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Published by Julie Carr
“We are all…the unchosen, but we are nevertheless unchosen together.” - Judith Butler This is podcast in which Julie Carr and occasional cohosts interview artists, writers, activists, scholars, religious leaders and others, asking questions related to Jewish (and non-Jewish) themes, such as oneness and the one, time and the infinite, home and diaspora, return and renewal, knowing and unknowing, law and practice, text and textuality, the idea of justice and the idea of love.
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In episode #38 I talk with painter, poet, and renowned scholar of philosophy and Jewish mysticism, Elliot Wolfson. We begin by touching on Elliot’s relationship with Kabbalah “beyond” the scholarship, even while he insists that no absolute division can be made between the practitioner and the scholar: “textual interpretation itself is a modality of ecstatic experience.” After acknowledging the short barrier of celebrity fascination with Kabbalah, Elliot offers a general history of Jewish mysticism, and defines some key Kabbalist terms: ein sof, sephirot, emanation, tzimtzum, reshimu, and the “breaking of the vessels.” We then move to a conversation about the concept of the infinite and the dynamic between the infinite and the finite, which includes questions about the relationship between good and evil and between judgment (din) and loving-kindness (chesed). Bob Dylan comes up (“there is violence in the eyes, girl”) as we think about the problem of desire. We touch on Elliot’s description of time as a “linear circularity,” and on the problem of speaking about what cannot be said except by un-saying. As Elliot has written on the first page of his newest book, Apophasis and Envisioning the Invisible: Unveiling Veils of Infinity, “ Whatever scheme the inquisitive mind proposes to corroborate the contours of infinity, it is always at an infinite distance from the goal it seeks to achieve,” which is to say, this conversation is of necessity unfinished. We hope to continue. A note: towards the end of the conversation, we talk briefly about tikkun olam (to repair the world) and Jewish messianism. We did not have time to go into these important themes in any depth, but it should be said, as a corrective to my too quick summary, that the concept of tikkun olam is at the heart of the long traditions of Jewish commitments to social justice and is not the same thing as Jewish messianism, which itself has a wide range of interpretations and applications. For some past conversations that touch on these themes see episodes 33 with Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, 30 with Daniela Naomi Molnar, and 13 with Almút Shulamit Bruckstein Çoruh. Future conversations will return to these themes and their endlessly complex meanings and manifestations. Texts / authors mentioned and Discussed: Sefer Yetzirah at the Sefaria Library Moses Maimonides, The Guide to the Perplexed Translated and with Commentary by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman Plotinus, The Six Enneads The Zohar Daniel C. Matt Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbols Emmanuel Levinas, introduction to French editions of Nefesh ha-Hayyim, L'Âme de la Vie Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem Elliot R. Wolfson , a Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many publications including most recently The Duplicity of Philosophy’s Shadow: Heidegger, Nazism and the Jewish Other (2018); Heidegger and Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiēsis (2019); Suffering Time: Philosophical, Kabbalistic, and Ḥasidic Reflections on Temporality (2021); The Philosophical Pathos of Susan Taubes: Between Nihilism and Hope (2023); Nocturnal Seeing: Hopelessness of Hope and Philosophical Gnosis in Susan Taubes, Gillian Rose, and Edith Wyschogrod (2025); Apophasis and Envisioning the Invisible: Unveiling Veils of Infinity (2026). His most recent work is Mystical Nihilism, Theopolitical Agnosis, and the Atheology of Faith: A Philosophical Defense of Nothing. Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
In episode #37 I talk with scholar and poet Ben Meyerson about his research and writing surrounding “voice” in diasporic song. Ben researches three musical forms: Troubadour lyric, Sephardic Romanzas, and Flamenco song, all of which originate from the Iberian Peninsula, dating from the 11th century to the present. Ben addresses some of the problems in theories of “voice” from thinkers such as Deleuze and Adriana Cavarero, who, he argues, in seeking to universalize “voice” risk losing track of individual, historical, cultural and physical voices . Ben’s interest lies in the complex ways that the singing voice can both protest particular historical losses and draw listeners into its community. We discuss and read from an essay we both deeply revere, Nathaniel Mackey’s “Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol” and we talk about Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation as articulating how voice/voices can both be “in relation” while also maintaining “rootedness.” Finally, Ben reads one of his own poems and speaks about how his research is connected to his Jewish identity. In this poetics-enthusiast’s episode, we also touch on Kristeva, Doug Kearney, Lorca, and Moten. A special treat: we listen to a live recording of New York-based Flamenco singers Juan Pedro Jimenez, Barbara Martinez, and Jackson Scott, courtesy of Tara Laraway’s Salon of the Bittersweet. Listen to the end for that! Texts / authors mentioned and Discussed Adriana Cavarero, For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression Gilles Deleuze , Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition Federico García Lorca, Theory and Play of the Duende Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation Douglas Kearney, Optic Subwoof Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language Nathaniel Mackey, “Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol” Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem Benjamin Meyerson, Seguiriyas Benjamin Meyerson, “Over-Abundance and Ineffability: Flamenco, Mysticism and the Joyful Language-Game” Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening Michel Serres, The Birth of Physics Steven J. Zipperstein, Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. Ben Meyerson is the author of the poetry collection Seguiriyas (Black Ocean, 2023) and five prior chapbooks: Near Enough (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023), After Boabdil (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2023), An Ecology of the Void (Above/Ground Press, 2019), Holcocene (Kelsay Books, 2018) and In A Past Life (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2016). He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and an MA in philosophy from the Universidad de Sevilla. He is currently a PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Toronto, where he studies oral poetries of the Iberian Peninsula and philosophies of material complexity. INTRO Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
In episode #36 I talk with Lebanese-American poet, author, and contemplative educator, Moudi Sbeity. His forthcoming memoir, Habibi Means Beloved , has many stories including foundational experiences of loneliness which become, for Moudi, sources of wisdom and belonging. Moudi talks about growing up in Lebanon, just after the civil war, as a gay kid who stuttered. He discusses what stuttering teaches him about the value and power of words, their ability to not just describe but to create our reality. We talk about his process of coming out in Lebanon and why he felt he had to “break up with God” in order to do so. At age 18, because of the 2006 Israel-Lebanese war, Moudi (an American citizen) was evacuated to live with family in Utah. We talk about Moudi’s complicated feelings about being a plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the case which brought marriage equality to Utah and the 10th circuit states. In 2020, Moudi found his way back to Islam through Sufism, and on his own terms. I ask him what God is to him (and he answers!). We end by asking whether “God-stuff” is “only” language, and if so, what does that actually mean? And then, we read each other some poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins and by Moudi! Poems read or cited Wendel Berry, Our Real Work Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty John O'Donohue, Flue nt Moudi Sbeity, Bread and Salt Moudi Sbeity, "My Country Is This Page" Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
In episode #35 I talk with ethnic studies scholar Nishant Upadhyay about their book, Indians on Indian Lands: Intersections of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity . Together, we dig into the complexities around “settler colonial frameworks,” thinking about what the category of settler means in cases of forced migration, or migration based on ecocide, genocide, or extreme need. We talk about writing history with a focus on one’s own positionality, how that has been important to both of us. Nishant speaks specifically about Brahminism and Hinduism in India and how these violently hierarchical structures have in some ways migrated with Indian immigrants in Canada and the US, and even within post-colonial and transnational feminist studies. We ask what real solidarity with indigenous struggles (across Turtle Island, South Asia, Palestine, and beyond) might look like in the contexts of our hyper-capitalist societies and the rise of fascism across the globe, and we locate pockets of optimism in our everyday intimacies, acknowledging that we must fight for our right to be together. People and groups mentioned or discussed Key figures in South Asian and Postcolonial Studies: Gayatri Spivak Partha Chatterjee Dipesh Chakrabarty Dalit Scholars: Chinnaiah Jangam M.S.S. Pandian Braj Raj Mani Hawai'i scholar and activist: Haunani-Kay Trask Indigenous nations of the Toronto area include: the Mississaugas of the New Credit, Anishinaabe, Chippewa, Haudenosaunee, Wendat, Métis peoples, and many other diverse Indigenous communities. Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
In episode #34 I talk with poet, artist, translator and scholar Jennifer Scappettone about her new book, Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism , in which she explores the power of a planetary, xenoglossic poetry of resistance—which is to say, a polyglot poetry that rejects mastery in favor of strangeness, a poetry that exposes how we are all outside of language, speaking and writing in waywardness and errancy. We begin with Jen’s multicultural and translingual upbringing on Long Island, her childhood obsession with the Statue of Liberty, and her time living in Japan as a young adult. We recall our years together as graduate students, and I take the opportunity to confess how I envied and was intimidated by Jen during that time, emotions that eventually transformed into admiration and love. We talk about the complexities of “contamination”: the powerful and necessary contaminations of all languages and cultures as they interact, counterposed against a literal contamination that forms one of Jen’s other obsessions, registered in her work on environmental injustice: the dangerous and often deadly contamination of the land. Jen reads us a poem by the Italian-Jewish poet and musician/musicologist Amelia Rosselli and speaks about Rosselli’s remarkable biography growing up in an antifascist Irish-English/Italian family. Along the way we (of course) speak of our mothers, ask how we might wrest a complicated and difficult beauty from the diseases of our time, and somehow arrive at Genesis I:2 (in multiple translations) and the question of the plurality (infinite) of God(s). Texts and people discussed: Etel Adnan Theodor Adorno, “On Lyric Poetry and Society” Don Mee Choi Lyn Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry Lyn Hejinian, The Beginner Amelia Rosselli: Locomotrix: Selected Poetry and Prose of Amelia Rosselli, a Bilingual Edition Sawako Nakayasu Jennifer Scappettone, The Republic of Exit 43: Outtakes & Scores from an Archaeology and Pop-Up Opera of the Corporate Dump Jennifer Scappettone works at the confluence of the literary, translational, visual, and scholarly arts, and is Professor of English and romance languages, gender studies, and the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization at the University of Chicago, where she directs the Environmental Arts+Humanities Lab . She is the author of five full-length books, including the scholarly monographs Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism and Killing the Moonlight: Modernism in Venice . Her chapbooks include SMOKEPENNY LYRICHORD HEAVENBRED: 2 Acts (The Elephants) featuring librettos for mixed-reality performance with Judd Morrissey and Ava Aviva Avnisan, and as curating poet, with Etel Adnan and Lyn Hejinian, Belladonna Elders Series #5: Poetry, Landscape, Apocalypse (Belladonna, 2009) . Both are available for download, free of charge. Her current project devoted to the “copper lyre” subtending telecommunications networks, Pennies from Nether, was a finalist for the 2024 Creative Capital Award in Literature. Music by Benjamin Roberts: benjamin.roberts447@gmail.com comments and questions: juliealicecarr@gmail.com
In episode #33 I talk with Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg about two terms that have been central to her lately: “collapse” and “entanglement.” We read from and discuss Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World , a book that helps think through these themes. Rabbi Jessica talks about what it’s been like on the ground in Minneapolis this winter, how confronting state violence and authoritarianism in real-time by caring for her neighbors has been both terrifying and profound in how it’s changed her sense of what “entanglement” really means. We discuss how accepting that we are in a time of collapse (of institutions, structures, and climate) might paradoxically help us get out of bed in the morning, rather than paralyzing us with fear. I bring up my obsession with “Longtermism” (not a fan), and Rabbi Jessica shares her thinking around “spiral time” in the context of the Jewish calendar, insisting that we can think long term while “holding the collective liberation of all people on the planet right now in our minds and hearts.” We end by talking about what both personal and collective grief can teach us, awakening us to the now. Texts and people discussed: Ross Gay, Inciting Joy: Essays poupeh missaghi, “When Bombs Fall: Saying Yes to Life” Aurora Levins Morales Susan Raffo with Kelly Hayes, “‘Minneapolis Community Defense Is “Riding on the Learning Edge of a Whirlwind’” (Interview) Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, For Times Such as These: A Radical’s Guide to the Jewish Year Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, “Spiral Time in Collapse: Dvar for Erev Rosh Hashana 5786” Émile P Torres, “Against Longermism” (Note: I mistakenly credited this essay to Sam Dresser. Dresser edited it, but It was authored by Torres in 2021.) Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
In episode #32 poet Rob Fitterman reads from and talks about two of his books: Holocaust Museum (Counterpath 2013), made entirely of captions from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s photo archive, and Creve Coeur (Winter Editions 2024), a “translation” of William Carlos Williams’ epic poem Paterson . Following Williams’ form line-by-line, Rob exposes the deep history of anti-Black racism in St. Louis, especially in regards to housing policy. Along the way we discuss his experiences growing up in a lower middle-class Jewish family in suburban St. Louis and his youthful (and continued) fascination with the poetry of “coterie” or group. We revisit the heated conversation around appropriation in poetry and art and consider the “empire-impulse” of some US conceptual poetry. How does “failure hallucinate repair” (Paul Chan’s line)? Why does some art about atrocities elicit a feeling of responsibility and not just empathy? And how might the “I” in a poem be just another “passenger on the bus” and not its driver? Texts, films, videos and people mentioned and discussed: Paul Chan Rob Fitterman reading from Holocaust Museum , Counterpath Denver, 2013 (video) Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States Jacques Ranciere The Emancipated Spectator Charles Reznikoff, Holocaust Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law Andrzej Wajda, Katyn (film) Frederick Wiseman films William Carlos Williams, Paterson 1917 East St. Louis Massacre (video) Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com Robert Fitterman is the author of 16 books of poetry. His most recent book, Creve Coeur, is a long poem published with Winter Editions (2024). Other titles include: This Window Makes Me Feel (Ugly Duckling Presse), No, Wait. Yep. Definitely Still Hate Myself. (UDP), Nevermind (Wonder Books) and Rob the Plagiarist (Roof Books). His long poem, Metropolis , was published in 4 volumes between 2000-2010: Sprawl: Metropolis 30A (Make Now Press, 2009), Metropolis 30: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edge Books, 2004), Metropolis 16-29 (Coach House, 2002), Metropolis 1-15 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000), He has collaborated with several visual artists, including Serkan Ozkaya, Nayland Blake, Sabine Herrmann, Natalie Czech, Tim Davis, and Klaus Killisch. He is the founding member of the artists-poets collective, Collective Task www.collectivetask.org . Fitterman's poetry has been described as reaching for a new lyricism by composing with found language reconstructed to articulate a subjective, “personal” relationship to social themes. His books are often single book-length poems with broad critiques of institutions: e.g., social media, online forums, museums, reviews, etc. He lives in New York City and teaches writing at New York University.
In episode #31 I speak with author and investigative journalist Katherine Stewart about her new book, Money Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy . What is Christian Nationalism (and what is it not)? What are the true anti-democratic goals of the “new right” and what are their strategies? How do misogyny and anti-trans rhetoric/policy serve these goals? And are they really trying to take away women’s right to vote? Katherine delineates five categories of actors in the nihilistic war against democracy: the funders, the thinkers, the sergeants, the power-players, and the foot soldiers. She exposes how “the thinkers” frequently rely on the ideas of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, and Julie dips into “the thinkers” who have worked towards these goals on her own campus (remember John Eastman?). A note: This conversation is shorter than many. Because of time constraints we were not able to talk about all of the major topics in this book. I highly recommend listeners read the book to learn more. Texts, institutes, and people mentioned and discussed: Katherine Stewart, Money Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism Katherine Stewart, The Good News Club: The Religious Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children God and Country (film), directed by Dan Partland, written by Katherine Stewart The April Institute Andrew Perez, Andy Kroll and Justin Elliott, “How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to the Architect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts” (article on Barre Seid, Leonard Leo and the Marble Freedom Trust) Carl Schmitt The Claremont Institute The Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, University of Colorado Boulder The National Organization for Marriage (editorial note: they are still going after Disney) Doug Wilson, Christian Nationalist pastor (Wall Street Journal video) Abby Johnson, anti-abortion activist on head-of-household voting (tweet) Joseph Porter and Adam Gibbons, “Existential Risk and Equal Political Liberty” Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com Katherine Stewart’s latest book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy , is one of Foreign Affairs magazine’s Best Books of 2025. Her previous, award-winning title, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy , formed the basis of the documentary feature God & Country , produced by Rob Reiner. She has covered the intersection of faith and politics for over 17 years; her work appears in The New York Times , Religion News Service , New Republic and others. Find her at @katherinestewart.bsky.social, @kathsstewart, substack.com/@katherinestewartbooks , and katherinestewart.me .
In episode #30 with Daniela Naomi Molnar, we begin our wide-ranging conversation by discussing Daniela’s work with the media of “color, water, language, and place,” which is focused around both human and earth-based memory. We talk about and read from her book Protocols: an Erasure , an erasure of Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We discuss this source-text and its ongoing place in the history of antisemitism, and what it meant to engage it so deeply. We then move into the multi-modal project, “Memory of a Larger Mind.” Daniela speaks about her four grandparents, all of whom survived Nazi concentration camps, and how her very close relationship with her grandmother, Rosalie, pressed her to work directly with the land of former camps where she makes pigments from what is now found there— flowers, weeds, rocks, and bones. In recent projects, Daniela works with glaciers and former glaciers as material for pigments, poems and other artworks. Along the way we talk about two kinds of power, that which feeds on fear and leads to violence, and that which resides in the unknowable, the invisible, and the nothing (the ein sof ) that is in and all around us. This leads to a conversation about mysticism and “justice” and how they might be entangled. Music by Ben Roberts : Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com Links Rabbi Lawrence Kushner: “Kabbalah and Everyday Mysticism.” On Being podcast , May 15, 2014. Tilke Elkins Dany S. Adams, PhD “The Face of a Frog” (video) Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet and artist who creates with color, water, language, and place. Her art centers on memory — planetary, cultural, familial, and personal. She works with pigments she makes from plants, bones, stones, and specific waters such as rainwater and glacial melt. Poems and essays are created alongside the visual art; the practices overlap and influence each other. Her debut book CHORUS won the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Poetry , followed by PROTOCOLS: An Erasure , currently shortlisted for the National Jewish Book Award . Forthcoming books include Memory of a Larger Mind , a book written with glaciers (Omnidawn, 2026), Light / Remains , a book of visual art, poems, and essays, and The World is Full , a book considering love as a political, relational, and internal force. Her work has been published and shown widely, is in public and private collections internationally, and is featured in the Los Angeles Times , PBS Oregon Art Beat , Oregon Encyclopedia , The Creative Independent , and Poetry Daily . She founded the Art + Ecology program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2016 and helped start and run the backcountry artist residency Signal Fire from 2008-2023. Her work leads her to far-flung places but she loves orbiting back to her studio where the forest meets the city in Portland, Oregon. www.danielamolnar.com / Instagram: @daniela_naomi_molnar A note: In this episode I mention the murder of Renee Nicole Good, which had just occurred, though I fail to name her. May her memory be a blessing.
In episode #29 I speak with multidisciplinary artist Ava Aviva Avnisan about their film, installation, music and performance work. We begin by talking about Aviva’s young childhood in Jerusalem as the descendant of Iraqi, Iranian and Eastern European Jews, and she traces the influence of her father, a professional photographer, on her own development as an artist. We discuss a collaboration we did with the poet Amaranth Borsuk many years ago, even without knowing each other ( Real Life: An Installation ). We get into the technology Aviva uses in much of her work, lidar scanning, and how it helps her create “a visual vocabulary of haunting.” Digging into two of Aviva’s recent projects, “Among Relatives: Indigenous Voices in the Cuyahoga Valley” (with Leila Khoury), an immersive audio visual installation, and “Specters of Home: Prologue” (with Doug Rosman) a ten-minute film, we discuss the legacy of settler-colonialism in Israel-Palestine and North America, the gender binary, and the very painful ways in which contemporary politics tear families apart. Aviva talks about her own struggles with members of her family who are unable to accept her gender transition or her anti-Zionism. She speaks throughout about her spiritual development and her gender transition, and how these transformations have changed her work and its motivations, opening and softening toward greater compassion and receptivity. We end with a short dip into the collaborative project Nobo’s Muse , a two-person art-pop band with Judd Morrissey, and we listen to one of their (fantastic) songs, as we disappear into the divine/work. Other artists, writers and projects mentioned: Karen River Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning TransMaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings What Flashes Up: Theological-Political-Scientific Fragments Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” (Theses on History) Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International Chris Marker, Sans Soleil Kelly Reichardt, Certain Women Ava Aviva Avnisan (she/they) is a multidisciplinary, research-based artist whose work integrates installation, performance, film, writing, sound, and emerging technologies to create embodied, time-based encounters. Working with tools such as 3D scanning, augmented and virtual reality, and generative AI, Ava’s practice explores how language, technology, and lived experience shape meaning and memory. Recent highlights include the international festival circulation of Specters of Home—Prologue , a short film selected for the 10th Beyond Borders | Kastellorizo International Documentary Festival in Greece and screened at the 8th Independent Film Festival of Mexico City as part of the CINE X MUJERES program. In 2025, Ava also presented new work created in collaboration with Judd Morrissey at SAIC Galleries in Chicago, debuting a large-scale, site-specific installation that expanded her practice into recorded music alongside photography, poetry, and 3D imaging. Ava is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at San Diego State University, with a co-appointment in the School of Journalism and Media Studies.
Episode #28 brings a special New Year’s treat: music! We peek behind the scenes as I talk with musician Ben Roberts, who happens to be my son, about the music for Return the Key. Ben talks about his passion for Irish folk music, what goes on in an Irish session, and what he learned playing Bach for people on their porches during the pandemic. We get into the relationship between emotions and music and the mystery of melody as we listen to and discuss four of our favorite RTK pieces. What is the difference between “fixing” and “exploring”? What happens when we orient toward the good? And what does it mean to feel “at home” in a music from another culture far away? At the end of the hour, Ben performs a Ukrainian folk tune on his cello, with a nod to our Jewish Ukrainian ancestors. Ben Roberts is a multi-instrumentalist and composer living in New York City. He has performed or recorded with Jon Battiste, MGK, Zoe Loyd, Esperanza Spalding, Flamenco dancer Tara Laraway and many others, and has led nearly every mainstay Irish session in New York and Boston. You can hear him on Tuesdays from 8-11 at Putnam’s Pub, 419 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn NY. https://www.instagram.com/benroberts447/
In episode 27, I talk with poet Susan Gevirtz about her childhood growing up in Los Angeles, within the two “religions” of Hollywood and Freudian psychoanalysis. We talk about her early experiences in the world of Hollywood films through her grandfather’s work as the musical director for Universal, and her sense, even as a young person, that the world that was presented to her was a made place, invented and therefore radically open to inquiry. We dig into her ongoing project, Guide School, a multi-faceted blended-genre manuscript that interrogates the longing for a “homeland,” and the unsatisfiable and therefore motivating desire for “origins” of all kinds - epistemological, historical, textual, and spiritual. Susan talks about her travels in Eastern Europe, the phenomenon of “the guide schools” in which tour guides are trained to present particular versions of history, and her encounters with the YIVO archive for Jewish Research of both Vilnius Lithuania and New York City. We end by discussing our somewhat vexed curiosity about Kabbalah, and mystical traditions in general, thinking together about how reading/writing as a practice of unknowing and infinite encounter might itself be a mystical tradition. Books and institutions mentioned Moses Maimonides: The Guide to the Perplexed: a New Translation, Translated and with Commentary by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman Marc-Alain Ouaknin, The Burnt Book: Reading the Talmud Jeffrey Veidlinger, I n the Midst of Civilzed Europe: The 1918-1921 Pogroms in Ukraine and the Onset of the Holocaust YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
In episode 26, I talk with Anas Qutob and Dave Snyder of Minneapolis about their friendship and their work as leaders in the Minnesota chapter of Friends of Standing Together —a grassroots progressive organization of Israeli Jews and Palestinians dedicated to peace, justice, and social transformation. Anas speaks of his childhood growing up during the Israeli invasion of his home city, Nablus, in the West Bank, and about working his way through law school before becoming a labor organizer in Minneapolis. Dave, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and a longtime social justice organizer, speaks of his journey toward deep commitment to the Palestine justice movement. We talk what Standing Together means to us and about the sacred work of friendship grounded in listening, in mutual recognition of suffering, and in working relentlessly for change. We end by reading a section of one of Mahmoud Darwish’s final poems, “Mural,” in both Arabic and English. “One day I will be what I want” is a line from “Mural” in John Berger and Rema Hammami’s translation. Standing Together’s Theory of Change Mahmoud Darwish, Mural, trans. John Berger and Rema Hammami Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com Anas J. Qutob was born and raised in Nablus (Shechem), Palestine. The son of a repatriated refugee born in exile in 1969, his family returned from Jordan to the Old City of Nablus in 1974, where they lived until 2007. His father, a tailor, supported the family through years of political and social upheaval. Anas earned his law degree in 2017 and joined the Palestinian Bar Association in 2020, practicing civil and criminal law in the West Bank until moving to the United States in 2023. He now works as an Organizer with SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa’s Member Action Center and is a Co-founder of Minnesota Friends of Standing Together (FoST–Israel/Palestine). He currently lives in Minneapolis with his turtle shell cat. Dave Snyder grew up in Minneapolis, the grandson of Holocaust survivors who fled Austria in 1939. He has spent the last 30 years as a campus living wage activist, labor organizer with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union local 7, housing justice organizer and then deputy director of Jewish Community Action (JCA), convenor of the Minnesota Asset Building Coalition (MABC), then statewide program director for “Family Assets for Independence in Minnesota” (FAIM). Dave has served on the Board of Directors of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Unidos MN, and as co-founder of the MN chapter of Friends Of Standing Together (FOST) - Israel/Palestine. Dave lives in Richfield with his wife Kristy, plus two massive teens, two obnoxious puppies, and two persnickity cats.
In episode 25, I speak with Benjamin Balthaser about his new book, Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left, just published by Verso. Benjamin tells me about his beloved communist grandparents and his own background as a labor activist and longtime member of Jewish Voice for Peace. We discuss the historical precedents to the current eruption of anti-Zionism among U.S. Jews on the left as we dig into the history, especially from the 1970s, of Jewish diasporism as a political identity. Benjamin shows us how diasporism grew out of the practical politics of the 1970s in response to the collapse of the New Left, the Jewish institutional turn towards Zionism, and the emergence of “identity politics.” We end by talking about the challenges of intersectional solidarity then and now, asking what we can learn from these earlier generations about maintaining our commitments to the liberation of all people, even when contradictions arise. This episode was recorded in two sections; you will notice a shift in sound quality after the musical break. We reference a future episode on the history of the red scare and its effects on Jewish institutions. Stay tuned! Books, movements and groups mentioned or discussed: Peter Beinart, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning Peter Beinart and Angela Davis, “What a Lifetime of Struggle Taught Angela Davis” on The Beinart Notebook podcast Daniel Boyarin, The No State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky Marjorie N. Feld, The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism Michael Gold, Jews Without Money Geoffrey Levin, Our Palestine Question: Israel and American Jewish Dissent, 1948-1978 Shaul Magid, The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint Myron Perlman and The Chutzpah Collective Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Black Power movement Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
In episode 24, I speak with Judith Levine, journalist activist, and author of five books. Judith and I (who go way back!) discuss our shared experience of losing parents to Alzheimer’s, asking what makes a self if not language, if not the mind, asking how we can value one another, even when the “self” seems to be gone. We then discuss Judith’s co-authored book (with Erica L. Meiners), The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence . Judith talks about the intense backlash to her earlier book, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, and about her sustained and ethical critique of the sex offender registry and of the carceral/surveillance/police state writ large. We reflect on #MeToo and various kinds of liberation, noting together that liberation is a central Jewish value (one that I’d oddly neglected to include in this podcast’s list of Jewish themes). We end with a nod to Orwell’s roses and Rebecca Solnit’s book of that title, affirming that we must continue to live and find moments of joy even now, especially now. A note: in this episode, we discuss sexual violence. Books, essays, movements and ideas discussed: Margaret Atwood, “We are double-plus unfree” Elizabeth Bernstein on “Carceral Feminism” Tarana Burke and #MeToo adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good Angela Davis, Abolition. Feminism. Now. Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie, No More Police: A Case for Abolition Paul Lafargue, The Right to be Lazy Judith Levine, Do You Remember Me: A Father, a Daughter and the Search for the Self Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex Judith Levine, “Remy Charlip’s Postmodernism for Kids” Judith Levine, Today in Fascism (substack) Judith Levine and Erica Meiners, The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence George Orwell, 1984 Stephen Post, The Moral Challenge of Alzheimer’s Disease: Ethical Issues from Diagnosis to Dying Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933). Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses Judith Levine is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and author, whose work resides in the territory where the body meets the body politic and intimate relations meet public life. She explores the intersections of sex, gender, race, reproduction, and dis/ability; the law, the economy, and consumer desire; social movements and public emotion. Levine is an anti-racist feminist activist and restorative justice volunteer, a forever intermediate cross-country skier, forever amateur pianist, and a lover of French and cats.
In episode 23, I speak with Lee Medovoi about his astounding new book, The Inner Life of Race: Souls, Bodies, and The History of Racial Power (Duke UP, 2024) . Lee traces the histories of racialization, surveillance, policing, and carcerality from late Medieval Spain, through the development of racial-liberalism and capitalism to the present, asking how these deep histories help us to think of color-line racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia as operating with similar logics, the logic of security/threat or friend/enemy. After a brief foray into Trump’s deployment of the “snake story” and the role of white womanhood in racist fear mongering, we dive into Lee’s main arguments. We discuss the racialized figure of the “converso,” (forcibly converted Jews) and how mistrust and surveillance of the conversos, and also the “mariscos” (forcibly converted Muslims) in the Iberian Peninsula in the 1400s was connected to the rise of the Ottoman Empire and a prelude to the colonization of the Americas. We unpack Lee’s use of the term “ensoulment” as a way to describe how power projects enmity and threat onto certain populations, justifying increased uses of violent policing and political control, such as we saw in the War or Terror and see now under Trumpian fascism. Finally, we turn to nonviolence and abolitionism as the necessary answer to these entrenched systems that target and deeply harm vulnerable populations and our collective hopes for living-with and belonging together. Books mentioned and recommended: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family To access Lee’s work, go HERE . Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com Lee Medovoi is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Arizona and Founding Chair of the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Social, Cultural and Critical Theory. Lee is the author of Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity (Duke 2005) and of The Inner Life of Race: Bodies, Souls and the History of Racial Power (Duke 2024). He has published widely on global American studies, biopolitical theory, critical race studies, and the environmental humanities. He has also co-edited a special issue of the journal Social Text with Keith Feldman (UC Berkeley) on the topic of “Race/Religion/War.” Between 2013 and 2016 he was the Principal Investigator for a three-year international Mellon Grant that explored the changing vectors of religion and secularism’s imbrications in political life across the globe. This project resulted in a collection co-edited with Elizabeth Bentley titled Religion, Secularism and Political Belonging (Duke, 2021). In 2020, Lee was also the Principal Investigator for a Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar titled Neoliberalism at the Neopopulist Crossroads that explored the social, economic and cultural underpinnings of the rise of far-right populist movements around the world. In 2021-22, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He is currently developing plans for a new book on the environmental unconscious of far-right politics of populist racism. He is also actively involved in the University of Arizona’s Environmental Humanities Consortium .
In episode 22, I speak with New York-based multidisciplinary artist Aaron Landsman about his 20-year project, Perfect City, a working group at the intersection of art, organizing, popular education and urban design. We discuss how our relationship to our Jewishness has been affected by the ongoing violence in Gaza, and we think together about the tension between utopian imagining—the “what if”—and the present-time demand to take care of one another within systemic challenges—the “what now.” We swirl around the topic of “communion,” both as a gathering together and as an imbibing of the holy through joyous embodied practice. We then turn to Aaron’s multi-platform theater piece, “Night Keeper,” which takes up loneliness and insomnia’s horrors. Finally, we talk about the suicides of friends and about embracing unruly faith practices: where is the way when there is no way? Books, texts, and spaces mentioned or discussed Aaron Landsman, “This is a Rehearsal” Aaron Landsman, Norman Westberg, and Jehan Young, “Night Keeper” (album) Emmanuel Lévinas, Existence and Existents , trans. Alphonso Lingis Emmanuel Lévinas, “Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism,” trans. Sean Hand Henry Street Settlement Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com - Aaron Landsman is a multidisciplinary artist. Born in Minnesota, living in New York City, he is obsessed with cities, shadows, anonymity and how we perform power. His parents are a Jewish teacher and legal scholar and a non-Jewish teacher and writer. Aaron's recent work Night Keeper premiered at The Chocolate Factory Theater in 2023, and is now out as an album on Hallow Ground Records, created in collaboration with composer Norman Westberg (ex-SWANS) and performer Jehan Young. He is working on a game that is a performance score about algorithms. His prior work has been commissioned and presented in the US, Netherlands, UK, Australia, Norway, Serbia and Belarus. Aaron is the founder of Perfect City , a working group at the intersection of art, organizing, popular education and design. His awards include a Creative Capital Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Princeton Arts Fellowship. He is the instigator of Perfect City, a 20-year working group dedicated to uplifting local knowledge in cities and changing power dynamics in communities. He co-authored The City We Make Together with Mallory Catlett, published by The University of Iowa Press. Additional pieces of writing have appeared recently, or will soon, in Urban Omnibus, Longleaf Review, The Iowa Review , Spoon River Poetry and Theater Magazine. He is a Lecturer at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.
In episode 21, I speak with writer, musician, and PhD student dena harry saleh. We discuss their father’s childhood experience in the Nakba, their own childhood growing up queer and Palestinian in Denver, and their young-adulthood in New York City. We then turn to two books that take up queer Palestine studies, Decolonial Queering in Palestine , by Walaa Alqaisiya, and Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, by Sa’ed Atshan, and dena talks about their own research goals surrounding queer and trans decolonial praxis in Palestine and in the Palestinian diaspora. We think together about the challenges surrounding decolonial imagining in this time of horrific unspeakable violence in Gaza. dena reads two of their poems as our conversation turns toward both grief and radical hope. We end on the beauty and difficulty of the idea of “utopia” (now and always) and on the concept of “oneness”—how it ties into both Judaism and Islam for us, and how it might offer us a way to think about complicity, responsibility, solidarity, repair and above all, mercy. — Books and other media mentioned or discussed Walaa Alqaisiya, Decolonial Queering in Palestine Sa’ed Atshan, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique Sa’ed Atshan and Katharina Galor, The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians Peter Beinart, The Beinart Notebook (substack) José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity dena harry saleh, “The Intersection of Disability and Genocide” Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman and Julie Carr “The First Principle is the Principle of Lostness” (RTK podcast)
In episode 20, I speak with esteemed feminist holocaust scholar, Janet Jacobs , about her work on holocaust memorialization and intergenerational trauma. We discuss Janet’s work on women in cults and on the crypto-Jews. We then dig into her books on the holocaust, one of which was recently banned from the US Naval Academy library by the Trump administration , and we get into the larger issue of weaponizing “antisemitism” in this moment. Janet explores the ethical and psychological challenges of writing about and representing atrocities. How do we avoid re-objectifying victims when we represent or study them? What does it do to us individually and collectivity to engage these histories? How do future generations carry the fear, trauma, and even hate that stem from genocide? What does Frantz Fanon teach us and about how victim-groups can become perpetrators, such as in Israel/Palestine now? We end with both the value and complexity of holocaust memorialization in our moment, and we affirm the necessity of continuing to teach genocide in our classrooms — Books and other texts mentioned or discussed Janet Jacobs, Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews Janet Jacobs, Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self Janet Jacobs, Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide, and Collective Memory Janet Jacobs, The Holocaust Across Generations: Trauma and its Inheritance Among Descendants of Survivors Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “The Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write” NYT, April 6, 2025 Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
In episode 19, Jennifer Pap and I talk with American-French poet, novelist, and playwright, Leslie Kaplan (born in 1943), whose revolutionary writing we have been translating. As a student, Kaplan participated in the occupation of French factories in ‘68 and the May uprising and general strike that followed. Several years later she resided and worked at La Borde, a radical non-hierarchical psychiatric clinic directed by Jean Oury. Oury was a leading figure in the psychothérapie institutionnelle movement. La Borde attracted major thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Frantz Fanon who were forging meeting places between anti-fascism, revolutionary politics, and psychoanalysis. We read from and talk with Leslie about her first book, Excess-The Factory, about her experience working in the factories, and her third, The Criminal, set at La Borde, both of which we translated into English. Along the way we discuss Leslie’s close relationship with an Auschwitz survivor, the entwining of justice and love, the relationship between the “limit” and the “infinite,” Leslie’s interest in theater and “play,” and the multiple and necessarily unfinished revolutions demanded by our time. We want to acknowledge the very sad passing of writer and revolutionary thinker Joshua Clover (1965-2025), whose press Commune Editions (with Juliana Spahr and Jasper Bernes) published Excess-The Factory in 2018. We remember Joshua with great respect and gratitude. Books and other texts mentioned or discussed Leslie Kaplan, Excess—The Factory, translated by Julie Carr and Jennifer Pap Leslie Kaplan, The Book of Skies, translated by Julie Carr and Jennifer pap Leslie Kaplan, Ms. Nobody Knows, translated by Jennifer Pap Leslie Kaplan, Mathias et la Révolution Jean Oury, “The Hospital is Ill” (interview in Radical Philosophy 143 (May /June 2007) More on Jean Oury and La Borde “Jean Oury and Clinique de La Borde: A Conversation with Camille Robcis” La clinique psychiatrique de La Borde (1971) (Film) — Music by Ben Roberts: Benjamin.Roberts447@gmail.com Comments and ideas to Juliealicecarr@gmail.com
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