The Artifact Podcast

Hold onto your symbological caps, in this episode of the Artifact Podcast, we look at how the menorah (the seven-branch Temple candelabrum) became a meme... and a metaphor... and we place the menorah metaphor in the flow of mind. Btw there are 4 minutes of out-takes at the end which Meir-Simchah finds hilarious. Our website is https://my.captivate.fm/ArtifactPodcast.com (ArtifactPodcast.com). Please subscribe, share, post about us with the hashtag #ArtifactPodcast, and dopmine burst us some 5-star ratings and glowing reviews. You can also help us continue making the show by becoming our patron on Patreonhttp://www.patreon.com/ArtifactPodcast ( http://www.patreon.com/ArtifactPodcast).  Join our https://www.facebook.com/groups/397213411493038 (Facebook discussion group) and tell us what you'd like us to cover. We've also got a http://www.facebook.com/ArtifactPodcast (Facebook page). We livestream our recording sessions, and we announce the livestreams there. Get in touch with Nachliel Selavan on his website about his https://www.museumtours.co.il/ (fantastic museum tours). You can also find him on LinkedIn, or onhttps://www.instagram.com/museumtoursil/ ( Instagram),https://twitter.com/MuseumToursIL ( Twitter), or Parler using his handle @museumtoursil. Get in touch with Meir-Simchah Panzer on Twitter http://twitter.com/meirSimchah (@meirsimchah). Check out his other podcast Two Christians And A Jew, where he, his amazing Christian co-hosts, and their guests discuss how they read the Hebrew Scriptures differently and what difference it makes for their lives. It's like interfaith dialog but with engaged minds and hearts instead of that kumbaya crap. Our theme music was arranged and performed by the great https://classicalguitarisrael.com/ (David Frankel). Support this podcast

On this episode of the Artifact Podcast, Nachliel and Meir-Simchah dive through the portal of a strange word in the Book of Samuel, meaning 'box'. This leads us to investigate loan words in general, some suprising loan words in the Torah, and ultimately into a discussion of the nature of the language of the Torah. Our website is https://my.captivate.fm/ArtifactPodcast.com (ArtifactPodcast.com). Please subscribe, share, post about us with the hashtag #ArtifactPodcast, and dopmine burst us some 5-star ratings and glowing reviews. You can also help us continue making the show by becoming our patron on Patreonhttp://www.patreon.com/ArtifactPodcast ( http://www.patreon.com/ArtifactPodcast).  Join our https://www.facebook.com/groups/397213411493038 (Facebook discussion group) and tell us what you'd like us to cover. We've also got a http://www.facebook.com/ArtifactPodcast (Facebook page). We livestream our recording sessions, and we announce the livestreams there. Get in touch with Nachliel Selavan on his website about his https://www.museumtours.co.il/ (fantastic museum tours). You can also find him on LinkedIn, or onhttps://www.instagram.com/museumtoursil/ ( Instagram),https://twitter.com/MuseumToursIL ( Twitter), or Parler using his handle @museumtoursil. Get in touch with Meir-Simchah Panzer on Twitter http://twitter.com/meirSimchah (@meirsimchah). Check out his other podcast Two Christians And A Jew, where he, his amazing Christian co-hosts, and their guests discuss how they read the Hebrew Scriptures differently and what difference it makes for their lives. It's like interfaith dialog but with engaged minds and hearts instead of that kumbaya crap. Our theme music was arranged and performed by the great https://classicalguitarisrael.com/ (David Frankel). Support this podcast

This episode in honor and memory of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is about the relationship between science and religion. It kicks off with an ammonite fossil, examines how several great religious thinkers have confronted the reality of fossils, explores The Map that Changed the World and Your Inner Fish (by Simon Winchester and Neil Shubin, respectively), and delves into the dialog carried on between Rabbi Sacks and Prof. Richard Dawkins. Material is quoted from the 2012 Think Festival debate hosted by the BBC (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFdPHdhgKQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFdPHdhgKQ)) and a Premier interview with Rabbi Sacks (https://www.premierchristianradio.com/content/search?q=rabbi+sacks (https://www.premierchristianradio.com/content/search?q=rabbi+sacks)). We also discuss Jordan Peterson who was interviewed by Rabbi Sacks (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06k5vn2 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06k5vn2)). Our website is ArtifactPodcast.com. Please subscribe, share, post about us with the hashtag #ArtifactPodcast, give us 5-star ratings and glowing reviews, and help us continue making the show by becoming our patron on Patreonhttp://www.patreon.com/ArtifactPodcast ( http://www.patreon.com/ArtifactPodcast).  Get in touch with us through our Facebook pagehttp://www.facebook.com/ArtifactPodcast ( http://www.facebook.com/ArtifactPodcast) and our Facebook discussion group https://www.facebook.com/groups/397213411493038 (https://www.facebook.com/groups/397213411493038), where you can hear about our next livestreamed recording session. Get in touch with Nachliel Selavan on his websitehttps://www.museumtours.co.il/ ( https://www.museumtours.co.il/), on LinkedIn, or onhttps://www.instagram.com/museumtoursil/ ( Instagram),https://twitter.com/MuseumToursIL ( Twitter), or Parler using his handle @museumtoursil. Get in touch with Meir-Simchah Panzer on Twitterhttp://twitter.com/meirSimchah ( @meirsimchah). Our theme music was arranged and performed by David Frankel (https://classicalguitarisrael.com/ (https://classicalguitarisrael.com/)). The cover art for this episode includes anhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cleoniceras_besairiei_Collignon_Alb_inf_Madagascar.JPG ( image) of an Ammonite fossil from Madagascar, by Antonov, on Wikimedia Commons.   Some great quotes from the episode: Rabbi Sacks: "Where I think I disagree with Richard is that Richard sees religion and science as inevitably in conflict, and I see them as two different things altogether. Science can tell us about the origin of life; religion tells us about the purpose of life; science explains the world that is; religion summons us to the world that ought to be.”   Rabbi Sacks: "I think we agree on the integrity of science, on the power that it has given us, and the immense dignity it that it represents. Richard accepts that as a fact. I accept that's what the Bible means when it says God made us in His image. But nonetheless we both cherish science as one of the great human achievements. And it is my belief that we will always need a sense of that which is beyond us in order to never lose sight of human dignity."   Rabbi Sacks: "The first lesson any philosophy student ever learns is facts are one thing and values are another. When all the facts are in, the question of values still remains. And we will never get that from science which is brilliant at establish facts but cannot ordain values; and therefore for that, we have to look, ultimately I think, at the Ultimate itself, God Himself, or at the very least, if you don't believe, at least accept the wisdom that has been honed and refrained through three and a half thousand years and has brought and freedom, dignity, and hope to the world."   Rabbi Sacks: "He goes around hitting religious people once in a while, and we probably need to be hit. God sent Richard Dawkins for a reason because we are too complacent, we believe 6 impossible things before... Support this podcast

In Episode 2 of the Artifact Podcast, we look at a recent archaeological find, a two-shekel weight from the First Temple period, found a stone's throw from where Nachliel grew up in the Old City of Jerusalem. This gets us talking about weights and measures, money and reputation, barter vs. currency vs. Trobriand Island economics, a Greek temple near Troy, Alexander the Great, Abraham, Jacob, beauty, counterfeiting, and propaganda. Thank you to everyone who has been supporting the podcast by subscribing, giving us 5-star ratings, writing glowing reviews, sharing the podcast far and wide, and donating (please now use Patreon http://patreon.com/artifactpodcast). We have amazing things planned, and you are making it possible for us to continue producing the podcast. If you haven't yet, we hope you do. But most importantly of all, thank you very much for joining us on these wild adventures into history, ideas, and existential mystery. If you are a podcaster and you'd like to interview Nachliel or me, please get in touch. In fact, if you're anyone who'd like to get in touch, please get in touch. Our website is ArtifactPodcast.com; you can drop Meir-Simchah an email at meirsimchah at gmail dot com; you can find us on Twitter: Meir-Simchah = @MeirSimchah, Nachliel = @MuseumToursIL; Nachliel does that Instagram thing, again @MuseumToursIL; and we're both on Facebook where we have a page for the podcast intuitively named 'Artifact Podcast' (https://www.facebook.com/ArtifactPodcast). We hashtag our posts about the Artifact Podcast with #ArtifactPodcast, and so can you (hint, hint). You can check out Nachliel's podcasts on the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) at https://www.tanachstudy.com/parasha-plus-study and https://app.tanachstudy.com/parasha-plus-study/sefarim/archaeology/bereshit. You can catch Meir-Simchah's podcast for Christians on the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) at TwoChristiansAndAJew.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Support this podcast

In this episode, Nachliel presents a cork from a bottle of wine from Carmel winery. The image on the cork takes us into Book of Numbers, into the history of the company that chose it, of the "First Aliyah," and of modern Israeli agriculture, into Jeremiah, and as well into propaganda and lashon ha-ra. Meir-Simchah steers us into considering wine more generally, as a part of human culture and spirituality, and that takes us into Noah, why he got drunk, the mind-brain relationship, earth and earthlings, humus and homo, adamah and Adam. Support this podcast