Dive into Digital Judaism: a Podcast Playlist
Ep57: Becoming Jewish on the Web (Juan Mejia)
Ep24: BimBam (Sarah Lefton)
Ep98: The Future of Torah (Brett Lockspeiser)
Ep192: Online Jewish Learning (Danielle Eskow)
Digital Jewish experiences are rapidly proliferating in this moment of social distancing. For a deep dive into questions of what digital Judaism has looked like thus far, along with what it might look like in the future, see this rich selection of conversations below, organized into an easily binge-able playlist (the individual episodes, with shownotes, accessible by scrolling down this page).
Juan Mejia, the Southwest/Latin America Regional Director for Be'chol Lashon, who grew up Catholic, converted to Judaism, and became a rabbi, joins Dan and Lex for a conversation about conversion, the growing importance of the internet in contemporary Jewish life, and emergent forms of Judaism arising in Latin America, and what it all might mean for the future of Judaism.
Sarah Lefton, the founder and executive director of BimBam, an organization that produced animated videos about Jewish texts, practices, and ideas, as well as apps and other new media, joins Dan and Lex to give us a window into that process. She outlines her own Jewish story, the evolution of BimBam over time, some of the unique characteristics of digital forms of Judaism, and more.
Brett Lockspeiser, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Sefaria, joins Dan and Lex. In the episode, they explore the beginnings, evolution, and future of Sefaria, a digital library of Jewish texts that describes its work as "the Future of Torah."
Danielle Eskow, co-founder and CEO of Online Jewish Learning, joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about leading one of the few for-profit businesses in a field (Jewish education) that is mostly made up of non-profit organizations.
Oona King, former member of the British Parliament, currently on leave from the House of Lords, and now Director of Diverse Marketing at YouTube, takes us on a deep dive into the democratization that new internet-based technologies, like YouTube, potentially represent, and we discuss possible applications to the process of re-imagining Judaism.
Sandy Zisser and Patrick Beaulier, of the Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary, join Dan and Lex for a conversation about digital rabbinic ordination.
Denise Handlarski, rabbi and founder of SecularSynagogue.com, joins Dan and Lex for a wide-ranging conversation, looking at digital Judaism, interfaith relationships, and colonialism, among other topics.
Eileen Levinson, founder of Haggadot.com, joins Dan Libenson and Lex Rofeberg for a conversation about crowd-sourced Haggadot (guide-books to the Passover seder), and about re-imagining Passover more generally. We hope to use this series as a case study of concrete practices for finding deeper meaning in contemporary Jewish practice.