S2 E25 Can AI Help Us Understand The Secrets of Jewish Mysticism?
This is a conversation Rabbi Josh had months ago with Zac Banik, Art/Lab alumnus and habitual Jewish learner and explorer. Enjoy.

This is a conversation Rabbi Josh had months ago with Zac Banik, Art/Lab alumnus and habitual Jewish learner and explorer. Enjoy.
Daniela Molnar is an award winning poet and visual artist. She and and Rabbi Josh will be together on August 25th at 7pm at Annie Blooms Books in Portland to discuss her stunning new work Protocols: An Erasure. This episode is a rebroadcast of Rabbi Josh's conversation with Molnar from Season One of this podcast. This week and next, and then periodically thereafter we'll be sharing snippets and full episodes that look back on highlights and moments that helped shape the direction of the Genesis....
To explore how music shapes Jewish cultural meaning, this week Rabbi Josh welcomes Eric Stein — mandolinist, bassist, and artistic director of Toronto’s Ashkenaz Festival, one of the world’s largest celebrations of Jewish music and culture. (And yes, it might be a little confusing — last week’s guest was Eric Stern , another multitalented Jewish musician.) Eric Stein has spent more than 25 years redefining the sound of Jewish music through projects like Beyond the Pale and Tio Chorinho. In this ...
Josh (Host): Eric Stern builds Jewish community and is a curator of Jewish culture. He's a very interesting, multi-layered renaissance man who is the irector of Programming at Portland’s Eastside Jewish Commons, an important player in the emergent Jewish scene here in Portland Oregon. Eric is also musician, vocalist, accordionist, pianist, composer, arranger, he trained as a classical singer and went on to found the eclectic, genre-bending band Vagabond Opera, which toured nationally, appeared o...
Part two of Rabbi Josh's conversation with Lou Cove, CEO of CANVAS, an organization seeding "The 21st Cultural Renaissance in Jewish Life".
In this episode, Rabbi welcomes Lou Cove—writer, cultural strategist, and longtime champion of Jewish arts and storytelling—for a rich and personal conversation about Jewish cultural identity, memory, and the power of creative revival. Lou shares the story of how a casual visit to the Yiddish Book Center unexpectedly transformed his life and career. Raised with little connection to Jewish communal life, Lou recalls how this moment set him on a path to reclaim a cultural legacy he didn’t even kno...
Today on the podcast, Rabbi Josh speaks with Ahuva S. Zaslavsky — a Portland-based multidisciplinary artist whose work grapples with the raw, layered questions of identity, transformation, and belonging. Ahuva was born and raised in Tel Aviv in a deeply mixed family — Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, traditional and secular — and it wasn’t until a move to the United States as an adult that she unexpectedly stepped into her life as an artist. Zaslavsky's work spans sculpture, printmaking, painting, video, ...
In this episide, Rabbi Shai Held and Rabbi Josh talk about Rabbi Held's book 'Judaism is About Love,' what it means to have love at the center of Jewish teaching, and why so many in the Jewish community don't understand that Love is central to their own tradition. In this moment of cultural conflict, at a time when the Jewish state is engaged in a horrific war, when Jewish communities are finding themselves confronting anti-Jewish hatred, Rabbi Held's ideas are profoundly important. The conversa...
Rabbi Josh continues his weekly additional episode/reflection on Israel.
Today Rabbi Rachel Joseph steps into the podcast. She will become, in 2027, the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel, one of the two largest synagogues in Portland. Rabbi Josh and Rabbi Joseph have known and worked together over the years, and they met in her office to go deep on a range of topics. They talk about what it means to be a “political rabbi” without preaching politics, the challenge of holding space for people who don’t all agree, and why sermons may not matter as much as relatio...
This week Rabbi Josh speaks with Sonya Sanford — a Portland-based writer, culinary educator, recipe developer, and podcast host. Sonya is the the author of Braids: Recipes from My Pacific Northwest Jewish Kitchen hwihc has delicious Jewish recipes with flavors of the Pacific Northwest. She is also the co-host of the highly rated Food Friends: Home Cooking Made Easy, a podcast that offers practical recipes and creative kitchen inspiration. Sonya was part of Art/Lab's first cohort for contemporary...
This week we bring you a conversation that Rabbi Josh had recently with Raghad Jaraisy, a Palestinian-Israeli advocating for Palestinian equality and civil rights in Israel. Jaraisy is the Co-Executive Director, along with Ofer Dagan, of Sikkuy Aufoq, "a shared Jewish and Arab nonprofit organization that works to advance equality and partnership between the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel – descendants of those who remained within the Israeli borders after the founding of the state in 1948 –...
Rabbi Micah Streiffer is a friend of the podcast, colleague, a teacher of Jewish ideas, and the founder of the Jewish organization Laasok, which is an online center of liberal Jewish teaching - a virtual 'beit midrash.' We talk about truth claims and what they mean for the Jewish tradition, we discuss Jewish belonging, the changing landscape of Jewish orgnaizational life and a whole lot more. Enjoy this conversation with the always thoughftul Rabbi Micah Streiffer.
This is the first in what will be an ongoing series of reflections about Israel and the Palestinians and the many complex feelings and thoughts that I have and I bet you do too.
This week I have the pleasure of talking with a graduate of Art/Lab's second cohort, illustrator, humorist, observer of life, and Jewish identity navigator Leanne Grabel. Leanne Grabel is a writer, illustrator, performer and has written and produced numerous spoken-word multi-media shows. Leanne was the 2020 recipient of Soapstone's Bread and Roses Award for contributions to women's literature in the Pacific Northwest. Brontosaurus Illustrated was published in 2022 by The Opiate Books; My Husban...
Ketzia Schoneberg is a gifted painter with a unique artistic vision. Her work has been showed widely in galleries in Portland and beyond. We talk about how her work expresses her personal biography and her Jewish identity, we discuss the impact of Judaism on her life and in her work, and we also tease out some of the conncetions between artistic and religious expression. And, of course, she weighs in on the important question of what is the best Jewish food. Enjoy!
Rabbi Josh discusses the political and 'spiritual' significance of freedom as we head into the end of Passover. Is there a Jewish take on freedom and what's happening in the United States under Donal Trump? How should Jewish people think about political and spiritual freedom?
Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem is a social practice artist, a soferet (Torah scribe), activist, and she also happens to be the Director of Art/Lab, our cohort program for Jewish artists. We have been working together since the inception of Co/Lab and it's been a powerful partnership. Our conversation covers Shoshana's work, her foray into the ethics of parchment making, synagogues and Jewish creativity, to name just a few subjects. Please subscribe/follow the show if you like what you hear! Enjoy!...
A reflection about the message of Passover and what it means right now.
My guest this week is Marc Blattner, President and CEO of Portland's Jewish Federation. How are mainstream Jewish institutions adapting to the rapid pace of change in the Jewish world? What are the limits of adaptability and flexibility as legacy Jewish institutions engage a Jewish world with shifting attitudes towards synagogues, Jewish affiliation, and.... Israel? What does it look like when an organization that is tasked with serving the whole Jewish community stretches to serve the existing ...
Gadi Golan is a Jewish human living in Portland Oregon. Gadi's own Jewish bio says a lot about 21st century Jewish life, and we talk about how his traditional-ish upbringing forms the background of this very modern fella. He has a fascinating tattoo on his arm, but not as fascinating as Gadi himself. Enjoy this wide-ranging conversations, plus: learn about the very best kind of matza ball!
This week's Torah portion has quite a bit to teach us about pretending. We may think of pretending as against our instinct for Judaism's love of authenticity. But let's take a closer look and fold some Kurt Vonnegut into the thing. Rabbi Josh offers a brief refleciton.
This week Rabbi Josh and Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem - the Director of Co/Lab's Art/Lab program - have a conversation with the Jewish artists who gathered at last month's Art/Lab Multicohort Retreat. What you get is Jewish artists from a variety of backgrounds, working in a variety of media - a musician, a painter, a writer, to name a few- discussing contemporary Jewish life in the world of the arts. We discuss Jewish identity in the 21st century, antisemitism, October 7th and more. Learn more abou...
As season 2 kicks off, Rabbi Josh will be adding weekly reflections and teachings about things that you might find interesting in the Jewish world and beyond the Jewish world. This week he shares an ancient Jewish teaching that resonates with what's happening in the United States right now. It's a midrash - an ancient Jewish retelling of a Bible story - that offers a wild take on a story from the Torah you've heard already. Enjoy.
We're back for Season 2 of the Genesis, continuing to explore Jewish identity and culture. In addition to now weekly conversations, Season 2 will feature weekly-ish reflections from Rabbi Josh on a variety of Jewish topics. Alicia Jo Rabins is a Jewish writer, musician, composer, performer and Torah teacher. She combines words, music, ritual and performance to create works exploring the intersection of ancient wisdom texts, feminism, and everyday life. Alicia Jo tours internationally as a musici...
Rabbi Josh shares a powerful teaching about Purim, about the Jewish response to a world in a crappy state of suffering.... and the true meaning of faith PLUS: more to come from the podcast in coming weeks, an awesome Israeli movie and more.
This week Rabbi Josh raps with Jeff Alden - if that really is his name - who tells a beautiful and moving story about uncovering an important piece of his own autobiography rather late in life. We cover a little bit of Jewish immigrant history, how America allowed people of all backgrounds to reinvent themselves, and how Jewish identity and culture are sometimes at work in the background of our lives. Jeff is a smart, fascinating, articulate man of culture and I'm grateful to him for sharing his...
Is Self-Criticism a Jewish trait? What role does it play in inspiring us - or damaging us? Liz Asch Greenhill is no stranger to the Co/Lab: Reimagine Jewish universe. I came to know Liz through our Jewish artist fellowship, Art/Lab, and have come to really respect how her ongoing search for self-overcoming and renewal has led her down new pathways. We discuss Jewish identity, self criticism and whether that's a Jewish trait, her psychedelic work and the Jewish-ness of psychedelic journeys, her w...
Rabbi Josh sat down with Zac Banik, an alumnus of our Art/Lab program (second cohort) and a thoughtful, creative human (actually this was two conversations SEAMLESSLY woven together through editing). Their conversation covers the tension between creativity/innovation and tradition in Jewish life and art, how we think about what we owe the Jewish past and the Jewish future, and they delve into Zac's fascinating engagement with an AI bot named Uriel, who loves Jewish ideas and with whom Zac has a ...
This is a stressful, nail-biting week of argumentation, animosity and election stress. So, we take you in another direction: music that brings people together in literal and figurative harmony. Jewish music has been an entryway for those in the Jewish community who otherwise have felt alientated from Jewish prayer. A Niggun is a wordless melody that people sing together and can be transcedent. Jewish melodies inherited from our ancestors and new melodies created by peers find their way into Jewi...