Shalom, shalom everyone! Welcome to the Light Lab Podcast! Eliana Light here back with another episode focused on T'fillah, prayer and liturgy where we hold the gems of our liturgy up to the light and see what shines through and play with prayer. So glad to have you join us. I hope your winter has been meaningful, I hope that any holidays you might have celebrated have been fabulous, and that there has been light and joy in your life. Hopefully, this podcast can be just a little bit of sprinkle of a bit of that light and joy. Today, my friends, I'm very excited to present an interview with Rabbi Reuven Kimmelman, or as I came to know him first, Professor Kimmelman. Rabbi Kimmelman is a professor of classical Judaica at Brandeis University. And that's where I met him. It was my first semester of college and I signed up to take a course on liturgy. I always loved leading to the last leading services. It started because I just really liked singing and being in front of people as wonderful diva-ish child. And then I grew to love the community feeling and the singing together aspect. But it was in Professor Rabbi Coleman's liturgy course that I began to fall in love with liturgy, as an art form, seeing its poetry, and thinking about the choices that a person made in crafting the liturgy .Taking language and ideas from Tanach, from the Jewish Bible, and other sacred texts, and creating these new beautiful poetic forms. And seeing the Siddur as something that again, people put together with meaning, with intention and with choice. So I was beyond thrilled that Rabbi Kimmelman agreed to be interviewed for the podcast. But beyond that, and I'll say a little bit more of this about at the end of the episode, he will be teaching a class through the Light Lab that you are welcome to sign up for. It's a three part course, technically six, but I'll explain what that means. A three part course on the three paragraphs and parts of the Shema, one of the central prayers and pieces of liturgy of the Jewish heritage that comes from our sacred texts from the Torah. And he, I mean, it's really like if you listen to this episode, you'll hear so many different source texts and connections. He has it all, really one of the foremost liturgists of our time. So I'm so excited for these classes. On January 25, February 1, and February 8, Rabbi Kimmelman will be teaching from 3-4 Eastern Standard Time. And then the days after that on those Thursdays, January 26 to February 2, February 9, at 7pm, I will be doing a deep dive, which is a Light Lab mode of exploration into pieces of liturgy, where we do hevruta, partnered study. We look at very particular questions, we sing through or chant through different pieces of the prayer to move it through us, and then we respond in our own way. More information about all of that, including links to sign up and share can be found in the description of this very episode. But for now, I'll just tell you a little bit more about Rabbi Kimmelman before we start our episode. Like we mentioned before, Rabbi Kimmelman is a professor at Brandeis University. He's also the Rabbi of Beth Abraham, New England Sephardic Congregation of New England. He specializes in the history of classical Judaism with a focus on the history and poetics of the Jewish liturgy. His forthcoming book is the Rhetoric of Jewish Prayer, a historical and literary commentary on the daily prayer book. I am so excited for that book. Oh my goodness. His other book is the Mystical Meaning of Lecha Dodi and Kabbalat Shabbat. Professor Kimmelman's other writings focused on the literary meaning of the Bible, the interaction between Judaism and Christianity, the ethics of conflict and war, and his mentor, Abraham Joshua Heschel. We are so so honored to be joined today by Rabbi Kimmelman.