“The Torah is Hospitalized and in Bandages” - The Thought of Rav Shagar on Chanukah, Israel, Religious Choice, and More (Special Chanukah Episode)
Release Date: 12/30/2024
"You Can't Suppress the Light": The Radical Messages of Rav Kook for Orthodox Jews Today, with Professor Marc Shapiro (247)
Orthodox Conundrum
The thought of Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, who died in 1935, remains extremely influential today in religious Zionist circles. Rav Kook’s ideology, particularly as interpreted by his son, Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, in books like Orot, has helped to set the agenda for much of the dati leumi world. Over the past couple of decades, however, additional works written by Rav Kook have been published, and some of the ideas they contain are extraordinarily fascinating and at times radical, even as they often have little to do with the Land of Israel or Zionism. These ideas, far from being dated,...
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Inside the Real Rules of War: Colonel John Spencer vs. Media Myths About Israel and Hamas (246)
Orthodox Conundrum
Colonel John Spencer, one of the world's leading experts on urban warfare, joins me for a wide-ranging conversation about Israel’s war against Hamas. We dive deep into the realities of modern combat, the strict standards of international law, and the false accusations of "genocide" being leveled against Israel. Colonel Spencer also shares insights from his recent high-profile debate alongside Dave Smith on Piers Morgan Uncensored, where he pushed back against the misinformation dominating media narratives. We talk about the dangers of influencer-driven disinformation, the moral challenges...
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OTD, Datlash, and the Religious Spectrum: When Orthodox Jews Leave Orthodoxy with Rabbi Alex Israel (CLASSIC EPISODE)
Orthodox Conundrum
The Orthodox Conundrum Podcast is off this week, and we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. In the meantime, enjoy this classic episode about Orthodox Jews who leave Orthodoxy. There’s a phenomenon in the Orthodox world which is called by various names, though most commonly “Off the Derech” or OTD, and “Datlash,” short for “Dati Leshe’avar” - that is, formerly religious. For a community which prides itself on continuity and on passing the tradition from one generation to the next, the idea that people leave Orthodoxy is simultaneously painful and threatening. Why did...
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Celebrating Pesach in Challenging Times: Haggadah Insights from Eight Teachers of Torah (245)
Orthodox Conundrum
I’m doing something a little different this week. Instead of discussing an issue in the Jewish world, I want to offer some inspirational words about the Seder as we enter the final week before the beginning of Pesach. To that end, I invited several of my podcast guests from the past year to present ideas that they find meaningful, with the hope that they will enhance your own Seder as we navigate celebrating Pesach during this challenging moment in Jewish history. In this episode, you will hear divrei Torah from Dr. Yosefa Fogel Wruble, Olivia Friedman, Rabbi Yitzchak Shurin, Rabbi Dr. Judah...
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"There Are No Shortcuts to a Healthy Jewish Education": Empowering Growth Without Guilt or Fear, with Rabbi Dr. Judah and Rabbanit Shayna Goldberg (244)
Orthodox Conundrum
We are now less than two weeks away from the night of the Seder, which is almost certainly the most widely practiced example of Jewish education in action. And that raises the issue of how we should define healthy Jewish education in general, and how best we can achieve it. These questions are doubly important because while there are many wonderful Jewish schools, there are, unfortunately, numerous educational institutions where religious growth and educational goals are met through the use of fear, guilt, charismatic authority, manipulation, and condescension. Whether or not it “works” is...
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A Moral Voice for Religious Zionism: The Profound (and Profoundly Human) Thought of Rav Yehuda Amital, with Rabbi Moshe Taragin (243)
Orthodox Conundrum
This conversation with Rabbi Moshe Taragin presents an introduction to the profound - and profoundly human - religious philosophy of Rav Yehuda Amital zt'l, the founding rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion. Rav Amital's ideas fill a unique niche in the Religious Zionist world today, and in many ways stand as a corrective to some of the ideology that has become dominant in the dati leumi world. His teachings grapple with some of the most pressing tensions in Jewish thought and life: universalism vs. particularism, the relationship between morality and halacha, and the relevance of Tanach as a...
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Chutzpah - and Illegal Activity - in the Service of Dodging the Draft, with Sam Sokol (242)
Orthodox Conundrum
When hundreds of students enthusiastically sing and dance about dodging the draft, while thousands of others protect those same students by spending more and more time in the IDF because of a manpower shortage... something has gone seriously wrong. When institutions that receive millions of shekels of government money actively undermine the State of Israel by encouraging and celebrating draft dodging... something has gone seriously wrong. When a minister in the Knesset is involved in creating a hotline that is used to tell people who have received draft notices to ignore them entirely......
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The Mainstreaming of Meir Kahane: A Halachic, Moral, and Theological Mistake, with Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Sinensky (241)
Orthodox Conundrum
Several recent articles have raised a troubling question: Is Rabbi Meir Kahane making a comeback? In the wake of the horrific murder of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, some influential pro-Israel voices have turned to Kahane’s ideas, reviving a debate that many thought was long settled. In this episode, Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Sinensky and I dive deep into why this is a dangerous trend—one that must be confronted head-on from a Torah perspective. While many may be invoking Kahane’s philosophy with Israel’s best interests at heart, we argue that his ideas are fundamentally...
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The Abuser’s Tool Box: Domestic Abuse in the Orthodox Community, with Keshet Starr (240)
Orthodox Conundrum
Domestic abuse is one of those topics that, sometimes, we simply wish would go away. It’s certainly among the very worst experiences that a person can have, yet it brings forward feelings of shame and failure, such that people are often reluctant to acknowledge that they are victims. Sometimes, they can’t even name it - either because they don’t recognize it for what it is, or because they are embarrassed and don’t want to admit it. Yet we can’t ignore it, and all of us need to better recognize the warning signs and the red flags - both for those inside and outside of a relationship...
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The Vanishing Art of Jewish Conversation (and What To Do About It), with Dr. Yosefa Fogel Wruble (239)
Orthodox Conundrum
The act of talking - dignified and informative conversation, where people connect on a serious level with one another - is essential to the Jewish experience. This goes back to the very creation of Adam; the Torah describes God as breathing a breath of life into Adam, after which he became a nefesh chaya - a living soul. Targum Onkelos famously translates that phrase as ruach memalela - a speaking spirit. Accordingly, the fact that man is able to converse is part of his very essence. In a similar way, the Torah is composed of not only written words, but also the Torah Sheba’al Peh - the...
info_outlineWe live in times in which, I believe, we in the Orthodox world need to open ourselves to new ideas and new thinking that will help enhance our love and appreciation for God and His Torah. Maybe the best example of a contemporary thinker who has opened the doors of perception while remaining fully committed to Torah, halacha, the Jewish people and the Land of Israel is Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, colloquially known as Rav Shagar.
I spoke with Rabbis Zachary Truboff and Yehoshua Engelman about Rav Shagar in episode 133, over two years ago. Today, as a special Chanukah presentation, I’m honored to speak to Rabbi Levi Morrow about Rav Shagar. Rabbi Morrow recently published Living Time: Festival Discourses for the Present Age which is an English language collection of some of Rav Shagar’s essays on the Jewish holidays. Because both he and I have found that some of Rav Shagar’s most impactful writing was on the subject of Chanukah, I was excited to speak to Levi about Rav Shagar’s philosophy in general, and to learn from him about some of Rav Shagar’s ideas regarding Chanukah.
Among the topics we addressed are the difference between the human and divine viewpoints; why some people don’t relate to Rav Shagar’s philosophy; the importance of “choosing” to be religious, rather than being compelled by facts - and why this existential choice is essential to our religious identity; how Rav Shagar understands the concept of religious obligation; his embracing of contradiction; whether we should be critical of those who leave Judaism, or if we need to respect that choice, as well; if there a place for interfaith dialogue, or learning about other religions; whether Rav Shagar should be thought of as a “Religious Zionist” or a “religious Zionist,” and what he might think about the State of Israel today; if he believed that the State of Israel has religious value, and if so, whether the State of Israel is also part of the redemption; what would he say about the reality of Israel today; and more.
Of course, we also dealt with Chanukah - specially how the Shabbat candles and Chanukah candles represent two types of holiness: meaningfulness and fulfillment on the one hand, versus sacrifice without any obvious meaning on the other; the candle of the commandment along with the candle of the human soul; the ways that mitzvot contain divine light - but also that the earthy vessels of the mitzvot are even holier than the light they contain; the way that the mitzvot don’t come from divine wisdom, but from His will (and what that means); what we mean when we say that God is beyond human categories; the relationship between Torah and the outside world and outside ideas; and the way that translation is a valuable method for bringing outside ideas into Torah thought.
This is not a typical episode of the podcast. For those, however, who are looking for new approaches that are grounded in our sources but which also deal forthrightly with the challenges Orthodox Jews face today, it offers a different perspective that hopefully you’ll find very meaningful. And perhaps most crucially, it opens up the possibility that others will also forge new Torah paths that forthrightly deal with reality as it is, not as we wish it were.
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Music: "Happy Rock" by bensound.com