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Leah Hochman and Stanley M. Davids, "Re-forming Judaism: Moments of Disruption in Jewish Thought" (Central Conference of American Rabbis, 2023)
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Leah Hochman
Welcome to the.
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New Books Network.
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Podcast Host
Hi, and welcome to the New Books and Jewish Studies Channel of the New Books Network podcast. I'm your host, Rabbi Mark Katz, author of the book Yohanan's Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life and today I'm here with Leah Hochman, who serves as the Associate professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion and in Los Angeles. And she is the editor of the book Reforming Moments of Disruption in Jewish Thought, which she edited alongside Rabbi Stanley Davids of blessed memory. And hopefully we'll get a chance to talk a little bit about who Rabbi Davids is as well. The story of Judaism is the story of change. Throughout Jewish history, revolutionary events and subversive ideas have burst forth, repeatedly transforming Jewish experience. Reforming Judaism. The book we're talking about serves to explore these ideasthe individuals behind them by delving into historical disruptions that led to lasting change in Jewish thought. The book includes distinguished arrays of scholars who take us on a journey from the disruptive prophets of ancient times, the rational, mystical and extremist medievalists, to the impact of Haskalah and early Reformed thought in modernity. It also explores contemporary innovations such as changes in liturgy and music, feminism and post Holocaust theology, and includes as well, insights into Sephardic and North African experiences. By showing how Judaism forms and then reforms and then reforms again. The contributors in this work demonstrate that tensions between continuity and change have always been a part of Jewish life, helping us to both understand the past and to contemplate the future. So, Professor Hockman, we are so glad to have you today. And we always open the same way. So who are you and why did you write this book?
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Leah Hochman
Thank you so much. It's so great to be with you. I'm happy to talk about this book. It was a real project of labor and love. I'm Leah Hockman. I teach Jewish thought and theology on the Los Angeles campus in the rabbinical school. I also teach for education students and for the Zelko School for Jewish Nonprofit Management. For the last 15 years, I've directed the Lockhram School for Judaic Studies, which is the undergraduate program in Jewish studies at usc. And I am a modernist. I love the idea and the story of Judaism. I love these disruptions from the modern age into the contemporary age. I am not a big fan of what's happening right now in the world because it's flawful of disruptions. But I'm so, so energized by the ways in which we're thinking about the past and thinking about the future.
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Podcast Host
So let's talk about the title. So why did you choose Reforming Judaism? Moments of Disruption in Jewish Thought. And what does it say about the focus of the project? Tell us about that and also just how the project came about.
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Leah Hochman
Yeah. So this is a. The project was really Rabbi David's baby, Stan, a blessed memory, was long had been thinking about thoughts and disruptions in moments of Jewish thought for many, many, many years. And this is. This was his baby before the pandemic. He had created sort of an editorial committee or a thought committee of faculty and students at HUC on multiple campuses. And he came up with this sort of trajectory. What are the moments of? I wasn't really. It was more like the moments of paths not taken. So we didn't come to that term disruptions for a while. And I joined the project after that committee formed and came on as his co editor. That was great. It also happened immediately before the pandemic started, like basically February of 2020. So the whole project itself was just. Is a sort of a metaphor of the idea. Like it was disrupted as we were disrupting. The title. Reforming Judaism. That's hyphen is almost not heard when you say it too quickly. Is about this idea of the construction of Judaism, but also the many ways in which Judaism can respond. We were really intrigued by the tensions of this path or that path or a third path, and what it means to have multiple possibilities. What would have happened if we had gone down the other path, some other path? What would have happened if we hadn't decided to smooth out the ideas from this disruption and then incorporate them. So to give you an example from the book, there's this beautiful chapter on Maimonides, who at the time was an incredible disruptor. But if you think about Maimonides now, he's one of these stalwarts of the orthodox movement, of the conservative movement of reform and reconstruction, reconstructing Judaism. So this, like the story told about Maimonides, is itself a disruption to the actual history of the disruptor, who was Maimonides? That kind of stuff we love. So we came at it with, in conversation with the CCIR Press and really wanted to tell the story not just of Judaism, like as a whole, but what it meant in terms of thought and theology and philosophy.
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Podcast Host
So let's talk now about the book. The book is an edited book, which means that you have multiple chapters, each by different authors, all talking about moments in time in Jewish history. And as you mentioned, the story of Jewish history is the story of disruptions. So how did you choose what material to cover? Because it really spans a lot, from the Bible to medievals to modern to then contemporary. And then what did you cut or wish that could have made it in?
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Leah Hochman
Well, some of it is accidental. Who you know and who you think has the time to write an article. Some of it is really, we pushed, we went back and forth multiple times about how to sort of think about the trajectory. I, for as long as I've been teaching, have put on the first day of every class I've ever taught, a long timeline of Jewish thought and timelines. I love a timeline. I love the idea of periodization. I think that's amazing. So I really pushed for the way in which it's constructed. The gds. I'm, you know, is an, an ever evolving process. I was really taken when I was an undergrad a million years ago by an essay by Gershom Scholar that Judaism has no essence because it's continually growing and continually evolving. So if you have an essence it can essentialize, then you boil it down to one thing. And we know that there's multiple ways in which Judaism has expressed itself over time. So this timeline really is a. It's a thought timeline as opposed to a historical Timeline or a geographical timeline or a linguistic timeline. And when I put that timeline up and I see all my students writing it down like it's some. As if it were for me, Si. And I. I say, what's the timeline that you would do? What's different about this, the way that I'm thinking about this, than you might think about what's missing on the timeline, what's on the timeline? And so when we did that, we also, we sort of played that out in a series of editorial meetings. And there's just a ton that's missing because there's so many different moments. So for instance, there's no chapter on the Karaites, and they are incredible disruptors. They were a great path not taken. And there's no chapter on Israel. So that's also, if we think about like Zionism. So the idea of what we did and what we didn't, it was less intentional and more. The book was getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And we really wanted to get it in a. In a space that we thought we could finish it in a given amount of time. And Also, you know, 20, 20, 20, 21, 20, 22, those were some pretty disruptive years. So we really wanted to make sure that our authors were well taken care of. I had some personal disruptions. Stan has some personal disruptions. So did many of our authors. So some of it is just happenstance in a way. Like, you know, a constructed happenstance, I would say, like a way of like really thinking about who we wanted to include. There's a real range of ages. There are rabbinic voices, there are non rabbinic voices. There are Jewish studies people and non Jewish studies people, which men, women, non binary, are trying to do as many things as we. Many people as we could.
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Podcast Host
What you're saying reminds me of a conversation that I actually had with my father in law where he was talking about the fact that in most Jewish studies programs there is kind of two timelines that people have. There's the secular world and the Jewish world. And often we don't overlay one on the other and really talk about the role that each of them play. So we actually played a game where he said, so who are the Jewish thinkers who are writing and talking and doing innovation at the time of the American Civil War? And actually, I could tell you in the 1860s who the big Jewish thinkers were, but it never occurred to me, you know, just how deeply I have separated out the Civil War era in America from Jewish history in the 1860s. And what you're saying really speaks to that.
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Leah Hochman
Right. Well, I mean the easiest way to think about that is there's a reason why everything's called union after the, you know, in the middle of the American Jewish history. Right. Hebrew Union College and the Union for American American UAZD. I'm right. I'm going to get the time wrong, the name wrong. Union of American Hebrew Congregations. But everything's a union and that's because of the Civil War. Right. Those fad words, they definitely precede even my 12 year old gen Alpha language.
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Podcast Host
Good. So let's talk about your favorite chapters. What were a few of the favorite chapters that were in this book and.
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Leah Hochman
Why it was a little bit like picking your favorite kid. Because I love all the chapters and they do really different things and each of the authors really. And what I love about this collection of authors is they really come at their specialists in these fields and they really come at their material with all their gun splicing. It's amazing. I am a modernist, as I mentioned before, so the places that I learned the most were in the pre modern period, those, those essays which I really, really love. But so it's hard to say what's favorite. I mean obviously I'm going to highlight Stan's essay on Chocolate Tea Sabatin. He. That was such a deep dive for him. He loved doing it, just talking to it. I mean he was not happy with my edits on it, I'll tell you that. But he was really just so never as happy as he was when he was engaged in this kind of research. So that's a favorite because really that's a pivot point. A possibility is that it's not even roads not taken, but roads shut down and detours that were external and internal. I really love Christy Garraway's essay on the ways in which the prophets have redefined what Judaism should be and the ways then that that sets up how later 18th and 19th century thinkers come back to the prophets. So that's sort of a trajectory that's a payout that doesn't come for a couple thousand years. I love Stephen Smith's article on using Buber to think about Holocaust testimony. I think that's an amazing. We think of the ways in which we codify materials and our investment in codifying those materials and then asking us to think about what it means for us in a spiritual kind of way. I think that's a really interesting set of questions. Or Feinstein's essay on sort of a both and Judaism of being open to types of change that's really, to me, very impactful. But I also love Gwen Kessler's essay and I love Candice Levy's essay and Josh Garraway's essay, particularly for lay audience on the challenges of early Christianity, I think is mind opening. So that I and I've already mentioned tomorrow, Ross's essay on Maimonides, which I just thought was masterful.
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Podcast Host
So for, for me, one essay that stayed with me, right. And they're all wonderful, but the one that stayed with me the most is Michael Myers essay on Holdheim. It is interesting in part for a few reasons, and I'm wondering if you can reflect a little bit on that essay. The first is that it's interesting you originally were going to call the book the Roads Not Taken, in part because he does a really good job both of showing you how divergent Holdheim is and at the same time how some of the radicalness of Holdheim has found its way into Judaism today and that the Reformed Judaism that we know is really a product of hold whole time. And I find myself actually not even realizing it often when I talk about Judaism today, channeling him or quoting him, without realizing that he's made his way subtly into my own rabbinate. And at the same time, there's one chapter on Reform Judaism, and the book chooses the most radical person, not Geiger, not other thinkers that I would call much more kind of mainstream, Stephen Wise or Isaac M. Wise, but choosing most radical of these thinkers. And I'm curious about both the decision to kind of represent Reform Judaism in that way and in addition to that, the role that you think some of these divergents actually do play, because it's not always roads not taken.
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Leah Hochman
Yeah. So there's one other essay about Reform Judaism. It's the Kerry Toolings piece about the paper platform. And that's important. That's important. And also there's lots of ways in which Reform Judaism obviously are liberal Judaism. So say like that pop up as alongside, we did not want to tell a story of how Reformed Judaism came to be that wasn't this. That's not the story of Judaism. So we were careful about that. But I mean, we're also interested in the people who are the most who actually, like, there's a reactive notion of how Judaism responds to people who are the most out there. So in many ways, we shouldn't have anything to do with shotgay Zvi, just like we don't. We shouldn't really have anything to do with Spinoza, because they're actually not in the End Jewish. Right. They. They pick other paths. We choose to keep them Jewish in the way that we tell a story because of the conflicts and the conundrums that they bring up for us. That's really important. And I am someone who loves attention. I love the tension. I think it's so productive and so essential for understanding things. So why do we pick Holdheim? Holdheim, actually. Similarly, although I'm to. Spinoza is a man before his time. Right. The ideas that Holdheim was trying to get Reformed Judaism or liberal Judaism to get to, no one was ready. Society wasn't ready, people weren't ready. And then not being ready, it's not really. It's. That's. It's. In some ways, it's sort of getting the path. My mom was a gardener, so she would always, like, till the ground. So here we are tilling the ground as a way for maybe a hundred years later for people to sort of be like, oh, yeah, I like that idea. I want that idea.
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Podcast Host
So for people who don't know who he is, maybe you can say a word about who he is. Holtun and what he says.
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Leah Hochman
Yeah. Simon Holtheim was one of the early liberal thinkers. There was a whole group of people who were very invested in including scholarship, academic scholarship or secular scholarship in the way that they were thinking about Jewish history and the meaning of Jewish history, but also a way of critiquing forms of traditional Judaism. And in that time period, in the 18th century and in the early 19th century, is the growth or the development of denominational Judaism. And when there becomes a liberal Judaism, then in response, there becomes an Orthodox Judaism. People talk about Orthodoxy before that, and it's a little bit of a misnomer or an anachronism because we don't have Orthodoxy until we have liberal as a way of sort of separating them out. And Abraham Geiger becomes the mouthpiece for Reform Judaism. Although there were many people, it's not really clear that there was one leader at the time. I think this sort of happens later in the development. And it's happening. There's the German thinkers and then there's the American experience, which are going along the same time period, but having very different experiences. Holtheim was traditionally raised, had an incredible education and an unbelievable mind, but was much more interested in radical change, was much more interested in breaking completely from a Torah Judaism or a Halachic Judaism based on the fact that the Torah wasn't, in his opinion, given by God to the people, Israel at Sinai, and therefore all of the halachic Jewish law that understands Rabbinic Judaism also as divinely ordained. He was like, this is a bunch of guys writing about this. So we everything is, everything is open to individual interpretation. But he does this from a place of deep, incredible learning. He's not just coming at it and rejecting it whole hog. He is someone who spent years and years learning about with, from within the tradition, Jewish experience. I wouldn't say Jewish history because people, this is the beginning of the, of the field of Jewish history, but really of the Jewish textual tradition. He was someone who wrote for Mendelssohn, Moses Mendelssohn. When he did his, when he translated transliterated the Hebrew Bible into, he did it into German using Hebrew characters and had a commentary. That commentary is called the Biur. Mendelssohn got in trouble for this by many orthodox thinkers who understood that as a major rejection of how to study sacred text. Holdheim was one of the commentators and Holdheim was just someone who was forward thinking. He wanted to include women. He wanted to. He didn't understand why the Sabbath had to be on Saturday. He was not someone who held by the ritual traditions. Is there something in particular that I'm wondering if there's a story that you know about Holheim that you want to share or if there's something about him that you're interested in.
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Leah Hochman
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Podcast Host
I just. I thought it was very interesting that he was one of the very first people to start talking about, you know, it's irrelevant whether the Torah was written by God at Sinai. It still matters in X, Y and Z way. But we can divorce the like, let's say the theology, the theological norm of it being from God, from its importance, and utilize it in a different way, which is what you find many Reform rabbis today saying and not realizing that he was the first one to say it. So you speak in this book, and you said that this really is your structure. The five key periods in Jewish history.
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Leah Hochman
Right, Becomes our structure. I mean, I originally pushed for it, but it wasn't like anybody was fighting me against. There wasn't a big pushback.
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Podcast Host
So between all these five periods, right, between biblical, rabbinic, medieval, modern, and then contemporary. And by modern, I mean not in the past few years, right? Modern, as in when modernity hits, which do you think were the most transformative? And could you even say that there was a period that was more transformative than any other?
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Leah Hochman
I would never say that. And I'll tell you, because I think, you know, one doesn't happen without the other. If you think about it, you know, if you think about a timeline, the reason that you put things on the timeline is that big moments have happened. And in this, if you think about periodization, these huge. Like, the way that you periodize anything is really the most important. Like, the space between the periods is the thing that's most interesting about a timeline, not the stuff that's inside the timeline. So, I mean, for me, the reason that I have, I break it up in those different ways, and in class, I name them slightly differently than I did than I do in the book. It's biblical, but it's also. Then it's rabbinic, sorry, it's biblical that ends in 70, and then it's Talmudic, rabbinic. And that's a long time. That's 70 up to basically Sajid on around 750, around 800, depending on what the class is. And then the longest time period is Rabbinic medieval. Because it's the medievalists that make the Talmudic period or the rabbinic period so important. Right. It's their emphasis. There's all these different moments in which rabbinic Judaism may not have been ended up being the one, the way that we went. And then because it becomes normative during the medieval period, that's why it's. To drop the Talmudic or the rabbinic out of the medieval, I think is sort of diminishes the importance of these major thinkers who are really, really highlighting the importance of rabbinic thought. But that period goes into 1750. That's huge. And if we think about what's happening in secular history, of course, it's. The Renaissance is happening. There's like, lots of things happening in between, not to mention the rise of Islam. Right. Like, there's like a lot of other world events that are key in a historical timeline. We would totally do that differently. So what period is the most important? I mean, for Judaism, the period, the foundational period, has to be the most important because everything builds on that.
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Podcast Host
Right, Interesting. And what you're saying about the medieval period is really interesting because one of the problems with Jewish education, at least classically, is that when you tell the story to, like, a group of, let's say, bar mitzvah kids, you know, you've got the Bible, you've got the destruction of the temple, you got the rabbis, and then you kind of fast forward to, like, you know, I would say maybe the shtetl going to America, the Holocaust in Israel. You miss all that middle stuff, which is, like, really juicy. And your book does a really good job of showing all of that.
- [25:16]
Leah Hochman
Now, I agree. I think that. I mean, you sort of get to 1492 and then you, like, you. And then you. That has to do with the little dictum, Columbus, sail the ocean blue, and then you move on. Right. And. And the only thing you learn about Sephardic Jews or even North African Jews is that they got kicked out. But not like the lives that they learned, they led and the languages that they developed and all the dialects and their food and their culture and their tropes and everything. Like, there's so much there that I think. I wish another book would be written about from this, you know, in the same idea about that experience. Because that to me is we. We mention it, but not. Not thoroughly enough.
- [25:56]
Podcast Host
Yeah. So why do you think the Jewish story is one of change? Is it a bug? Is it a feature of Jewish history? Why is change such a constant throughout time?
- [26:06]
Leah Hochman
I don't think that Jewish history or Jewish experience is any different than any other experience. I think all people's experiences are ones of change. Maybe that's because I studied Hegel in grad school, but I think that there's really. There's no such thing as stasis in that regard. And if there is stasis, then of course that leads to sort of a concretization. And after the concretization, then sort of a breakdown. And I think it's really important to be able to move with times now. Is there a single thread all the way through? I mean, depends on who tells that story. I was again, a story from grad school. I was once at a Shabbat dinner and. And some people showed a picture that their kids had written a drawn of Moses getting the tablets of the Mount Sinai. And he was dressed as a Chasid, right? Like Moses was a black hat with the pais and a black caftan. And I was like, okay, well, that's interesting. That's interesting telling of that story. And the idea that there's one thing all across time is something that we tell to keep ourselves comfortable, but to keep ourselves calm. But we're constantly in a shade, a state of movement. I think there's rhythms. If I think about the current disruptions of American society, of Jewish life right now, if we look back at 1920, you know, it's in the 1920s, there's also similar disruptions. In the 1820s, there were also similar disruptions. In the 1720s, it's also similar disruptions. So to me, there's this constant. There's a rhythm and there are cycles. I think Stan would disagree with me on this. I think he would say that there's something really beautiful about Judaism's ability to adapt and redirect. And I think of it more as like, this is the. This is how history works. I'm sorry, he's not here to disagree with me because he. I mean, I miss him deeply in every day of my life. But in this, talking about this book, his investment in the ways in which it was structured, in the way that the. This people tell their stories in their chapter, I think is. Is just really something to have learned from.
- [28:15]
Podcast Host
One of the other things I admire about the book is that you spend a lot of time on contemporary, right? Most books that tell the history of the Jewish people will have a chapter at the end as a coda on stuff that's happened over the past few generation or two. You have a whole section on it. I'm curious why. Why did you choose to give so much to feminism, the LGBTQ inclusion, post Holocaust theology, all of the stuff that take up actually very little space on the physical timeline of Jewish history, though, probably are things that many of us are thinking the most about today.
- [28:52]
Leah Hochman
I want to answer that question, but first I want to ask you what you. First of all, if you have the same idea about history, if you think it's a quirk of Jewish history that it's constantly changing, or if you have. I just want to push. But I'm curious about your opinion on that.
- [29:08]
Podcast Host
Oh, I mean, I agree that all history has changed. Right. But I actually think that, like, that's the reason Judaism has survived for 3,000 years, is our ability to change and to change well and to know how to change. And, you know, we live in an era right now of tremendous change. And it's interesting. I kind of wish I could go forward 200 years and to see I'm a reformed rabbi. Is my Judaism going to survive or am I a Karaite? Right. Is my Judaism going to disappear? And I think that also is a really interesting thing that your book brings up, which is you can think of it almost like a bunch of branches, and some of the branches branch off and become the main branch, and some of those branches branch off and then eventually fizzle. And it's hard in any given moment to know which branch you're on.
- [30:04]
Leah Hochman
There is a tiny Karaite community, so don't be too afraid.
- [30:07]
Podcast Host
I visited them in. In Jerusalem. They are very small, though. Yeah. But let's talk about the contemporary stuff.
- [30:14]
Leah Hochman
So I think it's. I mean, what's interesting, it's true that most people that a lot of books don't aren't that interested in the contemporary period. I'll just say that the sort of the gender theory essay is actually about Rabbinic Judaism. So it's in an earlier time period. But the, you know, feminism, of course, is a massive disruption. There's not a single lick of Judaism that hasn't been impacted by that. I would say the same thing about David Friedman's music. So I love that article. I love that essay by Evan Kent and this and the idea of the ways in which the post Holocaust period has actually been as really productive in Judaism as the modern period, really the 18th and 19th century. So this denominational period of the modern age in which that essay about Holtheim appears is important. But really what we've done since the. The two major disruptions of the 20th century, which was the Holocaust and Also the destruct the establishment of the state of Israel. You know, the Judaisms that have developed are so wildly divergent from one another and they. It's so. I don't know, it's like juicy is a good word for it, but it's really like there's so many different ways in which to think about that. I think you're right about your critique about Jewish education, that it was very much contained, really. It was went from the Bible basically to the 1940s, and then now all of a sudden you're supposed to know all these things. But what's interesting, I think the critique that's sort of implicit in Jason Rojich's essay about critical theory, using critical theory as a post Holocaust thought that we. If you put that together with what Stephen Smith is saying in his essay about using Martin Buber to hear Holocaust testimony, these are, I think, flags for how do we continue to grow and change and innovate in a. In a world in which we feel like we're all set like that. We feel that we are actually, we've made it right, that we are successful, that Reform Judaism is solid, Conservative Judaism is solid. We're all going to be exactly the same as we are for the next hundred years, even though nothing in our history ever says that to be true. And so these little moments of like, this is a possible pathway, this is a possible pathway. This is one innovation, I think, that gives us, the readers and all of us who are thinking, operating in the Jewish studies world and in Jewish life more generally, opportunities to think about the roles that we can play, what's impinge, what we're beholden to, and thinking about the roles that we have to play in the continuity of Judaism and Jewish thought and Jewish thinking.
- [32:56]
Podcast Host
So moving along those lines, if this book was written 30 years from now, and I know this is a very hard question I'm about to ask, but what additional chapters might be included? You know, what are changes that are afoot, things that may or may not be happening, roads that may be taken or not taken that are happening right this moment.
- [33:17]
Leah Hochman
I mean, that's such a loaded question, isn't it? I mean, obviously we have to figure out what's happening with Israel. And in the. The major disruption of October 7th, it's just, I mean, it's unfathomable. We are still processing that what we thought was the major disruption of COVID It's given us new opportunities, new engagements to think about, how to think about community. But really what happened, the Hamas massacre and the failures of security, you know, like this is similar, something similar than as what happened in, during the Yom Kippur war. But the idea that American Jews might have different opinions than other diaspora Jews from each other, Pat, is I think earth shattering. And then, you know, the split between a conservative and a liberal mindset, and I mean this politically rather than theologically or religiously. Those, that's also, those are major, major disruptions. But I would also say what's AI going to do for us? Right? In what way is AI huge disruption? So for me, this whole time period, this early 1920s, 1920s, sorry, I got my century wrong. The early 2000s, this is going to be a decade of major development that I just don't, I can't even foretell what that's going to look like. I just don't know.
- [34:50]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I read your book probably about three months ago and even since reading your book I've noticed a huge change, which is that there are beginning to be synagogues that are founded on the basis of anti Zionism. Right. Groups of Jews who are praying together, synagogues who have changed their tenets to be about that which I mean, even three months ago I could never have imagined that those synagogues would exist. And the question is like, is this of a moment of time or are we watching some kind of big change? And I'll put my flag in the ground and say I'm a deep, deep Zionist and believe deeply in the state of Israel. But also. So I'm watching this sea change happen in America and feel like I'm living through history.
- [35:43]
Leah Hochman
I mean, yes, at the beginning of the afterword I write about this fake saying, may you live in uninteresting times. And I really just want us to live in uninteresting times because every day it's like what happened in the six hours that I was able to fall asleep, you know, and thinking in my doom scrolling the idea of it's impossible to know. I'm certainly not. The Torah speaks against this. The rabbis also speak against soothsaying. So I can't prophecy into the future, but I don't know, is it just a moment in time and then in five years life will be different? I have no idea. Obviously I think the political ramifications abroad and domestically, not just for Israel, but also the United States and Europe. I mean I just, it's, it's unclear what's going to happen. But I will also say I don't even know about the tech developments that are about to shape our world. So I remember once I. My grandmother, also a blessed memory. I was visiting her in the, I don't know, early 2000s, and I bought a little GPS map that you stuck onto the, you know, the screen so you could know where you were going. And she was like, I can't believe that they even have these maps and these little machines. And then next thing you know, it's on my watch, right? Like the develop, like the tech developments that I'm not even aware of as I read my books about medieval and modern Judaism, that those are the things I think will be the most altering for us in terms of Judaism and the questions of about Israel and Israel's future. I just, I don't have.
- [37:27]
Podcast Host
I don't know what you're saying about tech is so interesting. I mean, I've often said to people that I think the most important innovation in Judaism in the past 20 years is the website Sefaria because of just how it's democratized Jewish learning. And I could imagine a world where if this book was written 50 years from now, Sepharia is a chapter on its own.
- [37:47]
Leah Hochman
Yeah, for sure. But I will also say I think another chapter would be on Jewish education and the changes on Jewish education, the partisanship of Jewish education. Also the, the growth, explosive growth of, of Jewish day schools that are not connected to particular denominations or particular temples or community day schools. I think that's incredible. But also the explosion of ed programs and teaching even lay people how to be Jewish educators, I think that's going to be also. That's going to be as important as the growth of Hebrew education, which happened in the early 1900s in New York.
- [38:28]
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Leah Hochman
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- [39:40]
Podcast Host
So let's go back to theory for one more moment. Something that I thought about when I was reading your book, and I'm wondering if you can reflect on this a little bit, is who drives the change? Right. We often talk about the theory of, you know, great men or great women leading changes. And then there's a different school of thought that basically says no. They're just catching the historical winds around them. Right. The change is bubbling up from the top. And then you get people who just kind of listen deeper and maybe are able to articulate it in a different way so that people can listen and read what they write, but that ultimately it's not about the great men or great women theory. I'm curious, based on, now that you've been through Jewish history with this story of change, who makes the changes and how?
- [40:28]
Leah Hochman
In Jewish history, I am of the school of thought as both and rather than either or, or zero sum, I don't think it's one or the other because I don't think anything happens in a vacuum. Great people don't develop in a vacuum and great ideas don't develop in vacuums. So, yeah. Are there figureheads that we name that then become representative of huge time periods? For sure, some of them are positive, some of them are negative. Right. We talk about the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon, obviously hugely important, but it doesn't happen. He can't happen all by himself. Right. He needs all the people around him. So I think it's easy in storytelling in general to use representative figures and they become the great people. And then hopefully somebody finds something that then can change the story or augment the story. So it's not just one person, it's another, you know, it's a couple different people. But we're also fickle readers in general, and we are interested in the things that only in the things that we're interested in. And sometimes we want simple answers and that leads to idolizing individuals and then using them as the metaphor for change. And I think that's fine. I think that's great. I think there's lots of different ways to tell a story. So I resist the question. You can see how annoying it is to be in my classroom. I resist the question, is it just great people? And I'm great. I wish they talked more about great women creating world change. But they mostly it's the great man theory, also a Hegelian theory. Or is it the. And then the rest of that theory is the. The. The yokels, like the schmoes everyday people were on the slaughter bench of history. Right. The. Or is it a time period? I think it's both and I love that. But there could be both. That's like the. Those are the overlapping timelines that we talked about at the beginning. But that's also the idea of like a fuller story, that there's always room to go back and look more and see what else is there. And in that, you know, the aphorism, you can turn it, you can turn it and you can find something new. And I think that the multiple languages in the Torah, you can still look at these same parshiot and find something new every single time, which is amazing. This is one of the great gifts of human intellect, is that we can both simplify and complexify.
- [42:47]
Podcast Host
Now, I know you had a tremendous amount of knowledge and have spent a lot of time with one of those great men in history, which is Mendelssohn. And I imagine, by the way, maybe I'm wrong, that giving away his chapter was like giving away a baby of yours. Cause, like, you know, because you've spent.
- [43:06]
Leah Hochman
So much time with him, honestly, I was delighted. I think Yoav Schaefer's article on Spinoza, Mendelssohn and Kahn is brilliant and he does something really interesting with it. And also sometimes you're sort of sick of the person that you've been with for 20 years.
- [43:20]
Podcast Host
Yeah. So I'm curious, you know, say a word or two very briefly, just who Mendelssohn is, but also tell us about how your work with Mendelssohn helped prep you for this book particularly.
- [43:33]
Leah Hochman
Yeah. Moses Mendelssohn was an 18th century thinker, born in 1729, died in 1786. And he was singular in that he had. He became famous for being Jewish and being accepted as a Jewish thinker, halachically observant by a series of people who were not Jewish or who were enlightened thinkers or reformers. I find him particularly interesting. He wrote about. I found his aesthetics the most interesting part about him, although most of his stuff I liked a lot of. He was very lucky to have been befriended by Gotthold Lessing, the playwright, who was a pk, a preacher's kid and was a rebel, rebel all on his own. Lessing befriended him right away and then really launched Mendelssohn into secular society. Other figures who had similar qualities, didn't have that friendship that really helped him. And then the two of them became friends with this other guy who was a publisher, Friedrich Nikolai. And they became the organs of the German Enlightenment. They just, they wrote a series of. They had publications and they had a journal. He just like caught fire at the right time. He was fascinating because he wasn't that innovative of a thinker to be honest. But he became famous for being innovative and then he became representative of all the changes that were happening in society and then that got projected onto him. So he's both this sort of beacon of or the idea of toleration of tolerance that Jews are people too. And also someone who is blamed for throwing the ghettoed walls open and. And secular Judaism, even though he was long dead before those things happened. And I'm really fascinated by the way that people project onto him. I like his philosophy a lot. But there were no big Mendelssohn Mendelssohnians afterwards. He just is someone who becomes a figure. And Lessing is the one who made him more famous by using Mendelssohn as the exemplar for his play Nathan the Wise. And Nathan the Wise was the. It's a story about tolerance put in an earlier medieval period in a Muslim country and was the first play that was put on in post war Berlin in 1945. And it's fascinating. I just think there's something really interesting about the idea of Mendelssohn in addition to who Mendelssohn is.
- [46:04]
Podcast Host
So how did Mendelssohn as a person you've lived with for 20 years and written about for 20 years, how did that work inform your then next big work which was this?
- [46:16]
Leah Hochman
Well, I've worked on other things in the in betweens. So I work a lot on food for instance. I'm interested in food ways and the ways in which food tells people's stories. Mendelssohn is seen as a big disruptor, but I don't think he's that big of a disruptor to be honest. So that was interesting to think about the ways in which people create disruptions for people that don't necessarily like they miss some disruptions and then they add other disruptions. And in all of my work, like from the beginning, from even from when I was first in college, I'm really interested in the way that people tell their stories. So some of those are philosophical stories or theological stories and some of those are historical like experiential stories like the. And the story of Jewish people or the stories of the Jewish people or the story of Judaism. So in many ways, the idea of Mendelssohn is really important. Like how people construct an idea about Mendelssohn and reformers project onto him, just like Orthodox Jews at the time projected onto him. That's basically what this book is about, is the ways in which these moments in time, these disruptions, the stories that were told about them, and then figuring out who they actually. What actually happened. So that in, for instance, that essay by Candice Levy on afterlife and rabbinic thought, which is something that, you know, it's one of the. The most common questions that I get in when I teach Intro to Judaism is what did you think about the afterlife? And to see it as a really. As a response to anxiety. Right. Most disruptions are responses to anxiety. So why is Mendelssohn projected onto. Because he's the object of people's anxiety. He becomes the object of people's anxiety. So disruptions are these moments of anxiety. We're in a tremendous amount of anxiety right now, so global anxiety. And I think that that is the most productive time. I mean, it's really generative. What that generates is not always positive, but it still really generates. So right now I'm working on other. Some other work on graphic novels. The way that people. Authors visualize Judaism, visualize God, visualized philosophy. Because we're working towards. If we think about what AI is doing, it's doing it for us. And what is that sort of shortcut that there's so many graphic novels. And really, in the last two years, all the great classics have been graphic novelized. And that's so interesting because I was someone who always read the book before I saw the movie. So what does it mean when the book is, you know, giving you the visual images already? So that's. I mean, that's. I don't know if it's like Mendelssohn in particular, but I loved the modern period. My colleagues who are ancient people think that basically Judaism ends by maybe 300, 400. That's when they stopped being interested. And I'm like, it doesn't really start until we get to like 1200. So the sort of ideas of what the idea of something is.
- [49:13]
Podcast Host
Thank you very much. Apropos of your current project. When I work with conversion students, I always make them read the Book of Genesis. And the version of the Book of Genesis I make them read is the R. Crumb graphic novel version because I find that it's much more engaging and they're much more likely to do it in its entirety than if I were to just ask them to pick up a random Bible and read the book of Genesis. So I want to, I hope that.
- [49:37]
Leah Hochman
You included a conversation about how Crumb depicts female bodies. I hope that that's part of that conversation.
- [49:44]
Podcast Host
I will make sure to from now on. Thank you. So again, I'm here with Leah Hockman, one of the editors of Reforming Judaism, Moments of Disruption in Jewish Thought. You can find that from CCAR Press and buy it wherever books are sold. So thank you for joining us.
- [50:02]
Leah Hochman
Thank you.