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About David Gottlieb

David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019).

NBN Episodes hosted by David:

Jewish Studies November 16, 2023

Fractured Tablets

Forgetfulness and Fallibility in Late Ancient Rabbinic Culture

Mira Balberg

Hosted by David Gottlieb
Listen:
The Rabbinic Sages of the Tannaitic era were fixated on memory and terrified of forgetfulness. In promulgating their own interpretations of Jewish law, the Tannaim not only took seriously Moses’s …
Religion December 20, 2022

Why Study Religion?

Richard Brian Miller

Hosted by David Gottlieb
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that …
Jewish Studies September 2, 2022

Humanity Divided

Martin Buber and the Challenges of Being Chosen

Manuel Duarte de Oliveira

Hosted by David Gottlieb
Throughout a hugely productive intellectual career spanning more than half a century, the Austrian-born philosopher Martin Buber returned repeatedly to the question of Israel’s divine election. Buber, who left Nazi …
Jewish Studies March 22, 2022

When I Grow Up

The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers

Ken Krimstein

Hosted by David Gottlieb
When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers (Bloomsbury, 2021), the latest graphic nonfiction narrative from New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein, is based on six of hundreds …
Jewish Studies July 9, 2021

Fragile Finitude

A Jewish Hermeneutical Theology

Michael Fishbane

Hosted by David Gottlieb
Perhaps no scholar has exerted a more decisive influence on the study of Jewish thought and theology over the past half century than Michael Fishbane. Continuing his recent engagement with …
Jewish Studies September 18, 2020

Unbinding Isaac

The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought

Aaron Koller

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought (Jewish Publication Society, 2020), Aaron Koller, professor of Near Eastern and Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University, provides a …
Jewish Studies February 28, 2020

Family Papers

A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century

Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), Sarah Abrevaya Stein weaves a narrative tapestry whose threads are drawn from the archives of …
Jewish Studies November 11, 2019

Martin Buber

A Life of Faith and Dissent

Paul Mendes-Flohr

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (Yale University Press, 2019), Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem …
Jewish Studies February 18, 2019

Martin Buber's Theopolitics

Samuel Hayim Brody

Hosted by David Gottlieb
Martin Buber is known as one of the 20th century's greatest Jewish scholars and thinkers, but he is less well known for his political theory and activism. In Martin Buber's …
Jewish Studies August 6, 2018

A Rich Brew

How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture

Shachar M. Pinsker

Hosted by David Gottlieb
The café, long a European institution, was also a stimulant and a refuge for European Jewish culture. In cities across Europe, and later in Palestine, Israel, and the United States …
Jewish Studies May 10, 2018

The Talmud

A Biography

Barry Wimpfheimer

Hosted by David Gottlieb
​In The Talmud: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2018), Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, associate professor of religious studies and law at Northwestern University, introduces the reader to the Babylonian Talmud, the …
Jewish Studies March 23, 2018

Jewish Radical Ultra-Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity, Zionism, and Women's Equality

Motti Inbari

Hosted by David Gottlieb
Jewish ultra-Orthodoxy, in its numerous manifestations, continues to exert profound influence on the Jewish world, even as it undergoes pressure to change from both within and without. In Jewish Radical …
Jewish Studies January 16, 2018

Bad Rabbi And Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press

Eddy Portnoy

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In Bad Rabbi And Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press, 2017), Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor and Exhibitions Curator at the YIVO Institute for Yiddish …
Jewish Studies October 23, 2017

The Great Shift

Encountering God in Biblical Times

James L. Kugel

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In a career spanning several decades, James L. Kugel has illuminated the Hebrew Bible from the perspectives of both a biblical scholar of enormous skill and eloquence and as an …
Jewish Studies October 16, 2017

Sacrifice in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

David L. Weddle

Hosted by David Gottlieb
Is there one principal avenue of exploration that could lead to the very heart of the religious experience? For David L. Weddle, professor emeritus of Religion at Colorado College, that …
Jewish Studies September 20, 2017

Witnessing Unbound

Holocaust Representation and the Origins of Memory

Henri Lustiger-Thaler and Habbo Knoch, eds.

Hosted by David Gottlieb
​​Witnessing Unbound: Holocaust Representation and the Origins of Memory (Wayne State University Press, 2017) is a ​collection of essays and interviews that offer fresh ​insight on the last of the …
Jewish Studies July 31, 2017

Moses Mendelssohn's Living Script

Philosophy, Practice, History, Judaism

Elias Sacks

Hosted by David Gottlieb
The work of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), one of Judaism's great philosophers and defenders, has nonetheless defied easy categorization or definitive depiction. While advocating for the granting of full rights to …
Jewish Studies July 13, 2017

Sharing the Burden

Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar

Geoffrey D. Claussen

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simḥah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar (SUNY Press, 2015), Geoffrey D. Claussen provides a thorough study of the life and work of one …
Jewish Studies June 26, 2017

A Remembrance of his Wonders

Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz

David I. Shyovitz

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), David I. Shyovitz, Associate Professor of History, and of Jewish and Israel …
Jewish Studies May 31, 2017

Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism

Sarah Imhoff

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In her new book, Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017), Professor Sarah Imhoff explores the relationship between American identity and American Jewish depictions and definitions …
Jewish Studies April 24, 2017

The Last Rabbi

Joseph Soloveitchik and the Talmudic Tradition

William Kolbrener

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In The Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition (Indiana University Press, 2016), William Kolbrener, professor of English at Bar Ilan University in Israel, explores the life and thought of …
Jewish Studies March 27, 2017

Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah

Yuval Harari

Hosted by David Gottlieb
Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah (Wayne State University Press, 2017) opens new vistas not only on the history of the practice of magic throughout Jewish history, but on …
Jewish Studies March 20, 2017

Broken Tablets

Levinas, Derrida, and the Literary Afterlife of Religion

Sarah Hammerschlag

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In Broken Tablets: Levinas, Derrida, and the Literary Afterlife of Religion (Columbia University Press, 2016), Sarah Hammerschlag, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School …
Jewish Studies March 6, 2017

Holocaust

An American Understanding

Deborah Lipstadt

Hosted by David Gottlieb
In her most recent book, Holocaust: An American Understanding (Rutgers University Press), Deborah Lipstadt reviews and analyzes the emergence of Holocaust scholarship in the academy, and Holocaust consciousness in the …