Humanistic Torah Podcast – Episode 2
Hosted by James M. Branum
HumanisticTorah.org
Episode for the Jewish week ending on September 19, 2025/27 Elul, 5786
In this episode:
1. Some thoughts about Rosh Hashanah for those who have complicated/conflicted feelings about the holiday.
2. Discussion of the writings of Shalom Auslander
3. Some thoughts on guests we hope to have on the program in the future, as well as our new policy about bleeping bad words to make this podcast “radio-ready.”
4. Excerpts from some of my favorite songs for the season of Rosh Hashanah (or listen to the full playlist here on Youtube)
5. A D’var Torah on Nitzavim, from an unbound humanistic perspective
Comments/Feedback: hello (at) HumanisticTorah (dot) org
A computer-generated transcript (which may have some errors) of this episode is also available below:
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to episode number two of the humanistic Torah Podcast. I’m James M Branum, and this is episode number two, and in our first segment today, I’ll be sharing a little bit about the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, but particularly giving some thoughts for those of us who have complicated feelings about this holiday. So if that describes you, listen to our first segment.
In our second segment, I’m gonna be discussing my Elul reading in particular. I’m gonna be talking about the writings of a rather interesting author, to say the least. The author’s name is Shalom Auslander, and I’ll be talking about him in the second segment.
Then for our third segment, I’m going to be sharing some excerpts of some of my favorite Rosh Hashanah songs. I won’t be sharing the whole songs. We don’t get in trouble the copyright police or anything, but what I’ll be doing is sharing little bitty excerpts. But I’ll also be sharing a link to a special playlist of YouTube tracks that have these songs in them, and some of them are a little bit older, some the renewer, but there are a lot of fun, some kind of silly, but I don’t know it’s I enjoyed it. So anyway, that’ll be a third segment.
Finally, in our last segment. We’ll be looking at this week’s Torah portion, giving a little bit of a humanistic take a D’var on these texts. So stay tuned.
(MUSIC TRANSITION)
So Rosh Hashanah and I would expand this to say, really the High Holidays in general. A lot of us do have very complicated feelings about these holidays, a mix of good memories and also some challenges, especially sometimes with either past memories associated with religious holidays or with some of the tones and ideas expressed in the high holiday liturgies. If this describes you, don’t feel alone, because I’m one of those people that have complicated feelings about the holidays
Now positively, Rosh Hashanah in particular, I do like a great deal. It has a lot of special significance to my family, because it played a role in my family being drawn to Judaism in the first place. By the way, we are converts, as I’ve talked about in episode one. Go back and listen, if you want to hear our story on that. But Rosh Hashanah actually was our entry point into Judaism. So for that reason, I have a lot of affection towards the holiday. I also really enjoy the shofar. I was a trumpet player when I was young, and so it really taps into that. And I love the shofar. I like the food traditions, the eating apples with honey and things like that. And of course, I also, because of covid years falling during several of my formative years of becoming Jewish. I also have a lot of fond feelings about outdoor stuff for Rosh Hashanah. And again, I think about especially during 2020, and 2021, we did a whole lot of Rosh Hashanah stuff outside, and it was lovely. I mean, the weather’s so nice in Oklahoma, often that time of year, just a lovely time to be outdoors. So there’s a lot of good things.
And of course, there’s, of course, the biggie, which is Rosh Hashanah being the beginning of a new year, the head of the year, quite literally, a time when we can make aspirations that we can make new intentions of where we want things to be different. And of course, the power of repentance is really embedded in this holiday, and that’s often a very good thing. So that’s the good stuff.
And I really want to begin there before I turn. And in the turning there’s also some hard stuff, and I’ve heard and I think maybe this is primarily something that often, people who grew up in fundamentalist religious traditions often deal with the most, but the baggage of these holidays, particularly as far as the liturgy, can be pretty triggering for folks who’ve had a fundamentalist upbringing and a recovering from it. I can’t speak to those who grew up with a fundamentalist Jewish upbringing, but I can speak as a recovering former fundamentalist Christian, and that is that I grew up with this continual sense of fear and dread of whether I could ever be really good enough in the eyes of God, I participated in a tradition that believed that you could lose your salvation if you hadn’t truly repented. And so I was continually in fear that especially, especially as I knew I would do the same bad things tomorrow, most likely the worst things you can do at 11, 12, years old. But. Nevertheless, I had this realization that I would never be perfect, and hence, could I ever say I really repented, and could I ever be saved? It was a dreadful way to be. And so every week we’d have these invitations. Sometimes in other traditions, they call them altar calls, where the guilt and shame and guilt and shame were piled on top to get you to make some decision to change your life, and there was just fear that you’re never enough. And so for me, many of the themes of the High Holidays touch on very similar ideas, and particularly in metaphorical language, to talk about the doors of the Mercy being open for a time, but then they’re going to close, and the book of life being sealed. And for me, it just stirs up a lot of stuff.
And so what do you do? For me again, the high holiday services and experiences of them are this weird mix of enjoyment and discomfort. It’s both, and particularly it deals the liturgy until fairly recently, I had one out, which was I didn’t go to all the services. I chose a few to go to, but I didn’t go to the whole day of services that my reform temple offered. Now I will mention my humanistic community we’re part of. We usually only have one service for each of the holidays, so that’s a lot easier. But the multiple services of the Reform services at the temple . . . I tended to not go to all of them. And again, it was really because of the liturgy. A lot of the liturgy, while having its good moments, also was triggering in some other ways. But now I sing in the choir, and which is wonderful, by the way, I enjoy singing in the choir a lot. It’s a great joy.
And again, even though I don’t believe literally all those words, I’m a humanist, and so theistic liturgy, I see it as metaphor. So when I sing I sing those songs, I sing them fully, as full hearted as I can, but from a place of recognizing as metaphor, not descriptions of actual reality. So anyway, this year, I’m going to almost all of the services, because the choir is going to be at those services. And so I think one of the things I’m going to do is to try to be intentional as possible about remembering the good parts of the holiday, seeking to connect with those pieces of it, but also to remember as a humanistic, unbound Jew, I am free to opt out, and whether that means not going to the service, and again this year, probably can’t do that because of being in the choir, but that’s always, that’s still always an option, but also it can mean just choosing to engage with it on my own terms, which might mean there’s some of the services I may really participate in and really intellectually engage with, and others of them, I might read a book. I might be in a different space, and that’s okay. I think that we all have power of how we can we all have choices about how we engage with these holidays. We’re not stuck with doing it one way.
Now, I do have friends for whom religious trauma is so deep, anything even closely connected with that trauma they can’t do and so if that’s you, then don’t worry. Don’t go. Seriously. Skip Rosh Hashanah. Skip Yom Kippur. It’s not the end of the world. In fact, it’s my belief that for Jews who might go to services only a few times a year. I personally wish they would skip Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I think that would they get a lot more out of would be going to regular Shabbat services more than anything else, and maybe Passover. But if you did Passover and some Shabbat services, you’re getting a lot more fuller rich review of what Judaism about than what you would get from the high holiday services, which, to be frank, for most progressive Jews. And I’m not just talking about humanistic Jews, I’m also talking about most reform, renewal and reconstructing Jews.
For Jews in these traditions, the theology of the high holiday prayer books is not the same theology as the Shabbat prayer books. I personally have a lot more resonance with the Shabbat prayer books, but the high holiday prayer books, they reflect an image of the Divine that does not reflect mine. And even from the standpoint of metaphor, I find it really hard to get there.
And so anyway, my my argument is, is that if the High Holidays wig you out, then don’t worry about it. You can skip it. I’m giving you permission, to the extent that my lay dispensation of indulgences works. You – please feel free to skip it. Seriously, because, there’s no reason to put yourself through grief, grief over a holiday that that is your choice to participate in.
I do think, by the way, the holidays are meaningful and for myself, are worth participating in, even when they make me uncomfortable. But I but the same time, we all got in our own boundaries and know what’s right for us.
So anyway, those are a few thoughts on Rosh Hashanah for this year.
(MUSIC TRANSITION)
Well, next I wanted to talk about an author that I’ve been reading this month of the law. And I discovered this author years ago by way of a used bookstore when I picked up his book beware. I believe, let me double check that. Believe it’s called Beware of God. But yes, beware of God’s stories in 2005 that book was fascinating and disturbing in the whole enchilada. It was really provocative work. One of the main themes that comes up in Shalom Austlander’sbook beware of God is that very often God in the story is the villain, not the hero, and reading it again makes you know, times made me feel uncomfortable, but at other times it really made me think, and made me really question some of the interpretations we give to the biblical stories, and do they really reflect our highest values? So anyway, I that book grabbed me.
So then I went, I’ve more recently, have read two of his memoirs. One of them is called Foreskin’s Lament: a memoir. And the second one is Feh: a memoir. By the way, a fair is spelled F E H. It’s a Yiddish word that, depending on how you interpret it. I’ve heard it. I’m going to just double check this actually, because why not? Let’s see what the experts at Wiktionary say. So they define it as in Yiddish, it is an expression of disgust or contempt. And so, well, you know what that is actually in English, so let’s look at it from Yiddish.
So okay, so according to dictionary, it means Ugh, ooh, ick, gross, or boo. So not great. So those were two, two, memoirs, and let me just be upfront with you. They are dark, dark, dark, dark, dark. You imagine the darker room of your house with in the middle of the night, with all the lights out. You want to get darker… that’s when you begin to approach Auslander’s work. It is dark. But also it is, well, I’ll give you a little taste of a couple of elements of what he does. Again, you really need to read his stuff to get it. But his basic argument is, is that he actually, throughout his books, to some extent, seems to believe in God, but does not believe that God is a good force in his life, that believes that God primarily is looking to kill people because Mitzvot were broken. And he got this, by the way, at times, from his parents, but also from his schooling. He went to traditional orthodox schools. And I shouldn’t say just orthodox schools. These were more in the ultra orthodox side of things. So this phenomenon you see in New York and some other places where the students get a very small amount of secular education. The rest of the day is spent in religious education. So in that context, that’s where he grew up, and very abusive situation, both physically abusive, verbally abusive, and so he internalized some really toxic ideas about God.
And so that led to some interesting conclusions, such as, when dealing with his frustrations with his alcoholic, abusive father, he heard someone say that until you hit the bar mitzvah age, your sins… a child’s sins, a son’s sins are imputed upon the Father. And so he realized the best way he could get rid of his father is if he could break as many mitzvos as possible before he turned 13. Wow. It’s logical, but it shows the, my opinion, the folly of fundamentalist thinking. These kinds of ideas are just out there.
So anyway, throughout his life, his memoirs deal with this trauma and his pushing back in various ways. He went through one phase, for instance, where he was as a teenager, he was secretly eating Treyf food, going – un-kosher food, in other words, going to fast food restaurants and eating in shame and yet feeling compulsively drawn to do this, but then at times being compul, compulsively compelled to follow mitzvah to the nth degree, even when he didn’t believe it was a good idea, because he was afraid that God would kill a loved one, or, in one case, that God would hurt the success of his favorite hockey team.
It’s hysterical, it’s hilarious, but it’s also dark, and it’s very real. A lot of the ideas and thoughts he had, boy, I related to them, I had some of those same kinds of thinking at that at that age. I mean, this is what fundamentalism does to you. And so anyway, I highly recommend his stuff.
I will say, though, if you’re offended by bad words, you don’t, this won’t be for you. You know, he’s, he’s, and he’s, he’s pretty explicit and talking about some things, I don’t think in any way, an abusive way, except maybe towards God himself. He is not, he’s not, he’s not a member of the god fan club. So make with that what you will. But I personally have found Shalom Auslander’s books to be really insightful and also oddly reassuring to know that when I feel things are bleak, there’s one guy out there who’s going to always see it bleaker. So anyway, the author’s name is Shalom Auslander.
(MUSIC TRANSITION)
By the way, before we go on, I wanted to mention a little bit about some some of the feedback we got from our listeners from our first episode last week, is the conversations we’ve had with people about the episode more generally. And I do think there’s a few things we are going to be committing to in the future. And wanted to let y’all know just kind of know what to expect. One is we are going to be going with a 30 minute format for this show. And the reason for this is is that we want to make this a radio friendly program. There’s a lot of community radio stations around the country who are not able to afford the programming they previously aired due to losing their CPB, Corporation public broadcasting, grants, and so many of these stations be looking for free content, and so we’re creating these podcasts that we will be releasing information soon on our website about this at humanistictorah.org but we will be providing these episodes licensed in such a way that community radio stations Can air them, but that means we have to stick to a 30 minute format that will be a little bit limiting, sometimes, particularly for interview segments, but also the same time, hoping that maybe 30 minutes is easier to fit into a week, maybe than a full hour program. Also, personally, I’m an avid, avid listener of the Judaism Unbound podcast, and that’s an hour long already, and so I’m expecting a lot of y’all hoping you’re listening to their podcast too, because it’s that good. So anyway, I think this podcast, Humanistic Torah, it’s gonna be a 30 minute podcast also, because we’re doing it radio friendly, that means we can’t have bad words in the podcast. In other words, all those nice, dirty words that George Carlin did the sketch about? We can’t use those words on the show, so I don’t want to censor people at the same time quickly for interviews. So what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be using the bleep button. And so my hope is that maybe everyone will still get the idea. But also my hope is maybe it can be a little bit funny. Jon Stewart, he made a lot of hay with the his bleeping bleep button, and so I’m hoping to do the same.
So if you’re coming on as a guest to the show, don’t worry. Curse all you like, but know that you will be bleeped.
Finally, while I’m thinking about also, should mention that we, I am looking for people to be interviewed for this show what the format of the interviews will look like is usually be a 20 minute interview. So because we have some other content in each episode, this is a magazine format. We normally have about 10 minutes. It’s other stuff, which means about 20 minutes is left for the interview. But I’m really wanting to cast a wide net of who could be interviewed, and so I’m going to share some categories of folks I would love to talk to, and I suspect some of you listening might be in one of these categories. So if you hear this and say, Oh yeah, that’s me and I’d like to do it, or if you know someone else who would please be in touch, send me an email at Hello at humanistic torah.org So who are these people I would like to interview.
Number one, interesting people doing interesting things in the Jewish world. In other words, creative, innovative things, startup projects, things like that would love, and especially projects that may not have received previous attention in the media in a big way. Yet I would love to talk to projects like that, in part because I want to amplify projects like that.
I definitely want to talk to Jewish peace activists of all kinds.
I also would be very interested in talking to converts to Judaism, either people who have recently converted, or people who may have done so in the past. And really, I’m open to conversations with folks in any movement, but I’m especially interested in folks who converted due to humanistic movements, because I do think our experience is somewhat different sometimes in converts and other movements. So would love to interview you if you fall into any of those categories, and over time, there’ll be a lot of other conversations we’re hoping to have, but for now, those are some of the folks I’m wanting to talk to. So if you fall into one of those categories, would like to be interviewed for about 20 minutes or so, shoot me an email at Hello at humanistic Torah, dot, O, R, G.
So for our music segment, I’m going to be sharing some excerpts of some songs, either on the theme of Rosh Hashanah, or at least related to themes of Rosh Hashanah, themes of liberation and new starts. And so all of these songs you can hear in their full length by going to YouTube playlist we’ve created for this, for the for these songs, you can find on the show notes to this episode for humanistic Torah podcast episode number two, just go to humanistic torah.org so the songs you’re hearing some excerpts from now are include some from Six 13 and the Maccabeats, both of them are Jewish acapella singing groups.
We also have a track by the Jewish Treats, which was a video made, oh, I think about 15 or so years ago, actually includes some Broadway talent singing and dancing, and it’s just a really, a fun, fun video. After that, we also have “dip your apple” from the Ein Prat Fountainheads a singing group out of a college singing group from the State of Israel. And finally, have a couple of tracks that are not directly Rosh Hashanah related, but are hit on so many themes I think are inherent to this holiday. This includes the “March of the jobless Corps” by Daniel Kahn and the painted bird. And finally, a song that I think all humanistic dudes would resonate with, the song aforkism (heretics), by the band The Klezmatics. By the way, if you’ve never seen this video, go to YouTube right now. Pull it up, you will not regret it. It is just such a delightful little song.
So anyway, look for our playlist. You want to hear all the songs, and also, I plan to be doing more of these kinds of playlists. And so just encourage you, if you have some music you think we should play in the future on one of these playlists, and to do an excerpt from on the on the show, please send me an email. Hello at humanistic Torah, dot O, R, G,
for D’var Torah. For this week, we are looking at the Torah Portion Nitzvayim, which begins in Deuteronomy, 29 verse nine. And the part that I’m finding the most interesting is pretty early on in the Torah portion. And so I’m gonna go ahead and read this. And by the way, I’m reading from the contemporary Torah translation, which comes from the Jewish Publication Society. So starting in 29 verse nine,
You stand this day, all of you before your God. Yod, hey. Vav, Hey, your tribe, you tribal heads, you elders and you officials, all the men of Israel, you children, you women, even the stranger within your camp, from wood chopper to water drawer to enter into the covenant of your God, yod heh vav heh, which your God, yod heh vav heh, is concluding with you this day with its sanctions, in order to establish you this day as God’s people, in order to be your God has promised you And is sworn to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I make this covenant with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with you this day before our God. Yod, hey. Vav, Hey, and with those who are not with us here this day.
So let’s talk about this. The Book of Deuteronomy, of course, is in many ways, a retelling of the story, and a kind of a restatement of the covenant that the the Israelite people are entering into with their God.
Now, obviously, as a humanistic as a humanistic Jew, I engage with this text differently. I don’t believe that there is a deity who intervenes in human history. And so there’s elements of the story I don’t believe happened the way that it’s being told. I see this as sacred mythology, and yet, I also see it as sacred mythology that is rooted in a very specific historical and cultural context.
And especially, there’s one other element of this text that is particularly important, which is to say that in the ancient world, the boundary lines between the secular and the religious were pretty much nonexistent in most contexts. And so while this is being framed as being a religious text, religious obligations, dealing with the relationship of God and the Israelites. In reality, this is also really speaking about the beginnings of a civil law tradition. Its speaking about this language of covenant is particularly significant because it is rooted in the form of the covenants of the ancient world between kings and their subjects, a set of mutual obligations. Obviously, one party, the king, has a whole lot more power in this relationship. And yet, because this is a legal contract, a legal covenant. There are responsibilities that the king, still owes to the people, and so that’s the framework of this covenant. And that’s the framework of this text.
Now what’s interesting, though, is if you look at beginning and it’s being addressed to all of the people, starting with the leaders, the tribal heads, you elders, you officials. Then, then it moves to all of the men of Israel, then the children and the women, and finally, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer.
And so let’s — I’m going to now look real briefly at the JPS Torah commentary on this text, because they have some pretty insightful things to say here. So from the JPS Torah commentary, it says, “The Stranger within your camp, , is the resident alien. (See comment to 1:16) While not Israelites, resident aliens are subject to the civil law and certain religious prohibitions enjoy particular rights and are permitted to participate in certain religious celebrations. For this reason, they too take part in the covenant ceremony and must hear the teaching read. “
Then on down, it says, “from wood chopper to water drawer. Since all categories of Israelites have already been listed, this phrase must refer to aliens who served as menial labor, laborers. According to Joshua 9:21, and 23 and 27 the Gibeonites were later assigned these tasks. The wording from wood chopper to water draw means that other types of menial laborers are also included, such as washermen, gardeners and straw collectors, who are often associated with these two in ancient Near East, Eastern text.
So why is this important? Well, I think it’s important because, specifically the moment of history where you’re living at here, I live here in the United States. We right now live in a country where the rights of resident aliens, people who live here, people who do work of all kinds, from the technical to the professional to to to the menial as it’s (I’m not a fan of that word for a lot of reasons), but blue collar work, there’s so many tasks being done by immigrants in our society, and unfortunately, we as a society are breaking our end of the deal. The biblical text here, I think, is envisioning a framework where that resident aliens are part of society and enjoy certain protections because they are part of the society, even though they are not full citizens, yet they still have rights.
And that, to me, is a take home message of this text. And again, we’re talking 1000s of years ago. We’re talking about massive gulfs of differences of understanding about culture and society and so many other ways. And yet this ancient text is telling us something that, least my society here in the United States, is failing it miserably, which is ensuring that everyone, including the resident aliens, are protected by the law, are given those basic protections that everybody needs, and so that’s my D’var Torah for today, is to say that we can learn from this ancient text. And one of those things is to say Everyone Counts, including the resident alien.
And that wraps it up for this week of the humanistic Torah podcast, I really would love to hear from you. Please send me an email. Hello at humanistic torah.org look for us on Facebook, and starting in the next few days, you can start finding this podcast and all of your favorite podcasting programs. Also do us a big favor. Please share this on social media. Give it a five star rating on any of your favorite programs to wait for us to get the word out about this podcast and the work that we hope to be doing in sharing and exploring the world of humanistic Torah until next time Shalom. You.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download