Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D.
Host of Hashivenu
The first woman rabbi to head a Jewish congregational union and a Jewish seminary, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D., became president of the organization now known as Reconstructing Judaism in 2014. Since then, she has drawn on her training as a rabbi and historian to be the Reconstructionist movement’s leading voice in the public square.
Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D. has hosted 29 Episodes.
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S2 Ep. 7: Discernment and Renewal at the High Holidays
September 20th, 2019 | Season 2 | 24 mins 52 secs
The holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur call us to deeply individual reflection while embedded and connected with community, and to a humility that nevertheless acknowledges that our choices matter. We speak with Rabbi Barbara Penzner about the spiritual dynamics of the High Holiday days, and their power to help us find discernment, connection and renewal.
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S2 Ep. 6: Portraits of Resilience
September 11th, 2019 | Season 2 | 29 mins 53 secs
Daniel Jackson is an MIT professor and award-winning photographer who edited an extraordinary collection: Portraits of Resilience pairs images and first-person accounts of MIT community members who have struggled with mental health issues. We dig deeply into Judaism's powerful psychological and spiritual resources for resilience, particularly for those grappling with the isolation and shame that can come with depression.
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S2 Ep. 5: Raising Our Voices
August 2nd, 2019 | Season 2 | 29 mins 57 secs
Dr. Koach Frazier is an audiologist, an activist, a rabbinical student and a powerful musician. We speak about singing and drumming, and explore how music can support us, uplift us, and lead us to transformation personally and collectively.
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S2 Ep. 4: The Spiritual Activist
July 1st, 2019 | Season 2 | 30 mins 53 secs
Claudia Horwitz's life's work has focused on integrating spiritual practice with the work of social change. In this conversation, she shares the strains that social justice work can inflict on activists, and articulates the importance of deep inner work in anchoring and sustaining individuals and groups in their work of tikkun olam.
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S2 Ep. 3: Changing the World from the Inside Out
June 11th, 2019 | Season 2 | 32 mins 18 secs
This compelling conversation with Rabbi David Jaffe explores the essential relationship between the pursuit of justice and the spiritual growth that comes from self-knowledge. We discuss his personal experiences of moral and spiritual awakening, as well as the tension between experiencing the brokenness of the world and opening ourselves to the unity of all creation.
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S2 Ep. 2: Love Received, Love Extended
April 28th, 2019 | Season 2 | 29 mins 22 secs
This wide-ranging conversation with noted teacher of spirituality Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg begins by recounting the influences that led her toward integrating meditation and yoga into Jewish spirituality. She then digs deeply into the essential interplay between spiritual experience (love received) and spiritually-rooted justice (love extended not only to neighbors, but to strangers, even in the face of trauma and fear.) We conclude by discussing of the transformative practice of spiritual direction.
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S2 Ep. 1: Trauma, Healing and Resilience
March 21st, 2019 | Season 2 | 30 mins 54 secs
Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg delves into her deep interest and growing expertise in the varieties of trauma and how trauma has informed Jewish experience on both the individual and the collective level. Equipped with this awareness, we then discuss ways to move beyond trauma and cultivate resilience, and how these approaches inform her development of Reset: Spiritual Practice for Social Justice Organizations.
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Episode 21: Tikkun Middot
February 4th, 2019 | Season 1 | 38 mins 3 secs
This conversation with Rabbi Marc Margolius explores the spiritual practice of Tikkun Middot, a mindfulness-based approach to cultivation of character traits.
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Episode 20: Choosing Life
December 4th, 2018 | Season 1 | 1 hr 3 mins
This special episode was recorded before a live audience at the Reconstructing Judaism convention in November 2018. I interviewed Susan Levine, an extraordinary person and a member of the Board of Governors of Reconstructing Judaism. Trigger Warning: Susan and I discussed resilience in the aftermath of a suicide attempt. Susan is wise and grounded and deeply reflective, both about her attempts to end her life, and about her decision to live with integrity and beauty afterward. We want listeners to be prepared for what's coming.
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Episode 19: Gratitude
November 8th, 2018 | Season 1 | 15 mins 3 secs
In the aftermath of the recent synagogue shooting attack in Pittsburgh, Rabbi Deborah Waxman shares a personal Jewish practice that sustains her in difficult times.
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Episode 18: Fitness
October 16th, 2018 | Season 1 | 24 mins 32 secs
What's the connection between marathon training and prayer? Can CrossFit shed light on building meaningful communities? We speak with Rabbi Jason Bonder about the intersection between fitness and spirituality.
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Episode 17: The High Holiday Season
September 6th, 2018 | Season 1 | 30 mins 16 secs
The holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur drive us to make sense of what's truly important, and sustain us as we strive to recapture those ideals. In this conversation recorded days before Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi David Teutsch and Rabbi Deborah Waxman share the meaning they find in deep themes of the High Holiday season, and reflect on their own evolving relationship with those ideas.
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Episode 16: Multifaith Encounters
July 9th, 2018 | Season 1 | 28 mins 35 secs
Multifaith dialogue has the power not just to build bridges of understanding, but to foster personal spiritual growth and transformation. We speak with Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer and Professor Sa'ed Atshan, a Palestinian Quaker Christian, about their experiences in multifaith work.
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Episode 15: Singing Together
June 4th, 2018 | Season 1 | 22 mins 31 secs
Singing together can be a profound and powerful experience. We speak with Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, an ethnomusicologist and a research professor at the music department at Tufts, about the role that music plays both in animating Jewish life and in helping us to cultivate resilience.
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Episode 14: Midrash
May 14th, 2018 | Season 1 | 22 mins 18 secs
In this episode, Rabbi Mira Wasserman and I discuss Midrash, the way ancient rabbis read scripture in new and creative ways, giving old words new life, meaning and relevance.
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Episode 13: Hebrew Poetry
May 7th, 2018 | Season 1 | 29 mins 10 secs
In this episode, I speak with Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz about modern Hebrew poetry, a recent expression of Jewish text. We talk about how modern Hebrew poets take apart traditional language and ideas and create something new from ancient building blocks.