Judaism Unbound

This bonus episode of Judaism Unbound is presented in partnership with Theatre Dybbuk. Once a month, their podcast -- called The Dybbukast -- releases a new episode, and we are proud to feature episode four of their podcast as a bonus episode here on Judaism Unbound's channel. In each episode, they bring poems, plays, and other creative texts from throughout history to life, all while revealing their relationships to issues still present today. Subscribe to The Dybbukast in Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are found.

Episode four, presented in collaboration with The Contemporary Jewish Museum, explores two murder pamphlets, "The Murdered Jewess Sara Alexander: Life, Trial and Conviction of Rubenstein the Polish Jew" and "Rubenstein, or The Murdered Jewess: Being a Full and Reliable History of This Terrible Mystery of Blood.” Published in 1876, both pamphlets tell the tale of Pesach Rubenstein, a Jewish immigrant who was convicted of killing his cousin Sara Alexander and disposing of her body in a cornfield. The case was a sensation in the press and took hold of the popular imagination.

Dr. Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and author of Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press 2017), discusses the story behind the pamphlets as the first significant intersection of Jews, the local and national press, and the American judicial system.

Nate DeGroot is a Jewish experiential educator and activist, and currently serves as the Associate Director for The Shalom Center. He joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about Judaism as a prompt for making the world a better place.

It’s not too late to register for our full-semester spring courses in the UnYeshiva! We’ve got Biblical animals, Jewish apocrypha, mythic approaches to climate change, and beyond! Visit JudaismUnbound.com/classes to learn more and register.

Access full shownotes for this episode via this link. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

Laura Yares is the author of a brand-new book, entitled Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. She joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about her book -- in some ways about Sunday Schools, to be sure, but in other ways a chance to explore the broader question, "What even is religion?" , through the history of Sunday Schools in the 19th century. They also ask what the book can help us learn, today, about our 21st century Jewish landscape.

Access full shownotes for this episode via this link.

Learn more about Judaism Unbound's UnYeshiva -- a digital center for Jewish learning and unlearning -- by heading to www.judaismunbound.com/unyeshiva. And if you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here!

This bonus episode of Judaism Unbound is presented in partnership with Theatre Dybbuk. We are proud to feature their third season's fourth episode as a bonus episode here on Judaism Unbound's feed. In each episode, they bring poems, plays, and other creative texts from throughout history to life, all while revealing their relationships to issues still present today. Subscribe to The Dybbukast on Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are found.

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In this second of The Dybbukast's five-episode series with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University (NEJS), they explore "The Imagined Childhood,” a short story originally published in Hebrew in 1979. Written by the prolific 20th-century Iraqi-born Israeli author Shimon Ballas, the story served as an epilogue to a collection of short stories whose narratives intersect with the author's early life in Baghdad.

Yuval Evri, Assistant Professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and the Marash and Ocuin Chair in Ottoman, Mizrahi, and Sephardic Jewish Studies, takes us through the author's immigrant history and his multilingual engagement in Arabic, Hebrew, and French throughout his body of work.

Read the transcription for "The Imagined Childhood"

THE TEAM

Hosted by Aaron Henne
Scholarship provided by Yuval Evri, PhD
Edited by Mark McClain Wilson
Story editing by Julie A. Lockhart with Aaron Henne
Featuring the voice of Jonathan C.K. Williams
Theme music composed by Michael Skloff and produced by Sam K.S.
Transcription by Dylan Southard

Elul is the 12th and final month of the Jewish calendar year. Elul Unbound is a Judaism Unbound initiative all about making Elul meaningful, through creative digital modalities. In this third bonus episode of Elul Unbound 2023, Lex Rofeberg and Wendie Bernstein Lash explore ways in which spirals might connect to the month of Elul, and the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

This Elul bonus episode is the third of four that will be released as part of Elul Unbound 2023 (our 18th-21st Elul episodes overall). For a 3-session Elul mini-course, which helps you take your Elul observance to the next level, you can register for Elul: Your On-Ramp Into Rosh Hashanah -- which is being taught by Wendie Bernstein Lash, longtime facilitator of Elul Unbound!

To check out our previous Elul bonus episodes, released through Elul Unbounds of the past five years, click here. Join our bi-weekly journey through Elul Unbound 2023, by signing up at this link, and sign up for our third Elul Unbound Shabbat gathering (Friday, September 8th), where we will be exploring Elul in real time with friends, by clicking here.