Now, perhaps more than ever before in our lifetimes, humanity seems to be seeking answers to some of our biggest questions. What and where is God? How do spirituality and religion impact the uniqueness of humanity? What is the nature of reality? Will everything be ok?
Fresh off the boat from Berkeley, CA, Dr. Tomer Persico takes us on a fascinating journey throughout the human landscape of the Jewish and Western worlds to help uncover the evolution of our shared spiritual, religious, and humanistic existence.
Together with Tomer, this remarkable episode of the show explores topics ranging from Bay Area-based communities of experimental Jewish Renewal, the evolution of Jewish and Universal spirituality, human understanding of God, the nature of existence and the quest to connect to the beyond, Jewish meditation, New Age thought, the breakdown and evolution of Israeli Jewish identity, the profound impact that Jewish belief that all people are created in the image of God has had on defining the modern west, an interesting and otherworldly thought experiment explaining why religion exists, and beyond.
Dr. Tomer Persico is a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. For the last three years, he served as the Koret Visiting Assistant Professor at the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley and a senior research scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Persico's fields of study are contemporary spirituality, Jewish modern identity, Jewish renewal, and forms of secularization and religiosity in Israel.
His first book, The Jewish Meditative Tradition (Hebrew), was published by Tel Aviv University Press, and his second book, In God's Image: the Making of the Modern West (Hebrew), examined the way the idea of the image of God influenced modern western civilization, was published in May 2021 by Yedioth books.
Links:
Books by Dr. Tomer Persico:
In God’s Image: The Making of the Modern West (Hebrew)
The Jewish Meditative Tradition (Hebrew)
Dr. Tomer Persico at the Shalom Hartman Institute
Dr. Tomer Persico’s blog, לולאת האל (Hebrew)
Dr. Tomer Persico’s blog in English
Dr. Tomer Persico’s Facebook & Twitter pages
Jewish R&D - Bay-area Jewish communities and congregations:
The Kitchen – led by Rabbi Noa Kushner
Urban Adamah
Aquarian Minyan
Beyt Tikkun: The Synagogue of Spiritual Transformation and Social Healing
Chochmat Halev
Congregation B’nai Emunah
Mission Minyan
Keneset HaLev – Community of the Heart
Philosophers and writers mentioned on the show:
Immanuel Kant
Henry David Thoreau
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Alexis de Tocqueville
Erich von Daniken – Chariots of the Gods
Charles Taylor
Alan Watts
Book Recommendations:
On modern Judaism – How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought by Leora Batnitzky
On understanding the modern world – Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, The Ethics of Authenticity, and A Secular Age – all by Charles Taylor
TV Recommendations:
Loki
Resident Alien
Schitt’s Creek
BoJack Horseman
Archer
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