The Schrift - Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Times

The word "slave" cannot be found in the Torah. After all, the Torah was written in Hebrew, not English. But more still, the Hebrew version of the word for slave actually can mean a lot of other things, too: worker, servant, subject, intimate. Were the Hebrews who built the pyramids really slaves or just "laborers"? Why is an English dictionary so much bigger than a Hebrew one? Did Moses speak the same Hebrew as Gal Gadot? To answer these questions and more, I spoke with a scholar of Classics and Biblical Hebrew who is himself a native speaker of Modern Hebrew, Professor Azzan Yadin-Israel.

When Richard Wagner wrote his operas it was--wait for it--actually cool to be German. Indeed, one need only listen to this music for ten seconds to figure this out. Being Jewish back then on the other hand was, well, not so coveted. How times have changed. For today, horn players like Bar Zemach are welcomed to blast the shofar in the best orchestras of Germany.

"Ironic" is a word we throw around in casual conversation. And yet, when we peer back the curtain, we soon see that irony has explosive cultural and philosophical meaning. And what happens when we get ironic about irony itself? That was a devastating question which even Alanis Morrissette seems not to have foreseen. Schlegel, on the other hand... Nowadays, ironic speech is so commonplace that it irks more than it phases. By contrast, in the entire Torah we get just one ironic remark. Professor Erica Weitzman disentangles irony for us and shares her fascinating theory of comic irony.

In these all-too-modern of times, we not only have fast food and instant coffee, but we also get to enjoy bite-sized philosophy. Why read Hegel or Kant or Descartes when we can, you know, get their entire philosophy summed up in a YouTube video? If this sounds snobby, it shouldn't, for no one is more guilty of this "hack" than I. Fortunately, Yady Oren, who has actually read Hegel, is here to explain Hegel's real philosophy of history. We also hear his opinion on whether the tenth plague was a genocide and whether the Israelites had the right to jingoistically celebrate when the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea.

What, if anything, gets lost when we translate the Torah from Biblical Hebrew into English? Despite popular belief based on the English translation of the Torah, the Pharaoh did not exactly "harden his heart." Rather, he strengthened his heart, made his heart heavy, and even, perhaps, turned his heart into a liver. Rabbi Dovid Roberts is the rabbi and spiritual leader of the Kahal Adass Jisroel Synagogue, located in the heart of Berlin. In this interview, Rabbi Roberts explains why he reads secular books, shares an enthralling theory of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch on Pharaoh's heart, and divulges the secret to great leadership.

In his 1940 work Moses and Monotheism , Freud made the provocative claim that Moses might have been an Egyptian! Even today, and even in secular circles, few would dare to voice this theory at the Passover Seder. Yet, Chaim Noll, German-Israeli writer and DDR dissident, explains why Moshe has far more controversy surrounding him than his lineage. In fact, it was Moshe's fondness for THE DESERT which was truly scandalous, at least by ancient standards.

We all have professors and teachers who taught a course which changed our lives. Rarely, however, do we get to sit down with them years later and reminisce on the class. And even more rarely do we get to do so in podcast form. Yet, this is exactly what I do with the professor who introduced me to Kafka's novel The Trial, which has been my favorite novel ever since.

We tend to view writers like J.K. Rowling and Shakespeare as magicians, baffled and floored by their ability to create exotic and captivating new worlds on the page. Yet, the dirty secret of writers is that fiction relies on time-tested storytelling techniques which anyone can learn. When Joseph reunites with his brothers, we see these ancient (and modern) storytelling tactics on full showcase. Richard Orodenker, writer and professor at Temple University, breaks down the literary stratagems of Vayigash.

We often dream about truly "random" things. Indeed, our dream life tends to look like a painting by Salvador Dali. Joseph believed that our dreams come from God. But what is God, actually? Is it possible that God, luck, and randomness are all intertwined? In my interview with Nate Klett, he explains how neuroscience remains utterly "in the dark" as to where (random) thoughts come from. Whether they have a "cause" or not remains a question of belief, not science.

How heartwarming a symbol is the “circle of life” really? Paul Stephan, Nietzsche expert and lecturer at the University of Leipzig, explains how Nietzsche’s theory of Eternal Return does not exactly mean that we should “live life to the fullest.” When I first heard this theory as a teenager, I made things far too easy on myself. And as I discussed way back in Episode 9, Season 1 of The Schrift, we need a more heroic answer for why Jacob and Joseph celebrated Passover four hundred years before the Exodus.

On episode eight, season one of The Schrift , I asked whether we might find a healthier way to handle insults than through either passive-aggressive sniping or unabashedly aggressive slashing. Nietzsche, who could spot passive-aggressive behavior from a kilometer away, has some advice for us on this matter. Keegan Kjeldsen, host of "The Nietzsche Podcast," helps us figure out what Nietzsche really would have said about Levi and Simon's decision to avenge their sister Dinah through brute force.

The word "romantic" is not always as romantic as one might think. In the Torah, there is an unquestionable "love triangle" between Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. Two years ago on The Schrift , I questioned whether Jacob's love for the infertile Rachel might be read as a cautionary tale. Yet my interviewee Meir Goldberg teaches that this love triangle is elegant--not problematic. Meir explains why the Torah wants us to get married and have children and why it is not Jacob but we who are "lovesick."

When we make a decision, we "think" we decided through our thoughts, but we can never really be sure why we behaved in a particular way. It is largely a mystery how Isaac "decided" to choose Jacob rather than Esau to inherit his legacy. Certainly, Isaac did not rely on thinking alone. Wolfgang Schröder of Achtsamkeitspraxis Berlin explains how mindfulness can enable us to "think" with our entire being.

As an actor, Tim knew how to get inside the heads of his characters and see the world through their eyes. Now an acupuncturist, he applies this same empathy and skill to treat his patients. In 1923, Martin Buber wrote ich und du . He encouraged readers to see people, nature, animals, and even God as "du"--that is, to see them as subjects rather than objects--to merge with them. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent for "du" in English, which could have been rather useful for praying to God.

Who was Abraham? As a child, I always imagined him as a poor nomad rather than as a wealthy magnate. Two years ago on the Schrift, I considered whether Lot was the quintessential "nice guy" in the derogatory sense of that term. To shed light on these matters, I interview my Torah-learning partner Jordan Ledvina, whom I value for his straight-shooting style and his readiness to incorporate Nietzsche in Torah debates.

It is a mystery what exactly God means when he tells Abraham to "Lech Lecha," He might be telling Abraham to go to his innermost self. But this only makes the question more complicated. Do we have a self? Or are we more akin to onions? In this interview, which is a sequel to "Episode 2" of The Schrift, Gita and I discuss how yoga can allow us to rediscover the multiple selves within us, even the "turtle self."

Kyra Hense is an art and dance therapist based in Berlin. Through the healing power of dance, she helps people rediscover the freedom and creativity they once felt as children. This interview, inspired by the Torah reading of Noach and "Episode 2" of the Schrift, teaches us how dance can bring Dionysus, God of Ecstasy, out of our innermost depths without succumbing to Noah's fate.

Robbie Kramer is the founder and CEO of Inner Confidence and host of the Leverage Podcast. He helps men overcome the shame they might feel at expressing themselves romantically to a woman. This interview hearkens back to "Episode 1" of the Schrift, in which I asked why Adam and Eve, immediately after biting from the forbidden fruit, felt shame at their naked bodies. In this episode, we discover how inhibiting shame can be--in romance, in the workplace, in looking in the mirror--and how difficult it can be to detect. And as always, Nietzsche occasionally appears as our jungle guide.

Stefan Willer is one of German literature's most cutting-edge professors, combining an expertise in German Romanticism with mind-bending theories on translation, knowledge of the future [Zukunftswissen], and etymology. In this interview, which picks up where "Episode 0" left off, Professor Willer and I explore what the German Romantics might have said about the untimely death of Moses, the circularity of the Torah, and the Torah's first letter.

Rome fell in 476 C.E. For nearly a thousand years, Italians walked past the Coliseum without really caring what stood before their eyes. The Italian Renaissance is what brought the ancient world into the present. Martin Buber called for a Jewish Renaissance in 1901. But for a true Renaissance to occur in Judaism, we must start reading the Torah again--and anew.