Judaism Unbound

Jeremy Dauber, the author of American Comics: A History and Jewish Comedy: A Serious History, who serves as the Atran Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture at Columbia University, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about these two books.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!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

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 first episode as a bonus episode here on Judaism Unbound's channel. 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 in Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are found.The second season of The Dybbukast begins with an episode about the life and music of Samy Elmaghribi, presented in collaboration with the Museum of Jewish Montreal. Born Salomon Amzallag to a Jewish family in Morocco in 1922, Samy became a major star in his home country and throughout North Africa performing, composing, and recording both traditional and popular music, and later became a cantor and community leader in Montreal. His life’s journey moves through a broad spectrum of time and space, giving us glimpses into moments in history that shaped generations.Yolande Amzallag, a professional translator and the founding president of the Samy Elmaghribi Foundation, shares about her father's life and legacy as Dr. Christopher Silver, the Segal Family Assistant Professor in Jewish History and Culture at McGill University and curator at Gharamophone.com, offers insights into Samy's musical history and Dr. Aomar Boum, Professor and Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA, discusses the political and cultural experiences that intersected with Samy’s life.

Dan and Lex celebrate the 3-century mark of podcast episodes. They consider the drastic growth of Jewish creativity and experimentation, all around the country and in the digital world, over the 6 years that Judaism Unbound has existed, and they ask what a recent New York Times magazine article can help us understand about the idea of "Jewish leadership." There are also, as a fun treat, some outdated references to the 2006 film "300!"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!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

Julie Weitz, a performance artist whose work "uses humor and ritual to propose ethically-grounded and intersectional reconsiderations of pressing contemporary issues," joins Dan and Lex for a conversation exploring the legend of the Golem -- and how it might be relevant to our observance of the Sh'mitah year (the once-every-7-year sabbatical year, marked via a recalibration of humans' relationship to the earth, and the remission of debts).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!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

Musician and songwriter Ezra Furman, whose albums include Twelve Nudes (2019) and Transangelic Exodus (2018), and whose work serves as the soundtrack to the Netflix series Sex Education, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about her spiritual journey, weaving the ancient with the new, breaking Judaism out of its "glass box," and more. Throughout, Furman speaks to the importance of creating a world in which every person is "inconveniently themselves," and Judaism, in parallel fashion, is "inconveniently itself."Furman is the co-host of another podcast in the growing Jewish-podcasting ecosystem. Check out Two Queers, Four Questions 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!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

Ginna Green and Lynn Harris, co-hosts of A Bintel Brief -- another podcast in the ever-growing Jewish pod-o-sphere -- join Dan and Lex for a conversation about A Bintel Brief. In their discussion, they explore the evolution of A Bintel Brief from (over 100 years ago) a written advice column in Yiddish to an oral podcast, released via the internet. They also consider the value of one of the scariest words, in Jewish communities and in our broader society -- "should."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!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

Shaul Magid, the Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and author of Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation exploring this new book, which opens up discussions around some of the most important Jewish issues of our time — pride (“identity”), survival (“continuity”), unity (disunity), power, and more.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!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

Omri Harel and Gil Kidron, co-hosts of A Podcast of Biblical Proportions, join Dan and Lex for a conversation looking at the Bible as a literary text. They explore how its writing can provide hints about its authors -- and the time periods that they inhabited -- and they ask whether we might read the Bible differently from how it was taught to us when we were children.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!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

LUNAR: The Jewish Asian Film Project, cultivates connection, belonging and visibility for Asian American Jews through authentic multimedia storytelling and intersectional community programming. Jenni Rudolph, LUNAR's Executive Creative Director, and Gen Xia Ye Slosberg, LUNAR's Executive Producer, join Dan and Lex to explore the origin and first season of LUNAR. They also offer a sneak preview of season 2, to be released on October 6th, 2021 (just a few days after this podcast episode's release!). Watch all released episodes of LUNAR via this link!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!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.

Ilana Kaufman is the Executive Director of the Jews Of Color Initiative, which recently commissioned a study entitled Beyond the Count: Perspectives and Lived Experiences of Jews of Color. Ari Y. Kelman was a member of the research team that conducted the study. The two of them join Dan and Lex for a conversation about this new study, and how we might apply its findings to American-Jewish life, now and in the future.Certain parts of this episode reference particular parts of the study, and it may be helpful to have the study open on your computer as you listen. You can access the full study 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!To access shownotes for this episode, click here.