Shalom, everyone and welcome to episode 30 of the light lab podcast. My name is Eliana, coming to you so, so excited that we've reached this milestone and very excited to share this interview with you today that we conducted back at Passover. But before we jump into that, I just want to remind you at the top of the show that show notes are available, just click the link wherever you are listening to this now, we make sure to make the show notes very detailed so that you can dive deeper into all of the texts and the music and the liturgy and the organizations that we mentioned in every show. We work really hard on those, and we hope that it can enhance your learning with the podcast. We also have full transcripts that are searchable. So if there's a part that you want to remember, you want to remember a quote or you want to share it with someone who would rather read then listen, that is an option for you as well. Both of those can be found wherever you are listening to this podcast right now. So it's August. It's a long time since Passover, but for the past many many years, at least seven though I can't totally remember. I have had the absolute honor of spending Pesach at Camp Ramah Darom. Ramah Darom is two hours north of Atlanta in beautiful Clayton, Georgia in the mountains. It's the camp that I grew up at, and it functions also as a retreat center year round. And their Pessach retreat, my friends, is just an absolute delight and a privilege. Imagine all sorts of Jews coming together to learn and study and sing and pray. Plus, you don't have to clean or cook for Passover. It's really quite a joy. And one of the joys is the amazing teachers that are there. And so today I'm sharing an interview that we did live from Ramah Darom with Rabbi Shai Held and Maharat Rori Picker Nesis. Rabbi Shai held is president and dean at the Hadar Institute, Hadar, he's taught both theology and Halacha at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and also served as Director of Education at Harvard Hillel. He's a 2011 recipient of the prestigious Covenant Award for Excellence in Jewish education. He has been named multiple times to Newsweek's list of the 50 most influential rabbis in America. His first book, Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Call of Transcendence, was published by Indiana University Press in 2018. The heart of Torah a collection of essays on the Torah in two volumes, was published by JPS and 2017, both on my shelf both amazing reads, and his next book Judaism is About Love will be published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux in 2023.
Already excited for that, but perhaps Rabbi Shai Held is most known for providing the interstitials on my album songs about G?d, which also came from an interview that we did at camp. Such an amazing joy to talk to Rabbi Shai Held and also it's a double interview, my friend so so grateful to also chat with my friend Maharat Picker Neiss. She's the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis. Prior to that she was the director of programming education and community engagement at Beis Abraham congregation, a modern Orthodox Jewish synagogue and University City, Missouri. She is one of the first graduates of Yeshivat Maharat, a pioneering institution training Orthodox Jewish women to be spiritual leaders and halachic Jewish legal authorities. She previously served as acting executive director for Religions for Peace USA, program coordinator for the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, Assistant Director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee and Secretariat for the International Jewish Committee on interreligious consultations, the formal Jewish representative and international inter religious dialogue. Rori is the co chair of the North American Interfaith Youth Network of Religions for Peace, a klal Rabbis Without Borders fellow and C0- editor of Interactive Faith, the essential inter religious community building handbook. What an incredible joy it was to spend Passover with Rabbi Held and Maharat Picker Neiss, or as you will hear me refer to them Shai and Rori, to spend Passover with them, two people who were kind of surprised that I asked them to talk about T'fillah We'll get more into that in this episode. I want to give a big thank you to Eliana Leader and Rachel Herman, who make the Passover retreat possible. And Rabbi Abe Friedman, another amazing friend and teacher who figured out how to get the technology to work so that we could record it and bring it to you. So without further ado, here is my interview with Rabbi Shai Held and Maharat Rori Picker Neiss, live from Ramah Darom.