Human & Holy

Does the Torah belong to every woman?

This week, I host a roundtable with two women who've built their lives around Torah: Annie Nagel, who left a thriving law career for the classroom and a PhD in Tanakh, and Hadassah Shemtov, founder of Batsheva Learning Center.

We trace the halachic sources on women's Torah study, where the historic hesitation came from, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe's radical reframe: that women's learning isn't damage control, but the direction history was always moving towards.

We also talk about the practical experience of Torah study for women: How do you keep Torah alive when you're working eighty hours a week with three babies? What does learning look like in a season when deep scholarship simply isn't possible? And what would it take for the next generation of girls to believe, without question, that no Jewish book on the shelf is off-limits to them?

EPISODE SPONSOR: This week's episode was sponsored by a woman who wants to empower other women to learn and take ownership of their birthright within Torah.

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Hadassah Shemtov is the founding director of Batsheva Learning Center, an organization that offers text-based Torah learning opportunities for women. She runs a chavrusa-based track at Ohel Chana High School and is the junior Rebbetzin at Young Israel of Los Angeles.

Annie Nagel is a PhD candidate at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and teaches Chumash at YULA Girls High School. She holds a JD from UCLA School of Law and practiced real estate law in Los Angeles.

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To inquire about sponsorship & advertising opportunities, please email us at [email protected]
To support our work, visit humanandholy.com/sponsor.
Find us on Instagram @humanandholy & subscribe to our channel to stay up to date on all our upcoming conversations ✨
Human & Holy podcast is available on all podcast streaming platforms. New episodes every Sunday & Wednesday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 "The Torah belongs to every woman" — who this episode is for
02:19 Annie's story: from law to a classroom and a PhD in Tanakh
04:42 Hadassah's story: the year in Israel that set her trajectory
07:32 "I'm not making the time I want to for my own learning"
09:26 What the pivot cost Annie: trade-offs and peers making partner
13:55 Framing the sources: were we all really at Sinai?
16:07 The halacha, plainly: are women obligated in Torah study?
21:33 Why the hesitation was about an era, not about women's minds
22:03 Moshe waits a day: Hashem holds back the Shechinah until every woman is there
24:14 Do women feel the Torah is theirs?
28:03 How Annie kept Torah alive when life was consuming
33:08 The Lubavitcher Rebbe's reframe: not a concession to the times, but the trajectory toward Moshiach
38:19 The common language of the house is Torah
42:54 The "living Torah" — when your whole life is already an offering
47:00 "Listen to what stirs your neshama" — Torah study without pressure or guilt
50:01 Why reading it yourself is irreplaceable
53:35 What would it take for the next generation to know the Torah is theirs?
54:08 Ending the split between text and hashkafa
58:00 "No sefer on the shelf is off-limits to you"
01:00:13 Rapid fire: one text to start with, the woman who lost her practice, where to begin from zero
01:06:18 One message, soul to soul
01:07:00 Closing

What does it mean to be both a stranger and at home in your Judaism? To be deeply connected to your faith and still feel othered from a piece of your own practice?

This week, in honor of Shavuos, we sit with a Talmudic dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael about how the Jewish people received the Torah at Sinai, and the much bigger question underneath it.

What does it mean to be completely at home in your Judaism, swept up in it like one unifying truth? And what does it mean to be a traveler in it, seeing each piece of it on its own terms?

A conversation about Sinai, sight and sound, the hedgehog and the fox, receiving the Torah as both a homecoming and an invitation to the road, and what to do when you feel like a stranger within your own Jewish self.

This episode is dedicated in honor of Reuven Morrison hy"d, killed in the Bondi terror attack on Chanukah. May his memory be a blessing, and may his life continue to inspire Jews to live openly and proudly as themselves.

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To inquire about sponsorship & advertising opportunities, please email us at [email protected]
To support our work, visit humanandholy.com/sponsor.

Find us on Instagram @humanandholy & subscribe to our channel to stay up to date on all our upcoming conversations ✨

Human & Holy podcast is available on all podcast streaming platforms. New episodes every Sunday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.

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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Welcome, and a Shavuos teaching on receiving the Torah
1:30 Preview: next Sunday's roundtable on women's Torah study
2:45 Dedication: Reuven Morrison hy"d
5:00 A joke the Lubavitcher Rebbe told: what is Judaism?
6:30 The question underneath the joke: general vs. particular
7:30 The first luchos vs. the second
8:30 Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael on how the Oral Torah was given
10:00 "They saw the thunder, they heard the lightning" — the verse at Sinai
11:00 Synesthesia, Beethoven, and scrambled senses
12:30 Sight vs. sound: the whole first, or the details first?
14:30 The Alter Rebbe and his grandson — who is Zaideh?
17:00 Isaiah Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox
18:30 Two temperaments, two ways of meeting the world
20:00 Returning to R' Akiva and R' Yishmael through this frame
21:30 Why they each had a different orientation
23:00 Back to the joke: Shabbos within Judaism vs. Shabbos as itself
24:00 A relationship has a story, but it also has its moments
25:30 Home vs. traveling, and why we see the details when we travel
27:00 Areas of our Judaism where we feel at home, and areas where we feel like strangers
28:30 Allow yourself to be a stranger in your own life
29:30 Receiving both the panorama and the particulars
30:30 What I'm taking with me into Shavuos

Today, I sit down with my friend, Zisi Zirkind for an unscripted conversation about burnout, motherhood, faith, friendship, and the holy delusion of believing your soul is needed in this world.

This isn't an interview; it's a conversation between two close friends. We talk about why it's not always doing less that restores our energy, the undervaluing of women's work and how we each experience meaning in our homes, why faith doesn't have to be rigid to be strong, how we hold paradox in every identity, and how friendship can help us each remember who we are.

Zisi Zirkind is the Rebbetzin of Yeshiva Center in Melbourne, teaches Chassidus through her weekly women’s Torah classes, teaches guided research classes at Ohel Chana Seminary, and is the host of the podcast Standing Between Earth and Sky. Find her podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0EOKqR8gwDDnEEvq7W02z3?si=0c228c7fbde34a5f Contact her at [email protected].
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To inquire about sponsorship & advertising opportunities, please email us at [email protected]

To support our work, visit humanandholy.com/sponsor.

Find us on Instagram @humanandholy & subscribe to our channel to stay up to date on all our upcoming conversations ✨

Human & Holy podcast is available on all podcast streaming platforms. New episodes every Sunday & Wednesday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Host's Intro: A Conversation Between Friends
00:02:25 Welcome Zisi Zirkind
00:02:50 Springboarding ideas as a way of bridging the human and holy
00:04:01 How much do I trust myself?
00:04:53 When you're taking a leap
00:05:19 A friend who can see you clearly
00:06:14 Sustained creative devotion is supported by a witness
00:08:14 Why sharing an idea forces it to become real
00:10:10 Is this my animal soul or my divine soul?
00:11:41 Delusion of separateness vs. delusion of holiness
00:12:54 Does what I do matter?
00:14:28 Burnout happens when you're not lit up by what you're doing
00:14:41 What will actually energize you?
00:17:06 Busy but not doing the right things
00:17:36 The Rebbe's "add another one" — what was he actually saying?
00:18:27 Showing up before the energy comes
00:20:27 The seductive permission to wallow
00:21:50 "I had to make a choice that I'm going to love my life again"
00:22:08 Hosting vs. being hosted — what really makes a place yours
00:24:08 Dissolution of self prepares you to rise
00:24:50 When to add, and when you need more support
00:25:42 Delegating what depletes you -- "I'm sick of cleaning"
00:27:10 Excellence and pride in the work nobody sees
00:27:55 Bringing the same creativity to home life
00:28:35 Why the years that look like pause are often the years that change you
00:31:51 Bringing your full self into your home
00:32:29 Letting yourself enjoy what you didn't think was "you" — dropping the identity attachment
00:33:43 Paradox: when opposing realities exist at once
00:35:17 Teaching style: opening to the text vs. filing it into systems
00:38:05 Tanya's permission for multiple parts of self to coexist
00:38:08 Trusting that Torah's truth can hold your questions
00:38:39 After the Bondi terror attack: "Faith doesn't have to be rigid to be strong"
00:41:51 Faith from intuition, not intellect
00:42:35 Why paradox can only be experienced
00:43:02 Faith as identity: "I'm here. This is who I am."
00:44:34 The ego in Torah study, and what it costs us
00:45:50 The never-ending process
00:47:38 Host's Outro

A conversation with Chana Kalmenson: shlucha of Chabad of Belgravia in London, poet, and teacher of Jewish mysticism, on the Sefirot of the Omer.
Chana walks through each of the seven emotional Sefirot: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut. What each one is, how they relate to each other, and how they show up in everyday emotional life. The episode also covers how the months of Nissan, Iyar, and Sivan mirror human development from childhood to maturity, why the inner work of the Omer is what prepares us to receive the Torah at Sinai, and how to approach the counting without falling into perfectionism.
The conversation goes especially deep on three Sefirot: Hod (humility, gratitude, surrender), Tiferet (compassion, holding paradox, the antidote to shame), and Malchut (dignity, agency, authentic expression). Chana shares what she learned about humility from her father-in-law, the Chassidic teaching on the soul's forgetting at birth, and how to step out of comparison with others.
A grounded, accessible introduction to the Sefirot for anyone counting the Omer or wanting to understand the Kabbalistic map of the inner life.

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To inquire about sponsorship & advertising opportunities, please email us at [email protected]
To support our work, visit humanandholy.com/sponsor.
Find us on Instagram @humanandholy & subscribe to our channel to stay up to date on all our upcoming conversations ✨
Human & Holy podcast is available on all podcast streaming platforms. New episodes every Sunday & Wednesday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.
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TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Opening reflection: loved into existence, loving me as me
00:31 Tonia's Intro
01:58 Welcome, and Chana on women's circles
05:25 What is Sefirat HaOmer, really? Pesach as emergence, Sinai as the destination
11:38 Nissan, Iyar, Sivan — the child, the teenager, the partner
17:45 Walking through each Sefirah: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, Malchut
22:10 Why we use consciousness to look at the inner emotional life
29:17 When perfectionism hijacks the practice (and what to do instead)
33:03 On Hod: humility, gratitude, the quiet power of the left leg
40:33 What Chana learned from her father-in-law about humility
46:10 The trauma of forgetting at birth, and the long work of remembering
50:37 On Tiferet: holding paradox, growing up, why compassion is truth
56:09 Self-compassion as the antidote to shame
1:00:14 On Malchut: dignity, agency, and what emerges when everything inside has a voice
1:09:33 Soul to soul

A live Human & Holy Women's Open Mic Night in Jerusalem, exploring the theme "I Am a Dreamer". A deeply moving evening of poetry, prose and song about dreams fulfilled and dreams shattered, on the dreams laid to rest and the ones held onto with quiet persistence, on the courage to keep dreaming. Listen for an expansive, heart opening hour of soulful art that will dare you to your own dreams.

Thank you to Sara & Joel Halpern for hosting this evening in Jerusalem.

Featured in this episode (in order of appearance):

Mazal Zaikin
Zeesy Gurevitch
Rivka Mazal Tauber
Chanah Rothberg
Hindel Swerdlow
Estee Silberberg
(30:07) Name Missing
(32:28) Name Missing
Ariella Seltzer
Shani Pollack
Miriam Sebbag
Leah Katz
Keren Vardi
Devorah Rutner
Chana Bennett
Tonia Chazanow

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To join our virtual Tanya class, click here: https://humanandholy.mykajabi.com/tanyaclassTo inquire about sponsorship & advertising opportunities, please email us at [email protected]

To support our work, visit humanandholy.com/sponsor.

Find us on Instagram @humanandholy & subscribe to our channel to stay up to date on all our upcoming conversations ✨

Human & Holy podcast is available on all podcast streaming platforms. New episodes every Sunday & Wednesday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.