The College Commons Podcast

Sources of inspiration from great teachers—and unexpected ones, as well. Ariel Burger is the author of Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom, which won the 2019 National Jewish Book Award in Biography. He is also an artist and teacher whose work integrates education, spirituality, the arts, and strategies for social change. An Orthodox rabbi, Ariel received his PhD in Jewish Studies and Co...

Mutually inspiring sources of Reform Judaism—from places you may not expect. Rita Fruman was raised in the Reform Movement in Belarus, beginning in 1999. In 2001, she became a madricha and then the Director of the Minsk Netzer club, where she oversaw the training of the next generation of leaders in Jewish summer camps. In 2003, she made Aliyah, and can say that her love for Israel was given to he...

Fighting anti-Zionism in progressive spaces. Amanda Berman is the Founder and Executive Director of the Zioness Movement, a new initiative empowering and activating Zionists on the progressive left to stand proudly in social justice spaces as Jews and Zionists. Until she recently made the transition to focusing exclusively on building the much-needed Zioness community, Amanda was also a civil righ...

How does vulnerability and resilience aid in the work of inter-religious understanding? Dean Phillip Bell is President/CEO and Professor of Jewish History at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. He earned a PhD and MA at the University of California, Berkeley and a BA at the University of Chicago. He has served on the Board of the Association for Jewish Studies and he is the autho...

Recasting the Jewish legal tradition as literature and spirituality. Dr. Alyssa Gray is Professor of Codes and Responsa Literature and Emily S. and Rabbi Bernard H. Mehlman Chair of Rabbinics at HUC-JIR in New York. She specializes in Talmud and Jewish Law, about which she has written two books and co-edited a third, in addition to numerous essays for both scholarly and popular audiences. Her new...

Israel as we visit it in our hearts, minds, and in person. Dr. Lesley Litman is the Director of the Executive M.A. Program in Jewish Education and works with the Experiment in Congregational Education as the coordinator of its Boston-based initiative. She also consults to The iCenter in the area of curriculum design and professional development in Israel education. Lesley holds a doctorate in Jewi...

Bridging the gap between politically liberal and conservative Jews. Rabbi Peter S. Berg is the Senior Rabbi of The Temple: The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation. The Temple is Atlanta’s oldest synagogue, founded in 1867. Rabbi Berg was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of the most influential rabbis in United States, by Georgia Trend as one of the 100 most influential Georgians, and by Atl...

How does music unlock and inspire learning and prayer, and even love? Singer-songwriter, composer, and educator Rory Michelle Sullivan has recorded four studio albums and performed internationally. She and her music have been featured at festivals such as ISH, Cincinnati’s Jewish and Israeli Arts and Cultural Festival, on Jewish Rock Radio’s Emerging Artist Showcase, and in Philadelphia RowHome ma...

A comedy show in Auschwitz? Exploring Holocaust and humor — and its limits. Ferne Pearlstein is a critically acclaimed filmmaker & renowned cinematographer. She won the Sundance Cinematography Prize for "Imelda” about the former first lady of the Philippines. She has produced and/or directed dozens of films including THE LAST LAUGH which was released theatrically in over 25 cities and screened at...

Parenting as spiritual practice, the complexity of cultural appropriation, and the challenging work of intersectionality and feminism today. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is an award-winning author and writer. She was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of ten “rabbis to watch,” by the Forward as one of the top 50 most influential women rabbis, and called a “wunderkund of Jewish feminism” by Pub...

Policy analyst Jordan Reimer unpacks the complexities of geopolitics in the middle east. Jordan Reimer is currently a policy analyst at RAND in the defense and political sciences department. He has an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and studied in Egypt and Yemen. He served as a policymaker at the Department of Defense under two administrations, focusing on Iraq, Iran, a...

Campus speech and our values. Michael S. Roth is the 16th president of Wesleyan University. A professor, author and curator, Roth's scholarly interests center on how people make sense of the past. His most recent book is Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist's Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech and Political Correctness on College Campuses (2019), published by Yale University Press. Among his many nota...

Cole Imperi: Death Becomes Us by HUC-JIR

Is belief of one type or another necessary to lead a good life? Scott Shay is a leading businessman, thought leader, and author of two widely read books: Getting Our Groove Back: How to Energize American Jewry, and In Good Faith: Questioning Religion and Atheism, the latter of which has been recognized as one of the best books of 2018 by Mosaic Authors and earned a finalist award from National Jew...

Palestinian author and vigorous advocate of Israeli-Palestinian peace, Yousef Bashir shares his compelling personal story of why we must focus on the human aspect of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Author of, The Words of My Father: Love and Pain in Palestine, Yousef Bashir is a Palestinian-American from the Gaza Strip, and the son of Khalil Bashir, a highly respected educator. Still su...

Does Judaism have a spiritual blindspot that draws some away, even to cults? Josh Bloch was the host and co-producer of CBC Podcast's Uncover Escaping NXIVM. He has worked on CBC's daily current affairs show The Current since 2012 as a documentary editor. He co-created the CBC show The Life Game, which tells people's life stories with the help of improv actors, and How To Do It: the guide to thing...

Yogi, podcaster, and passionate Jew, Lauren Taus has a different take on being culturally Jewish. With decades of experience as a licensed clinical therapist and yoga teacher, Lauren Taus guides people in embodied healing to alchemize personal and intergeneration pain. She works with the body, the mind and the spirit to transform lives, and guide individuals into their highest, most authentic expr...

Reform liturgy in Israel, where Hebrew content has a whole new meaning. Rabbi Dalia Marx, Ph. D., is the Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Professor of Liturgy and Midrash at the Taube Family Campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, and she teaches in various academic institutions in Israel and Europe. Marx, tenth generation in Jerusalem, earned her doctorate at the Hebrew Uni...

Take a gripping glimpse behind the bars of the American criminal prison system from a Jewish social activist who's done time on the inside. Evie Litwok is the Founder and Executive Director of Witness to Mass Incarceration (WMI). WMI’s mission is to end mass incarceration by placing formerly incarcerated women and LGBTQIA+ experiences at the center of the fight for alternatives to mass incarcerati...

“Unorthodox” Podcast host takes questions on American Judaism and Jewish culture. Author and freelance writer, Mark Oppenheimer, wrote the “Beliefs” column for The New York Times from 2010 until the summer of 2016. He now hosts a weekly podcast "Unorthodox," produced by Tablet magazine. On iTunes’s #1 Jewish-themed podcast, he delivers the News of the Jews to the world, and interviews guests (Jewi...

Poetry and prose from the pen of Yermiyahu Ahron Taub transport us from the world of Orthodox Judaism to the libraries of modern America. Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of the collection of short stories Prodigal Children in the House of G-d (2018) and six books of poetry, including A Mouse Among Tottering Skyscrapers: Selected Yiddish Poems (2017). Preparing to Dance: New Yiddish songs, a CD...

Exploring the therapy of angels and past lives to understand the soul and the self. Doris E. Cohen, Ph. D., is an internationally renowned clinical psychologist and psychotherapist and has been in the private practice for more than 30 years. Her unique approach uses psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, Past-Life Regressions and Dream analysis.

Exploring the value, ritual, and tradition of storytelling while straddling different Jewish worlds. Pearl Gluck’s work has been part of the Sundance Lab, played at the Cannes Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and PBS. The Turn Out is her first fiction feature film. Her first documentary feature film, Divan (2004) opened theatrically at Film Forum in NYC, was broadcast on the Sundance Channel...

This episode of the College Commons Podcast explores how music can be a powerful tool for bringing people together, and examines empathy's role in the core of Judaism. Senior Rabbi at Stephen Wise Temple, Yoshi Zweiback was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. He graduated from Princeton University in 1991 and was ordained as a Rabbi by the Hebrew Union College Jewish...

Is the Two-State Solution for Israel and Palestine the best solution for a persistent conflict? David Makovsky is the Ziegler distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute and director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process. He is also an adjunct professor in Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In 2013-2014, h...