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My name is Rabbi Matt Schneeweiss. I am, first and foremost, an Orthodox Jew. I am also a student of the Stoic masters: Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. This podcast is dedicated to exploring the relationship between Judaism and Stoicism - where they overlap, where they differ, and how they complement each other. I also use this podcast to think out loud about how to apply the principles of Judaism and Stoicism to my own life, with all its ups and downs.
329 Episodes
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Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 21 minutes 25 secondsSynopsis: There's nothing like a real-world example to showcase Stoic principles. This incident that happened to me a couple of weeks ago illustrates one of the core ideas in Epictetus's teachings: the use of "impressions." Not only that, but it also exemplifies one of the chief benefits of tefilah.Sources:- Epictetus, Discourses 2:18-30-----The Torah content for the first month of the new school year has ...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 14 minutes 6 secondsSynopsis: In an effort to jumpstart weekly TSJ episodes, I've decided to start from the beginning of Meditations Book 7 and work my way through. Chapter 1 is very reminiscent of Koheles ... or is it? You can be the judge of that.Sources:- Aurelius, Meditations 7:1- Koheles 1:9-11-----The Torah content for the first month of the new school year has been sponsored by the Brevique BrewLid. The BrewLid integrat...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 14 minutes 9 secondsSynopsis: On July 19th, while I was in Seattle for the summer, my car - which I had been renting to a talmid - was rear-ended. What followed was a rollercoaster of bureaucratic insurance annoyances accompanied by anxiety from afar. The saga ended on August 23rd, this past Erev Shabbos, when they finally finished repairing my car 15 minutes before the shop closed. I arrived home and immediately recorded this...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 59 minutesSynopsis: This evening (8/7/24), in our final Stoic Jew Shiur of this summer, we learned the fourth entry in Marcus Aurelius's journal. This, too, is a self-reminder to keep his principles at the forefront of his mind - but this is the first time in the Meditations that Marcus explicitly mentions his own mortality. As we've found in nearly every one of these shiurim, there is tremendous overlap between these Stoic te...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 1 hour 28 minutesSynopsis: This evening (7/31/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we deviated from our sequential learn-through of Meditations and took up a timely question: What do Stoicism and Judaism have to say about the double-assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr? The specific questions we examined were: (1) What should or shouldn't we feel about the deaths of evildoers in gene...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 1 hour 19 minutesSynopsis: This evening (7/24/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we learned the third entry in Meditations Book II, which deals with some weighty topics: God, the universe, hashgachah (providence), and theodicy (the question of evil in the world). We began by underscoring the fundamental differences between the Stoic view of God and the teachings of Judaism, but by the end of the shiur, nearly everything that Marcus ...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 1 hour 28 minutesSynopsis: This evening (7/17/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we learned and discussed the second chapter in Book II, which had a markedly different tone than the first chapter. Here we see Marcus reminding - or rebuking himself - in order not to lose sight of who he really is. We raised a TON of questions and emerged with a nice, unified understanding of the chapter.-----מקורות:Aurelius - Meditations 2:2 (trans. ...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 15 minutes 31 secondsSynopsis: I can't believe it, but this past Friday marked three YEARS of gratitude journaling! In this episode, as I usually do in these "gratitude milestone episodes," I recap my gratitude journal practice and identify the benefit or level-up that currently stands out the most in my mind since my last milestone. And in this case, I go into yet another example of applying Stoicism to insomnia! Related Epis...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 1 hour 10 minutesSynopsis: This evening (7/10/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we achieved our goal of finishing our analysis of the opening entry of Book II. After reviewing and continuing what we did last time, we raised a question that has bothered me for years: Judaism has a clear statement about what our ultimate value system is, but what is the underlying value system in Stoicism? We then analyzed the final argument in the c...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 1 hour 32 minutesSynopsis: This evening (7/3/24), in our Stoic Jew Shiur, we attempted to do an orderly review of what we covered last time, but instead, we slipped right into a fresh analysis of some of the most fundamental questions in ethics: What do we mean by good and bad? We debated whether and to what extent Marcus Aurelius's answer to this question overlaps with our understanding of the Torah's stance. We became so inv...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 1 hour 37 minutesSynopsis: This evening (6/26/24) was our inaugural "Stoic Jew Shiur"! After a brief overview of who Marcus Aurelius was and what his Meditations are, we dove RIGHT into the text of Book 2 Chapter 1. We quickly discovered that this opening paragraph was rich in ideas and fruitful in providing insights into how we - or at least, how I - learn the writings of Stoics and non-Torah other philosophers and thinkers a...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!I should have made this announcement more than an hour before the first shiur, but better late than never! 😅-----The Torah content for this week has been sponsored by Meir Areman, l'zeicher nishmas Zelda bas Ziesel, his grandmother, whose yahrzeit is on the 21st of Sivan.-----If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like ...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 25 minutes evenSynopsis: You might have heard of Bruce Lee's "Be Water, My Friend" analogy, and if you're a listener of this podcast, you might have also heard of Marcus Aurelius's fire analogy, but have you heard of Seneca's BEE analogy? I know I hadn't! In this episode we review all three analogies, discussing how they integrate with Torah (thanks to Rav Kook) and how they can be applied to life.Sources:- Bruce Lee- Marcus A...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 19 minutes even (Steven)Synopsis: This episode was inspired by four occurrences that recently befell me, each of which involved what we'll dub "a minor monetary fluctuation." The rest of the episode is devoted to unpacking the insights from these occurrences, using Epictetus as our guide, Jerry Seinfeld as our role model, and Rambam as the teacher who connects it back to Torah.Sources:- Epictetus, Enchiridion (The Handbook) 4-...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 17 minutes 48 secondsSynopsis: Yesterday I walked into a swarm of bees. In this episode, I reflect on that experience and follow my musings to the writings of Epictetus, to the bee reference in Tehilim 118, to musings about Israel's present war, and to yesterday's commemoration of the Holocaust.Sources: - Epictetus, Enchiridion (The Handbook) 1:5; Discourses 2:18- Malbim on Tehilim 118:10-12- Bamidbar 10:9-----The Stoic Jew Po...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 21 minutesSynopsis: And The Stoic Jew Podcast is BACK! Or is it? Well, it's back for at least this episode, in which I reflect on 1000 days of gratitude and muse on the relationship between my gratitude accountability practice and the mitzvah of recounting the Exodus from Egypt. Whether this marks the return of regular TSJ episodes is up to my listeners!Related Episodes About Gratitude:- 7/8/21: The Gratitude Accountability Ex...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 22 minutesSynopsis: And we're back! By "we" I mean The Stoic Jew Podcast AND my insomnia! :D I've been up since 3:35am this morning, and I decided to make a podcast episode about my latest Stoic Jew take on my situation, based on the words of Marcus Aurelius and Koheles (Ecclesiastes), as explained by Ralbag (Gersonides).Related Episodes about Insomnia:- Blaming My Insomnia on Satan - A Cure for Insomnia … I Hope- Applying Epi...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 34 minutes 10 secondsSynopsis: What will you do or say in your last moments, when (God willing) you are on your deathbed? In this episode I reflect on the final words of U.S. presidents, the death poems of Zen monks and Japanese haiku poets, the statements and attitudes of the Sages of the Talmud about the particular circumstances in which we die, the final moments of the Jews massacred on October 7th (may Hashem avenge their ...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 8 minutes 11 secondsSynopsis: This is the audio version of the 2.5-page article I published on rabbischneeweiss.substack.com/ on 11/17/23, entitled: God of Time or Dog Eating Its Own Vomit? I wrote this in lieu of a parashah article because I needed to write it for myself. If I don't write for myself, who will write for me? And if not now, when? (parashah article can be found at the end)-----The Torah content for the rem...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text!Length: 29 minutes 47 secondsSynopsis: In today's unscripted "Stoic self-talk workshop" episode, I reflect aloud on a mistake I caught myself making, in which I fell victim to the "God fantasy" of living life as though I were outside of time. Related Content:- for my most recent shiur on the phrase "b'Shem Hashem El Olam," here's Part 1 and here's Part 2; I gave these shiurim in September 2020, and have no recollection of what I said,...
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