Jewish Almanac Podcast
Episode #5
March 15, 2023
What follows is a working script of this episode, so there may be slight variations in wording from the script.
This is the Jewish Almanac Podcast, a weekly short program that explores opportunities for frugal and DIY Jewish adult learning.
I’m James M. Branum and this is episode #5 with a release date of March 15, 2023.
Before going on, don’t forget that you can find a transcript and show notes for this episode (and all past episodes) on our website JewishAlmanac.com. This podcast can also be found on most of the major podcast apps.
And this episode is brought to you by our podcast backers, including an anonymous donor who didn’t want to be named — so to whoever you are, we appreciate you!
In this episode, I”ll be sharing our weekly podcast roundup, where I”ll be sharing highlights of some of the best Jewish podcasts out there, and then I’ll have a segment to discuss two programs I watched recently on Chaiflicks, a streaming platform for Jewish and Israeli content. Finally, you’ll hear about some of the resources available for learning Ladino, a Jewish language that was once the primary language of Jews in the Mediterranean. .
So, on to the podcast roundup…
On Judaism Unbound, Episode #369 hosts Dan & Lex interviewed Ariel Mayse, a professor of religious studies at Stanford and is the co-author of a two volume series on the topic of Neeo Hassidism.
On Chutzpod, season 2 episode 21, we heard the last episode of Sarah guest hosting (in place of regular co-host Joshua Malina). I really enjoyed hearing Sarah on the show and hope that she comes back to guest-host down the road. I really appreciated Sarah’s experience as a Jewish person who is also indigenous to this continent, but also I appreciated the perspective she gave to these episodes, based on her experience as a Jew who was less versed in some aspects of Jewish practice and hence came to the conversation with what the Buddhist tradition refers to as “beginner’s mind.”
The topic for this episode (in honor of International Womens Day) was the Jewish character of Lilith, described in Jewish folklore as being Adam’s first wife (with Eve being wife #2). While I knew a little bit about the Lilith story, I didn’t know that the story had its roots in rabbinic curiosity about why there are two creation accounts in Bereshit, aka Genesis. From there, their unpacking of the Lilith story goes into some intense places including delving into issues including sexuality, gender role,s and autonomy. There is a lot here and arguably is one of the most educational episodes of Chutzpod to date. You don’t want to miss it.
On Adapting: The Future of Jewish Education podcast, episode 3, episode 21, host David Bryfman spoke with Susan Bronson of the Yiddish Book Center in Amhearst, Massachusetts. The main topic of the conversation was the idea that Yiddish learning is not a historical exercise, but rather is very much an expression of modern Yiddishkeit, particularly when seen through the lens of young Jewish adults who are connecting with Yiddish as an expression of their leftist Jewish values and culture.
By the way, thanks to this episode I discovered some new music by Joshua Dolgin, who has the stage name of DJ Socalled, who is described by wikipedia as “a Canadian rapper and record producer, known for his eclectic mix of hip hop, klezmer, and other styles such as drum & bass and folk music.” I got to listen to a lot of his tracks on Spotify over the last few days and I came away being very impressed, particularly with the song “You are never alone” from his 2007 album Ghettoblaster, that somehow, amazingly blends Western Swing, HipHop, klezmer, and Jazz in a way that is really hard to describe but really enjoyable to listen to.
On the Queer Yid podcast, episode 3, I heard a powerful conversation with Shlomo Satt, a survivor of conversion therapy who spoke about his life growing up as a queer kid in the Yeshvish world. It was a painful listen, particularly in hearing more of the inner workings of the so-called gay conversion therapy world, and how so often those who are promoting and even running this “therapy” are in fact folks who are queer, but aren’t ready to accept it yet.
I also really liked hearing Shlomo’s original liberating idea — that if G-d made him gay, then it was G-d’s problem and not his.
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Next, I want to share a little about the online streaming platform ChaiFlicks.com. A few months ago my family and I signed up for it when it was on sale and we have really enjoyed it a lot. The service features a pretty large library of mostly Israeli TV shows and movies, but also some non-Israeli films on Jewish themes. Most of the content is in Hebrew, but there are English sub-titles.
Cost-wise, it’s currently at $7.99/month, but they often have coupons and promo codes, so be sure and search for the latest specials before signing up.
On the TV show side of things, I’m definitely a big fan of the show Checkout (aka “kupa Rashit” which means “main register” in Hebrew). It is a workplace mockumentary-style comedy in the vein of The Office, but of course it is set in Yavne, Israel with some of the most hilarious characters I’ve seen on TV in a long time, with my favorite character being Ramzi, the sweet (but naive) Arab-Israeli grocery worker who is entirely too excited about groceries — which of course brings immediate comparisons for me with Dwight Shrute’s obsessions with paper and beets on The Office.
Besides TV shows, there are also a lot of good documentaries and I got to see two recently.
Rabenu (our rabbi) told the story and legacy of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, in ways that were trippy, compelling, but also deeply disturbing — mostly when I recognized how many similarities there were —- in both good and bad ways — between the Breslov movement of Judaism and Evangelical, and especially Charismatic strains of Christianity.
The other documentary I got to watch was Havana Curveball, a film that told the story of Mica, a boy who was inspired by his grandfather’s story of escaping the Nazis by way of Cuba, and who decided for his Bar Mitzvah service project to donate baseball equipment to Cuban youth — which of course became a much more complicated proposition given the ridiculously cruel and inhumane US sanctions regime against the people of Cuba. I like many things about this film, but probably was most excited to see some of my favorite Havana landmarks, including the Templo Beth Shalom in the Vedado neighborhood which I got to visit back in 2019.
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I wanted to share for a few moments about resources for learning Ladino.
Ladino is a Jewish language that has been described as being “ essentially 15th-century Spanish, with words mixed in from Portuguese, French, Italian, Arabic, Greek, Turkish and Hebrew.” It was historically spoken by Sephardic Jews across the Mediterranean from the time of the Spanish inquisition until World War 2. It is no longer widely spoken as a first language, but according to some sources there may be as many as 200,000 people today with some degree of familiarity with the language.
So far in my baby steps of learning Ladino, I’ve found a few resources that I think are worth exploring, but I hope to share more over time in later episodes of this podcast.
For now though, let’s talk about a two of these resources.
First, MyJewishLearning.com has a great page of resources on learning Ladino, including links to classes, dictionaries, resource libraries, books and oodles of other resources. — Just go to the show notes for this episode and you’ll find the link to this page.
Memrise.com (which is spelled M E M R I S E dot com) has a great Ladino short course that focuses on basic vocabulary and that is thankfully free! Again, you can find a link to it on the show notes for the episode. — By the way, I tried this one and really liked it. I’m already fascinated by the differences between Spanish and Ladino.
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That’s it for this week.
If you have comments, suggestions, critiques, please send them my way. My contact info is on our website, JewishAlmanac.com but I also love to hear from folks on Facebook (just search for Jewish Almanac) or on the server on Mastodon.
Also, thanks go to Danny Bale, and Rosegoldglitch for the music we used in this episode.
So until next week, Shavuah Tov, have a good week!
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