Shows
Bad Rabbi Media"The Whole Book is Sort of a Meditation, a Prayer Designed to Protect the Person Who is Reading It": The Punk Rock Jewish Life of Author/Filmmaker Jeff Wengrofsky"The whole book is sort of a meditation, of a prayer designed to protect the person who is reading it." Jeff Wengrofsky, the most authentic punk-rock person I personally know, wrote a memoir, and you should buy it and read it. In some ways an unintentional pean to the Lower East Side, Jeff gets into what it was like to grow up feeling like an outsider ("The sensation of feeling like an outsider is not a pleasant one, so I was looking to find some new form of community, and let go of whatever past I had"...2024-02-1952 min
Bad Rabbi Media"How Do We Move People to a Different Place?": Assessing the War While Dreaming Past It with Israeli Citizen Shawn RubyIt was both challenging and illuminating to speak with my old friend Shawn Ruby, an Israeli citizen who is deeply rooted in his Zionist identity (having originated in Canada and raised his family and made his life in Israel, one child a high-ranking IDF officer), firmly anchored in an unwavering pursuit of moral clarity, and overall one of the most thoughtful people I know. We spoke an hour past the time the last group of hostages was supposed to be let out, in the midst of what he described as a great national anxiety, "everyone is sitting by their...2024-01-221h 20
Bad Rabbi Media"It’s Not a Time for Dialogue. It’s Just a Time for Checking Up on Each Other": The Tragedy of Victim-ism and Other Casualties of War with Coexistence Activist Rabbi Shaul Judelman "One of my Palestinian friends said, Everybody’s pro-Hamas right now. Cause they did something! On an internal level, hamas’ bid to take over leadership of the Palestinian struggle is very strong. On the other hand, I have another Palestinian friend saying, what do you mean — Hamas is a disaster for our people. It’s always been a disaster for our people. We’re all sitting around not working for a month now…" Whenever anything happens in Israel, the person I want to hear from the most is Rabbi Shaul Judelman, Israeli resident of the West Bank town Tekoa...2023-12-191h 05
Bad Rabbi MediaPOETRY BONUS EPISODE! "Do They Sing, or Repeat a Song?": Laws vs. Miracles & the "Jewish Voices Missing from the Gospels," with Poet Atar Hadari Poetry, right? I don't know about you but I'm feeling like I could use some poetry right about now. To that end! Right before the High Holidays started I had a conversation with one of my favorite Jewish writers, poet and translator Atar Hadari. The episode was slated for release on Monday 10/9, and of course intervening world events made it nearly impossible to think about poetry, much less listen to it read aloud, much less claim a moment of open-ended reflection to contemplate, assimilate, absorb. But at this point, I feel like we could all...2023-12-0157 min
Bad Rabbi Media"I Just Couldn't Accept That That Was Something That Was Being Said": Contemplating Humanity & Inhumanity from "A Weird Place," with Joshua Leifer"So now I'm in a weird place" is a sentiment many can relate to these days. Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, following the latter's barbaric 10/7 torture-rape-massacre of 1400 Israelis, and kidnapping of 240 more, has provoked some of the most acute fissures of my generation, with implications that can't be fully predicted except to say we will be living with them for generations more. Joshua Leifer experienced what he describes as an acute awakening about the nature of left-politics in the wake of the massacre. "I reacted very personally to people I knew personally from the left-journalism milieu, reacting excitedly...2023-11-141h 06
Bad Rabbi MediaHIGH HOLIDAY MOVIE BONUS EPISODE with Daniel Zana from the Jews on Film podcast! “We are all characters in our stories, and we have to look internally, and hopefully at the end of 90 minutes we’ll become a better person. But sometimes the characters don’t change, and you’re just like, ‘Oh, you were offered the opportunity to grow and learn from your experiences, and instead you’re still being the same turd you started out as.’ ” Bonus episode! I've been wanting to interview the awesome Daniel Zana for a while because I'm such a huge fan of the Jews on Film podcast he cohosts with Harry Ottensoser. There are so many differen...2023-09-2645 min
The Nick Bryant PodcastJudaism, the Kabbalah, and the Hereafter with the Bad Rabbifor two extra episodes a month please visit patreon.com/thenickbryantpodcast Charlie Buckholtz attended Williams College, received an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University, and rabbinical ordination from the Bat Ayin Yeshiva. Charlie held a year-long fellowship as a rabbinical apprentice to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, served for three years as Rabbi of the historic Sixth Street Community Synagogue in NY's East Village, and started and led numerous community-building projects and creative cohorts of rabbis, artists, and others along the way. Charlie spent six years living in Jerusalem as Senior Editor at the Shalom Hartman Institute. 2023-09-221h 03
Bad Rabbi Media"What is the Purpose of a Synagogue?": Championing Compassion, Curiosity & Awe with Rabbi Angela Buchdal Since arriving at Central Synagogue almost two decades ago, Rabbi Angela Buchdal has transformed it into a sui generis experience of communal prayer: backed by a professional band and musical director, her own professionally trained singing voice, and a crew of clerical colleagues with similarly formidable vocal skills, not only is Central’s building packed, their livestream boasts an endless scroll of remote participants from around the country and across the world. This has all happened at a time when in general, Jews are exiting Jewish institutions and rejecting traditional forms of worship. Plummeting synagogue mem...2023-09-1845 min
Bad Rabbi Media"No One Has Screamed for Justice": Can We Summon the Moral Courage to Hold Epstein Abusers Accountable? with Nick BryantFriends, I can't tell you enough how excited I am to share my most recent Bad Rabbi Media interview with Nick Bryant -- intrepid investigative journalist, author (The Franklin Scandal), interviewer (The Nick Bryant Podcast), and most recently, Director of epsteinjustice.com -- an organization dedicated to pursuing accountability for the scores of victims abused and traumatized by Jeffrey Epstein's government-backed child-trafficking ring. Nick has been investigating and uncovering similar operations, in which children are pandered to social and political elites, who are then permanently compromised by blackmail photographs, for over two decades. In addition to meticulously d...2023-08-2857 min
Bad Rabbi Media"Teaching From the Mud": Wandering, Witnessing, and Awakening with Melanie LandauEarly in my conversation with return guest Melanie Landau, I told her that she is one of my favorite wanderers, and she responded that I'm one of her favorite witnesses. Of course, it's an honor to witness such high-level wandering with the intensity of introspection and the commitment to translating insight into practice that Melanie brings to her wandering path. We talked a lot about the deep grief she has worked through since the breakup of her marriage, the host of realizations that emerged from that process, and the work she has done to leverage those realizations into growth. "...2023-08-0855 min
Bad Rabbi Media“What’s the Jewish Future You Believe In?”: Systemic Strategies for Structural Change with Jordan Mann of the Jewish Liberation FundI was pretty rapt listening to Jordan Mann articulate the Jewish Liberation Fund’s (JLF) vision for a progressive Jewish future – and not only because “power,” “systemic strategies,” and “structural change” are my love language. Jordan’s personal connection to the work, both the crackling passion he brings to it and the personal journey that brought him there – from his childhood as the son of a Jewish father and black mother in “very white and conservative” central Illinois (“The reform synagogue would have evangelical Christians come in to teach us about Muslims”), to working with college students in a stint with Hillel (“Doing Pu...2023-07-2642 min
Bad Rabbi Media"We Need the Fantasy of a Destination and a Journey and a Path": Living Tangientially with Basya Schechter “I think this is such a great line for your podcast. It’s from my third album, Exile. ‘I am in exile in my own home. My real home is moving, it’s a wandering home. I give birth to contradictions, I give up in indecision, and worry.' ” Basya Schecter is one of my favorite wanderers. From a prolific early singer-songwriter career as the leader of Pharaoh’s Daughter, to her nine-year stint as the full-time musical director and then spiritual leader of communities in Manhattan and Brooklyn, to her recent sabbatical and transition to a more fluid m...2023-05-1750 min
Bad Rabbi Media"How Does it Feel?": Arnoff on Dylan on Empathy as Everything Dudes: please check out Stephen Daniel Arnoff’s podcast and book, Bob Dylan: On Man and God and Law. One of my favorite pop-culture rabbit-holes, the podcast delivers on so many levels: informative, illuminating, a ton of fun and at times breathtakingly insightful. I was super excited to talk to him about how he came to approach song lyrics as sacred text, how music “saves your life and keeps you company,” and his esteemed lineage of invaluably “weird” teachers (“Weird is good. I like weird.”) He describes his journey from passionate singer-songwriter to pursuing a doctorate in ancient midrash, the Talmud pro...2023-03-2753 min
Bad Rabbi Media"If It Doesn't Hit You in the Kishkes It's Worthless": Jon Madof's Universe of GroovesOne of the things I love most about Jon Madoff is that on any given day in the midst of of numbly scrolling on my phone to avoid contemplating any number of personal and collective inevitabilities, I can run into a video of him JAMMING TF OUT on his guitar -- alone in his basement with headphones, in a venue backing up a friends band, on an internet show or a clip from a festival leading his own band -- and for a minute or two be reminded of the pure joy of the creative process. As a musican...2023-02-061h 16
Bad Rabbi Media"I'm Not Going to Be Anybody's Disciple": Sacred Nonconformity, Sahara Blues, and the Coming Cantorial Revolution with Jeremiah LockwoodJeremiah Lockwood is not only the hardest working man in Jewish music, he is one of its truly great living visionaries and practitioners. In this great conversation he describes his journey growing up in a "cantorial family" with a grandfather who was a famous, record-selling star at the end of the "Golden Age" of Jewish cantorial music; to being a teenager obsessed with Southern Blues apprenticed to the great bluesman Carolina Slim; to starting his own band, The Sway Machinery, "singing hazzanus in a hard aggressive rock band that's sort of a hedonistic party band, and also a ritual...2023-01-1036 min
Bad Rabbi MediaBAD RABBI VS. BAD RABBI: The Yiddish Press and Lost Models of Jewish Identity with Eddy PortnoyCheck out this incredibly fun and lively live podcast recording I did with historian of Yiddish popular culture Eddy Portnoy. Appropriately enough, this episode, which deals with the lost forms of Jewish identity Eddy Excavated through his research in to the Yiddish Press, was itself temporarily lost. We recorded it in May 2020; in the interim, Eddy's insights about the lost and latent posibilities of Jewish culture and identity -- and the surprisingly moving and off-beat, often darkly hilarious tales they emerge from -- have only become more urgently relevant. Enjoy! "Family lore conveniently forgets that Zeide the...2022-12-0558 min
Bad Rabbi MediaIMPOSTER STORIES with Hal Niedzviecki...the surprising things we learn about ourselves as we get older, the vast territories of unknown self suddenly exposed — eg, the ways our families’ immigrant histories impact our live and choices and relationships, every day — and how bracing and humbling it can be to realize we’ve labored under such partial understandings — was a recurring theme Niedzviecki reflected in with deep insight. The conversation had me revisiting some of my memories about his parents, jovial suburbanites who loved a good barbecue and always had an extra fridge stuffed with canned sodas. Not knowing they were immigrants from Russia who started wi...2022-11-1149 min
Bad Rabbi Media"There's a Difference Between Activists and People Working for Change": Rabbi Shaul Judelman on Hope, Despair, and Israel-Palestine PTSDRemember Israel, Palestine, etc.? For a few weeks in May it led most news cycles, between the end of Bibi's 12-year reign and installation of a new leading coalition, to the renewal of Gaza hostilities and the ultra-disturbing flashpoints of violence between Jewish and Palestinian Israelis. If this all feels a bit fuzzy and distant, to be fair it was like, FIVE WHOLE MONTHS AGO. That's why it was so great to recently catch up with Rabbi Shaul Judelman, our first return guest! As co-founder and director of Roots-Shorashim-Judur, which works at the grassroots level to build community among...2021-12-131h 21
Bad Rabbi Media“We Will Mess Up, and That’s Okay”: Dasee Berkowitz on Becoming a Soulful ParentParenting is one of those subjects where it always feels like there’s a reverse correlation between how much it’s talked about and how well it’s understood. Like, the more we talk about it, the dumber we get. This is why I was so happy to read Dasee Berkowitz’s new book, Becoming a Soulful Parent, and talk with her about it – because what she offers is a new way of talking about parenting that actually has the potential to make us wiser, and possibly even help us grow as people. Berkowitz, Director of the Becoming a Soulful Pa...2021-05-071h 04
Bad Rabbi Media"Oh My God, This is Very Real": Rabbi Zac Kamenetz's Book of EthneoGenesis"How can we blend the sense that the ecstatic, the effervescent, the beyond, is our human birthright, and we can also be modern liberal people thinking about intersectionality and social justice?" We're stuck, dudes; it's no joke. That's why I needed to keep talking about the transformative potential of psychedelics to facilitate real healing, on both individual and collective levels. And that's why Rabbi Zac Kamenetz was the perfect person to talk to. As founder and CEO of Shefa, an organization dedicated to grounding psychedelic therapy in Jewish spirituality, Zac is working as we speak to advance the breaking...2020-10-221h 08
Bad Rabbi Media"Why Are We Serving Bourbon in Shul and Not Psilocybin Tea?": The Psychedelic Vision of Aaron GenuthDudes. In the midst of a pandemic, deep economic crisis; shocking and mean-spirited governmental incompetence, abuse, and neglect; deep cultural malaise punctuated by eruptions of collective indignation and outrage at the systemic racial injustice embedded in U.S. society – what could possibly be worth talking about? What could possibly help? There’s only one thing I can think of: a shift – an expansion – of consciousness. That’s why I wanted to talk to my old friend Aaron Genuth, a psychedelic educator, advocate, and organizer with Darkhei Refuah, Paths of Healing – with a focus on Orthodox and Hassidic communities. Aaron talks about...2020-07-161h 03
Bad Rabbi Media“Only the Left Can Defeat Anti-Semitism”: Raffi Magarik on the Real Crisis of American Judaism and Why the Only Real Solution is Solidarity (also, what “solidarity” means)I really needed to talk to Raffi Magarik. Whenever the subject of anti-Semitism erupts into the news, the public discourse around it immediately and invariably become combative, contested, confusing, and confused. Are there different kinds of anti-Semitism or just one kind that shapeshifts through history, adapting to the parameters of its new host? If there are different kinds, should we call them all out equally, or are some inherently more evil and dangerous and merit greater vigilance and attention? Should the response be political or stridently apolitical? Raffi gets into it in a deeply honest and rigorous fashion in...2020-03-271h 10
Bad Rabbi Media"There's No Such Thing as a Mistake": Improvisational Judaism with Rabbi Aaron PotekAaron Potek is one of the only rabbis whose job is actually *being a rabbi* (shul, holidays, weddings, funerals, etc) who I still talk to on a regular basis. At least part of the reason for this is his deep investment in comedy. Aaron started doing standup in high school and then got into improv, which he still performs. We talk about how the mindset of improv has shaped his spiritual worldview and how it impacts his role as a communal rabbi. He get into how he thinks the "there's no such thing as a mistake" mindset that essentially...2019-12-211h 03
Bad Rabbi MediaThe RebbetzinWhat's it like to serve a community in the role of the Rebbetzin, the Rabbi's wife? I was honored -- and at times deeply moved, at others deeply disturbed -- with the bracingly honest sharing of a women who spent forty years in this role, serving a traditional suburban Jewish community in the Midwest. There are stories of connection, and stories of abuse; stories of friendship and betrayal; stories of uplift, and stories whose implications are sobering to contemplate. It was an extremely edifying conversation, and one of my favorite intervies yet. So real!2019-10-101h 21
Bad Rabbi Media"One Law for You and the Resident who Lives Among You": Throwing Spikes in the Wheels of Power with Rabbi Aryeh BernsteinI really, really needed to speak with my old pal Aryeh Bernstein about how to participate LOCALLY in effective activism--both as a general practice, and specifically in this urgent moment organizing to oppose the concentration camps at the border and other insidious ICE actions around the country. What I loved about our conversation was that Aryeh both had tons of accumulated wisdom and practical advice to pass on, and offered both a) compelling Big Picture framing of the issues at stake and b) deeply moving Jewish teachings to support his argument for the obligation to act for, within, on...2019-08-211h 58
Bad Rabbi Media“Two Traumatized Peoples”: Yossi Klein Halevi, the Exhaustion of the Op-Ed Warrior and the Subversive Possibility of Feeling Each Other's PainI was SO PSYCHED to sit down with author Yossi Klein Halevi fresh off two solid months of touring and dialoguing around his super engaging and worthwhile book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Yossi describes his transformative experience, in the past year since it was published, of Inviting the voices and narratives of Palestinians into his home, head, and heart (as well as into the newly out paperback edition of the book, which features in-depth responses from some of the very neighbors with whom he'd hoped to spark conversation). Yossi talks about this disorienting experience of "losing his armor,"...2019-07-181h 01
Bad Rabbi MediaThese Things Do Happen": Seeing Familiar Conflicts Differently with Dahlia ScheindlinI REALLY wanted to speak with public opinion expert, political strategist, and writer Dahlia Scheindlin. The timing hardly could have been better: Dahlia has worked on 5.5 election campaigns in Israel and many more in countries across the world. Though a couple weeks before the latest wrinkle of Bibi's failure to form a coalition, triggering new elections, Dahlia's hard-earned, deeply observed insights about this moment of the Israel-Palestine Conflict -- especially around what kind of solution is possible and what is no longer possible -- pose constructive challenges to those on all sides of the issue. I was particularly struck...2019-06-061h 12
Bad Rabbi Media"Is That It?” - Josh Frank’s Life of Lost StoriesI caught author & pop culture archeologist Josh Frank in the midst of touring for his great new book Giraffes on Horseback Salad, a graphic novel that bills itself as the legendary unmade film collaboration between real-life friends and absurdist kindred spirits Salvador Dalí and Harpo Marx. Josh gives the fascinating background to how the project — his fourth in a series of ‘lost histories’ (the second of which was coauthored by yours truly) — came to be, and many times almost didn’t. He gets into his lifelong obsession with lost layers of pop-culture history and the intense ups, downs, and general non...2019-05-071h 45
Bad Rabbi MediaSo Animal, So Human, So Cosmic, So Galactic": Power and Intimacy with Melanie LandauMelanie Landau's story is a gripping illustration of what she now teaches as an intimacy coach, spiritual teacher, and group facilitator: how to approach "life as a constant opening and deepening to the presence of the existence of what is." From a deeply traditional, patriarchal upbringing in Australia to a life in Jerusalem embedded in the rhythms of religious ritual, spiritual growth, and political engagement as a group facilitator of "Deep Listening" around the Israel/Palestine conflict--Melanie feels into the importance of accessing freedom by going to the places we fear most, accessing the body's natural capacity to "transmute...2019-04-031h 34
Bad Rabbi MediaPersonal Resilience & Public History: Judith Rosenbaum Takes Women's Stories Stories SeriouslyJudith Rosenbaum – historian, educator, Executive Director of the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) – discusses the critical work of JWA in collecting and showcasing Jewish women’s stories, and her own path to becoming an activist-historian and public thinker. We get into what it means to talk about feminism as spiritual leadership, the power of knowing our stories to enhance personal and collective resilience, and her mission to enable people to bring the fullness of who they are to the communities they’re a part of.2019-03-061h 25
Bad Rabbi MediaEric Kaplan's Comic Wanderings "If You Change Your Life, Angels Will Give You Cookies"Eric Kaplan's career as a TV writer (Big Bang Theory, Simpsons, Drinky Crow), book author (Does Santa Exist? A Philosophical Examination) philosopher (Ph.D, U.C. Berkeley), and religious seeker spans decades and at times seemingly lifetimes. In this episode we follow the fascinating and multiple expressions of his lifelong quest to grasp and navigate the space between the embodied (subjective/finite) and "free" (objective/eternal) dimensions of human life--including his definition of spirituality ("an invitation to change your life") and comedy ("a way of dealing with contradictions we care about but have not yet processed"), and how he...2019-02-071h 17
Bad Rabbi MediaHow to Come Alive: Hazzanit Basya Schechter's Journey StoriesFrom a childhood in ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn to a deep discography as singer-songwriter-composer Pharoah's Daughter to leading a community through the alchemy of liturgical song, Hazzanit Basya Schechter shares her many inner- and international journeys through creative loopholes, constructive ruptures, indigenous cultures, motherhood and more. She brings up Abraham as a role-model of wandering totally unprompted by me, and shares living snapshots from the path of moving forward while always drawing on the past.2019-01-081h 31
Bad Rabbi MediaShefa Siegel - Amateur of PrayerShefa Siegel spends most of the year far removed from Jewish life - teaching and writing about the history, morality, and politics of humanity's relationship with natural resources. But once a year he steps back into synagogue to do the thing he cares about most: praying for, before, and on behalf of a Jewish community. We talk about how this idiosyncratic existence came to be, about the High Holiday melodies that came to him in a dream after visiting a Florence shul, and the encompassing profundity of ritual song.2018-11-241h 50
Bad Rabbi Media“How Do Human Beings Learn, and How Do we Change?” - Ariel Burger, author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Weisel’s ClassroomRabbi, Artist, Musician Ariel Burger discusses his nearly lifelong relationship with Elie Weisel—as a sensitive, searching teenager navigating a life of Talmud and comic books; an undergraduate jostling between college and rabbinical studies; as his Teaching Assistant while pursuing a doctorate on an approach to conflict resolution based on Hasidic spirituality; and finally as a student-colleague and teacher-artist forging his own pathways of activism, identity, and the ethics and metaphysics of memory. He muses on Weisel’s highly eclectic, at times almost mystical, always insistently human approach to teaching and learning. He relates some of the powerful experiences — the “k...2018-09-091h 24
Bad Rabbi MediaBad RabbiRabbi Shaul Judelman traces his journey from WTO protester in search of his own indigenous culture, to Orthodox rabbi doing local peace work with Israelis and Palestinians in the Territories and beyond as co-founder and -director of Roots/Shorashim/Judur. Shaul talks about the hard, hard work of holding the truth and legitimacy of multiple narratives while living a life deeply committed to one in particular. In short, we get INTO IT.2018-08-071h 19