The Oral Talmud

“I want activist reads to also be responsible reads, which is why I’m so committed to people being anchored and being able to actually read these classical texts.” - Jane Kanarek

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week Dan & Benay learn with special guest Professor Jane Kanarek of Hebrew College Rabbinical School, author of “Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law” (2014), “The Pedagogy of Slowing Down: Teaching Talmud in a Summer Kollel” (2010...

“Opinions that are contradictory to one another, the opposite of one another are both the words of God.” - Dan Libenson

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This episode is dedicated to beloved Talmud translator Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz who passed in 2020, in the days before recording this episode. After honouring his life, Dan and Benay return to learning the deeply radical daf Eruvin 13. (For background, listen to Episodes 12, 13, and 15.) The legend of Rabbi Meir asks...

“We have to imagine that everything that we love today, or don't love, might end up in the Tisha b’Av of the future.” - Dan Libenson

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This episode was originally released for Tisha b’Av in 2020, the Jewish calendar’s most essential day of mourning and remembrance. In our new podcast re-release schedule, this episode is coming out much closer to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. As Hashem w...

“I love the world of the Talmud. I love the fact that they need to justify, they wanna justify, they wanna talk and talk and talk; the way that people who are less socially confident sometimes find themselves doing, when we're in a situation where we're in a new community, and we just, you know, ramble! That's something I love about the Talmud.” - Shai Secunda

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week Dan...

“I find it deeply moving and worthy of homilies that arguably the most influential voices in the history of Jewish thinking are anonymous.” - Daniel Boyarin

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week Dan & Benay learn with special guest scholar Daniel Boyarin! Boyarin is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Emeritus Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the a...

“It's only when you know why, and the essence behind the whys, that you are able to create. You're able to then be free of the momentary form of a practice, which is trying to achieve a certain goal, and create other forms that achieve that same goal.” - Benay Lappe

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week we return to the legend of Rabbi Meir, who we began learning about in Episode 13. When...

“Even if the good book was not written by God, the Talmudic page is often a good place to encounter the Divine.” - Ruth Calderon

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week Dan & Benay learn with special guest scholar Ruth Calderon, author of “A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales” (2014). In 1996, Calderon founded ALMA: A Home for Jewish Culture in Tel Aviv, where she built pathways for secular Jews to enter into Talmud study. Ca...

“You don't have to stand outside of the tradition to fix it. If you realize where the tradition is wrong, that doesn't put you outside of it. That puts you squarely in the center of it, standing on the shoulders of the greatest ones who have the ability to, from the inside of tradition, using the Torah’s mechanisms and ideas to overturn it.” - Benay Lappe

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

Part 2 of our...

“And in Jewish law, if you get 23 Jews to agree on something? You know something is wrong!” - Benay Lappe

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

Come and learn BENAY’s favourite text in all Talmud: L’Taher et HaSheretz! Here the Rabbis ask what qualities are required in someone who will serve in the ancient Jewish court system, the Sanhedrin. We get two very different, absolutely radical opinions, and the second will be our jumpi...

“You’ve got to decide with whom and where your voice is going to be heeded. Where are you going to have the power to effect change? That’s your olam. If we get to this big world, we can become actually overcome with powerlessness. But I think that’s the driving question of the bottom line of this text. What’s your world? Who’s your kahal?” - Benay Lappe

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

...

“You’ve got to decide with whom and where your voice is going to be heeded. Where are you going to have the power to effect change? That’s your olam. If we get to this big world, we can become actually overcome with powerlessness. But I think that’s the driving question of the bottom line of this text. What’s your world? Who’s your kahal?” - Benay Lappe

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

...

“That was the rabbinic genius, to say that that which is wholly new also is given from God at Mount Sinai. That’s a genius sleight of hand that allows you to feel a sense of continuity and connection and history and sacredness in what is absolutely new.” - Benay Lappe

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week we reach the end of the Rabban Gamliel story we’ve been learning for the past two...

“I don’t have to win; I don’t have to get the person to capitulate to me. I don’t have to hear the person’s apology – as long as I’ve gotten the world to be the way I need the world to be.” - Dan Libenson

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week we continue discussing the story of Rabban Gamliel, this week focusing on his reaction to being deposed as the head of th...

“There are barriers being put up that say ‘You’re not a good Jew if you don’t do it our way’ – but as soon as those barriers come down, there’s actually a huge interest! And then the question is: What do you do with that engagement? What does that involvement produce?” - Dan

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week and next we’ll be discussing another essential Talmud narrative: the conflict between th...

“In my book, I refer to ‘The Talmud's Golden Old Age.’ I was a little reluctant to use this terminology, because who knows if it's the golden old age? This could be the Midlife Period of the Talmud. We have no idea where we are historically!” - Barry Wimpfheimer

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week Dan & Benay invite on special guest Talmudist Barry Wimpfheimer, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. Barry is...

“Is it inevitable and necessary to get the Rabbi Eliezers out of the room? Or is part of the story saying, ‘You actually need to keep him in the room. We understand that unity or progress or getting everybody rowing in the same direction is important, but you don’t take people out of the room.’” - Benay Lappe

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week Dan & Benay pick up where they left off in the...

“What the sages had was imagination and boldness.They were deeply rooted in the inherited tradition, and, rather than that rooting holding them back, the rooting allowed them to go forward.” - David Kraemer

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week Dan & Benay invite their first guest to the show: Benay’s own Talmud Teacher, David Kraemer! David is the Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian and Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jew...

The rabbis must have been leaving us a message. It says, "Please do to us what we did to God and whoever put the Torah together. We played fast and loose with what they were saying directly, and we understand that that means you’re going to do that to us, and we want you to." - Dan Libenson

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week Dan & Benay unpack one of the most fam...

“Maybe the reason they were undoing the original covenant was to give themselves a little breathing room, saying, ‘God actually gave us permission to play.’” - Benay Lappe

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

Access the full Sefaria Source Sheet with additional show notes via this link. 

This week we’re exploring another foundational origin story in Talmud: a re-writing of the already dramatic scene of receiving Torah at the foot of Mount Sinai...

“If you pay attention to the folks for whom the system isn’t working, you’ll know how the system will eventually not work for everybody.” - Benay Lappe

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

Access the full Sefaria Source Sheet with additional show notes via this link. 

Last week we celebrated and reflected on five years of our study partnership with a new “Episode Zero.” This week we bring you the original first episode...

“I am responsible for my chevruta’s learning and my chevruta is responsible for my learning. I am invested in you.” - Benay Lappe

Join study partners (chevrutas) Rabbi Benay Lappe & Dan Libenson as they reflect on five years of The Oral Talmud, and celebrate its transition from a video series to a podcast! 

What do lasting study partners recognize in each other? How do they decide how and what to learn together? Find out what makes a learning journey exciting, possible, and loving! 

This week’s texts: 

The Oral Talmud is a weekly deep dive study partnership between Dan Libenson and Benay Lappe where they try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today. They have been releasing The Oral Talmud as a video series since they first started learning together five years ago, but are now making the jump to podcast platforms, starting with a brand new Episode Zero, reflecting on the whole learning journey. We’re so excited to learn with you! The first three episodes drop on June 23.

T...