In this episode of Search for Meaning, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback sits down with Professor Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, one of today’s leading scholars of rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. Their conversation ranges from the ancient world to our own moment, exploring how religious traditions take shape through encounter, disagreement, and relationship.
Rabbi Yoshi first encountered Michal’s work in Israel during the World Zionist Congress, where her lecture left a lasting impression. In this episode, she shares her personal and intellectual journey—from growing up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish world, at a time when it was still rare for women to pursue advanced Talmudic study, to becoming a major voice in the academic study of Jewish–Christian interactions in Late Antiquity.
Michal discusses her groundbreaking research comparing rabbinic texts and early Christian and monastic literature, including insights from her award-winning books Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud and Jewish–Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity. She explains how ancient texts reveal moments of dialogue and shared interpretation where we often assume only separation—and why those discoveries still matter today.
The conversation also turns to the present: living and teaching in Israel during painful and uncertain years, what ancient texts can teach us about resilience and endurance, and how scholarship can help us hold complexity without losing hope.
This episode is an invitation to think more deeply about boundaries and belonging, inter-religious dialogue, and the enduring power of learning to illuminate both the past and the present.
https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/humsos/goldstein-goren/pages/staff/Michal-Bar-Asher-Siegal.aspx
