)
Episode 92: How Drunk is Too Drunk (on Purim)? (Megillah 7b)
Episode 93: Be Careful What You Witness (Sanhedrin 37a)
Episode 94: Adam Created Alone (Sanhedrin 37a)
Episode 95: Does the Mishnah Describe a Seder? (Mishnah Pesachim Chapter 10)
Episode 96: Do You Want to Suffer? (Berakhot 5b)
Episode 97: You’re Busy Dying (Berakhot 5b)
Episode 98: The Evil Eye (Berakhot 20a)
Episode 99: Smaller Is Better (Bava Metzia 84a)
Episode 100: Mistaken Readings About Education (Bava Batra 21a)
Episode 101: Children Teaching Children (Bava Metzia 85b)
Episode 102: Kinder, Gentler Education (Bava Batra 21a)
Episode 103: Not In My Backyard (Bava Batra 21a)
Episode 104: Education Anxiety (Bava Batra 21a)
Episode 105: Teaching Assistance (Bava Batra 21a)
Episode 106: Short Tenure (Bava Batra 21a)
Episode 107: The Virtue of Imprecision (Bava Batra 21a)
Episode 108: Blaming the Teacher (Bava Batra 21a-21b)
Episode 109: The Smaller the Greater (Bava Metzia 85b)
Episode 110: Study or Doing? (Kiddushin 40b)
Episode 111: Teaching or Doing? (Kiddushin 40b)
Episode 112: The Greatest Compliment (Bava Kamma 16b-17a)
Episode 113: Text People (Ketubot 17a-17b)
Episode 114: Something You Want to Say to Me? (Yoma 87a)
Episode 115: Spiritual Innovation (Yoma 87a)
Episode 116: Getting Humble (Yoma 87a)
Episode 117: The Downside of Martyrdom (Avodah Zarah 18a)
Episode 118: Is a Torah a Torah? (Avodah Zara 18a)
Episode 119: Getting Into Heaven (Avodah Zarah 18a)
Episode 120: We Are All the Good Bad Guy (Taanit 29a)
Episode 121: Hanging in the Balance (Kiddushin 40b)
Episode 122: Don't (Need to) Look Back (Kiddushin 40b)
Episode 123: Not All Bad (Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 1:4)
Episode 124: The Risks of Moving On (Yevamot 87b)
Episode 125: Rabbinic Nudging (Yevamot 87b)
Episode 126: Uprooting Torah? (Yevamot 87b)
Episode 127: The Primordial Hanukkah (Avodah Zarah 8a)
Episode 128: Conditional Conversion (Shabbat 31a)
Episode 129: On One Foot (Shabbat 31a)
Episode 130: Unconditional Conversion (Shabbat 31a)
Episode 131: Expansiveness and Constriction (Shabbat 30b-31a)
Episode 132: Getting Into Relationship (Shabbat 31a)
Episode 133: Worth Losing a Bet (Shabbat 31a)
Episode 134: The One Place (Shabbat 31a)
Episode 135: You Want to be Jewish? (Yevamot 47a)
Episode 136: A Little Bit of This (Yevamot 47a)
Episode 137: The Healing Power of a Scab (Yevamot 47b)
Episode 138: (Re)Born to Learn (Yevamot 47b)
Episode 139: Ruth’s Conversion (Yevamot 47b)
Episode 140: A Jew in Every Way (Yevamot 47b and 46a)
Episode 141: Learning from the Impossible (Yevamot 46a)
Episode 142: One or the Other (Yevamot 46a)
Episode 143: Re-Imagining the Scene (Yevamot 46a)
Episode 144: Unexpected Guests (Yevamot 46b)
Episode 145: The Secret Code (Menachot 29b)
Episode 146: Iterating the Myth (Menachot 29b)
Episode 147: Witnessing Conversion (Yevamot 46b-47a)
Episode 148: Risk Tolerance (Yevamot 47a)
Episode 149: Jewish in My Bones (Yevamot 47a)
Episode 150: Highlighting the Radicalness (Yevamot 47a)
Episode 151: Not Holier Than Thou (Yevamot 47a)
Episode 152: Too Much Oversight (Yevamot 47a)
Episode 153: Chicken Stories (Gittin 54b)
Episode 154: Don’t Study Torah (Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 16)
Episode 155: Mishnah is Greater Than Torah (Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 16)
Episode 156: Myth Building (Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 16)
Episode 157: A Word in Its Time (Sifrei Deuteronomy 48)
Episode 158: Forgetting Torah (Sukkah 20a)
Episode 159: Finding Torah (Pesachim 66a)
Episode 160: The Tradition Trusts You (Pesachim 66a)
Episode 161: The Present Time (Yevamot 47a)
Episode 162: What Time Is It? (Pesachim 66a)
Episode 163: Remembering the Future (Pesachim 66a)
Episode 164: Rabbinical School Candidate (Bava Metzia 85a)
Episode 165: Winning Souls Wisely (Bava Metzia 85a)
Episode 166: Outliers on the Scatterplot (Bava Metzia 85a)
Episode 167: The Good Kind of Cog (Bava Metzia 85a)
Episode 168: Writing Your Own Torah (Sifrei Deuteronomy 160)
Episode 169: Fated to Change (Sifrei Deuteronomy 160)
Episode 170: Jewish Literacy (Kiddushin 49a)
Episode 171: Translation is a Lie (Kiddushin 49a)
Episode 172: Demotions and Promotions (Kiddushin 49a)
Episode 173: Torah Is Not Torah (Kiddushin 49a)
Episode 174: What We Mean By Text (Kiddushin 49a)
Episode 175: Students and Sages (Kiddushin 49a)
Episode 176: You Never Know (Kiddushin 49a)
Episode 177: Craftspeople and Artists (Ketubot 103b)
Episode 178: Comparing Versions (Ketubot 103b)
Episode 179: Power and Empowerment (Ketubot 103b)
Episode 180: Succession (Ketubot 103a-103b)
Episode 181: Age Before Wisdom (Ketubot 103b)
Episode 182: A New Chain of Transmission (Ketubot 103b)
Episode 183: The R&D Department (Ketubot 103b)
Episode 184: The Peter Principle (Ketubot 103b)
Episode 185: I Alone Can Judge It (Sanhedrin 4b and 5a)
Episode 186: Levels of Svara (Sanhedrin 5a)
Episode 187: Svara is the Decider (Eruvin 13b)
Benay Lappe is the Founder and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA: a traditionally radical yeshiva. She is an award-winning Talmud educator, specializing in the application of queer theory to Talmud study. She received the Covenant Award in 2016, considered the highest honor in Jewish education, and has been named to many lists of the most influential Jewish leaders of our time. She has rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Dan Libenson is president of Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. He is the founder of Judaism Unbound and previously served as its president. Dan continues to serve as a Senior Fellow of Judaism Unbound and co-hosts the Judaism Unbound podcast.