Not everyone adapts to podcasts as a means of consuming information, but I must confess that, for me, they are a balm (along with audiobooks, which have tremendously boosted my reading ability in recent years). Therefore, we will start a series of recommendations from the podosphere here on the blog. And let’s open the section in style by talking about Torah with Fries, an excellent and humorous guide to Jewish religion and culture.
The Torah with Chips has been extremely useful to me, first of all, because I suspect that non-Jewish Brazilians like me end up having contact only with Judaism… from the time of the First and Second Temples. That is, the one described in the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible, to use a more acceptable expression from an interreligious point of view) and in the New Testament. As the Brazilian Jewish community is relatively small and tends to be concentrated in metropolises, I suspect that the experience of many people here with the Jewish tradition is nothing more than what can be found in the Bible.
But of course Judaism has changed tremendously in the last 2000 years (as has Christianity, of course). The experience of the diaspora (the formation of Jewish communities in the most different parts of the world), the reinterpretations of the Scriptures by different currents, the impact of modernity, all of this changed countless aspects of Jewish beliefs and culture, which, incidentally, are multiple. , depending on the time and place where they develop.
Torah with Chips manages to portray this diversity in space and time tremendously well, and in the lightest way possible. Anyone who is already in the habit of listening to podcasts knows that it is a very intimate experience, even because we usually listen to the programs with a headset: you need to empathize with whoever is talking on the other end. At this point, the presenters Ângela Goldstein (orientalist) and Theo Hotz (historian and rabbinate student) scored successive goals by approaching the themes with depth and good humor, talking with the utmost naturalness, without, at the same time, the lines becoming that mess of the cute “mesacasts”, so common on the Brazilian internet. Makes you want to keep talking to them after each episode ends.
As Torá com Fritas has been on the road for some time (May 2021, according to the player I use), the listener already has dozens of episodes available on the main podcast platforms. I’m marathoning out of order here and still far from over, but my favorite episodes so far are episodes 4 (Jewish life cycle) and 45 (DNA tests and Jewish origins).
For those interested, it is possible to follow the news about the podcast through Instagram and fur twitter, among other social networks. It is also possible to contribute to the work of the duo on the crowdfunding platform Catharsis🇧🇷
I am Janice Wiggins, and I am an author at News Bulletin 247, and I mostly cover economy news. I have a lot of experience in this field, and I know how to get the information that people need. I am a very reliable source, and I always make sure that my readers can trust me.
