The First Podcast Episode for A-J Levine’s Text

Friends, welcome to the first day of the 2023 Asynchronous Lenten Study, The Jewish History of the Lenten Season. I’m stepping out on a limb here with the very first Notes from the Diaspora podcast episode. Let me say, I have no idea what I’m doing with this audio format, but I know you’ll offer feedback along the way!

Following brief introductory notes, you’ll find the audio transcript.

In this first week of the study please read the Introduction to Prof. Levine’s book and Chapter 1. In this 30 minute podcast (this is a longer episode to include introductory material, but I’ll aim for < 20 minutes in the future), you’ll hear a summary of the themes that I suggest you watch out for in the intro and first chapter. I’ll be back with you Wednesday to offer the chat prompt for group discussion. You can read the instructions for the chat here.

Happy reading!

Audio Transcript

To be as accessible as possible, I include a transcript of the audio. Over time, I may consider using time stamps to better organize the transcript, but I’m learning while flying here! Please do share your feedback on whether you like this format.

Summary

This is the first notes from the Diaspora podcast. It is an introduction to the podcast and the notes from diaspora podcast. The podcast is intended to inform, liberate, and combat anti-Semitism. The newsletter is primarily a written newsletter.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the first notes from the Diaspora podcast or diaspora notes pod. I’m Adam, and I’m the author of notes from the Diaspora. And in this very first episode of something that I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m going to give you a little introduction. To me, and then a little introduction to what we’re up to here. And the third part will be an introduction to the Linton study that starts today using the text from Jewish studies and New Testament Professor Amy Jill Levine’s book, entering the Passion of Jesus. And so who am I? I identify. An interesting, unique American diaspora Jew, and I think I embody so many characteristics of American Jewry, and that begins with not being raised as a Jew at all, which may strike you as funny. I was raised within kind of a faith-based. In fact, my dad is a Christian pastor with. The United Church of Christ, which is a mainline Protestant denomination in the US, it is a mainline Protestant denomination that is concerned with issues of social justice, is a denomination that is on the side of open and affirming attitude towards our LGBTQIA. This to offer full membership within the body of the church, including a clergy participation, so it is not mere acceptance, but within the United Church of Christ there is affirmation for that community within the UC there is an effort to be multicultural, to be pluralistic. To affirm many different traditions to be non doctrinal and non. Needle, which is to say that membership among the community does not require adherence to strict religious doctrine. Rather, those who follow Jesus, those followers of the way are welcome within the United Church of Christ. Of course, later in my life we learned through my mom. That we do have a biological direct biological connection to a Jewish. Family that immigrated here at the beginning of the 20th century from Eastern Europe. This family is throughout the Midwest in the United States, but also stretching to both coasts as well. I learned this information later in my adolescence, and that opened something within me. I dove kind of head first into study into the worshipping into studying in synagogue settings, to meeting with rabbis, to working with kind of an interfaith community in the Midwest where I live. Live to be involved in interfaith discussions and Torah study as well within the Jewish community. I think that all of these factors are growing up. Not being a Jew, but having that biological connection understanding had to balance a mainline Protestant upbringing with a blossoming interest within Judaism. Has provided the fertile ground for a complicated religious identity, and rather than turn away from that, I’ve tried my best to turn toward that, but of course also I went to school, both undergraduate and. Graduate degrees in philosophy focusing on the philosophy of science, and so there is a healthy dose of epistemic humility. Or you might call skepticism. That is, through both my formal training, but also the way that I engage with the world. So I think it is through this lens that I approach the study. Of religion, but my interest, my interest with you, my interest in this podcast, my interest on the news. Letter is to offer some evidence in support of the things that I hold dear to me, but it is not to impress upon you any particular influence around your devotional or faith-based understanding. Your theology, your personal commitments of belief, that is your business and it’s not. Up to me, necessarily, to influence that direct. But you may find that you are reflecting on some of your devotional or faith or religious beliefs or religious identity. If a wrestling with that identity or an enrichment of that identity is 1 outcome of our time together, then all the better. All the better for it. But I’m not in a position where I want to exert much influence. Actually, on your devotional or apologetics practices. And so I’m here really to follow the evidence that I find within my reading of the Abrahamic texts, specifically the Old Testament or, as you will hear me, refer to it, the Hebrew Bible and also the Greek scriptures, which includes. Predominantly, the gospel accounts also the epistles from Paul. Both the authentic Pauline epistles that there is scholarly consensus that Paul was the primary. Author. But we’ll also take seriously non Pauline epistles as well. Those epistles that were attributed to Paul but written only in his name by those who maybe knew Paul and those writing in the tradition of what they understood. Paul’s theology and apologetics and devotional stance to be. And you can read more about all of these beliefs behind kind of my writing and work in the space notes from the diaspora is predominantly a written newsletter. It’ll be about once a week I’m targeting on Mondays to have a podcast episode like the One you are listening to right now. In which case, over the next six weeks I’ll be sort of setting up the readings for each week because many of you are here because you are participating in this asynchronous Linton study using Professor Amy Jill Levine’s text. And so for the next six Mondays, as you listen to this podcast, we will be discussing primarily. The upcoming reading for that week, but I hope to extend the podcast conversations beyond. Merely the six week Linton study, but that each Monday we will begin our weeks together, reflecting on topics that are relevant and germane to the writing within notes from the that the diaspora. And so that’s the quick welcome to who I am and what we are up to here and a little bit about why we’re on this pursuit of study. Together to inform. Your understanding that may help you wrestle with or to shape or to enrich your religious identity. But to inform you of the scriptural and text traditions that stand behind the Abrahamic tradition, expressed through the Hebrew Bible and the Greek scriptures. Another reason why I’m doing this is to work towards the liberation of all people. Of it, in particular the liberation of our Jewish siblings within Christian spaces, the idea that the New Testament or the New Covenant in Jesus. This came to supersede or to replace the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible or the Eternal Covenant between the religious figure Moses and the Hebrew conception of God, or the Hebrew figure Abraham, kind of the prototypical Jewish person and the eternal covenant between Abraham. And the Hebrew God that that New Testament did not come to replace or to supersede that Old Testament that is supersessionism. That is a form of Christian anti-Semitism. Another form of Christian anti-Semitism is to believe that Jesus came to liberate the Jewish people, but to liberate the Jewish people from a temple domination system, the view that it was the temple and Temple Judaism that was taking the people by taxing the people, draining them of their resources. Working in collusion with Rome, these ideas lack nuance. They lack sophistication and they lead us to believe that Jesus was a Liberator of the Jewish people from Temple Judaism, when in fact Jesus was. A Liberator, but a Liberator from a militarized and oppressive Roman occupation, not from Temple Judaism, but from Rome is the liberation that Jesus sought to spread in the 1st century Jewish Jesus movement, and so to inform you, second to liberate. Jewish people within Christian spaces and that leads to this third big why is, I think across the spectrum, not merely within explicitly Christian spaces, but to combat anti-Semitism? Globally, because through the information that we will discuss and share together, we will come to have deeper appreciation for the roots of Judaism as a religion. But as an ethno religion as a religion that takes seriously the hereditary kind of ethnic boundaries of what it means and what it is. To be Jewish. And so to inform, to liberate and to combat anti-Semitism, kind of the three driving pillars to answer my why question why start this newsletter? Why engage through this podcast? It is to go some way towards achieving those 3 aims in form. Liberate and to come. Anti-Semitism and so we’ve talked some about who I am, why we are here, the type of content you can expect and three big aims for our time together. I do want to go back to one point that I’ve just made, that this is primarily a written newsletter, and so while you will hear from me. In these kind of podcast formats, once a week, I really mean this to be the supplement to the primary material, which is the written. Content of this sub stack newsletter and so don’t take these podcasts to be my attempt at kind of a professional production. Certainly that is not in my wheelhouse in my wheelhouse, is writing is synthesizing ideas as kind of creating a digestible place where you can learn more. About the sources of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek scriptures, but I am not a podcast producer and I. I’m not sort of a creative screenplay writer. My skills are in analyzing secondary sources and then creating written content, written material, and so I hope you will understand that the newsletter that shows up in your inbox is kind of the primary content. The primary mode of discussion, and these podcasts are merely to supplement. What you are finding? Within the written newsletter alright, who I am, why I’m here and how we can understand what we’re doing together. Let’s move on to entering the passion of Jesus by Professor Amy Jill Levine. Many of you are here because you signed up for this six week asynchronous Linton. Study there are some posts about this available to you if you want to read about kind of my format and my approach to the newsletter, I hope you will read those post. But in this in the in the remaining kind of 5 to 8 minutes here I’m aiming for 20 minutes or less here for our podcast time together each Monday. And so as we prepare to embark on this first official week of the study, what I hope that you will read from Amy Jill Levine’s book. Entering the passion of Jesus this week. Is at least the introduction and chapter one. Now if you have not yet procured your own copy of the book, you can easily do so via Amazon or I would encourage you also to find a local bookseller to support kind of the local economy wherever it is that you live. You can find the links to one. Indianapolis based indie reads, a local bookstore. Of course. I’ve also provided the link to the Amazon copy of the book. That is in the newsletter post about this study that likely you read that post to to sign up for this study that we are embarking on now, I want to begin with this quote that you’ll find from Professor Levine quote to study Jesus and the Gospels is to study Jewish history. And quote. So we are taking that claim serious. So I hope that you understand this Linton study. If you are approaching this through the Christian tradition, if your religious identity is affiliated with the church in some way, if your upbringing was within the church in some way, then this is really an important point. To understand that we are not necessarily here to understand church. History or Christian history? Rather, we are here to understand Jewish history and to see how that Jewish history informed the 1st and 2nd centuries of the comma. An era that that Jewish history created the foundation from which later Christian expression emerges, and so it is a couple of 100 years after the initial Jewish Jesus movement that Christianity begins to become codified and the texts become canonized. And certain beliefs and creeds and doctrines and what it meant to be a Christian. That kind of circumscribing that boundary, that comes long after the 1st century. Jewish Jesus movement. And so I returned to that quote to study Jesus. And the gospels is to study Jewish history. And so that really is kind of the North star for our time together. So I will be focusing significantly on kind of the Jewish background, the Jewish context. As we study together over the next six weeks. Weeks now, if you are looking for something that is maybe a little bit more centered in the Christian tradition, well, because you were signed up for this study that enrolls you for all of the content that I’m pushing out in this newsletter and already you may have noticed that there is a Sunday post. The Sunday Post takes the assigned gospel reading. For that week, and reads that gospel reading through a Jewish lens. And so Jewish history in the book study. But then we will be centering some gospel accounts specifically within the Sunday posts and reading those and interpreting them and informing the Jewish history and the Hebrew Bible tradition that stands behind those assigned gospel readings. So there’s a little bit for everybody. Here but I just want to make clear that in the Linton study, we really will be focusing on kind of the Jewish background and less about the modern or contemporary Christian expression of the Linton season. I hope that is interesting to those who signed up. So over the next six weeks together, each Monday you will receive this oh 15 to 20 minute kind of audio podcast episode that will set up the week ahead. On Wednesdays, you will be prompted to participate in the chat together to participate in the chat for this newsletter. There’s just one thing that you’ll need to do, and that is to download the sub stack app. Now I have provided the instructions to do that in an earlier newsletter post, so you either go into your inbox. Blocks and see where you received the the e-mail about the chat. Or you can just scroll forward if you’re on the website and find the post that says join the chat that gives you the specific instructions to download the app. Once you’re within the app, you’ll see that you may be assigned or you may be rather. Signed up for more than one newsletter, but fine. Notes from the diaspora, this newsletter that we are conducting. The Linton study on this is the platform that we are using, so make sure that you’ve selected that publication at the bottom. You’ll see a toolbar and one of those icons is like kind of chat bubble or two chat bubbles. If you select that and tap on that. Then that will bring you to our chat. And so each Wednesday I will provide a chat. Prompt and through the sub stack app you can participate in that chat. There’s already one chat going in fact, after I shared a post that said on the Bible, kind of my thoughts on the Bible and the people who wrote it, I said, hey, you’ve heard my thoughts. Let’s hear yours. That’s the current chat that’s happening in the sub stack app. Now you can go back and participate in that right now. There are at least three people, maybe four, who so far have participated in that chat, but each Wednesday you will receive a chat. Prompt through the sub stack app and I hope you will participate in that. That chat prompt will be related to things that we are discussing that week and then on Fridays I will pick out one of the sacred texts that Professor Amy Jill Levine alludes to within whatever the chapter selection is for that week. I’ll provide a little bit of background, some commentary on that sacred text and I will send that out on Fridays. And so you will get three kind of messages, three opportunities to engage over the next six weeks. Monday, the 15 to 20 minute Uh podcast that you’re listening to now. Wednesday, an opportunity to participate in the chat all together. That’s a great opportunity for community building with the other folks who are signed up for this study. And then Friday reflection on one of the sacred scriptures from the week now. Of course as mentioned. You’ll also see the Sunday Post that comes through the gospel reading, you might say, hey Adam, where does that gospel reading come from? Well, the revised common lectionary, this is an annual reading cycle used in Christian communities. In fact, it’s kind of a Tri annual or three-year cycle, there are years. A, B&C and so each week is potted out with a gospel reading. But other things as well. There’s also a a reading from the prophetic tradition, et cetera. So there are multiple readings available to you. I will just be using the gospel account each Sunday. And so you’ll get those three Monday, Wednesday, Friday kind of Linton study specific. Opportunities to engage, but you’ll also see that at least one Sunday post and maybe more occasional posts from me, those will come right into your inbox. Make sure that you, you know include the sub stack, e-mail address and notes from the diaspora that that’s kind of a favored or preferred sender in your inbox to make sure things don’t go right. Uh to the spam folder? OK. So that’s kind of what we’re looking at for the next several weeks together. I do want to just mention one thing that you signed up using a code or or likely you signed up using kind of a coupon code that I sent out around this six week study specifically that code gave you 90 days of access to all the content. That’s available to you through this newsletter. I’m not trying to sound salesy at this time. But at the end of the 90 days, I just want to mention that if you like the content that we’re pushing out here, I’ve set kind of a subscription for paid subscribers at $6 a month. Now, if you signed up using the coupon code, then you have 90 days of unlimited access to the content and so that’s great. So that’s an opportunity to kind of try out. What I’m doing here, but I’d love it if you wanted to become a a subscriber, a paid subscriber to the newsletter at $6 a month. That’s, you know, around a dollar a post, if you do the math around kind of monthly, what you’re gonna expect here. So I hope that you enjoy reading the content participating in the community through the chat. There’s some additional benefits that you can check out on the subscriber page. There’s also an option to become a founding member of the founding member is kind of an annual cost that’s a little bit more. But through that founding membership, but what I hope to do overtime, what I plan to do overtime, hope is not a strategy I indeed plan to do these things. I’ll be I’ll get continued audio podcast like this each month I’m going to provide kind of a more in depth video opportunity and then quarterly I’ll be hosting virtual live events. Now I want to work with the kind of founding. A membership community to know what’s going to be best for you. If those are YouTube lives, Facebook lives, there’s different ways to leverage live streaming platforms to make sure our time together is easily accessible to you and that you can participate in those live events in robust. Ways, but I just want to mention that that for $6 a month or if you want to go all in as a founding member, I will create opportunities to engage in sort of different multimedia modes and methods and opportunities for engagement. OK, I think that’s great sort of set up material. We’ve already hit just about the end of our time. I hope you’ll understand is the very first. Episode it’s OK that we might go a little bit over. So the introduction and chapter one, that is what I hope you will read this week. Now, in the introduction, what you’ll find is there’s a bit of an overture to the entire text, and I found that in the beginning some of the words that I latched onto in the introduction. Was about how this really is heart work. This is work in the gospel accounts here around this time of Linton’s study. That this does. Speak to Professor Levine’s heart, and she has kind of some remarks that as a Jewish woman. And herself, no matter that this Christian tradition, this Christian season of Lent speaks to her heart and reminds her of the time of atonement that happens within the Jewish liturgical tradition. The Jewish festival schedule between the time of Rosh Hashanah, which is the New Year and 10 days later. Dom Kippur, the day of Atonement, one of the most holy days on the Jewish calendar. You’ll read about how this time in the Linton Christian liturgical calendar connects for Professor Levine with the festival seasons of Yom Kippur of Rosh Hashanah of this holy time of atonement. And so that’s, I think, really interesting to latch on in this kind of overture information in the introduction this time of atonement and reflection. And you’ll find when we reach the end of the study, the things that I took away. And I’ve read this book a few Times Now because this is my second year offering this study in particular. That some of the things that I walked away with after reading this text this year. Is in the conclusion I felt connected to a fulfillment to an acceptance to Shalom, which is really a kind. Of a a. Full satisfying completion of ideas within the Hebrew tradition, Shalom and fullness, and another Hebrew idea of Chesed which is loving. Kindness, Shalom Behas said. That the headset is this kind of loving kindness that is not merely being polite or being courteous or being kind, but a deep resonating sense of. Full loving kindness. And I think that Shalom and that hessan they work together to complete an individual. And so we find in the introduction the kind of passionate. Art work and atonement that lint the Linton season provides those who practice in some of the rituals and you’ll find at the end of the study, maybe you yourself feel more fulfilled more whole that you’re identifying with some loving kindness that is within. Do I think that is the work that I want to do together to build us toward that over the next six weeks? The Bible is literature and the the literature of the Bible means that we have to read closely. So in chapter one you will find that the close reading that’s savoring each gospel account on its own. Is really important to Professor Levine and it should be important to us as well. So the literature of the Bible. People demands close reading in the same way that you would closely read any other literature that may be on your night stand or your bookshelf. But with even more urgency and more deep connection to the thousands of years of history that stand behind the text, the authorship of the Bible unfolded. Over 850 years of storytelling of. Law codes of genealogies of beautiful songs of deeply meaningful poetry that is the enriching. Content behind the Hebrew Bible and the Greek scriptures. So we must read closely, and we must take seriously that we are connecting ourselves to thousands of years to generations of our ancestors. And so I hope you feel that as you engage chapter one now the festival season of Passover. Pesach this is a a Jewish festival of liberation, of celebrating liberation from enslavement. The story here is from the exodus, when the Hebrew people were enslaved in. As great literature, this does not need to be factually true for it to be true in our lives, that each of us can find opportunities to celebrate liberation and to work toward liberation in fact. I even said that the liberation of the Jewish people and Christian spaces is one of my primary objectives when I answer why I do this work. And so the backdrop of liberation, the backdrop of freedom, celebrating that freedom is the practical backdrop for the Lenten season. And for Holy Week. As we work towards. Jesus execution by Rome at Jesus crucifixion and so you’ll learn some about Passover as the backdrop. Now we talk about the liberation from enslavement in Egypt, and that is a story of myth for which there is not much archaeological evidence to support, but where we do have significant. Extra biblical evidence. To support this liberation, the themes of liberation is that during Holy Week, this practical backdrop to the Linton story that there is Roman occupied Israel, Roman occupied Judea, or Roman occupied Jerusalem, that the the idea of a Freedom festival. Would be risky. In a Roman occupied Jerusalem, and that does connect to the Passover festival of liberation. All of these themes will show up for you in the first chapter, and so I hope that you read that closely as we’re reading all of our material quite closely. So what else should we read in the introduction and chapter one? Well, I think you will find already that your understanding of this season may be enriched. Whether you’ve known about this season your whole life, or if you’re just encountering these things for the first time, I hope that you will find a real sense of enrichment through reading the text and that you will. Lead to your own meaning, making for this very holy and important time, both in the Christian liturgical calendar and in Pesach in the in the Hebrew festival calendar as well. Perhaps the the sound of Jose. Nana, perhaps the sound of palm branches being waved. If you were raised within a Christian tradition, Hosanna and the the Palm branches being waved or laid down on the way towards the altar. Maybe this is familiar imagery for you. Well, you’ll understand that palm branches only feature in one gospel account. That will be surprising to you. You will find that Hosanna was not a new word developed by the Jesus Community. Rather, Hosanna comes from the Psalms that many Hebrew or Jewish or Judean people that they would sing those psalms on the way. Towards a worship at the temple. So this ancient kind of Psalm tradition of singing songs together as the corporate body is moving to worship at the temple that Hosanna is familiar to the ancient Hebrew community. And here we see the gospel tradition connecting that ancient. Hebrew Psalm to Jesus. Entry into Jerusalem. Some of the things to watch out for in the introduction and chapter one that you will be reading now. I want to make one final point before closing out this very first podcast episode and the final point that I want to make. Is that Jesus indeed was on death row that Roman capital punishment was the cross that Jesus death was state sanctioned execution, and that by you, quote, UN quote carrying your cross, picking up your cross, following Jesus. If that is your religious. Identity if you are following the values that you read from the gospel accounts, that makes you an accomplice, that you are an accomplice to a capital crime that by following Jesus there is tremendous risk. And so I hope that’s. Other shocking and compelling invitation to take seriously your engagement with this study and with this season and so with 30 minutes, I’ll leave you for the first podcast episode. Happy reading. I’ll be back with you Wednesday with a chat prompt.