Episodes

  • The Neshamah Project Episode 117: Interview with Professor Shaul Magid

    The Neshamah Project Episode 117: Interview with Professor Shaul Magid
    Jul 14 2026
    Professor Shaul Magid (Harvard Divinity School) joins me for a conversation about spirituality and the political. We trace his path from the seventies counterculture into the yeshiva and Bratslav worlds of Jerusalem, his relationship with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi — including their final encounter — and why he stands both inside and at the margins of Jewish Renewal. From there: peoplehood and what it's become, his position of counter-Zionism and what it does and doesn't claim, Korach and the friend-enemy trap, survivalism as a spiritual dead end, and ahavat chinam as a practice. We close with the tools he thinks Judaism needs for whatever comes next. Shaul's forthcoming book, The Scourge of Jewish Nationalism: Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum's Anti-Zionist Thought, comes out this August from University of California Press. Find his writing at shaulmagid.substack.com and his weekly Thursday-night podcast on Spotify.
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    1 hr and 20 mins
  • The Neshamah Project Episode 118: One Stone at a Time

    The Neshamah Project Episode 118: One Stone at a Time
    Jul 17 2026
    In this episode, Rabbi Ben explores two teachings from the Degel Machaneh Ephraim about how spiritual transformation unfolds. Every action becomes a stone: one act leads to another until, almost without noticing, we have built a mountain. Teshuvah, prayer, and generosity offer ways to change direction by laying down different stones. The episode also considers what happens when Torah becomes more than information—when study becomes relationship, and wisdom begins to flow like a living well from within. The question is less whether today’s practice changed your life than: What stone did you place today? Because mountains are built that way. So are souls.
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    13 mins
  • The Neshamah Project 116: Living with Mystery

    The Neshamah Project 116: Living with Mystery
    Jun 25 2026
    In this episode, Rabbi Ben explores the mystery of the red heifer through the teaching of the Or HaChaim. Rather than treating mystery as a problem to solve, the Torah invites us to practice wonder, humility, and openness before realities larger than our understanding. Sometimes mystery is not the absence of truth, but the beginning of a deeper encounter with it.
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    24 mins
  • The Neshamah Project Podcast Episode 115: Spiritual Maturity

    The Neshamah Project Podcast Episode 115: Spiritual Maturity
    Jun 18 2026
    This week on The Neshamah Project, Rabbi Ben Newman explores three mystical commentaries on Korach—from the Moroccan kabbalists Abir Yaakov and Or HaChayim, and the Degel Machaneh Ephraim—on spiritual gifts, ego, leadership, and holy disagreement.
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    18 mins
  • Neshamah Project Podcast Episode 114: Being and Nothingness

    Neshamah Project Podcast Episode 114: Being and Nothingness
    Jun 13 2026
    Rabbi Ben Newman is joined by Rabbi Shoshana Leis for a lively exploration of a Hasidic teaching on ayin and yesh—emptiness and being. Together they reflect on spiritual leadership, ego, creativity, perception, and the possibility of infusing ordinary embodied life with sacred awareness.
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    39 mins
  • Neshamah Project Podcast Episode 113: The Goal is Unity

    Neshamah Project Podcast Episode 113: The Goal is Unity
    Jun 4 2026
    In this episode of The Neshamah Project, Rabbi Ben explores a teaching from the Noam Elimelech on the Menorah as a symbol of spiritual integration. At the beginning of the path, we may need many practices, disciplines, and supports. But over time, those many lights are meant to become one light: a life of deeper emunah, wholeness, and achdut. This episode reflects on how modern seekers can move from spiritual collecting toward embodied unity.
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    13 mins
  • The Neshamah Project Podcast Episode 112: Pleasure as a Crown for the Divine

    The Neshamah Project Podcast Episode 112: Pleasure as a Crown for the Divine
    May 28 2026
    In this week’s episode of The Neshamah Project, we explore a teaching from the Noam Elimelech on Nasso about wonder, desire, and sacred participation in the world. The Torah’s phrase yafli—to make a special vow—is read through the lens of pele, wonder or miracle. The teaching reminds us that miracles are not ours to control, yet we can become vessels through which wonder moves. It also offers a powerful spiritual approach to pleasure: we are not asked to reject the physical world, but to engage it with awareness, gratitude, and holiness. Wine can lead to dullness, or it can become song, blessing, joy, and sacred presence. The question for contemporary seekers is simple and profound: does our desire numb us, or does it awaken us? When refined, pleasure becomes practice, and longing becomes a path back to the Infinite.
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    17 mins
  • Neshamah Project Episode 111: Humility and Renewal

    Neshamah Project Episode 111: Humility and Renewal
    May 15 2026
    A teaching from R' Elimelekh of Lezhinsk, Noam Elimelekh, on BaMidbar, Numbers 1:1, 2:1 on humility and renewal.
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    11 mins