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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.
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Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 5 minutes 30 seconds Synopsis: This short, unplanned, off-the-cuff Erev Yom ha'Kippurim episode has been brought to you by my less-than-stellar seudah ha'mafsekes, and the insights it led to. Gmar chasimah tovah to us all! Sources (will find later) ----- The Torah Content for this week is sponsored by Rifka Kaplan-Peck in memory of Shira Malka (a”h) "who taught me that seeking knowledge of God is the greatest gift." ----- If...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 29 minutes 7 seconds Synopsis: After yet another unintended hiatus, we're back for another Gratitude Journal milestone! In this episode we reflect on gratitude, slowing down time, being present, illusions about the future, mezuzah vs. cheap Amazon trinkets, and tapping into what's eternal. I know I've said this in the past, but THIS time I have a plan for relaunching a more regular frequency of TSJ content. I'm optimistic tha...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 29 minutes 25 seconds Synopsis: AND WE'RE BACK! This episode is brought to you by the letter "I"—for insomnia. In a spontaneous decision to return to my old practice, I turned a sleepless night into a new installment of TSJ. If you're looking to up your gratitude game, this one's for you. We start with a recap of my gratitude journal practice, explore an idea in Modim and the Jewish approach to gratitude, then dive into an ex...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 21 minutes 25 seconds Synopsis: 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 ye...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 14 minutes 6 seconds Synopsis: 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 ...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 14 minutes 9 seconds Synopsis: 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 th...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 59 minutes Synopsis: 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 ...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 28 minutes Synopsis: 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 ge...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 19 minutes Synopsis: 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 Marcu...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 28 minutes Synopsis: 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 (tr...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 15 minutes 31 seconds Synopsis: 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 ...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 10 minutes Synopsis: 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...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 32 minutes Synopsis: 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 i...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 1 hour 37 minutes Synopsis: 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...
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 ...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 25 minutes even Synopsis: 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 - Ma...
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 Handboo...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 17 minutes 48 seconds Synopsis: 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 Sto...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 21 minutes Synopsis: 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 Accountabili...
Have any questions, insights, or feedback? Send me a text! Length: 22 minutes Synopsis: 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 - Applyi...
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