Jenny Camhi and Jessica Kort are the Chief Talent Officer and Director of Communications and Strategy, respectively, of The Leichtag Foundation. In this 1st episode in a three-part mini-series, Dan and Lex speak with Camhi and Kort, on location at Leichtag Commons -- a Jewish community farm, education center, co-working space, and more, located in Encinitas, California and operated by the Leichtag Foundation. The two guests provide a window into the programming that takes place at Leichtag Commons, along with an exploration of "The Hive," a collaborative co-working space that fosters a space of creativity, collaboration, and connection, for employees of Jewish and secular non-profits.To access full shownotes for this episode, click here. 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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 333: Cross-Pollination - Jenny Camhi, Jessica Kort

Dan and Lex have been thinking a lot about art lately. In this conversation, they reflect on recent podcast episodes exploring Jewish art from a variety of angles, revisit their notion Judaism itself might be best understood as a medium of art, and play around with what the words "mosaic" and "Mosaic" might mean for the future of Judaism (yes, you did not misread, it's the same spelling for both!).To access full shownotes for this episode, click here. 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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 332: Is Judaism Mosaic or mosaic?

New Voices Magazine, a Jewish and justice-focused magazine by and for Jews ages 18-24, recently published an investigation -- written by Julia Hegele -- entitled "How Jewish Summer Camps Are Damaging LGBTQ+ Youth." The investigation, which you can read here, shines a light on the experiences of LGBTQ+ campers -- now LGBTQ+ camp alumni -- who have for decades faced exclusion, emotional conflict, pressure, and trauma at their Jewish summer camps. It includes voices from a wide range of Jewish camps -- different geographic regions, Jewish denominations, and affiliations -- and also offers up potential strategies for reparative work moving forward.In this episode of Judaism Unbound, Hegele -- along with New Voices' editor-in-chief, Rena Yehuda Newman -- join Dan and Lex to discuss this investigation.To access full shownotes for this episode, click here. 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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 331: Safety and Unsafety at Summer Camp - Rena Yehuda Newman, Julia Hegele

This bonus episode of Judaism Unbound is presented in partnership with Theatre Dybbuk. Once a month, their podcast -- called The Dybbukast -- releases a new episode, and we are proud to feature their second season's eighth 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.The Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian is the earliest documented Jewish play, thought to have been written in Alexandria, Egypt in the second century BCE.  From the fragments that remain, we know that it tells the biblical Exodus narrative in the style of a Greek tragedy. In 2016, theatre dybbuk combined the extant 269 lines with modern-day stories of refugees, immigrants, and other voices from the American experience to form a new adaptation, titled exagoge, that relates the ancient story to contemporary issues.This episode, presented in collaboration with the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, features performances from exagoge intercut with a conversation recorded at the annual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in March 2022 between theatre dybbuk's artistic director, Aaron Henne, and Dr. Miriam Heller Stern. Dr. Stern, the Vice Provost for Educational Strategy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and founder of Beit HaYozter/the Creativity Braintrust, studied theatre dybbuk’s process alongside Dr. Tobin Belzer during the creation of the adaptation.

Bonus Episode: The Dybbukast Season 2, Episode 8 - Adapting Exagoge

Allison Silverman is an Executive Producer for the Netflix series Russian Doll. She joins Dan and Lex for a conversation that covers a ton of ground: the many and intersecting Jewish layers of the show, a behind-the-scenes look at how a series like this is created, and even whether TV shows like Russian Doll could be a potential source for new Jewish rituals and practices.If you're a Netflix subscriber, you can view Russian Doll for yourself by clicking here!To access full shownotes for this episode, click here. 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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 330: 'Russian Doll' as a Jewish Text - Allison Silverman

Kendell Pinkney is a theatre-artist, creative producer, and rabbi. He serves as the Artistic Director of The Workshop, a newly launched arts and culture fellowship for professional JOCISM (Jews of Color, Indigenous Jews, Sephardi, and Mizrahi) artists. Pinkney joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation exploring big-picture questions of Jewish art, along with specific questions about The Workshop in particular.To access full shownotes for this episode, click here. 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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 329: Workshopping Judaism - Kendell Pinkney

Liora Ostroff and Naomi Rose Weintraub are the curator-in-residence and artist-in-residence, respectively, for The Jewish Museum of Maryland (JMM). They explore, in conversation with Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg, a recent exhibition that they helped to install at JMM, entitled A Fence Around the Torah: Safety and Unsafety in Jewish Life. We encourage to explore the exhibition yourself, before you listen to this episode, or as you listen to it, via AFenceAroundTheTorah.com.  To access full shownotes for this episode, click here. These include visuals of the exhibition, which will greatly enhance your experience of this podcast.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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 328: Safety and Unsafety in Jewish Life - Liora Ostroff, Naomi Rose Weintraub

Andrew Tobolowsky, author of a new book entitled The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, joins Dan and Lex to talk about what the Twelve Tribes of Israel myth is, and why it matters. They explore the ways in which groups have mobilized it -- all around the world -- for a few thousand years, and how that conversation across the millennia can help us better understand how people (and communities) continually construct and reinvent their identities. To access shownotes for this episode, click here. ALSO, if you'd like to purchase The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, be sure to head to the Cambridge University Press website and enter the promo code TMTTI2022 at checkout, for a 20% discount!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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 327: The Myth of the 12 Tribes of Israel - Andrew Tobolowsky

Marques Hollie is a Philadelphia-based theatre artist, ritual leader, operatically-trained vocalist, and -- most importantly for this episode -- an ordained Maggid! What's a Maggid, you ask? That's a great question. It's so great that we devoted much of this episode to exploring it! Listen in to learn what a Maggid has been in the past, what it is today, and what it could become in the future.Marques Hollie is one of our teachers in The UnYeshiva, Judaism Unbound's digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning. You can sign up for his course, Whose Canon is it Anyway? (just like this episode!), by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/whosecanon.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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 326: Whose Canon is it Anyway? - Marques Hollie

Stephen Daniel Arnoff, author of a new book entitled About Man & God & Law: The Spiritual Wisdom of Bob Dylan (and host of a similarly-titled podcast), joins Dan and Lex for a conversation that's a little bit about Bob Dylan -- but largely about his influence on others, including American Jews.Between Passover and Shavuot, Judaism Unbound is offering several different 3-week "mini-courses" that you can take through the UnYeshiva -- our digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning. Learn more about these UnYeshiva mini-courses, and/or register for them, by clicking here!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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 325: Bob Dylan -- Tangled Up in Judaism - Stephen Daniel Arnoff

In recent days, it has become clear that the future of reproductive justice in the United States is at risk. With the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned, many organizations are speaking out publicly, to ensure continued access to safe abortions around the country. Among Jewish organizations, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) has been a leader in this regard.Two years ago, two of NCJW's leaders -- Sheila Katz and Danya Ruttenberg -- joined Dan and Lex in a conversation that explored the history of their organization, but also shone a light specifically on questions of abortion access through Jewish lenses. We are re-releasing this episode, because we believe it is as relevant as ever.Learn more about NCJW, and participate in its work, by heading to www.NCJW.org/act.

(Re-Release) Episode 243: Organizing the Grassroots - Sheila Katz, Danya Ruttenberg

Deborah Newbrun, co-founder of SVARA's Queer Talmud Camp, and the beloved former-director of Camp Tawonga, is launching a new initiative, entitled Divorce and Discovery: A Jewish Healing Retreat. She joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg to discuss her vision for the first-ever Jewish retreat that will be crafted, specifically, to provide participants the chance to heal from divorce. The inaugural Divorce and Discovery retreat will take place October 27-30, 2022, and you can learn more about it here.Between Passover and Shavuot, Judaism Unbound is offering several different 3-week "mini-courses" that you can take through the UnYeshiva -- our digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning. Learn more about these UnYeshiva mini-courses, and/or register for them, by clicking here!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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 324: Healing from Divorce, at Camp

Dan Libenson talks to Gil Kidron, of A Podcast of Biblical Proportions, about the podcast’s first season. They explore Gil’s ideas of who might have been responsible for writing some of Genesis's, most prominent stories -- and for putting the final edit together. In doing so, they ask what political and spiritual interests the book of Genesis might have served, before it was combined with the rest of the books into what we now know as the Torah. The second season of A Podcast of Biblical Proportions begins next week, examining The Book of Exodus.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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Bonus Episode: Who Wrote Genesis, and Why? - Gil Kidron

Natan Margalit is the founder and president of an organization called Organic Torah. He joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about his new book, entitled The Pearl and the Flame: A Journey into Jewish Wisdom, Ecological Thinking, and Healing in a Fragmented World.This conversation is the latest in a recurring Judaism Unbound series, where once a month we have been exploring Shmita (the year of release) with a wide variety of different thinkers, activists, and artists. To access shownotes for this episode, click here. Between Passover and Shavuot, we are offering several different 3-week "mini-courses" that you can take through the UnYeshiva -- our digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning. Learn more about these UnYeshiva mini-courses, and/or register for them, by clicking here!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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 323: Jewish Fractals - Natan Margalit

Dan and Lex have a PSA: Passover, in the bible, is two holidays! Not one. You've been conned! Or...ya know...Jewish history is interesting and one of the holidays in a sense "swallowed" the other over time. But also, maybe you've been CONNED. (See this article, by Michael Satlow, for a more in-depth explanation). In any event, Dan and Lex are curious what we might create, if we conceived of the holiday(s) of Passover and Chag HaMatzot ("Matzah Festival") as potentially two different things (as they initially were in the Bible). How might this help us find meaning in the latter days of the holiday(s), which do not contain a seder or organized ritual?  To access shownotes for this episode, click here. Between Passover and Shavuot, we are offering several different 3-week "mini-courses" that you can take through the UnYeshiva -- our digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning. Learn more about these mini-courses, and/or register for them, by clicking here!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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 322: Is Passover Really Two Holidays in One? - Dan and Lex

Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg schmooze in the 6th episode in an ongoing mini-series, exploring what Jewish food has been in the past, what Jewish food is today, what it could be in the future, and who decides. In this conversation, they hone in specifically on what the distinctions are between "Jewish Eating" and "Kosher Eating," and why those distinctions are important to consider.To access shownotes for this episode, click here. 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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 321: Jewish Eating ≠ Kosher Eating - Dan and Lex

Arthur Waskow, a visionary Jewish activist and teacher, joins Judaism Unbound for a special mid-week bonus episode. In it, Waskow reflects on two key pieces of his life's work: the creation of The Freedom Seder, over 50 years ago, and his founding of The Exodus Alliance this year. The Exodus Alliance is a multifaith campaign to heal earth & humankind from carbon pharaohs and their climate plagues, and you can learn more about it at www.exodusalliance.org. For another Judaism Unbound episode featuring some of the other organizers of the Exodus Alliance, see Episode 320: Seders in the Streets - Madeline Canfield, Nate DeGroot.

Bonus Episode: Confronting Carbon Pharaohs - Arthur Waskow

The Exodus Alliance is a group of multifaith organizations, faith leaders, and everyday people taking action for climate justice. On Passover, they plan to organize Passover street seders in front of Chase banks all across the country -- the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels -- to challenge the financial underpinnings of this "Carbon Pharaoh." Nate DeGroot, national organizer for The Shalom Center, and Madeline Canfield, organizing coordinator for the Jewish Youth Climate Movement, represent two of the projects that are collaborating on the Exodus Alliance, along with Dayenu. They join Dan and Lex for a conversation about "carbon pharaohs," non-violent direct action, and activism across generations.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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! so much more!) by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/store.To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

Episode 320: Seders in the Streets - Madeline Canfield, Nate DeGroot

Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus, professor of religion at Wheaton College Massachusetts, is the author of Gastronomic Judaism as Culinary Midrash. He joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about what that book's title argues. In other words, how is Jewish food, and how are Jewish eating practices, "midrash" -- forms of interpretation that play with, and expand, the bounds of Jewish tradition?This episode is the 5th in an ongoing mini-series, exploring what Jewish food has been in the past, what Jewish food is today, what it could be in the future, and who decides. To access shownotes for this episode, click here.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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store.

Episode 319: Culinary Midrash - Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus

Rob Nipe and Nora Rubel, the team behind Grass Fed -- Rochester, New York's vegan and kosher butcher shop -- join Dan and Lex for a conversation about what makes something count as "really" meat, and how that relates to Jewish eating.This episode is the 4th in an ongoing mini-series, exploring what Jewish food has been in the past, what Jewish food is today, what it could be in the future, and who decides. To access shownotes for this episode, click here.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! You can also buy Judaism Unbound merch (hoodies! stickers! mugs! So much more!) by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/store. 

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