Judaism Unbound Episode 411: Jewish Counter-History – David Biale
David Biale is the Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis and the the award-winning author/co-author of seven books on Jewish history. He joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about counterculture, secularism, and reaching for our roots, all in the context of understanding the Jewish past and present.
P.S. This episode pairs nicely with our past two episodes, which also explore radical approaches to Jewish history. Listen at Episode 410: The Golem of Brooklyn – Adam Mansbach and Episode 409: American Jewish History’s History – Hasia Diner.
Registration for the UnYeshiva’s new spring mini-courses is now open! We’ve got conversion, bodies, mishnah, and more! Visit JudaismUnbound.com/classes for more information and to register.
[1] Read David Biale’s full bio here, and learn more about New Lehrhaus, the Bay Area learning organization of which he is co-president, here.
[2] For a sense of Biale’s career as a historian and Jewish studies scholar, see his most recent anthology, Jewish Culture: Between Canon and Heresy, which contains over a dozen of his writings spanning roughly the past 40 years.
[3] Dan references this lecture that Biale gave at UCLA in which Biale discusses his intellectual biography, particularly how his experiences as a Jewish college student in the 1970s influenced his academic career.
[4] Biale mentions Sandra Fox’s recent book, The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America. Learn more about Fox’s research from the historian herself in our episode, Episode 383: Jews of Summer Camp – A History.
[5] Dan brings up neo-Hasidism, a contemporary spiritual orientation with roots in an 18th- and 19th-century Eastern-European mystical movement (called Hasidism). To learn more about neo-Hasidism, check out this multimedia “Starter Pack” compiled by Gashmius Magazine, listen to our episode with the publication’s founders: Episode 368: Progressive Hasidism – Jonah Gelfand, Daniel Kraft, or check out a recording of our collaborative learning event, Hasidism Unbound: Unlocking Radical Spirituality with Gashmius Magazine.
[6] Biale references his book, Cultures of the Jews: A New History, because it argues (and celebrates!) that there is no singular, monolithic Jewish culture.
[7] In his discussion of the overlap between religion and culture, Biale mentions that Babylonian Jews used to write “amulet bowls.” He’s talking about incantation bowls. Learn more about this magicical pottery in this interview in New Voices Magazine featuring Jewish studies scholar Shira Eliassian.
[8] Biale also talks about his book, Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought, when Dan asks him about secularism and religiosity vis-a-vis Jewish culture.
[9] Biale cites a Talmudic story in which the rabbis refute Rabbi Eliezer’s use of a verse from Deuteronomy to say that the Torah is in heaven, i.e. up to God, instead arguing that the Torah is here on Earth and thus open to interpretation. This story takes place in Bava Metzia 59a-b, and is sometimes called “The Oven of Akhnai.”
[10] Much of this episode centers on heresy and its role in Jewish religious, cultural, and spiritual life. For more content in this vein, see our past episodes with writer Jay Michaelson: Episode 197: Religious Heresy and Episode 340: More Religious Heresy.
[11] Biale shouts out Daniel Schwartz’s book about 17th-century radical Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image.
[12] Biale describes the heyday of secular Jewish movements as taking place about 100 years ago, with the rise of groups like the Eastern European Bund (German for “union”) and Tarbut (Hebrew for “culture”). He also talks about the Jewish student movement in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s which evolved as a part of the counter-cultural waves across the country during that time.
