Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Seth Price 0:08
Folks, welcome back to the show. This is the Can I Say This at Church podcast I am, as always, Seth, your host, bringing you some new content for December, I warned you. I know last week was a repeat though Austin Fischer is freaking brilliant. I really should have him come back on. Anyhow, new content today. So I'll Avi Finegold and Stephen Backhouse Steven is not new to the show, but obvious. And man, I laughed a lot in this conversation very, very much so. And I think you will, too. Slight trigger warning, you might get mad at some of these things, right? But that's okay. And if you're a patreon supporter, you heard some things beforehand. That are hilarious. And this is just a quick PSA, you should already be supporting the show. And if you do, thank you. I'm glad you're here. Thank you so much for downloading. Without any further ado, let's go.
Seth Price 1:21
Let's see. Excellent. “Recording in progress” (Zoom sound). There we go. We did it. Alright, who wants…you're not both doctors. Right? Or you both are doctors?
Avi Finegold 1:28
I'm a rabbi. He's a doctor together where Rabbi-Dr.!
Seth Price 1:34
Yeah. Can I say it that way? How can I make that work? Anyway? Here we go.
Avi Finegold 1:39
So these questions when you have a rabbi and a doctor. It's like is it Rabbi Doctor, is it doctor rabbi?
Seth Price 1:44
It is the same with Reverend when I have a reverence on like the Reverend, Dr. Pastor, preacher, Deacon Steven Backhouse, you know? Anyway, let's roll. Rabbi Avi Fine gold and Stepen Backhouse. Steven, welcome back to the show. Avi, welcome to the show for the first time.
Stephen Backhouse 2:06
Thank you!
Avi Finegold 2:07
Thank you. Yeah, hopefully not the last.
Seth Price 2:09
Yeah. No, let's do it again. We'll do it tomorrow. We won't do it tomorrow. Tomorrow's Thanksgiving. But you know what I mean?
Yeah. Welcome to the show. For those that are listening. I have no idea when this episode will release probably in the next few weeks. But we were recording the day before the United States holiday of Christmas. And I say that because Avi, you're in Canada. And I know your Thanksgiving listening was awhile ago.
Avi Finegold 2:24
Yes, Thanksgiving…
Stephen Backhouse 2:26
You said Thanksgiving or Christmas?
Avi Finegold 2:28
You said Christmas!
Seth Price 2:29
I don't even know how the internet works. Let me start again. (laughter)
We're recording this the day before Thanksgiving in the United States, which Christmas I think falls on the same for everybody, if celebrated. However, before the day before Thanksgiving, United States, which is different in the UK. I don't believe you have the “United States Thanksgiving” in the UK. And I know I have friends in Canada, and they've already had theirs. So that's kind of contextual here. Yeah. So you've been giving thanks for months now. But welcome to my Thanksgiving holiday. Avi, I appreciate you coming.
Avi Finegold 2:59
Well, you know, I spent 10 years in the US so I've done my fair share of both cooking and being at Thanksgivings.
Seth Price 3:07
You celebrate both?
Avi Finegold 3:10
I have an American wife. Look, I celebrated neither until I moved to the States. And then I realized that it was such a big deal in America to celebrate Thanksgiving, which is not a bad thing it's important. A lot fewer Canadians do the whole Thanksgiving traditions. And so I never really did it. And now we sort of like celebrate a bit on both. It's hard to celebrate Thanksgiving as an American in Canada when it's a workday and the other Americans that would love to celebrate Thanksgiving with you have a workday too. So what I might do is that Friday Night Dinner, which is our big Sabbath dinner, it's a day later, it'll be Friday night, and we actually have Americans coming for dinner and I may just make like a turkey, some stuffing and, you know, come up with the the day late and $1 Short Thanksgiving, for the Americans.
Seth Price 3:54
Well, you know, you're giving thanks for Black Friday. So I appreciate that, which I don't participate in. So, well good, well, let's start with you. Avi, since Stephens been on the show a couple of times, if you were to explain to people who and what you are kind of why you are, what would you answer to that?
Avi Finegold 4:09
I'm Avi Feingold. I am an adult educator in Montreal and online. I'm a rabbi. Without a pulpit, we tried the pulpit thing. My wife is also in the pulpit and we realized that two pulpits was not a good idea. Especially in two different congregations. It's I always joke that it's like a genetic disease, ordination. It's okay if you're a carrier you're just not supposed to marry another one. And like, you know, after a year, we were like, You know what, let me take that step back. I love adult education. It was a much bigger it was what I was doing beforehand. It's what I'm doing now and I'm much more appreciative and interested in doing that kind of work. And so that's what I do. Nowadays, a lot of it has shifted to online and podcasting and I have multiple podcasts of which one of which I'm guessing we're going to talk about today. But I have others and I like to teach I like to give over ideas. I think that ideas are at the bedrock of what we do, whether within faith communities or secular communities. And that's what I like, to disseminate big ideas, especially other people's I don't…my ideas are whatever.
Seth Price 5:19
I agree with that. My ideas are very little I would rather other people talk, Stephen, welcome back. So people should know you because I think you've been on the show at least twice. Maybe more than twice.
Stephen Backhouse 5:30
Yeah, we did a two parter while ago on nationalism and patriotism.
Seth Price 5:34
Well, that doesn't exist anymore. Stephen, you know, we fixed that right. Biden won the election! Like we're done with nationalism, absolutely. What would you want people to know, anything, anything, or we could just say, listen to the old ones. I mean, we could be lazy.
Stephen Backhouse 5:48
I sort of do a Christian version of what Avi does, which is I also don't have a pulpit. But I do spend a lot of time doing education in Christian theology, kind of in unorthodox places. So in businesses or in charities, or in churches, but places where groups don't normally have space for theology, I like to bring that in and, and teach people how to think Christianly about what they're doing. So it's usually Christian groups that bring me in. But just to think about how we use power, how we resolve conflicts, what we think about money, power, government, nationalism, patriotism. How Jesus works out in the modern world, there's a lot of that stuff that a lot of people are doing, they've started an organization or started a movement, and they, they want to find ways to connect that to the to the faith that they've got. So that's what I do. I call it Tent Theology so I bring that around and open up theology spaces there.
Seth Price 6:46
I'm not certain that I know how to think Christian(ly) when there's like, 97,000 denominations that all think differently, but that's not why y'all are here. So, um, so y'all started a podcast, which I've really enjoyed binging over the last week, I've listened to about half of your episodes, which is actually the inverse of what I usually do. I almost never listened to religious podcasts. Because I'm, I'm terrified that I will steal other people's thoughts, ideas and questions and make them my own. And I won't learn anything that way. I felt like if it doesn't come from me organically, and for the most part of selling a friend last night, the show is mostly out of my curiosity, this podcast, if I'm not curious about a topic than the show just doesn't happen. That all. I'm glad other people like to listen, but that's not the primary purpose. So you started a podcast, it's either called “hyphen” or “the hyphen”. I'm not sure…
Avi Finegold 7:38
It started with “the hyphen”, but I feel like it's kind of The Facebook, we kind of dropped “the”
Seth Price 7:43
Yeah.
Stephen Backhouse 7:45
We are following the Facebook trajectory.
Avi Finegold 7:47
Absolutely. Yeah.
Seth Price 7:49
So if you had to drill it down beyond the Facebook, which is now Meta, what what is what is more, more primal than hyphen?
Avi Finegold 8:00
Well it is the space between the notes right? So the space…exactly, there you go. And then eventually, we're going to call it “Our Space” instead of “my space”, because it's not just about me, right?
Seth Price 8:13
First episode will be named Tom. Just Tom. Yes. Exactly.
Avi Finegold 8:19
Moving further back in time to Friendster, AOL Instant Messenger,
Stephen Backhouse 8:27
Avi! Facebook is a name that's going to be available soon. So why don't we just call our podcast, the Facebook and then start from there?
Seth Price 8:33
Oh my gosh, what have I done? What have I done?
Stephen Backhouse 8:37
We better explain Seth, what it is.
Seth Price 8:40
So what is the hyphen and I joked a moment ago that, that I was talking with your with my son? And he was like, what is that we googled it, and madness ensued, and I only had like 90 seconds to talk with him. So it's not like I've had time to unpack it at all. So what is the hyphen? And how does it kind of relate to what y'all do and what you're trying to do?
Avi Finegold 8:59
Oh, who's going to take this one?
Stephen Backhouse 9:00
Oh, it's your idea Avi.
Avi Finegold 9:03
So I mean, we, I think, Hyphen came up like sort of at the end. And it came out of this idea that, you know, you know, there's no such thing as a Judeo-Christian right? That that is the word exists everywhere. But but it doesn't exist in practicality. There is no Judeo-Christians. That's just not a thing, right? There are Judeo’s, Judeans, Jews, right? And then there are Christians, and the hyphen in the middle is designed to like unite them. But in reality, it just, there's so little that actually happens in day to day life with Jews and Christians together that that hyphen might as well not exist. And we just wanted to highlight, I guess, the fact that at some point in time, it's it's important for Jews to have conversations with Christians and vice versa, not because we're trying as we say in the intro, not because we want to convert each other and God knows there are many to try from the Christian side to convert Jews. It is not about that and is not about Jews trying to say that we are right. And whatever we did is completely right, and the Christianity should just go away because it's a false religion. It's not about that either. Because we got rid of the disputations in the 12th century, right‽ Well, not really. But like we at that point, we realize they're not good ideas. But the conversations are there, and we are there.
And I guess, you know, like, the only thing that really stands after talking to Stephen for so long, the stands between us is this hyphen. It's so little, I mean, the thing that stands between us is really Zoom. Right? So we could have just called a Judeo-Zoom-Christian!
Seth Price and Stephen Backhouse 10:43
(laughter)
Seth Price 10:44
That wouldn't have worked,
Avi Finegold 10:46
No, exactly. And so that's where it's at. And that's what it highlights. And that's what it's, that's what we're trying to really do is have these conversations between the Judeo and the Christian and just talk about the similarities. And it really started at a really basic, much more prosaic, understanding of like what I wanted. I was like, you know, we were releasing our Christmas episode next week. And I had no idea what an Advent calendar was. I kept seeing them in stores, I kept, you know, passing by, I had some sort of idea of what it might be. But I really had no idea. I had no idea what happens, right, during the Eucharist in different denominations. I know that that exists. I know that there's a wafer, I know that there's wine. And like, I just wanted to know what these things were.
And I was like, if I have these questions about Christianity, I am sure that Christians have questions about Jews, right? What is the difference between the Hasids, right, that have those big black coats and the curls and all that or what is the shofar actually used for in like, you know, during Jewish services, as opposed to in Christian Services? Like what is a Passover Seder, what happens during that time?
Seth Price 11:49
The first one that I've known what you said, right there? Passover Seder, that's the first one.
Avi Finegold 11:53
Have you seen in some churches they use the ram's horn?
Seth Price 11:56
So I grew up Southern Baptist, so absolutely not. Yeah, we're not allowed to move. You sit in the pews. And you sit there till we tell you to ties, then you move?
Avi Finegold 12:07
The Hasidic community is the ultra orthodox, the ones that are likely to see the pictures of the stereotypical looking Jewish individual, which is a very small minority of Jews, the ones that have the long black coats, beards, and the curls and stuff like that, oh, who are those people? What do they do? You know, like, are they really exactly like the Amish? Or is it just the same dress? You know?
So these questions, but then we realized that like, there was much more to it than that, right? How do we read the Bible? How do we interpret the Bible together? What do each of us say about various passages? How is our respective histories affecting each other? Right? How does me not knowing as a Jew about what happened all the way up to the Council of Nicea? Right? Or during the Reformation? I should know that because that affects my existence, day to day as a Jew. Right?
My Jewish existence is affected by these Christian historical elements. And vice versa. And so those conversations have been happening and continue to happen on this podcast. And I think that that was, the goal. Two people who know not everything. If we're generalists, right, we know enough about a little about everything in our respective faiths that we can have these conversations relatively intelligently, make minimal amount of mistakes, and people can just be a fly on the wall, having, you know, hearing these things. And although we'd love to have more participation we should hear from people what they want to hear as oppose to just our ideas.
Seth Price 13:43
Those are Pandora's boxes. I did that once. I had like 90 suggestions and was like, I can't do all these. Also, half of these I’ve already done. So that tells me who's been listening. Who hasn't been, but I'm aware that most people are not like me, most people are not completionists where they will log into a show and they're like, “Oh, well, I have to go back to number one. Listen to all of them.” Which is I find deeply satisfying, but I know for most people. daunting, daunting, though, the favorite podcast to do that with is one called Behind the Bastards. If you like history, it is fantastic.
Avi Finegold 14:13
Okay, well, yeah we will check that out. Now's the time for to do it with us because we're not even like 10 episodes in and we're gonna go to 600 episodes easily.
Seth Price 14:22
Yeah. Stephen, do you agree?
Stephen Backhouse 14:27
Well, we are the Facebook now aren’t we?
Seth Price 14:29
Yeah, that's very Meta. See how we pulled it all back together there. Even the word Meta pulls it back together. Stephen, do you agree with obvious definition of the hyphen? And then I'm also curious, is the length of the hyphen differ based on the country that you're in? Because Judeo-Christian is a massive hyphen here in the United States? But I'm not certain about Canada, which you both can probably speak to nor about the UK at all. Like is it stretched and elongated or shortened depending on what political or religious posture we're trying to take?
Stephen Backhouse 14:56
I think I'm probably taking this from Avi observation actually. But I think the way a Judeo-Christian operates in reality is usually just a bunch of Christians trying to prove that they're not just a monolithic culture. So they say like, let's rope the Jews in with us to sort of stab against. It's usually like the Muslims or the atheists or something. Right. So I don't know if how genuine it is amongst Christians. I suspect Judeo-Christian is not a term that was coming up by the minority. The Jewish community is not making up Judeo-Christian it is the Christians who are using that term. And then what kind of Christians are using that term? And why? Yeah, so to me, I interrogate that term a little bit. And I wonder whether it is just trying to co opt or or obfuscate kind of what's really going on.
Seth Price 15:49
Have either of y'all dug in to the the origins of of that. It must be marketing, and there's no way it's not marketing?
Stephen Backhouse 15:56
Yeah, Avi have you have you? I don't know.
Avi Finegold 15:58
Yeah, there is actually a book, a work of philosophy, a French philosopher, Jacques Cousteau Lyotard. I'm sure, Stephen, you've heard of him? I don't know if you have Seth.
Seth Price 16:07
Nope.
Avi Finegold 16:09
I'm not trying to call names here.
Seth Price 16:12
You don't know this, Avi, but I also transcribe these episodes, I'm gonna need you to email me how to spell that word.
Avi Finegold 16:16
It’s like leotard but with a “y” at the front.. Lyotard. And he actually wrote a highly technical work of philosophy called The Hyphen. And it's a note this connection between Judeo-Christian but it's not something that anybody can and should even read it. I'm saying it's important. It's one of those like, you know, I don't know what your background is what you studied in university, but I'm sure there's a…
Seth Price 16:44
Communication. It's just, like a minor in philosophy and theology that I didn't complete either. Yeah, but I also went to Liberty University. So everything is kind of inside that.
Avi Finegold 16:57
Oh really! Wow, oh my God. Yeah, we got to talk about that.
Seth Price 16:59
Sure, lets go.
Avi Finegold 17:01
When we do our hyphen show on religious universities from the Jewish and Christian side, we can get on that? So he wrote this book, and I know that it exists, I own it. I've never read it, I probably never will. It's just this thing. But my guess is that or my sense is that you're right, that it was much more invented from the Christian side to justify, to validate, the idea of, you know, we are not just this new religion, or whatever it is, we have these deep roots. And we have these values that are, you know, and we are all encompassing. And in North America, Judeo-Christian, in theory, when the term was coined, was likely all encompassing, because the Muslim world and the Eastern traditional world was not there.
But what I was going to answer for you is that I think it depends where you stand. Because on the Christian side, if you're on the Christian side of that, your relationship to the Judeo was probably minimal to nothing. And except for in church, when you read about the Jews, and even that has no bearing on the Jews of today.
Seth Price 18:19
What do you mean?
Avi Finegold 18:20
The Jews of the Hebrew Bible and of the New Testament are not at all the Jews that are exist. I mean, they are descendants of but the practice, the faith, of Jews in the first century, and in the fifth century BCE, and post that is completely unrecognizable to the Judaism that we have today other than like, the broadest strokes of an outline of Sabbath and worship and stuff like that. They didn't have worship three times a day, and we don’t have sacrifices in the temple. Right? So we're saying that, that, if you think you know, Judaism, because you read the New Testament, and you know about the Pharisees, or you read about, you know, the Sabbath violator in the book of Numbers, you don't know Judaism today.
Seth Price 19:06
But there was a History Channel documentary every year. And I watched that, so.
Stephen Backhouse 19:10
So that’s it then!
Avi Finegold 19:13
Sure.
Stephen Backhouse 19:14
I haven't even watched that. So when, Avi had this idea. We didn't know each other.
Avi Finegold 19:18
Oh, hold on just one second! But from the Christian side, it's almost non existent. But from the Jewish side, even though very few Jews speak to Christians about Christianity, we are living in a Christian culture in North America wide, right. It's a little less of that bleed over in Canada here. But we are living in a society that is permeated with Christianity. I mean, Christmas is here. I live in Quebec, which is a formerly highly, highly, highly Catholic Province, which still has the vestiges of it, even though it is deeply secular. And when you're deeply, deeply, secular you're pushing back against something and that something is Catholicism, which means that we are still dealing with a highly, highly Christianized society. So we think about that a lot more than we think about then, you know, we don't talk to them necessarily. They're not necessarily people that we talk to about faith. But on the Jewish side, that Judeo-Christian thing is felt intimately because we are in somehow, you know, roped into this faith into this idea of what Judeo-Christian is.
Seth Price 20:21
Yeah. What were you gonna say, Stephen?
Stephen Backhouse 20:24
Well, just what he was saying about Christians just operate in a world in which they don't know, any Jewish people, or they just don't really have any context. And that was why I wanted to do this podcast with Avi because he's absolutely right. Because when I was, so that, I mean, Avi and I didn't know each other. I have lived in Montreal for a while, but we didn't know each other that. But I got this email from a friend of our mutual friend of ours out of the blue saying, I know this rabbi in Montreal that he wants to start talking to Christian theologians, and I recommend that he talked to you. And, and I just right away. Well, here's the thing. I realized I didn't really know any Jewish people. I mean, I met Jewish people, but I didn't have any friends who were Jewish. But I certainly hadn't had like, a long standing relational conversation with anyone who is Jewish.
And I also realized, like, and I don't even, I'm not even, I hadn't even noticed that I'd missed that. And it was like, oh, this is weird. Not only do I not know Jewish people, I don't even miss the fact that I don't know Jewish people. And yet, I'm spending all my time, as he said, talking about Pharisees in the New Testament, and talking about the temple practices, and Jesus cleansing the temple and the Jewish connections to Christian theology. And I thought, there's something missing in me; I need to correct this. So I was really happy to jump on that opportunity and go into this podcast with Avi. Because I was like, yeah, there's something that's not good in me and I want to fix that. And it wasn't antagonism. I don't know, it was almost like, it wasn't like I've gone out of my way to avoid talking to Jewish people. It was like, I hadn't even noticed that I wasn't talking to Jewish people. And that's not good. And so I was so happy for this to happen.
So for me, The Hyphen stands like a kind of a bridge really can be a bridge, to help me understand something that I didn't know. It's also quite fun. I don't know if Avi finds this. But like, when he asks me questions, that I then have to explain, like, oh, yeah, why is it, what is the difference between Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic?
Seth Price 22:44
(Laughs)
Massive!
Stephen Backhouse 22:45
I mean I have to describe it and that itself renews the interest in in the Christian side of things as well. So yeah, to me, that's part of this thing. It's like this hyphen is like a bridge into new worlds, and also kind of take me back to the worlds that I thought were familiar.
Seth Price 23:02
Yeah. How do you? How do you even explain, so say, that's a question, Stephen, that you're asked of Avi, how do you even explain that in an hour, because it appears the episodes are an hour because there is centuries upon centuries of difference between Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist?
Stephen Backhouse 23:18
Well, it helps that Avi knows way more about Christianity than I know about Judiasm. For all the reasons he's just said, I mean, yeah. Right, because Avi you went to a Christian didn't go to Divinity School in Chicago?
Avi Finegold 23:34
I went to the University of Chicago Divinity School, which is technically nondenominational, but has lots of Jewish scholars, lots of Christian scholars, lots of Eastern scholars, there's the Oriental Institute there. What I remember what I loved about it, and that was, that's good. You know, going back to what you're just saying, when you go into the University of Chicago Divinity School, you you fill out a questionnaire and it's like the Hyde Park Theological Colleges, you know, survey. And I'm sitting there and I'm looking through so many denominations that you're supposed to tick off which one you are, and then you get to the very end and it's like Jewish, and then “other”, right. I'm like, there's this, you know, I didn't know…but it wasn't just that it was like broken down like really fine.
Seth Price 24:22
Alliance Baptist, Central Baptist, Free Baptist, Virginia Baptist, those are just the ones in my city by the way, those all exist.
Avi Finegold 24:29
I'm more curious about that where I was like, I know broadly speaking the difference between Catholics and Protestants but I'm sometimes playing the enlightened idiot for the people listening right and and yeah, so I would first task in an hour you know what's the difference between a Catholic and Protestant to begin with, right? At a practical level at a theological level. I you know, you watch The Godfather, but you also watch plenty of Evangelicals something or others as well, broadly speaking, what are the differences between the two and then we'll save the Orthodox for another time. And then I imagine that we'll have an episode on different denominations of Protestantism, and without getting into really, really fractional, you know, bits like that. And then I think that it's about breaking it down and asking what are the questions that we can answer within the amount of time that we have. And then saving the other ones for another time?
Stephen Backhouse 25:23
I was gonna say like, and then the other part of our what we do is, I'm always interested in that kind of like, what does it feel like? Like not kind of, what is it, but almost like, what does it feel like to have Hanukkah? What does it feel like to be around, I asked me like around if you're on a Jewish person who's not observant, you know, who doesn't wear the head, the head, the skullcap. Who doesn't observe Sabbath, like, what does it feel like?
Avi Finegold 25:49
Right there for the Patreon people I showed off my kippah.
Stephen Backhouse 25:54
And so to me, like some of those questions, like, Avi is giving me this idea of like, what are all the questions you've always wanted to ask a Jewish person? And then you get say, what are all the things you always want to ask a Christian? And it's not just data and information. Some of it is like, how do you think about these people? Like what does it mean for you when you see somebody who's Jewish but not observant? And then he gets to ask me like, how do you feel when you're around crazy Trumpy charismatics, or how does it feel when you're around a high church…Roman Catholics, whatever, and there's just something kind of fun about that, that aspect as well of having that kind of ability to ask those questions.
Avi Finegold 26:33
I don't know if it's just us, but like sometimes the small, oftentimes, the small like fact based question becomes, you know, the launchpad audit naturally we are not planning these into like, larger questions that are more important than you know, what happens at X or what happens…you know, can you redo the Mass if you didn't take it properly? Like little things like that, or, or whatever it is.
Stephen Backhouse 26:59
Atonement and forgiveness stuff like that.
Avi Finegold 27:02
Yea, we end up on much bigger questions around things as a result of that.
Seth Price 27:06
Yeah. So I was what I was gonna say. And then I have a question for you, Stephen. And then Avi, I'd like your opinion as well. So you're talking about like the difference even in denomination so I was at an event on Sunday, chaperoning with some of the youth, which my son's a part of so you know, your kids in the in the youth so you your chaperone because it's one of the one of those humans is yours, you're the reason that they're there. And someone had said, “Well, you know, yeah, this minister here they had a, they had a falling out with a lot of the congregation because one of their first things once they were installed at this Presbyterian Church was that they said it's totally fine to be gay”. And I was like, “was that a thing that Presbyterians do?” And he was like “Well, they're Presbyterian USA”, to which I was like, “I don't know what that means”. And there's also a Presbyterian church next to us. They're not USA”… “no, they're not USA.”
I don't know what that means! And like I live here. It's so frustrating! Like, I don't know what that means. It's just so much, so much stuff.
Ad Break 27:58
One of these days, I'm going to figure out how to put like an ad stop in the middle of the conversation so that it's not so awkward of a pause, right? And maybe the guests can contribute. But today is not that day. But we got to do this anyway. Right? It helps to make things go, talk to you in a minute.
Seth Price 28:36
Getting to that bridge metaphor, Stephen, from the Christian side, I want to stretch that metaphor hold onto it a bit. What do you feel like is the like the monolithic structure, which is probably not a fair way to phrase the question, but I don't know a better way to do it. That is holding up that part of the hyphen? Like what is the main thing that is attaching the hyphen to the “C”?
Stephen Backhouse 28:57
I think it's this “chosen person” idea. I think it's people wrestling with that. I think it's something like that. So like the early New Testament, essentially, its whole connection, it's just it's just the New Testament is a series of footnotes to the Hebrew Bible. And it's pretty much them always trying to work out, alright, are we still connected? How are we connected to this idea of the of being chosen by God? What does this look like? What does this mean? If, if Israel is a light to the Gentiles, what does that mean? How are we a light to the Gentiles?
So, so much of the New Testament is not being set…the Imagination is not being set against Judaism. It's being written by Jews, for Jews about Jews and they think they're being Jewish. They think, like, this is what it looks like now to be a light to the Gentiles. And that has what set in motion if you think like playing pool where you line up a shot, and no matter I mean, you start the balls are really close together, but by the time they get to the end of the table, right, they can be quite far apart. And I wonder whether the starting point in the New Testament was “chosen people”, and then to see how that develops over history. And it's obviously become quite maligned and perverted in bad in lots of times in Christian history and I’m not defending that. But I do wonder whether that might be the thing that keeps bringing people sort of back, or that that's the connection and that link, that hyphen, has been tenuous, I mean, it breaks quite a lot. But I wonder whether that is the tenuous connection? What do you think, Avi? Is that fair?
Avi Finegold 30:40
From the Christian side?
Seth Price 30:41
No, from your side.
Stephen Backhouse 30:43
Just the idea of like “chosen person” might be that the idea of trying to work out what it means to be a chosen…
Avi Finegold 30:49
Well, “that and”. And we've spoken about this, and I, you know, it's not a shock, except to people who haven't necessarily thought about this at all, or a lot. It's also the justifying of the “chosen-ness” right? If you have to take the chosen this away from one people and give it to another you have to constantly be reminding yourself, right, that this is the right thing that we did. And, and that kind of automatically, like, you can't just walk away from that and sort of like, Yeah, we did it, we're done. We're the new chosen(s), who are the chosen(s)doesn't matter. We're not thinking about it, we're not talking about it, you end up constantly meaning to justify to yourself and to others. Right? Why what you did is the right decision, even though you didn't do it, right, the faith as a whole right there is that, you know, that looms so large for a lot of theologians.
And I suspect that there are theologians that would say, maybe we shouldn't have done this, maybe we aren't so chosen, but like the way in which you live your life and you justify your existence is to go and say, no, no, proudly, we chose this! We were chosen, we are the chosen, this is what it is! I suspect that's a part of it as well. But yeah, the, you know, so much of the Hebrew Bible that you have to answer for constantly and constantly, that it's there. Now from the Jewish side I think it's a quirk of history. I think that if you…
Seth Price 32:19
Chosenness is a quirk of history?
Avi Finegold 32:20
No, our bridge to the “C”
Seth Price 32:23
Yeah.
Avi Finegold 32:25
You know, if Christianity had gone and become an established tradition, but really like minor, the way that the Jains are today, or Zoroastrianism, right? The Jewish community wouldn't have wouldn't have to think about it nearly as much.Llike, yeah, there are these people that sort of did their own thing. And we don't think about them much. And you know, and that's it and you move on. But for, you know, a major strain of Jewish history, right, we broadly can divide it into people that were living in Arab-Muslim lands, and people that were living in Christian lands. You don't really have a lot of Jews that have a long, long, long history of living in lands with Eastern religions.
So broadly speaking you know, these faiths loom so large for you that you end up having to contend with it on a regular basis as being this faith that emerged out of the faith that you live in right now. And so you don't necessarily have to justify it, you're like, yeah, well, whatever. That's their thing. But it's around so often the you end up thinking about it a lot.
Now, that can happen in a good way, right? Especially in the Muslim world, right? If you look at the most one of the most famous Jewish philosophers, Maimonides, he doesn't seem to have a problem with Islam, because he says himself, oh, well, this is clearly a monotheistic faith that really believes and stuff and has a law based society very similar to ours. And so, you know, they're kind of cool, right? They have some mistakes, right? But having a false prophet, you know, is not a huge deal compared to, you know, having a, and so he'll talk all sorts of things about it are wrong. And then, but then in the, in the European/American world, right, what happens is, is that you're dealing with this other faith that is constantly thinking about you because of the aforementioned reasons. And you're living amongst them, even though you have very little contact with them you end up defining so much of who you are, right, as a negative approach to well, “we're not Christian like this”, right, because :we don't believe in three as one…we believe that one is one”. Right. So so much of your thinking ends up in contradistinction to what, right? The you know, what the dominant tradition is. And for the most part, for some reason or another, that ended up in a much more antagonistic relationship, with very few exceptions throughout history; until we get to today where we have this like real detente, this really nice way of approaching things where we're like, we can have these kinds of conversations. But we're still undoing so much of that history of, you know, “well, we're not Christian and we're not believers like this, and we don't believe in false prophets”. And so much of our thinking about our own faith ends up through the lens of other faiths, because it's so dominant. And because it's so closely connected.
Seth Price 35:17
I'm curious why…maybe there's not an answer to this, this probably isn't even an accurate question to ask. But I'm curious why the bridge was created, or the hyphen was created, to Christianity instead of Islam, or why there's not also an Islam - Christian bridge, considering they're all or unless I'm way out of character. Unless I'm way out of turn, like Abrahamic faiths, like the I worked with a guy for a long time, who we would talk about religion all the time, and he happened to be Muslim. And we would have amazing conversations. And he's like, I didn't know we had this much in common. You know what I mean? Like, I'm curious why it's just the one hyphen and why there are not more hyphens. And that may not be a question for necessarily y’all maybe, I don't know if that's a fair question.
Avi Finegold 35:56
Stephen, do you have an answer?
Stephen Backhouse 36:00
I don't know. I mean, no, not a quick answer to that. I feel that (the) Judeo-Christian label Avi and I are trying to like redeem it, or we're making the best of that word. But I do think it's been used as a weapon against others, specifically against Muslim, to be honest, so I don't know. Yeah, I don't know why we're not in a world where there's the Muslim-Christian hypen.
Avi Finegold 36:28
I mean, I do hear that term of “Abrahamic faiths” come up more often these days. I would say that, again, it's an accident of history in that if the golden age of Islam hadn't gone away, we would be dealing much more with that. And that, that the fact that the they sort of missed each other, right, the golden age of Islam, and the Enlightenment, sort of missed each other by a good couple 100 years. Whereas had they existed a lot closer together, or at the same time, you'd end up with a lot more of the blending of all of these thinkings. And the Eastern philosophy, as in terms of Arabic philosophy, would be much more of our daily culture.
And unfortunately, right because it is a deep and really, really fascinating faith tradition and philosophy, that that would be a lot more of our discussion. But instead, what happens is that the Arab world sort of retreats into the Arabian Peninsula and doesn't participate nearly as much in the Enlightenment of which we are living right now. Whereas I would suspect that if we were having this conversation in Dubai, the reverse would probably be true. I'd be having a conversation with, you know, a Muslim cleric and we'd be wondering, why aren't the Christians a bigger part of this discussion?
Seth Price 37:50
Yeah, yeah.
Stephen Backhouse 37:51
It's interesting that like of the Abrahamic faiths, right, so when the Christians get their revelation, they think they're now the ones with the latest and the best word, they go off pretty quickly. It doesn't take long before they start, like, marching with swords and shields and taking their gospel to other lands at the point of a sword. Historically, Muslims as well, the Muslim expansion through Europe and Africa was done often through a lot of violence. And, and yet, Israel didn't do that. So the Jews weren't doing that they received the revelation from God, and it didn't lead to like a violent expansion, a tribalistic expansion, across the globe. That I do wonder whether that's also quite to me, that's interesting thing that the chosenness of Israel is to suffer, whereas the chosenness for Christianity and Islam seems to try them, or they want to try them. What do you think, Avi..is that?
Avi Finegold 38:53
I mean? Yes, and no. I think that the moment of, and again, I'm not a scholar of this. I'm just a lowly reader with some hypotheticals going on in my mind. I'm like, “that's right”. And I'm like, well, Jews like to point out to the fact that that doesn't happen because we are a non proselytizing faith. Right that we stick to ourselves and we're happy with whatever and we try to push people away and there's the classic story that they give always of Ruth. Ruth the Moabite who converts to Judaism but not after she is rejected three times by her mother in law, right. And then the a convert is supposed to be rejected if somebody wants to come in, but we don't…it's too hard for you don't worry about it's not your thing, it’s don't. And I wonder whether that's just because at the moment when global domination became a thing when it became cool, right?
Seth Price 39:53
When has that not been the case?
Avi Finegold 39:55
All the kids are….well no, I'm saying like if you think about it before Rome, you didn't really have these like…you had these like territorial aspirations, yeah, these people that were trying to like push into, you know, various areas, but nobody was thinking about like, “well, we are going to be the ones and we're going to be the only ones. And we're going to have global total domination of Roman or hellenist culture” or whatever it is like and at the moment when that happens, that's the moment when the Jews are exiled. Right. That's the moment of the first major major diaspora for the Israelites in the Jews at the time. And we never really recovered from that. And that the idea of “well we're not proselytizing” is sort of like, yeah, we don't really have global aspirations. Because…because…because we couldn't. I mean there was no,
Stephen Backhouse 40:39
You make a virtue of a necessity or something. Exactly. Yeah. You know,
Avi Finegold 40:43
Exactly. Yeah. You know, and it's like, “oh, I didn't want to go to that party anyways, the kids there aren't cool, right!”
Seth Price 40:48
Don't tell anybody I wasn't invited.
Avi Finegold 40:52
Exactly. Yeah. So like, I suspect that that's part of it. And that if, you know, Jews had been actual players in this, you know, territorial thing, and we had, you know, actual territory and an ability to have skin in the game, and to have an actual ability to have a fight in this thing we might actually (have) had more nationalistic, territorial global aspirations, and it might, things might have shaken up very differently. But as a result of like, you know, this destruction of the temple and the exile we end up diasporic for such a long time. And, you know, then, as a result, you don't end up with…you always assume that you're just going to be, you know, the really smart kid in the corner that's never going to be cool and never gonna become super popular, but always have the influence. Which Jews love to have this thing, right! We love to point this out. (in another voice) “Think about how many Nobel Prize winners are Jews and think about how many you know this, or how many that” like the outsized influence, and I'm like, I don't need to think about that. I'm just happy with who I am. And you know that's it. So I'm not here peddling Jews run the media conspiracies, lest anybody come at me.
Stephen Backhouse 42:01
Is that part of the Judeo-Christian hyphen idea as well, though? Which is that actually it's all very well talking about Christian civilization. But come on, let's be honest. How many how many of our pillars of so called Western European civilization they're not Christian, are they? So is Judeo-Christian, a way to acknowledge that as well that this isn't just some monolithic?
Avi Finegold 42:25
Are you saying this is the bully's way of saying no, no, no, no, no, I'm friends with the brainiac. He can't just really like, throw me away and tell me that I'm useless. Right? I'm “Judeo-Christian”. We have these big…I don't know…never thought about it.
Stephen Backhouse 42:42
As soon as Avi said, let's call it hyphen. I like I got it. I was like, yeah, let's call it hyphen. This is a good word. You can talk about the word hyphen for a long time.
Seth Price 42:50
Yeah. So for those listening, that little exchange there were like, I don't know, I hadn't thought about it that way. I was cutting pomegranates last night, which is among my least favorite things to do. But also my most favorite things to do, because I enjoy eating them in the prospect of it. It's expensive.
Avi Finegold 43:05
Wait they don’t sell them….they don't sell them pre cut for you. So it’s a Montreal bougie sort of thing?
Seth Price 43:11
Oh no! I could buy it in that way. But so…I like I was raised in a way that if you don't do any work the joy is less if you didn't work for it. And there's a part of me that does enjoy the tediousness of eating the pomegranates. After I've spent 40 minutes getting them open.
Avi Finegold 43:31
Do you not know the whole under the water trick and the whole cutting off the top?
Seth Price 43:35
Yes I do but there is a there's like a a juicy film that that is already on the pomegranate. So when you run out of the water, it takes away some of the sweetness there a slightly more bitter. And by
Avi Finegold 43:46
That’s by the way, one of the alternate podcast names that we had, it was that The Juicy Film.
Seth Price 43:52
(speaking through laughter) But y'all were talking…about (laughter)
Stephen Backhouse 43:57
Moist Theology
Seth Price 43:59
Oh, gosh. Let me get back on track. So y'all were talking about you were reading through Scripture. And you both brought the same passage. And I think it was Deuteronomy could have been Leviticus, but it was a specific passage, and it literally just ended. I've finished it this morning. I think you're gonna spring off into Matthew.
But there was a part in I forget what you asked Stephen and you're like, “but what about this”? And Avi you're like, “I've never actually considered it that way, that's interesting”. To which I was like, well, that's the purpose for the show, like absolute I've never considered it that way. That's interesting. Like, that is a good response to interfaith dialogues I think; and a healthy one, a yearned for one I think if we're honest. That they you know that they could learn something. So question from each of you. And then I know that we're running close on time, because I can't remember exactly how many hours you are ahead of us, Stephen, but I know that you said you had a hard time to the jet to stop. So these are the two questions that I asked everybody, Avi and Stephen, you've already answered these questions. So y'all can go in any order. What are some of the things that you feel like we should be allowed to speak, or talk about, in our synagogues or in our churches? I've changed the question for present company that if we do not intentionally discuss them will begin to unravel the faiths that we hold dear.
Stephen Backhouse 45:10
What are the things that…say the question again?
Seth Price 45:12
Yeah, yeah, so the question is born more so out of so say I'm sitting at church and I just stand up and I say why don't we vote on letting people be gay in our church and also be deacons? And people in the back are like (shhhhhhhh) we were not interested in that today.
Stephen Backhouse 45:27
What's the one question that would start to unravel everything? but that we should be allowed to speak about?
Seth Price 45:31
Yeah, but that we should be allowed to speak about and question and talk about as a congregant of the church body or the faith body. And not necessarily one that the minister or Rabbi or Reverend or I don't know what the right word is here, pronoun or title is, not the one that they should be foisted on the congregation. But the one that everybody is thinking, in your opinion that nobody talks about for fear of being ostracized or kicked out or excommunicated.
Avi Finegold 45:58
Interesting, Stephen, you go first. (laughter from all)
Stephen Backhouse 46:03
It's on my mind. It's on my mind. But we talked about it earlier. But, I would, I would like to question the chosen person narrative amongst evangelicals especially, I would like to interrogate that, because it's such an ingrained part of a lot of Protestant, Christian, you know, their self imagination. That when they open up any random bit of the Bible, they think it's written about them. And when they hear Israel being blessed, when they hear the chosen nation being blessed, they think, “oh, that's about us”. And I would like to question that, and I would like to start talking about that more and to actually begin to look at what what has actually happened. Like Avi said, what happens when you claim you're the chosen person, but the previous Chosen People are still there. So then what happens? And you try and brush them under the carpet or do even worse things, which is what Christendom has done to Jews throughout history. And I think all of the bad things that Christians have done to Jews have come directly from their (inability) about not being able to share the stage with with chosen people.
Avi Finegold 47:13
Was that the alternate title for the Crusades, “brushing them under the carpet”? (chuckles)
Seth Price 47:19
Are either of y'all familiar with a show that has become popular called The Chosen?
Stephen Backhouse 47:24
Yes.
Seth Price 47:25
How would you? How would you retitle that name then Stephen, if we can't, if we need to question that that wording, or that mindset, like the entire show is framed around? Now, they're talking about the disciples being chosen, but we both know what's going to happen with that show once it's on DVD and get screened in churches? What would you retitle that unrelated question?
Stephen Backhouse 47:46
The Followers
Seth Price 47:48
There you go, fair enough, just want to make sure because I gotta remove that baggage.
Avi Finegold 47:48
So, I'll even be more valorous than that. Right? And there's an American Rabbi named Brad Hirschfield, who wrote this book called, You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right, and that really became a guiding principle for a lot of my thinking, and a lot of my day to day interactions with both Jews and non-Jews. And I would have no problem, maybe this is theologically problematic, or I don't know what it is. But I have no problem with Christians saying, maybe the one problem they might have is that they are supplanted what chosenness is, but different people are chosen for different things. And you're chosenness, I have gotten to a point in my where and faith and my day to day living, that your chosenness doesn't impinge on my chosenness. Right? And my truth is objectively true but only objectively true for me. It's not even objectively true for my wife, or my kids when they grow up and have developed faith traditions, or my neighbors or the people that I'm teaching right. And I don't try to impose my objective truth onto other people. Everybody has their own, right, it's postmodern, whatever, I'm not going to get into it.
But different people can have different objective truths instead of thinking about it as subjective truths. And your chosenness, to me, is a big part of that if you really feel like you are chosen to do “great work”, as long as you're not saying and again, that's maybe the part that I would have to change about that as long as you don't go and say, I am chosen and you are no longer chosen because it can only be one chosen. You know, that's when we might have some words and then I might realize that you know, in the 2000 year tradition of Jews versus Christians we kind don't have a great track record. We feel like the Detroit Bears in that one.
Seth Price 49:34
Wait! You feel like the Detroit what?
Avi Finegold 49:36
The Detroit Bears right?
Seth Price 49:40
Who are the Detroit Bears?
Stephen Backhouse 49:39
mumbling something about Detroit…
Avi Finegold 49:40
Football? Right?
Seth Price 49:41
That’s the Detroit Lions! (we all laugh)
Avi Finegold 49:43
What am I thinking! I’m thinking of the Chicago Bears! I mean gosh I’ve been living here for so long! (Seth is still laughing) I keep thinking of the ‘85 Bears
Stephen Backhouse 49:45
The Detroit Bears are so bad that no one's even heard of them! (laughs)
Avi Finegold 49:53
Right? Like you know, we're the Detroit Lions of the…
Seth Price 49:57
I’m not editing that out! That’s staying in!
Avi Finegold 50:01
Oh man! This is great. I do know enough football (maybe) if this was a Freudian slip.
Stephen Backhouse 50:05
And on Thanksgiving as well.
Seth Price 50:09
I'll also leave in my screw up with Christmas as well. There we go. Yeah.
Avi Finegold 50:13
So that's the way that I would approach it, that question.
Seth Price 50:18
Fair enough?
Avi Finegold 50:20
Did I answer the original question?
Seth Price 50:23
Is there anything you would add? Is there anything that so say in your wife's congregation? What would you, what do you feel like they would say?
Avi Finegold 50:32
So, I don't speak for my wife's congregation, it's a very large congregation, and they are very…
Seth Price 50:37
So say in your old congregation that because you said you were in the pulpit prior?
Avi Finegold 50:39
Yeah. What I would say is, and, you know, to me, it's maybe not even a congregational thing. I think about this a lot. So I have, for example, one of the podcasts that I have is it's called Bonjour Chai. It's the largest Canadian-Jewish podcast, right. We talk about current events, we have a weekly you know, and we're trying to always be contemporary with what are the issues of the week or whatever. And a few weeks ago, we had a guest on who was talking about Judaism Intactivism. And Intactivism is the new movement towards intact male bodies and activism, right. So they're anti-circumcision. They don't like that term, they are pro being intacted or whatever, I'm not gonna get into their politics and stuff like that. But for those of you who have read, you know, the Bible, circumcision is a fundamental part of The Covenant that Jewish males have with God. And it is universally something which is, you know, practiced almost universally to this day. But there's a growing movement of people that believe in intactivism and a part of them are Jewish, and they want to advocate for this and to have spaces in the Jewish community where people who are not circumcised are welcome.
And I got a lot of pushback, even though I may have disagreed with this individual, I got a lot of pushback from a lot of people that you shouldn't even give these people the space to have these kinds of questions. To have, you know, don't give them any, you know, audience. And I'm like, I may disagree with them. But A: I don't think there are any wrong questions or wrong opinions, it's up to you to go and prove these people wrong and to say, well, it's even beneath me to have these kinds of conversations as to why they're wrong is I think, a fundamental problem in tradition faiths today in religion today. So that is what I would start with.
And what that illuminates for me, much bigger is, and it's a big struggle, I think, that people don't talk about within the Jewish community, is the struggle between the universalism and particularism. Where we are a particular tradition we are, there is theoretically an in-group and an out-group within Judaism, right, people that are Jewish, and people that are not Jewish. But those lines get very, very blurred in today's day and age. And we don't have these questions. And I am…I'm a big Universalist. I clearly want to have these kinds of conversations with just about anybody. And I'm willing to have conversations with people that are really on the fringes of the Jewish community and people that are beyond the Jewish community. But we're not asking these questions as to where does the universalism stop and where does the particularism begin?
I love Steven, I wouldn't have him as a member of the 10 that we need to have a prayer quorum even though he is a believer, he is not a Jewish believer, and therefore he does not belong in the quorum of Jews. Where do those lines work, and not work, are not necessarily questions that we are dealing with in the Jewish community. It's fairly an uncomfortable topic, because there is a lot of interfaith relationships that are happening more than there used to be. There are a lot of still people with loose ties, what I refer to loose ties, within the community, people that don't necessarily want to go to services every week, people that don't practice the way that you know, ima practice or other observant traditional Jews might practice but still want to maintain some sort of ties to the community.
And it used to be that we would push those people out. It's like, well….all you care about is bagels. Well, forget it, you know, we don't need you in this community. And and, you know, bagels and Seinfeld, right, that’s Judaism for a lot of people. Well, nowadays is Larry David, I guess but Right. But nowadays, there are so few. And it's interesting, just the guests that I had on who was this intactness? Why are you pushing us out? You need us more than we need you. You want in and you're trying to push us out at a time when so many people are leaving faith traditions and leaving Judaism. Why are you doing that?
And I think he has a point. And actually that's the bigger point over the activism and (a) reason why I had him on is to have these kinds of conversations. And I think that that's the big conversation that now nobody really wants to talk about, right. The interfaith tradition, the interfaith marriage, the, you know, observance versus lack of observance. These are all things that people are thinking about, the gay versus not gay, like all these things are around I think. And I'm not sure what the answers are (because) the standards are so complicated. But that's, you know, just that's something that has to be out there and really be discussed more.
Seth Price 55:29
Give me one moment. My, um, my children came down was something that is apparently life altering. Right, one second.
Avi Finegold 55:38
I've been there.
Seth Price 55:42
Sorry. It looks like we lost Stephen. I wonder if he's coming back. What happened?
Stephen Backhouse 55:48
I don’t know, it just just stopped. No, the internet…didn't…my computer just shut down!
Seth Price 55:52
Oh, well, you got to apply those updates.
Stephen Backhouse 55:56
It just shut down. And then uh….
Avi Finegold 55:58
It is a sign from God. (laughs)
Stephen Backhouse 56:01
I saw a screen I've never seen before since owning this computer and it said “you've had an error and we've had to restart”.
Seth Price 56:06
Well, you're back. You're back just in time. So I'll ask you both this question.
Avi Finegold 56:11
Are you sure it didn’t say “you are in error.”
(we all laugh)
Stephen Backhouse 56:18
“And you must restart.” (laughs)
Seth Price 56:16
Hey, you must begin again.
Stephen Backhouse 56:21
“You must be born again”.
Seth Price 56:25
That's funny. That's the Nicodemus Air.
Stephen Backhouse 56:26
So my apologies. Do we need some sort of clear like space to restart this again?
Seth Price 56:31
No, you actually popped right back in about 15 seconds after Avi had finished. So yeah. So the question that I asked everyone. So Stephen, I think you've been asked this twice. So I'll begin with you…Avi to give you a bit more time to answer the question.
So the question I begin with is when you try to wrap words around what God is, Stephen, what would you say to that? If someone asked you like, how do you try to say, “here's what God is”.
Stephen Backhouse 56:59
My mind these days is in the world of fermentation, patient fermentation. I'm reading a book by Alan Kreider called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. And he's talking about the value that the early Christians had on patience which was not a virtue amongst the Greco Roman world. And they saw God as eternally long suffering, slow to anger, right. And they tried to act accordingly, and that a lot of the sins that happen in the world, especially amongst Christendom, happened because of impatience and a desire to quickly change things rather than just to patiently wait and see or let things happen in a slow way. And it's that kind of process of '“bubbling change” which Alan Krieder, the Anabaptist church historian, calls “patient ferment”. So I would say something like that I would probably in my own way I tried to say talking about God is that part of the heart of the cosmos which is always creating and yet always waiting and patiently waiting as well.
Avi Finegold 58:06
God is a bacteria then, right?
Stephen Backhouse 58:09
God is the ferment and is the yeast in the dough.
Seth Price 58:15
Well, to make that more to make that more beautiful or pretty, I guess then bacteria is if you wait long enough, you will you will to become intoxicated, because that's what we do after fermentation. So yeah, intoxication, maybe in the best way. Who knows?
What would you say to that question, Avi, like what is? Who is? However you want to wrap words around? So
Avi Finegold 58:37
I'm a big fan of the Maimonidian approach, and it's not his conception entirely. But he is a big proponent of that. And I think there's not enough Jews that think about this. I'm really a big thinker in terms of negative theology, right? I don't like to think about what God might be. But I also have a good idea of what God is not. Right. And, you know, the finger of God does not exist, and God does not get angry, the way that we get angry. These are all just analogies for our human, you know, little pea-sized whatever's. And instead of thinking about all the things that “is” I really ended up drawing more towards, let me not think about it in this way, or let me not thinking about in that way. There's no emotion, there is no physicality, there is no temporality to God. And beyond that, you start getting at some of the broad contours of again, where that might be, but it's much more defined by what God is not than what God is.
Seth Price 59:39
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I like that. Plug the places where do y'all want people to go to do whatever it is that they need to do as it relates to the work that you do? And we should probably begin with Hyphen, because that's, that's what that's what originated this. So where would y'all direct people to kind of do what they need to do on the internet.
Avi Finegold 59:59
So, I mean, if you go to your podcast player Hyphen is apparently a common enough podcast word, you can search for it under Hyphen Jewish living lab. And maybe you can put it in the show notes or whatever. And that's easiest way to find Hyphen alone. And easier ways, just going to Jewishlivinglab.com. And you'll see all of the podcasts that I put out, and you can click on that. And you can click on the Apple link or the Spotify link right through there. And it'll, you know, in case you forget, and you can see all of those. So that's really the easiest one one direct ways to go to Jewish living lab.com and find me there.
Seth Price 1:00:38
Stephen yourself?
Stephen Backhouse 1:00:36
Well, I also plug that Avi does, he makes cocktails. Like, I recommend that you check out it says or Google Rabbi Avi Finegold + cocktails and see what you get, because I saw some good stuff.
Seth Price 1:00:49
Some good recipes there. Is that what you're saying?
Avi Finegold 1:00:52
Uh, yeah I do cocktail workshops. And yeah, I have this thing called The Jewish Cocktail Lab with little spin off where we teach some basics, some interesting Jewish ideas using cocktails as well as jumping off points. But cocktails are always fun.
Seth Price 1:01:05
Also intoxicating. Absolutely. So you're inadvertently saying that Stephen is correct there's what you're saying?
Avi Finegold 1:01:11
Yes. Not even inadvertent I’m very advertant in this!
Seth Price 1:01:17
Stephen where would you want people to go?
Stephen Backhouse 1:01:19
Oh, I just told you go to the Jewish Cocktail, it’s an amazing cocktail.
Seth Price 1:01:22
He is like this. Every time Avi, he refuses. He refuses either. I've had him tried to plug his books, he won't do it. He won't like his podcast, he doesn't do it. Which is endearing.
Stephen Backhouse 1:01:34
Alright, after you’ve had your cocktail, and you're gonna have a kosher cocktail, and then you're gonna come to tenttheology.com and check out all that stuff. And you could you could have a look at the Kierkegaard A Single Life, the biography of Søren Kierkegaard that I wrote, yes, well, you could check that out. Do come to Tent Theology you'll find all sorts of fellow travelers and interesting people on that podcast.
Avi Finegold 1:01:57
We need to come up with the hyphen cocktail that that would be a good one. What spirit most embodies, and don't answer the holy one, most of bodies Christianity?
Seth Price 1:02:11
Bourbon?
Stephen Backhouse 1:02:10
Something made by monks,
Seth Price 1:02:11
Bourbon.
Avi Finegold 1:02:13
Very different answers. That's American and European, very interesting. So Benedictine, and bourbon, and some Manischewitz splashed on top of that with a wafer.
Seth Price 1:02:26
(laughs) With a wafer!
Outro: 1:02:50
Now, I haven't added it up. But there are 100,000’s, if not millions of podcasts on the internet. And I am humbled that you continue to download this one. If this is your first time here please know that there are transcripts of these shows. Not always in real time, but I do my best. And if you go back in the logs, you can find transcripts for pretty much any episode that you'd like.
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I pray that you are blessed. And you know that your cherished and beloved, we’ll talk soon.