Lex Rofeberg is joined again by Lexi Kohanski, and Liana Wertman (our friends at The Torah Studio) for the 4th and final conversation in our 2025 edition of ApocryFest: Hanukkah Unbound and Un-Canonized. In this episode, they consider how we can channel our newfound Apocryphal ideas into the world today. They consider the importance of texts that are both canonical and non-canonical, along with endorsing the value of entering texts (such as apocrypha) that bring us into a state of beginner's mind.

You can sign up for ApocryFest 2025 by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/apocryfest. Do so, and we’ll send you all sorts of cool Apocryphal stuff, during Hanukkah, to help enrich your experience of this holiday! And you can register for The Hanukkah Apocrypha Extravaganza on December 21st, via this link!

For all of our episodes from past years' ApocryFests, click here.

Head to JudaismUnbound.com/classes to check out our up upcoming 3-week mini-courses in the UnYeshiva! This time around we are offering The Torah of Kink, Hasidism and Neo-Hasidism, Queering Kedusha (Holiness), and Brit Milah Unbound: Exploring Circumcision!

Today we are thrilled to feature an episode from Judaism Unbound’s family of podcasts on our flagship podcast’s feed. The podcast is The Oral Talmud, hosted by our founder Dan Libenson and Benay Lappe – founder of SVARA: a Traditionally Radical Yeshiva.

Join Benay Lappe and Dan Libenson in their chevrutah, their partnered study and exploration of the Talmud through the “traditionally radical” lens pioneered by Benay Lappe. Together, we explore key stories and practices from the Talmud as a how-to manual for re-imagining Judaism after the previous version “crashes.” Whether you are a beginner or a longtime learner of Talmud, this podcast offers a framework to understand the Talmud more deeply from the perspective of contemporary academic study and creative re-interpretation.

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Episode 0: Learning Together

“I am responsible for my chevruta’s learning, and my chevruta is responsible for my learning. I am invested in you.” - Benay Lappe

Join study partners (chevrutas) Benay Lappe & Dan Libenson as they reflect on five years of The Oral Talmud, and celebrate its transition from a video-series to a podcast! What do lasting study partners recognize in each other? How do they decide how and what to learn together? Find out what makes a learning journey exciting, possible, and loving! 

For full episode shownotes, click here.

Lex Rofeberg is joined again by Lexi Kohanski, and Liana Wertman (our friends at The Torah Studio) for the 3nd conversation in our 2025 edition of ApocryFest: Hanukkah Unbound and Un-Canonized. In this episode, they explore a text called 4 Ezra. 

You can sign up for ApocryFest 2025 by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/apocryfest. Do so, and we’ll send you all sorts of cool Apocryphal stuff, during Hanukkah, to help enrich your experience of this holiday! And you can register for The Hanukkah Apocrypha Extravaganza on December 21st, via this link!

For all of our episodes from past years' ApocryFests, click here.

Head to JudaismUnbound.com/classes to check out our up upcoming 3-week mini-courses in the UnYeshiva! This time around we are offering The Torah of Kink, Hasidism and Neo-Hasidism, Queering Kedusha (Holiness), and Brit Milah Unbound: Exploring Circumcision!

Lex Rofeberg, Lexi Kohanski, and Liana Wertman (the latter two our friends at The Torah Studio) bring the 2nd conversation in a 4-episode mini-series entitled ApocryFest: Hanukkah Unbound and Un-Canonized. In this episode, they explore a text called Genesis Apocryphon. They explore the power of texts written in the 1st-person (unlike most of the Bible), ask whether it may be spiritually productive to engage with texts that are fragments (allowing us to fill in the blanks ourselves), and wonder aloud what changes when allow stories from our tradition to have multiple versions that can all simultaneously be "authentic."

You can sign up for ApocryFest 2025 by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/apocryfest. Do so, and we’ll send you all sorts of cool Apocryphal stuff, during Hanukkah, to help enrich your experience of this holiday! And you can register for The Hanukkah Apocrypha Extravaganza on December 21st, via this link!

For all of our episodes from past years' ApocryFests, click here.

Head to JudaismUnbound.com/classes to check out our up upcoming 3-week mini-courses in the UnYeshiva! This time around we are offering The Torah of Kink, Hasidism and Neo-Hasidism, Queering Kedusha (Holiness), and Brit Milah Unbound: Exploring Circumcision!

Hanukkah is here! Lex Rofeberg, Lexi Kohanski, and Liana Wertman (the latter two from our friends at The Torah Studio) kick off the 2025 edition of ApocryFest: Hanukkah Unbound and Un-Canonized -- a 4-part mini-series of Judaism Unbound. They ask why texts of the apocrypha are worth exploring, why it's worth doing so on Hanukkah in particular, explore some beloved apocryphal faves (Judith and Maccabees) along with introducing a few texts (Genesis Apocryphon and 4 Ezra) which will get bonus episodes of their own once Hanukkah begins.

You can sign up for ApocryFest 2025 by heading to www.JudaismUnbound.com/apocryfest. Do so, and we’ll send you all sorts of cool Apocryphal stuff, during Hanukkah, to help enrich your experience of this holiday! And you can register for The Hanukkah Apocrypha Extravaganza on December 21st, via this link!

For all of our episodes from past years' ApocryFests, click here.

Head to JudaismUnbound.com/classes to check out our up upcoming 3-week mini-courses in the UnYeshiva! This time around we are offering The Torah of Kink, Hasidism and Neo-Hasidism, Queering Kedusha (Holiness), and Brit Milah Unbound: Exploring Circumcision!

Dan and Lex are joined by Sarah Hurwitz, author of a recently-published book entitled As a Jew, which explores ways in which antisemitism has shaped Jewish identity -- and how Jews can reclaim their tradition. This episode is the second in a short mini-series on antisemitism, following up on a conversation last week with Daniel May. 

Access full shownotes for this episode via this link. 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!

Join the Judaism Unbound discord, where you can interact with fellow listeners all around the world, by heading to discord.judaismunbound.com. 

Daniel May, publisher of Jewish Currents, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about anti-semitism. May is the author of a recent piece in Harper's Magazine entitled "An Outrage to Common Sense: On the Meanings of Anti-Semitism," a piece that serves as a great launching point into a discussion of antisemitism's history, its contemporary manifestations, along with debates about when it manifests and when it doesn't. If you've noticed that some parts of this description use a hyphen in "anti-semitism," and others use "antisemitism" with no hyphen, you're a sharp reader! That punctuation choice and its ramifications is part of this episode as well. 

Access full shownotes for this episode via this link. 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!

Join the Judaism Unbound discord, where you can interact with fellow listeners all around the world, by heading to discord.judaismunbound.com. 

Barbara Thiede (also known as Shulamit Sapir) is a multi-time guest on Judaism Unbound in the past, a key figure in our recent book Judaism Unbound...Bound, a past teacher in the UnYeshiva, and a major influence on Judaism Unbound in many respects over the years. She joins Dan and Lex for a conversation that extends a previous appearance of hers (Episode 101: Not Your Rabbis' Judaism), and continues a mini-series of Judaism Unbound episodes where we look back on what has shifted in Jewish life since our founding ten years ago.

Access full shownotes for this episode via this link. 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!

Join the Judaism Unbound discord, where you can interact with fellow listeners all around the world, by heading to discord.judaismunbound.com. 

David Kraemer is the author of a recent book entitled Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora, and the Joseph J. and Dora Abbell Librarian and Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He joins Dan and Lex for a conversation that uses that book as a springboard into a conversation about diaspora and exile in the Jewish past, present, and future.

Access full shownotes for this episode via this link. 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!

Join the Judaism Unbound discord, where you can interact with fellow listeners all around the world, by heading to discord.judaismunbound.com.

This week, Judaism Unbound is thrilled to feature the 1st episode of Door to Door: A Pilgrimage Across Generations -- another podcast in Judaism Unbound's family of podcasts!

Want to connect with Judaism Unbounders all around the world? Join our Discord server, which we have just opened to any and all Judaism Unbound listeners, all around the world! Just head to Discord.JudaismUnbound.com to join.

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Door to Door is a deeply personal, five-part podcast series tracing one Jewish family’s multigenerational pilgrimage from a once-lost home in Wachenbuchen, Germany, to the present-day echoes of inherited memory, trauma, and resilience.

Told through archival recordings, family reflections, and emotional returns to ancestral ground, this podcast chronicles the survival of Simon—a Holocaust survivor taken to Buchenwald Concentration Camp during Kristallnacht—and the generations that followed him. It's a story shaped by suffering, but defined by rebuilding, remembrance, and an enduring commitment to legacy. Door to Door invites listeners to witness what it means to reclaim identity from the wreckage—and to carry forward the names, the stories, and the truths nearly erased.

If you’ve ever felt the weight of inherited memory, or the pull to understand where you come from — subscribe to Door to Door wherever you get your podcasts. Let this be part of your story, too.

Basya Schechter -- a songwriter, musician, performing artist, and cantor -- wants to remind everyone that you don't need to be in a synagogue to have powerful experiences with Jewish music. She joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about her evolutions as a musician, her experiences performing in contexts as different as a college dining hall and a sprawling concert venue, and so much more. This episode is the fourth in an ongoing mini-series of Judaism Unbound episodes mobilizing Jewish music -- past, present, and future -- as a launching point into conversations about contemporary Jewish life and experience.

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!