“ When people say, ‘What makes something Jewish?’ A lot of times you're looking for some substantive answer to that, emphasizing the value of tikkun olam or whatever it might be. But no, what makes it Jewish is that it has been part of this process of changing and remixing, that's the essence of Judaism.” - Dan Libenson
Aug 24
1 hr 4 min
“[The Rabbis] show us, and texts from antiquity across the board show us, that any silly political insistence that there are only two sexes and there always have been, is just straight up nonsense. They attest to more than two genders. And yet, we repeat it so often that they inherit a binary system from the Bible and then scholars writing about gender have projected our assumptions about their binaries on the text.” - Gwynn Kessler
Aug 17
1 hr 14 min
“ Even if you accept that we are nothing compared to Moses, nevertheless, we're sitting on the shoulders of Moses and everyone who sat on his shoulders. So we're actually having a higher perspective, even though we're smaller ourselves. That's an argument that accepts the concept of each generation being less impressive than the previous one but nevertheless, they can overturn things because they just see farther.” - Dan Libenson
Aug 10
59 min
“ I'm really starting to land somewhere for me with this text. I think this is an instruction manual for how to apply that very radical and broad directive of prioritizing human dignity over the precise following of the Torah when they conflict.” - Benay Lappe
Aug 3
1 hr 2 min
“It is preferable to break, violate a prohibition in the Torah, anything the Torah says don't do, you can actually go ahead and do it if by not doing it you would cause someone significant indignity or disrespect.” - Benay Lappe
Jul 27
1 hr 1 min
“That's what Rabbi Yitzchak is saying, once the temple is destroyed, we are all in a state of unhealthy living, and our desires can only be satisfied in forbidden ways.” - Benay Lappe
Jul 20
1 hr 4 min
“ The issue here isn't sex. The issue here is objectification. So that can take place in a sexual context, but it can also take place in other contexts. So this potentially gives us the opening to say in a case where you have a disease that you're going to die where the cure would require the treating of another person as an object, that is not permitted. That's a much larger category. ” - Dan Libenson
Jul 13
1 hr 3 min
“ There's no question in my mind that retelling, reshaping the contours of the Jewish story is what you do. That's the most Jewish thing of all Jewish things.” - Benay Lappe
Jul 6
1 hr 4 min
“The rabbis ultimately see us being the Rabbi Akiva character, that everyone is an innovator, an upgrader, a potentially radical rewriter. That's the story that they're telling over and over and over and over in the Talmud. That's the message that they're trying to tell one another, to empower one another.” - Benay Lappe
Jun 29
1 hr 1 min
“ People who learn the tradition own that tradition and therefore can do with it what an owner can do with what an owner owns. If you own your house, you can knock down walls, you can build an extra story, completely change it. You can knock down the whole thing.” - Benay Lappe
Jun 22
1 hr 1 min
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