The Oral Talmud

Episode 47: The Maidservant’s Moral Power

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 4 May 2026 05:10:00 +0000

“This story raises the questions of who's in our community, who can be in our community, and who’s svara should we be listening to? The answer is much broader on all of those questions than we typically think. She changed the entire tradition. She changed how we think about prayer and life and suffering and our role vis-a-vis God and what should happen in the world because we listened to her, we listened to her svara.” - 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.

The most powerful rabbi in the world is dying and everyone around him is fighting to keep him alive. Prayers are flying, desperation is rising, and no one is willing to let go. No one, that is, except the one person who sees what’s actually happening.

In this episode, Benay and Dan dive into a story that flips everything: authority, compassion, even what it means to do the “right” thing. A nameless maidservant dares to break ranks, not out of rebellion, but out of clarity. In doing so, she exposes a deeper truth that the sages can’t see. This isn’t just a story about death. It’s about who gets to decide what mercy looks like and whether moral courage sometimes means going against the very tradition you’re trying to honor.

This week’s text: Ketubot 104a

Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 46: Sweet Little Lies

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 05:10:00 +0000

“ We're meant to be profoundly, deeply, intimately, radically empathic with one another. My understanding should be influenced by what I know is in your mind. I need to get into your head and I need to get into your heart, and I need to understand how this is gonna land for you. And I need to intertwine my consciousness with yours before I know what the right thing to say is.” - 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.

A wedding. A fragile moment. A question no one wants to answer honestly: what do you say when the truth might wound? The rabbis don’t dodge it. They stage a collision between two instincts we all recognize: tell the truth no matter what… or protect someone’s dignity at all costs.

In this episode, Benay and Dan crack open a deceptively simple dilemma that turns explosive fast. Can kindness justify a lie? Can empathy override Torah itself? What emerges isn’t just a ruling, it’s a radical claim: morality isn’t about rigid truth-telling, it’s about learning to feel your way into someone else’s reality. And once you see that, everything changes.

This week’s text: Ketubot 16b-17a

Episode 45: The Svara Torah

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 05:10:00 +0000

“ I think the value that's being privileged here is relieving suffering. It's not fiscal responsibility, it's not caution, it's not never making a mistake in giving to an undeserving person. Those are values, but making sure someone who's suffering isn't suffering, even if it's gonna cost us more money, that's a more fundamental value. And that's the Svara that wins.” - 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.

In this episode, a community collects its money, lines form, and the demand is always greater than the supply. Some people are hungry. Some are exposed. Some are lying. And someone has to decide—right now—who gets helped and who gets turned away.

Benay and Dan dive into a brutal rabbinic argument about triage: Do you check up on the claims of the hungry and risk their suffering, or trust them and risk being fooled? Beneath the surface, the question cuts deeper, what matters more: preventing abuse, or preventing pain? And who gets to decide when those values collide?

This week’s text: Bava Batra 9a

Episode 44: When Tradition Fights Back with Menachem Fisch

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 05:10:00 +0000

“ I now read the Talmudic literature as a paradigm of rationality, where you realize that to be rational you have to be self-critical. But you can't be fully self-critical merely by talking to yourself.” - Menachem Fisch

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.

A philosopher of science walks into a Talmud conversation and everything shifts. In this episode of Oral Talmud, Dan & Benay sit down with Menachem Fisch, who didn’t grow up inside the Talmudic world and that outsider lens changes the read. What he sees isn’t a tradition handing down answers, but rather a system designed to generate argument, doubt, and transformation, where truth emerges not from agreement, but from friction.

But the story doesn’t stay clean. As Menachem Fisch traces this radical, dialogic vision, cracks begin to show. Some voices are welcomed in, even radically different ones. Others are shut out completely. The same tradition that thrives on disagreement also draws hard boundaries around who gets to speak. We follow that tension all the way through: between openness and exclusion, evolution and control, courage and comfort. This episode doesn’t tie it all up. It leaves you inside the argument, exactly where the Talmud wants you.

Menachem Fisch is the Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor of History and Philosophy of Science Emeritus, and Director of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies at Tel Aviv University. He has published many books including Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture, which serves as a launching point for this conversation.

Episode 43: Black Mold

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 6 Apr 2026 05:10:00 +0000

“ The rabbis would acknowledge that's not the reading that is closest probably to the original intent. It's nevertheless a justifiable reading because the ends is justifiable. And we're using our reading as a way of not completely breaking the chain. We still wanna have some connection to the past, even though we know this is the most strained connection possible to the past. And that actually feels like a more laudable reason to do misreadings than one in which you're trying to fool people.” - 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.

The rabbis don’t just read the text, they bend it on purpose. In this episode, Benay and Dan pull back the curtain on one of the Talmud’s boldest moves: deliberate misreading in service of a better world. From constitutional debates to ancient law, they trace a throughline — sometimes the reading isn’t the goal. The outcome is. And the text gets stretched just far enough to carry it.

Then the stakes get real. A city must be destroyed. A house must be torn down. The rabbis refuse both, twisting the text, again, until violence becomes impossible. But just when it feels clean, controlled and resolved the tradition interrupts itself again. Just like what we saw in the case of the wayward and rebellious son: yes, it did happen. Cities did fall. Houses were destroyed. This episode lives in that tension, between moral imagination and moral memory, and asks again what it takes to change a system without lying about the harm it once caused.

This week’s text: Sanhedrin 71a

Episode 42: But I Sat on His Grave!

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 05:10:00 +0000

“ The power of the methodology that is modeled over and over and over in the Talmud is that it makes very clear that we are not limited by the original intent or the obvious meaning of a text. So even if a text actually does mean what it looks like, it means, and we find it difficult, we are not bound to continue perpetuating that norm in the tradition.” - 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.

In this episode of Oral Talmud, Dan & Benay bring the “wayward and rebellious son” text to its end game. After spilling so much ink to narrow the law into absurdity, the rabbis finally say the quiet part out loud: this law was never real. No one was ever executed. No one ever will be. So why is it in the Torah at all?

Because the purpose all along has been transformation. Dan and Benay surface one of the Talmud’s most radical claims: some texts exist in order to be argued out of existence. Not to follow them, but to outgrow them. But just when the tradition seems ready to erase its past, another voice interrupts: it did happen. People were harmed. And you don’t get to rewrite history just because you’ve evolved. This episode is a gut-punch — a blueprint for moral courage that refuses both blind obedience and convenient amnesia.

This week’s text: Sanhedrin 71a

Episode 41: Goldilocks and the Wayward Son

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 05:10:00 +0000

“The whole myth of ‘God wrote this,’ which I don't believe the rabbis bought into, is necessary in order to make these rationales convincing. It isn't so much intended to guarantee people's compliance and observance. What if that myth, ‘God wrote this’ is necessary to justify the hyper literal interpretations away from the text?” - 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.

What if the purpose of a question isn’t the answer, it’s how the question teaches you to think? In this episode, Benay & Dan keep tightening the screws on the “wayward and rebellious son,” a harsh law the rabbis seem determined to make impossible to put into action. The pre-requirements stack up: exact food, exact timing, exact circumstances, exact parents. Until the whole thing starts to feel less like law and more like a deliberate unraveling.

But then the real twist hits. The digressions, the absurd scenarios, the hyper-literal readings. They’re not mistakes. They’re the method. Then, Dan & Benay crack open a deeper claim: maybe the Talmud isn’t just solving problems or offering answers, it’s training a mind. Teaching us to follow threads, question assumptions, and even outgrow the text itself. This episode turns from legal analysis into something sharper: a theory of how traditions evolve, not by blind obedience, but by people learning how to think their way beyond what they inherited.

This week’s text: Sanhedrin 71a

Episode 40: Consciousness of Guilt

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 05:10:00 +0000

“That’s one of the reasons there's a crash because it's dealing with a new reality where everybody has the potential to know everything. And so there's no more hiding. And so what we have to do is to reinvent a Judaism that is palatable to everybody who's expected to participate.” - 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.

What happens when the crowd finally says stop? In this episode, Dan and Benay stay with the case of “wayward and rebellious son” as they unpack a charged Talmudic scene: a rabbi abuses his authority, a colleague is publicly humiliated, and the people shut the whole thing down. Not leadership. Not procedure. The community. It’s a moment of collective refusal that feels startlingly contemporary.

This conversation asks questions like: Who controls the mic? What happens when hidden reasoning becomes public? And what changes when people gain access to the inner logic of power? They connect ancient rebellion to modern deplatforming, open information, queer inclusion, and the collapse of elite gatekeeping. This episode is about the hard truth that systems don’t change themselves. People do.

This week’s text: (Sanhedrin 71a)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 39: A Glutton for Punishment

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 9 Mar 2026 05:10:00 +0000

“ The big idea of what we're doing is to say, well, if we can see what the rabbis were doing to the Torah, then we can potentially do that to the rabbis in the next era. Then I think the question gets raised, what are the categories that Judaism over the last 2000 years, may have constructed or approved of, that we now would not approve of?” - 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.

What happens when a label becomes a death sentence? In this episode, we continue exploring the case of the “wayward and rebellious son” — a law that authorizes killing a kid not for what he’s done, but for who he’s assumed to be. This text reveals the danger of turning identity into destiny.

As we’ve seen in previous episodes, the rabbis again pull a quiet revolution. Instead of rejecting the law outright, they squeeze it — narrowing it, complicating it, stacking impossible conditions — until it practically disappears. Identity becomes behavior. Certainty becomes doubt. Punishment gives way to accountability. We follow this move into urgent territory: who we amplify, who we silence, how private actors spark systemic change, and why justice doesn’t descend from institutions — it rises from people refusing to participate in harm.

This week’s text: (Sanhedrin 70a, 71a)

Episode 38: Bad Seeds in the Capitol

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 2 Mar 2026 06:10:00 +0000

“ Learning Talmud specifically was a spiritual practice designed to shape us into the kinds of morally sophisticated thinkers that can create a certain kind of world. So, at moments like this, it's not necessarily an odd thing to do.” - 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.

What do you do when the world feels like it’s on fire? This episode was recorded the day after the January 6th storming of the Capitol in 2021. Dan and Benay wrestle with a raw question: when democracy feels fragile, is studying Talmud an escape or a form of resistance? They argue that learning itself is a discipline of moral formation, a way of shaping people capable of building and re-building a just society.

Returning to the text about the “wayward and rebellious son” from last episode, they push the conversation beyond ancient law into urgent territory: vigilance, social responsibility, systemic failure, and the danger of trying to “solve” society’s problems by simply eliminating the bad actors. Not easy punishment, but harder accountability. We ask what kind of people we must become when the flames are real, and we ask whether cognitive development is itself a civic act.

This week’s text: (Sanhedrin 68b, 70a)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 37: Wayward Sons of a Certain Age

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 06:10:00 +0000

“The Talmud is giving you a toolbox of methodologies and mechanisms to use to write repugnant understandings of God’s will out of existence.” - 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.

What do you do with a sacred text that tells you to stone your own child? In this episode, Dan & Benay confront one of the Torah’s most disturbing passages: the law of the “wayward and rebellious son.” The Talmudic text we discuss - Sanhedrin 68b - is a masterclass in moral engineering, as the rabbis methodically dismantle a death sentence, while hiding what they are doing in plain sight.

This episode dives deep into predictive justice, rabbinic power, and the spiritual technology of narrowing bad laws out of existence. It’s not just interpretation, it’s transformation. And it asks a question that still burns today: when adherence to tradition becomes dangerous, do we have the courage to rewrite the tradition?

This week’s text: Sanhedrin 68b

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 36: A One-Way Ratchet

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 06:10:00 +0000

“What you can't do is try to ratchet it backwards to the original law from the Torah. No, it does not have a special status because it was in the Torah. Once it's overruled, it's overruled. Period. End of story.” - 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.

In this episode of Oral Talmud, Benay and Dan continue to discuss a text about divorce, and they uncover a radical rabbinic principle hiding in plain sight: once the sages change Torah to reduce suffering, you don’t get to roll it back. No nostalgia. No appeals to “original intent.” Just a one-way moral ratchet toward dignity, toward protection, toward repair.

This conversation traces a daring throughline: we don’t inherit justice, we practice it. If you’ve ever wondered whether religious tradition can evolve without losing its soul, this episode doesn’t hedge. It leans all the way in. This Talmudic text is an argument for moral courage: when tradition causes harm, repair isn’t optional. Moving from ancient divorce law to modern constitutional law, Dan and Benay ask, who gets to change the system, and what is the cost when nobody does?

This week’s text: Gittin 33a

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 35: Repairing the World Means Admitting It’s Broken

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 9 Feb 2026 06:10:00 +0000

“That is a point at which they're gonna say this is such a broken world that we can't let this stand. We're gonna have to repair the whole world to prevent people from falling into this category and that's going to mean overturning a Torah law.” - 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 a new Talmud passage. It’s about divorce again – but not really. Dan & Benay begin by thinking about how the law can look orderly on the page while quietly unraveling lives in practice. This episode starts with pointing out a strange rabbinic habit: naming how things used to be, even when that past was unjust. Instead of smoothing over the damage, the rabbis deliberately expose it, which invites us to notice where the system itself is doing harm.

From there, the conversation addresses the lives caught in the gap, the people who have slipped through the cracks, and suffering that cannot be fixed from within the rules. This episode lingers in the uncomfortable space where repair requires more than compassion. It requires changing the law itself, and asking whether we’re willing to do the same when our own systems break down.

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Gittin 32a & 33a)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 34: Our Way or the Highway

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 2 Feb 2026 06:10:00 +0000

“What's really important is not just that they're doing it, but they're showing you that they're overturning Torah with what their own svara tells them is a better take on how to be a human being and that's why I think this entire document of the Talmud is an instruction manual for us. I think they meant to teach us how to do it so that we could do 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.

This is the final part of Dan and Benay’s conversation about Tractate Ketubot, pages 2b and 3a, which is a case about conditional divorce that is really about showing us how to change the law when necessary to alleviate suffering. In this episode, we see the moment when the Talmud’s sages stop hiding their most radical move. The rabbis don’t just reinterpret the Torah – they openly claim the authority to override it.

BUT, as the text unfolds, we watch that boldness collide with fear…fear of instability, fear of power…fear of what happens when moral intuition is taken seriously. Throughout this podcast Benay and Dan have argued that the Talmud is a manual for how to handle moments of crash. Here we see the rabbis showing us how tradition can be rebuilt but then they hesitate. Dan and Benay ask the unsettling question: when suffering is clear and the tools to alleviate it are in our hands, why do we so often hold back?

This week’s text: Ketubot 2b & 3a

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 33: It’s Svara All the Way Down

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 06:10:00 +0000

“It's always been that if we get to a point where svara tells us that this text is wrong, svara trumps the text.” - 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.

When we were recording this episode in November of 2020, it was feeling very much like we were living in a time of crash in America and in the world, just like the world at the time of the Talmud. That sense still feels true to today, as we release the podcast version five years later. In times like this, the systems we rely on reveal their cracks. This episode leans into that unease, asking what happens when a law that is meant to protect people instead traps them in unending suffering.

Continuing the case we explored last week, from Tractate Ketubot, pages 2b and 3a, which is a text about divorce, we follow one rabbi’s willingness to do something pretty shocking about it: override the Torah itself in order to stop harm to human beings. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and a radical claim that responsibility doesn’t end with saying “sorry, that’s the rule.”

This week’s text: Ketubot 2b & 3a

Episode 32: Our Hands are Not Tied

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 06:10:00 +0000

“ What this text is trying to say, as is the entire Talmud, is ‘my hands are tied’ is not how we do Jewish. It's never been how we do Jewish, ever since the rabbis at least, and can never be thought of as a legitimately Jewish response to any suffering ever.” - 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.

When this episode was recorded back in November of 2020 it was a moment of deep uncertainty surrounding the presidential election. The news felt unresolved, the ground unstable, and many of us were hovering between anxiety and numbness. Instead of rushing to conclusions, this episode slowed everything down and asked a different question: What does it look like to cultivate steadiness, moral clarity, and courage when the world won’t give us answers?

Turning to a startling passage in the Talmud, we explore a moment when the rabbis openly admit they are changing the law. Not because a verse demands it, but because human suffering does. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and the refusal to say “my hands are tied.” This conversation pulls back the curtain on how Jewish law actually works and why uncertainty may be the very place where our deepest responsibility begins.

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Ketubot 2b and 3a)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 31: A Talmudic Stitch Sampler

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 06:10:00 +0000

“The big error is to imagine that a general principle of interpretation applies only to the case in which we learned it.” - 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 work through to the end of the case of a person who is sick and needs to eat (and not fast) on Yom Kippur. We recognize this whole section of Talmud to be a sampler - a presentation of the many moves available to the clever sage who is dedicated to the work of changing the system, rather than letting people suffer.

Do we want Supreme Court justices who read and reinterpret text like the rabbis of this sugya? How do we react when people use otherwise liberatory tools in harmful ways? What might the results-oriented jurisprudence of this case indicate about the larger debates that our Talmud editors were dealing with in their time? Especially if we believe that by the time all of these defensive arguments were being spelled out, it was the established practice that people who need to should eat on Yom Kippur? What is the role of a constitution in protecting minorities? Recognizing and responding to suffering? When we’re suffering under a system now, what can we do? What can we utilize from our learning to help us?

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Yoma 82a & 83a - Part 3)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 30: Magician School

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 5 Jan 2026 06:10:00 +0000

“Talmud is showing people how you do the sleight of hand. It's like magician school! And this is the manual! A magician never reveals his tricks! But the democratization of the old tricks allows for the new tricks.” - 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 continue to work through the case of a person who is sick and needs to eat on the austere fasting day of Yom Kippur. We give special attention to the moves which the sages make in order to resolve an apparent contradiction between the earlier Mishnah and a later rabbi whose opinion they clearly want to settle on - instead of the primary text taking ultimate precedence.

How do we appreciate the rabbis without being apologetic for their sexism or ableism? How does noticing the intended audience play into the Talmud and college admissions? Is the more essential value here listening to the individual? or stopping any potential harm? In what ways are Torah, Mishnah, and Talmud constitutions? What are the super “precedents” in Jewish law? What can we do when we recognize helpful legal concepts and tools being weaponized? When it comes to judges, do we prefer one who claims to treat the role as an umpire, or one who is honest about the impact of their worldview? How is studying Talmud like reading a book of magic tricks?

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Yoma 82a & 83a - Part 2)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 29: The Heart Knows The Bitterness of its Soul

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“As almost always, there's a wink in this text. And the question is: has that wink been successful? Or have we lost track of the wink and opened ourselves up to the misinterpretation of this radical approach, for an originalist approach?” - 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 continue to build on the discussion of Pikuach Nefesh – how the Rabbis established and expressed their fundamental value that one should put the preservation of life before almost any Torah law. We bring in a core text in the SVARA yeshiva which explores the case of a person who is sick and needs to eat on Yom Kippur, instead of fasting. The interplay between Torah, Mishnah, and Gemara are fabulous illustrations of their differing agendas, the rules of Talmudic debate, and a timely gateway into discussions of originalism in legal interpretation.

Is there a time for originalist readings, whether it be the American Constitution or foundations of Halakha? What is the job of law? Is it to define the only rights that we have? Or to assume we have a complete freedom unless otherwise limited? Reading Rashi’s commentary, what guesses can we make about where the debate developed in his time by noticing what he adds to the conversation? What are the implications of using a verse from Proverbs as a proof text?

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Yoma 82a & 83a)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 28: The Tile Contour Gauge Theory of Tradition

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“In these moments of new foundings, I wonder the extent to which you have to make some kind of a plausible argument that your changes are actually an expansion of ancient principles. Otherwise, I wonder if they’ll be cast out by the immune system.” - 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.

For the past few weeks, Dan & Benay have been exploring the rabbinic declaration that we should violate *almost* any Torah commandment to save a life or avoid being killed ourselves. But that “almost,” the exceptions to this rule, offer essential insights into the project of the Rabbis, and how we can be emulating their process for making the innovations we need now. In our final episode with this particular sugya, we work to connect the dots and make the analogies that put these fundamental principles into action!

How does our current sugya speak to moments when our society needs a new refounding? How do we help people who have only been taught Torah to understand and appreciate how much the Rabbis built onto Judaism? What do we do now if another layer has to be built We’ll find that the sages teach that we actually should accept being killed if the only other choice is transgressing mitzvot in public, and especially during a time of religious persecution. What’s the difference in these scenarios? What are the implications? When can martyrdom - or non-life-and-death sacrifices (such as sacrificing our jobs) - be necessary for liberation? How are you, the listener, applying what you believe to be the foundational principles of these sugyot to the crises of racism? Climate disaster?Like Benay’s Tile Contour Gauge, what are your metaphors for tradition? (The gauge is in the video version of this episode!)

This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic - Public and Private” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 4)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 27: Who’s To Say Your Blood is Redder?

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“What's inherent in racism is the idea that you are judging groups of people in terms of value one against another. And I think that's precisely what's underneath – that's the svara essentially – about why you can't murder someone else to save your own life. Because you cannot say: I know my life is more valuable than that person's.” - 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 continue to unpack the exceptions to the rabbinic declaration that we should violate *almost* any Torah commandment to save a life or avoid being killed ourselves. The main focus this week is that we should accept being killed if the alternative is murdering another innocent person. We work our way into the fundamental principles which drive these exceptions, and show how these fundamental ideas map onto the most present issues today. We’ll continue the conversation next week!

What is the difference between killing and murder? How do we derive broader ideas from cases in Talmud? How does that practice diverge from attempts to protect queer Jews by reinterpreting Leviticus? What would we put on the “you can absolutely violate this law if someone will die otherwise” list when it comes to American Law? How do words change their meaning? Why does Steinsaltz translate svara as “logical reasoning”? How can we determine the fundamental principle under a rule, and not get stuck on the words of the rule itself?

This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic - The Exceptions, cont.” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 3)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 26: Why We Show Our Work

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 8 Dec 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“And since they've shown us their work, we're able to say, ‘I'm not following the substantive rule in this case! I'm following the process rule – which says: How do I think about this new case?” - 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 the memory and legacies of Ruth Bader Ginsberg & Breonna Taylor.

Dan & Benay pick up where we left off last week, in Nitza’s Attic, and the crucial decision that we should violate *almost* any Torah commandment to save a life or avoid being killed ourselves. This week we begin to explore the exceptions to this rule - but even more so, how those exceptions were narrowed, and the reason for showing the rationale the Talmud builds for narrowing these exceptions. We’ll continue the conversation next week!

What was Talmudic about Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s life and work? How can Talmud’s process help us understand systemic contexts that led to the unjust death of Breonna Taylor at police hands. How do uncover and generalize or re-apply Talmud values to today’s subjects which Talmud does not discuss word-for-word? What is the influential relationship between foundational laws like Torah and Constitution, Custom (minhag), and svara, our moral intuition? When we re-read Torah, how do we learn to recognize which teachings about the Torah we’ve forgotten are not in the original text? What gifts was the stamma (the editor of the Talmud) giving us in showing us the reasoning behind shifting laws and narrowing exceptions?

This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic - The Exceptions” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 2)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 25: Nitza’s Attic

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 1 Dec 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“When the Rabbis start saying: Well, when does this line in the Torah apply? And when doesn't apply? – You forget that their first radical move was to imply: This doesn't always apply. That's enormous. It's that shift that makes anything possible.” - 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.

So far, Dan & Benay have been exploring when the sages overturned Torah on a case-by-case basis, spending the last two weeks on pikuach nefesh and violating Shabbat to save a life. Now we move from a tricky question asked along the road, into a Judaism-defining vote held in a tiny attic: Is there any mitzvah we should allow ourselves to be killed over before transgressing it? How does tradition building work? How do we construct narratives about how tradition changes? How do we groove new traditions so that 2000 years from now people think of our innovations like we think of ya’avor v’al yay’ha’rayg (transgressing rather than dying)? Why is this monumental moment happening in an attic?Do we need to jettison existing traditions in order to make room for new, life-saving traditions? When are tzitzit, tefillin, and kippot serving the right purposes?

This episode was recorded around Rosh Hashana 2020, when there were conflicts between the tradition of coming together in-person to celebrate the High Holy Days, and not gathering in large groups, which was unfamiliar to many people, but would increase the disabling and deadly spread of COVID.

This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 1)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 24: Sacred Disobedience

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“Jewish law works like any legal system that survives for a long period of time – and it does so by the same mechanisms. And those mechanisms are the human insight that is brought to bear to modify, qualify, limit, and expand the law as one receives 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.

Last week, Dan & Benay began to learn how the Talmud questions and defends the principle of Pikuach Nefesh, the teaching that we can and should break Shabbat and, therefore, (almost) any commandment in order to save a life. This conversation does start by getting new listeners caught up, and the previous episode is available for going deeper. This week, we learn the final proof, which, like many episodes, inspires many connections to American law; this time we get into more of the meta on why we make these connections...

As the rabbis start to put together a new system, what are some of the values that they put at the center of that system? How do they make the transition from a previous system which may not have had those radical values to one that now does? How do they kind of maintain a sense of continuity through all that change? How can we learn from their techniques as we work to insert back into the tradition the missing innovations and values that are just as radical shifts to the tradition we’ve received as breaking Shabbat to save a life was for the Rabbis? How do we extend their work to save the lives of queer people too? How do we navigate and counter slippery slope arguments? Where do we find svara in the American legal system? Why don’t we learn these techniques for change? Is it by design, fear, incompetence? What would it be like to teach the history and role of fixing the tradition? And finally, why does the Talmud give all these proofs and make the absurd claim that the final proof is one that can’t be refuted?

This week’s text: “Pikuach Nefesh” (Yoma 83a & 85a/b)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 23: Life Comes First

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“How do you take what you have and analogize, and tie some new radical thing that you don't have but you want to insert into the tradition? This entire passage is part of the instruction manual! This is some new twist of creativity, a twist of imagination.” - 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.

Benay & Dan turn to another essential Talmud text, the origins of Pikuach Nefesh, the teaching that we can and should break (almost) any commandment in order to save a life. What we find is that while the Mishnah has no qualms about giving clear examples of life-saving actions we can take on Shabbat, the Gemara wants some textual support for violating what is so clearly written in Torah. In this discussion we get into all of the explanations except for the final one, the one that tradition ends up hanging this law on.

What values can we recognize in the Rabbis? Which of them do we want to maintain in the next version of Judaism? When do we want to emulate the ways in which the sages sold the people on radical new ideas? When the Talmud quotes seven different sages giving seven different answers for a halakhic question, what’s going on there? One-upsmanship? Intentional absurdism? A meta teaching about how to develop new foundations for tradition? How do we see these arguments playing out in court cases in our own time? Speaking from 2020, Dan & Benay end up devastatingly prophetic in their discussion of the fragile foundations of Roe v. Wade and abortion laws… The discussion continues next week!

This week’s text: “Pikuach Nefesh” (Yoma 83a & 85a/b)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 22 - Hillel & Shammai: Beyond Elu v’Elu

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“Ultimately the only way that you actually take these lessons into your soul is through trying to implement it in your actual life. And often that's gonna be failure!“ - 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.

Dan & Benay return to the daf after a series of interviews, picking up where we left off in Episode 19, exploring where the editors of the Talmud went next after the famous “Eilu v’Eilu” moment between the Schools of Shammai and Hillel. While they were both decreed to be “Words of the Living God” (or some arrangement of those words), the halakha was said to be decided according to Beit Hillel because they taught the teachings of Beit Shammai before their own.

But the very next line in the Talmud - which is rarely ever read - seems to undercut the entire message of this practice! Were we making too big a deal about Beit Hillel? Did the editor of this part of the Talmud misunderstand something? Are they intentionally undermining the first narrative? What do we do when we encounter texts that appear to reverse the radical potential we had seen in them before? And what is going on when Talmud brings in aphorism and folk sayings? Are they really able to help us recognize when we’re messing up? How can we offer and receive the loving rebuke of tokhecha?

This week’s text: “Hillel & Shammai: After Elu v’Elu” (Eruvin 13b)

Episode 21: Dissecting Daf Yomi with Ilana Kurshan

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 3 Nov 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“Part of what I love about Talmud is that even if you're just listening, there's so many gaps, so many rough edges, so many places that don't quite fit together. There're all these holes and you, the reader, burrow into those holes. You find your nook, your cranny, your space, your neek’rat ha’tzur. And it's the nature of the discourse that has you do that. I don't think it's possible to learn this text passively!” - Ilana Kurshan

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 Ilana Kurshan, author of the award-winning “If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir” (2017) through the lens of Daf Yomi, the practice of studying a whole page of Talmud each day. Ilana Kurshan has worked in literary publishing both in New York and in Jerusalem as a translator and foreign rights agent, and as the books editor of Lilith Magazine. Since our interview, she has published, “Children of the Book: A Memoir of Reading Together” (2025) about raising kids and a love of books.

Long-time listeners of The Oral Talmud will have picked up on split opinions between Dan & and Benay regarding the practice of Daf Yomi, and Ilana joins perfectly suited to plead the case for this fast-paced daily learning! What’s at stake in different methods of Talmud study? How can a reader avoid giving up when the Talmud gets boring? How can we find additional excitement when starting a new masechet (tractate/volume)? What are the unique benefits and spiritual opportunities of Daf Yomi? What happens when we bring our own literary and background interests as lenses to Talmud? And, in the end, how can we avoid a passive learning position in Daf Yomi (or in any method of study) and always ensure that our learning is empowering?

For this episode, we’d like to remind listeners, that every episode exists as an unedited video recording from our first broadcast in 2020. Ilana is a very animated guest! (Find this episode on YouTube)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes of references and further reading on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 20: Transforming Story into Law with Jane Kanarek

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 05:10:00 +0000

“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), and “Throwing the Talmud Across the Room: Emotions and the Cultivation of Subjectivity in Talmud Study” (2025, via Taylor & Francis). Jane Kanarek joins the Oral Talmud to discuss her understand of what the sages were doing in constructing the Talmud, and her pedagogic values in building a Rabbinic School classroom.

What are the Rabbis doing with the Book of Genesis when they transform stories into law, especially when it comes to the most shocking narratives? What is the Rabbis’ relationship to Torah, especially in the moments that we’ve labeled them as misquoting torah in past episodes of The Oral Talmud? What evidence do we actually have for the Rabbis’ relationship to God and Talmud, beyond the winking? Why do we teach Talmud, and what are our goals for our students? How can a thoughtful teacher incorporate secondary texts as new commentaries for helping students develop lenses to read the Talmud through? What comes to the surface when we really slow down our learning?

Episode 19: The Elu v’Elu Episode

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 05:10:00 +0000

“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 us to think about the qualities of the Talmud’s ideal person, how they think and lead in the world. Today we explore how this question comes alive in the relationship between the early rabbinic Schools of Shammai and Hillel, in the famous “Elu v’Elu” story!

What is the relationship between translation, access, and the joy of figuring it all out? How important is it to notice which Divine Names the Talmud authors are invoking in particular stories? How do we deal with the indeterminacy of truth? Can it be that God actually wants us to hold opinions that are contradictory to one another? Is this text a lesson on the best way to convince people of our opinions or the best way to build lasting relationships with people we disagree with? How do we preserve dissent for the future?

This week’s text: “Elu v’Elu, These and These are the Words of The Living God” (Eruvin 13b)

Episode 18: What Tisha b’Av Can Learn From Yom Kippur

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 06:00:00 +0000

“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 would have it, Dan and Benay draw some fascinating connections between Tisha b’Av and Yom Kippur, deepening our appreciation and intentions for both.

How do holidays slip away from their most potent purposes? What does it mean to mourn for something, somewhen, or someone without wanting it or them back? How do we deal with a guilt of not being in a constant state of mourning? How can we use Tisha b’Av to reflect on the great CRASHes of history, the shifting eras of authority and responsibility? What we can’t imagine losing?

Episode 17: The Iranian Talmud with Shai Secunda

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 6 Oct 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 & Benay learn with special guest scholar Shai Secunda! Shai Secunda is Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism at Bard College. He received a bachelor’s degree from Ner Israel Rabbinical College, a master’s from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA/PhD from Yeshiva University. He is the author of “The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Talmud in its Sasanian Context” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) and “The Talmud’s Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and its Sasanian Context” (Oxford University Press, 2020).

What are some aspects of the geopolitical context in which the Talmud was formed? What was it about the time, space, and culture where the Rabbis lived that led them to construct the Gemara, its winding justifications and responses to the rarely justified radical changes of the Mishnah? How granular can we get into eras of the Talmudic period? Was anyone else doing what the Rabbis were? How do we navigate difficult gaps in evidence?

Episode 16: The Greatest Voices Are Anonymous with Daniel Boyarin

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 author of many articles and books on the Talmud, including “A Traveling Homeland: The Babylonian Talmud as Diaspora” (2015), “Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity” (2004), “Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture” (1993), “Socrates and the Fat Rabbis” (2009), “Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man” (1997), and, most recently “The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto” (2023), themes of which Boyarin experiments with in this interview from the Summer of 2020.

What does it mean to approach to Talmud as a portable homeland for a Diaspora nation? How does it feel to be charmed by Talmud? Is Talmud a project of intentional incoherence? What lessons do we learn from the voice of the anonymous editor(s) of Talmud. How do we find a usable past?

Episode 15: Svara’ing Your Svara

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 we met him, he was a master of Rabbinic acrobatics, able to turn any law inside out, and offer his incredible logic as support. Now we’re going back a page to learn about his origins, who his teachers were - and how he learned to “Gemar his Gemara & Savar his Svara!”

Why hone our gemirna and savirna? How do we learn to find the radical messages on every page of Talmud? What do we get from different teachers? When do we turn to Rashi’s commentary, and how do we put it in context? Why do we ask “why”?

This week’s text: Rabbi Meir’s Origins (Eruvin 13a and Sotah 20a)

Episode 14: Reading the Angel of Death with Ruth Calderon

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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. Calderon also served on the Knesset from 2013-2015, and reflects on dynamics between secular and religious Israelis, as well as the impact of coronavirus in 2020 (when this episode was recorded).

How do we find our paths to Talmud? What is Talmud doing that gives the sense of the Divine? What does it mean to “read against grain,” and how can it help us expand our perspective? What can the story Ruth brings teach us about how the Rabbis thought of approaching death? Who do we see in this relationship with Death now?

This week’s text: Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi and the Angel of Death (Ketubot 77b)

Episode 13: Using Tradition to Overturn Tradition

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 8 Sep 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 exploration of L’Taher et HaSheretz! Using the Torah to make ritually pure the very creepy crawlies which the Torah says are ritually impure! Last week we learned that this feat of Rabbinic acrobatics was a requirement for holding a position in the Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish court system. This week we learn about Rabbi Meir, who could justify changing ritually purity and impurity statuses like he was juggling!

What is the discussion of shifting ritual purity status a radical metaphor for in the Talmud? When does argument get us closer to the truth, and when is it just arguing to derail? How do we peel apart the historical figures in the Talmud from what they’ve come to symbolize? How would YOU purify the sheretz?

Tune in next week for an exciting interview with Ruth Calderon, author of “A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales”.

This week’s text: Rabbi Meir, Sumakhus, Ravina, and the Sheretz (Eruvin 13b)

Episode 12: The Ideal Person

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 1 Sep 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 jumping off point for the next few episodes.

Are the story sections and legal sections of Talmud really all that different? How do they relate to each other? When do we desire unanimity, and when is it a sign of a greater problem? Who do we want in charge of decisions of life and death? How do the Rabbis teach us to overturn Torah this time?

This week’s text: Who is Fit for the Sanhedrin (Sanhedrin 17a-17b)

Episode 11: The Broken Social Contract

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 05:05:00 +0000

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.

Like our previous week’s episode, this was recorded in June of 2020, in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police. Likewise, we turn to another text which emphasizes the culpability of bystanders and those who remain silent when witnessing cruelty – a story of how one wrong party invitation devolves into the Fall of Jerusalem. When is it time to speak up? How do victims of harm understand our silence? What compromises are we willing to make to avoid worse consequences? Which actions become understandable when we recognize how deeply the social contract has been violated? When we tell stories about our past, what are we saying about our present?

This week’s text: Kamtza, bar Kamtza, and the Fall of Jerusalem (Gittin 55b-56a)

Episode 10: The Obligation to Protest

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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.

This week’s episode was recorded in June of 2020, in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police. We turn to a piece of Talmud which SVARA shared out in the days following, a lens for understanding the enormous groundswell of protests and political action which followed in response. What is the context of this powerful slogan about the responsibility to protest? Who is in a meaningful position to speak out in different spheres? What does it mean to be impactful without being able to immediately solve systemic issues?

This week’s text: The Obligation to Protest (Shabbat 54b-55a)

Episode 9: Turning Around

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 episodes. After being deposed as leader of the study hall, and watching in awe the flood of new students to the academy, Rabban Gamliel visits Rabbi Yehoshua, the man he had embarrassed so much that the rest of the scholars impeached him. Does Rabban Gamliel really drop by to make peace, or are there other motivations at play? How does Rabbi Yehoshua’s response echo through the eons to call out/in leaders of today?

The episode does have a broad re-cap from the two of us, but of course we recommend listening to the previous episodes as well.

And then! For a special Shavuot text (we recorded this at the end of May 2020), we visit Mount Sinai, and follow Moses’s mystical time-traveling journey through the twists and turns of Torah interpretation to the back of Rabbi Akiva’s classroom. What are the metaphors of this story illustrating? What model is it building for teaching us how to connect our innovation to our history?

This week’s text:

The Removal of Rabban Gamliel, Conclusion (Berakhot 28a)
Moses in Rabbi Akiva’s Classroom (Menachot 29b)

Access the full Sefaria Source Sheet with additional show notes via this link. Find an edited transcript and full shownotes of references and further reading on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 8: Dreams and Discovery

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 4 Aug 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 the study hall, and the massive influx of new students to the yeshiva that followed. The episode does have a generous re-cap from Benay, but of course we recommend listening to the previous episode as well. What lessons can we be learning as marginalized people trying to build spaces and find our voices? What do we do when the repentance we hope for from people who have hurt us just doesn’t come? How do we make sure we’re not withholding Torah from the world?

This week’s text: The Removal of Rabban Gamliel, Aftermath (Berakhot 28a)

Episode 7: No More Gatekeeping

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 the early sages Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua, and more specifically the changes the yeshiva went through after Rabban Gamliel was deposed. What was going on at the time of the later Talmud authors that they wrote this story about their predecessors? Where do we see these dynamics around changes in leadership and access to learning today? What happens when we open the doors?

This week’s text: The Removal of Rabban Gamliel, Adding 700 Benches (Berakhot 28a)

Episode 6: Narrating the Law with Barry Wimpfheimer

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Barry Wimpfheimer) — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 the author of The Talmud: A Biography (2018) and Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories (2011).

While our last guest, David Kraemer, focused on the motivations of the sages in constructing the Talmud, this week’s guest, Barry Wimpfheimer turns the focus onto how Talmud has influenced Jewish life, and how and why different communities have utilized Talmud. What kinds of truth are at play when encountering Talmud? How did the narratives of the Talmud change in redactions? and what can the interplay of story with legal statements tell us about how Talmud was supposed to be read?

Episode 5: Excommunicating Dissent

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 story of The Oven of Akhnai, reading the part of the story that is often neglected: the fallout from excommunicating Rabbi Eliezer. What morals did the sages intend for us to take from the narrative? What can each character symbolize when we map their stances and choices on to conflict in our present day? How should we respond to hurt and fracturing of community?

This week’s text: The Excommunication of Rabbi Eliezer (Bava Metzia 59a-b)

Episode 4: Retelling the History with David Kraemer

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 7 Jul 2025 05:05:00 +0000

“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 Jewish Theological Seminary and author of A History of the Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2019.) How does David Kraemer’s history of Talmud deepen our understanding of the texts we’ve investigated so far? What does Kraemer believe motivated the sages in this great project? Who was the rabbis’ intended audience, and how has access to Talmud changed the role Talmud plays?

Episode 3: Misquoting God

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 05:05:00 +0000

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 famous stories in all of Talmud: The Oven of Achnai. A disagreement between the sages develops in a power struggle with God! How can the ways that the sages “defeat” the Divine show us the instruction manual for overthrowing them in turn? Where do we see these debates play out in our Jewish world?

Plus some expansive conversation about how “The Oral Talmud” got its name, understanding our generation of learning as a third meta-Torah coming from the revelation at Mount Sinai.

This week’s texts:

The Oven of Akhnai (Bava Metzia 59a-b)
Deuteronomy 30:11-16
Exodus 23:1-3

Episode 2: Voiding the Torah

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 07:10:00 +0000

“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. The sages say that when scripture says we “under” the mountain, that doesn’t mean the mountain’s shadow; instead, the rabbis say “under” means that God had literally picked the mountain up and threatened to drop it on us if we didn’t accept Torah! What if the Sinai covenant came out of duress and within a power imbalance? How and where did the Rabbis ratify our obligation if not from Mount Sinai?

This week’s texts:

“Beneath” Mount Sinai (Shabbat 88a)
The Book of Esther (Chapter 9)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes of references and further reading on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

Episode 1: Rebooting Judaism

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 06:10:00 +0000

“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, discussing a classic origin story within Talmud. What does the way the Talmud tells a story teach us, beyond the actual content of the story? What bold moves do we need at times of crash and upheaval?

This week’s texts:

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai Secures Yavne (Gittin 56a-b)
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s Deathbed (Berakhot 28b)

Episode 0: Learning Together

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 05:10:00 +0000

“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 Chevruta of Rabbi Yochanan & Resh Lakish (Bava Metzia 84a)
Widening the Doors to the Study Hall (Berakhot 28a)
Make for Yourself a Teacher (Pirkei Avot 1:6)

Trailer

jtaylor@bespokenlive.org (Lex Rofeberg) — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 05:05:00 +0000

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.

The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. We are grateful to SVARA-nik Ezra Furman for composing and performing The Oral Talmud’s musical theme. The Oral Talmud is produced by Joey Taylor, with help from Olivia Devorah Tucker, and with financial support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah.