The Stoic Jew

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 5 minutes 30 seconds Synopsis: This short, unplanned, off-the-cuff Erev Yom ha'Kippurim episode has been brought to you by my less-than-stellar seudah ha'mafsekes , and the insights it led to. Gmar chasimah tovah to us all! Sources (will find later) ----- The Torah Content for this week is sponsored by Rifka Kaplan-Peck i...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 29 minutes 7 seconds Synopsis: After yet another unintended hiatus, we're back for another Gratitude Journal milestone! In this episode we reflect on gratitude, slowing down time, being present, illusions about the future, mezuzah vs. cheap Amazon trinkets, and tapping into what's eternal. I know I've said this in th...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 29 minutes 25 seconds Synopsis: AND WE'RE BACK! This episode is brought to you by the letter "I"—for insomnia. In a spontaneous decision to return to my old practice, I turned a sleepless night into a new installment of TSJ. If you're looking to up your gratitude game, this one's for you. We start with a re...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 21 minutes 25 seconds Synopsis: There's nothing like a real-world example to showcase Stoic principles. This incident that happened to me a couple of weeks ago illustrates one of the core ideas in Epictetus's teachings: the use of "impressions." Not only that, but it also exemplifies one of the chief benefits of...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 14 minutes 6 seconds Synopsis: In an effort to jumpstart weekly TSJ episodes, I've decided to start from the beginning of Meditations Book 7 and work my way through. Chapter 1 is very reminiscent of Koheles ... or is it? You can be the judge of that. Sources: - Aurelius, Meditations 7:1 - Koheles 1:9-11 ----- The Torah content...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 14 minutes 9 seconds Synopsis: On July 19th, while I was in Seattle for the summer, my car - which I had been renting to a talmid - was rear-ended. What followed was a rollercoaster of bureaucratic insurance annoyances accompanied by anxiety from afar. The saga ended on August 23rd, this past Erev Shabbos, when they finally finishe...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 59 minutes Synopsis: This evening (8/7/24), in our final Stoic Jew Shiur of this summer, we learned the fourth entry in Marcus Aurelius's journal. This, too, is a self-reminder to keep his principles at the forefront of his mind - but this is the first time in the Meditations that Marcus explicitly mentions his own mortality....

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 28 minutes Synopsis: This evening (7/31/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we deviated from our sequential learn-through of Meditations and took up a timely question: What do Stoicism and Judaism have to say about the double-assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr? The specific ques...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 19 minutes Synopsis: This evening (7/24/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we learned the third entry in Meditations Book II, which deals with some weighty topics: God, the universe, hashgachah (providence), and theodicy (the question of evil in the world). We began by underscoring the fundamental differences between the Stoic vie...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 28 minutes Synopsis: This evening (7/17/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we learned and discussed the second chapter in Book II, which had a markedly different tone than the first chapter. Here we see Marcus reminding - or rebuking himself - in order not to lose sight of who he really is. We raised a TON of questions and emerged...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 15 minutes 31 seconds Synopsis: I can't believe it, but this past Friday marked three YEARS of gratitude journaling! In this episode, as I usually do in these "gratitude milestone episodes," I recap my gratitude journal practice and identify the benefit or level-up that currently stands out the most in my mind since...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 10 minutes Synopsis: This evening (7/10/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we achieved our goal of finishing our analysis of the opening entry of Book II. After reviewing and continuing what we did last time, we raised a question that has bothered me for years: Judaism has a clear statement about what our ultimate value system is,...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 32 minutes Synopsis: This evening (7/3/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we attempted to do an orderly review of what we covered last time, but instead, we slipped right into a fresh analysis of some of the most fundamental questions in ethics: What do we mean by good and bad? We debated whether and to what extent Marcus Aurelius...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 37 minutes Synopsis: This evening (6/26/24) was our inaugural "Stoic Jew Shiur"! After a brief overview of who Marcus Aurelius was and what his Meditations are, we dove RIGHT into the text of Book 2 Chapter 1. We quickly discovered that this opening paragraph was rich in ideas and fruitful in providing insights int...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! I should have made this announcement more than an hour before the first shiur, but better late than never! 😅 ----- The Torah content for this week has been sponsored by Meir Areman, l'zeicher nishmas Zelda bas Ziesel, his grandmother, whose yahrzeit is on the 21st of Sivan. ----- If you've gained from what you've learned he...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 25 minutes even Synopsis: You might have heard of Bruce Lee's "Be Water, My Friend" analogy, and if you're a listener of this podcast, you might have also heard of Marcus Aurelius's fire analogy, but have you heard of Seneca's BEE analogy? I know I hadn't! In this episode we review all three analo...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 19 minutes even (Steven) Synopsis: This episode was inspired by four occurrences that recently befell me, each of which involved what we'll dub "a minor monetary fluctuation." The rest of the episode is devoted to unpacking the insights from these occurrences, using Epictetus as our guide, Jerry Seinfeld as our role...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 17 minutes 48 seconds Synopsis: Yesterday I walked into a swarm of bees. In this episode, I reflect on that experience and follow my musings to the writings of Epictetus, to the bee reference in Tehilim 118, to musings about Israel's present war, and to yesterday's commemoration of the Holocaust. Sources: - Epictetus, Enc...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 21 minutes Synopsis: And The Stoic Jew Podcast is BACK! Or is it? Well, it's back for at least this episode, in which I reflect on 1000 days of gratitude and muse on the relationship between my gratitude accountability practice and the mitzvah of recounting the Exodus from Egypt. Whether this marks the return of regular TSJ ep...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 22 minutes Synopsis: And we're back! By "we" I mean The Stoic Jew Podcast AND my insomnia! :D I've been up since 3:35am this morning, and I decided to make a podcast episode about my latest Stoic Jew take on my situation, based on the words of Marcus Aurelius and Koheles (Ecclesiastes), as explained by Ralbag (G...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 34 minutes 10 seconds Synopsis: What will you do or say in your last moments, when (God willing) you are on your deathbed? In this episode I reflect on the final words of U.S. presidents, the death poems of Zen monks and Japanese haiku poets, the statements and attitudes of the Sages of the Talmud about the particular circumstances...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 8 minutes 11 seconds Synopsis: This is the audio version of the 2.5-page article I published on rabbischneeweiss.substack.com/ on 11/17/23, entitled: God of Time or Dog Eating Its Own Vomit?   I wrote this in lieu of a parashah article because I needed to write it for myself. If I don't write for myself, who will write for me?...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 29 minutes 47 seconds Synopsis: In today's unscripted "Stoic self-talk workshop" episode, I reflect aloud on a mistake I caught myself making, in which I fell victim to the "God fantasy" of living life as though I were outside of time. Related Content: - for my most recent shiur on the phrase "b'S...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 18 minutes 28 seconds Synopsis: My morning reading of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations , combined with my review of the Rambam's Hilchos Teshuvah and my reading of the most recent issue of The Imperfectionist (by Oliver Burkeman, author of my current favorite non-fiction book: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals...

Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 16 minutes 9 seconds Synopsis: This morning I read a passage in Meditations which answered a question I've had about the formulation of vidui (confession) for many years. This answer is similar to answer I happened to reread from the Rav (Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik) this morning. In this episode I compare and contrast these...