Seforim Chatter x 18Forty: How Jewish History Changes the Way We Learn Torah

Transcripts are produced by Sofer.ai and lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections. 

Nachi Weinstein: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Seforim Chatter podcast. On this episode of the podcast, I’m going to be joined once again by Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin, who is the founder and host of 18Forty and the 18Forty podcast, and we’ll be discussing the new book, I Read This Over Shabbos. And this is a book, a movement, a Twitter account, many things in one for those that are familiar with Twitter, X.

When it started, it was Twitter, I think, right? And I should mention that Dovid was on the podcast many years ago. It wasn’t really the podcast, at that point it was still the Zoom, not Zoom. It was still the it was it was Twitter Periscope, and then it became X, the whole thing was. Very vintage.

Yeah, very I still had my old OnePlus phone, the little camera would pop up. If you listen to those recordings, you’ll still see that. So, this is really the opportunity, we’ve talked over the years, we never got a chance to get together and have another episode. Now your book is out, this is the opportunity to do something again.

So, thank you for joining me once again.

Dovid Bashevkin: Nachi, this is genuinely my privilege and pleasure. We’ve known each other for so many years. We look, we discuss a lot about the overlap, where it’s different.

And I genuinely, like I think your work in the Seforim Chatter, what it’s become, is so unbelievable. This is a massive privilege for me, but it is incredibly distracting to sit surrounded by your library, ’cause that’s the only thing I’m looking at. But thank you for having me.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, we can get into some of that, we can talk about some of that, maybe later if you want.

Okay, so let’s start off as I do all Seforim Chatter episodes, even though maybe we discussed it, but so many years ago, listeners don’t remember, I don’t remember. Tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and your background.

Dovid Bashevkin: Sure. So, my name is Dovid Bashevkin.

That’s what my parents and all my close friends, though not everybody can pronounce Dovid, so I online, I sometimes use David, because I can’t stand people calling me Dah-vid or Dah-veed. I’m a good Dovid. I’ve demoted people before. If you call me Dah-vid, I’m going to demote you to David.

It’s a demotion. I grew up in the Five Towns, like in the in the 90s of the Five Towns. I studied, I went to South Shore, old South Shore with Reb Binyomin Kamenetsky. I went to high school in DRS, Reb Yisroel Kamenetsky.

I studied in Eretz Yisroel in Yeshiva Sha’alvim. Then I studied for four years in Ner Yisroel by Reb Nussbaum, Reb Ezra, za’tzal, who passed away just about a year ago, and a little bit by Reb Tzvi Berkowitz. And then I did semichah in YU. I went to actually I went to YU to study Reb Tzadok.

I think I’m the only person who switched to YU to study Chasidus. I went to study Reb Tzadok by Yaakov Elman, who was a student of Rav Hutner, who wrote who became more academic later in his career, but I brought him back to his roots to study Reb Tzadok. And then and then I did a PhD at the New School, which is not a new school, it was a school that was founded for refugees, Jewish refugees actually from World War II. I wish it remembered its Jewish roots more.

But I did a PhD in public policy. I’ve worked for NCSY. I’ve worked for Birthright. And now, I’m really focused on 18Forty, and I also teach in Yeshiva University.

So that’s that’s that’s the basic it’s the basic bio.

Nachi Weinstein: And you’ve written some books.

Dovid Bashevkin: And I’ve written a couple—

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, let’s talk about your books. How did you forget about that?

Dovid Bashevkin: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got Sinagogue, B’rogez Racheim Tizkor.

Yeah, my first My first book was a sefer, which actually I I think the pieces takeh they hold up, the pieces. It’s on HebrewBooks, B’rogez Racheim Tizkor. That was the first When you You probably know this too, when they say it by by Reb Meir Simcha, that like you have like what’s your first thing going to be? So I wanted my first thing to be belashon derabbanan, I can I can write in Hebrew, I can read a proper Hebrew Getting off the derech. Yeah, and then exactly! And then you can and then you can do the fun stuff.

So I did that. I wrote a book on sin and failure in Jewish thought, that’s called Sinagogue. I wrote a Haggadah with NCSY. I think I’m missing something.

Top 5. Oh, and I wrote Top 5! Top 5, and I wrote a Mishpacha, and you—

Nachi Weinstein: Used to write every week.

Dovid Bashevkin: Ah, Mishpacha, zachur letov. I love the chevrah Mishpacha, I literally…

And I wrote, yeah, a humor a book on humor called Top 5, that was a collection of my columns there. It’s the same strategy: I write articles, then collect it in a book, then you got your next book going, so Right.

Nachi Weinstein: Although Sinagogue was a book, that wasn’t articles.

Dovid Bashevkin: Sin- but but you know what? Some of those were published beforehand.

If you look carefully. And then and then I expanded them, exactly.

Nachi Weinstein: Your Haggadah, which was the topic of our first conversation all those years ago, I’ll tell you my wife still uses it every year. It’s a fun Haggadah, graphic, she enjoys it.

I know it’s NCSY Haggadah, but It is a fun Haggadah. It comes alive. Yeah, regular people, so to speak, not only if you’re, you know, NCSY community.

Dovid Bashevkin: No, that means a lot to me.

The whole point of the Haggadah that I did, ’cause you know this, when you get a Haggadah the problem is you want to just say Kiddush, it’s 11 pages because every commentary, all the lomdus, all the halachos. So I just wanted it where like there’s one page and one idea, just one kavanah. That was my, that was my Haggadah idea.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, nice, fresh graphics and so forth.

Exactly. Okay. Let’s turn to the Dovid Bashevkin Twitter persona, okay? We’ll call it Twitter even though it’s X. Yes.

You have this Twitter persona, large following.

Dovid Bashevkin: We’re grandfathered in, we could call it X. Yes.

Nachi Weinstein: Yes.

How did How did this start? Before we even get to, I read this over Shabbos, which we’ll get to, you discuss the intro of the book, how did this whole Twitter persona and the whole Twitter account start? For those that remember in the heyday by the way of Jewish Twitter, I don’t know today it’s kind of teetering, it’s not the same as it was, when we first met all those years ago, through Twitter.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah. Yeah, it it it’s different. Look, social media was just starting.

I joined in 2011, that’s more than 10 years, it’s 15 years ago, which is really, really crazy. And when I came on there, it was really a place, I called it the place where you could pass notes in the back of the classroom. You know, like if you’re in class and you don’t just want to focus on the front of the room, there’s chevreh in the back, and you could pass notes. What I loved about Twitter was that it was Jews from different backgrounds who are all in one space.

You don’t have to be invited to some secret WhatsApp group with It was just it’s a place where Jews could, and they were sharing their ideas and stuff, and I was very attracted to the fact that here we have legitimate, there were chasidim, there were I remember, and there’s still chevreh who are like undercover, there’s like, you know, my father’s a huge rav, and I’m here just like undercover, just keep it quiet, just to see what’s going on out there. It was a fantastic place to meet and interact with Jews who are not like you. And that’s always what I love to do. That’s always what I love to connect with, and that’s how we first connected.

So Twitter originally, I think if I made a contribution to Twitter, it was the it was the style of taking a a non-Jewish photo, not not ’cause it’s it’s just a regular photo from the news and giving it a Jewish caption. That was like my shtick, and then I built that. Like it was mostly jokes. And I would take captions, you would see, I don’t know, Bill Belichick, a big coach, coming off a bus with all the bags, and I said, you know, it’s the shver showing up for the ufruf.

So these like cutesy little—

Nachi Weinstein: He would wear his fedora.

Dovid Bashevkin: Exactly. He wore the You remember the picture. That’s right, of course.

So that that that early stuff. There was like an early picture of of David Letterman who’s a late night host with Jimmy Kimmel. Said the yeshivishe Rosh Yeshiva with his modern orthodox pulpit rabbi son. Just like a a sweet way of bringing Jewish culture and Jewish ideas to the masses.

That’s how I That’s how I first first started on Twitter. What evolved after that is that I read this over Shabbos. That was also a shtick that came from a from a rogue interview on a different podcast, on the Meaningful People podcast. I was I was invited there early, and they were like very neshoma.

We’re We’re in the podcasts that it’s normal to read books, but in the regular world, on regular podcasts, no one is reading books anymore. We’re the geeks. Exactly. So they looked at me, I remember they were together still, and they looked at me and they’re like, “How many books do you read?” Like it was like crazy.

You read more than one book a year, and you don’t have a homework assignment? So I threw out, “10,000 books.” Ich veiss nisht. I threw the math, and I have a nephew who’s takeh really good at math. He says that that’s impossible. Just like do do the math.

You’re not reading a book a day for five years. So I scaled back the number. But it gave me this idea of like I’m I am reading a lot, and both of us, we’re reading good stuff that people like everyone’s going to enjoy. You don’t have to be a nerdy academic to enjoy this.

Nachi Weinstein: I still get, you know, we’ll get to this, but why not, we can digress here. When I When people see like academic books, and they and the academics really are still like in the presses, like, “People are interested in this beyond the realm of academia?” I’m like, “Yes, but you have to reach them.” Now, some books are very tedious. Correct. But a lot of academic books have a wide appeal.

Dovid Bashevkin: If you have the right packaging.

Nachi Weinstein: I’ve seen this on Seforim Chatter, interviewing professors, academics about their books, and people like I see the sales, like I see for here people buying I think—

Dovid Bashevkin: There is a legitimate argument that you and I, particularly you, might be the most hated people in America because we push sales. And nobody, everyone, anybody who buys books is married to somebody who said, “Ad kan buying books.”

Nachi Weinstein: So for those that are familiar with my chats, so I used to be on Twitter, but I can talk some about my Twitter experience, but now there’s still, but it’s a lot on the Seforim Chatter WhatsApp community where there’s a lot of people. And there are so many people, the other day I hear from a spouse, or I hear from them themselves, like, “You have cost me so much money.” Because new books, book deals, Amazon has these deals just with the algorithm, and I, you know, I put, “Oh, it’s a deal,” and then people are just buying books, buying books.

Dovid Bashevkin: You’ve cost me a fortune. Half of this book, I would say, we have a chapter in Vayechi, which is about the lost tribes, I give you a shout-out, because I think No, shouting you out is so important because you really transformed the limud for a lot of people. You You expanded the canon where like, yeah, you can’t Nowadays, if you’re talking about Lost Tribes, and the other was your series on Shabbetai Tzvi, which was which was genuinely revolutionary. Before that, if you’re quoting something from Shabbetai Tzvi on a deep cut, you’re quoting some apocrypha about the Taz.

I mean, that was like as far as it went. And you literally took like the deepest deepest dive. I went through the whole series with you. It was unbelievable.

And and so many chapters of this are really just distillations of Seforim Chatter recommendations. If you stay with it, I package it a little differently, a little sweeter. I try to distill, really get it down to it. But so much of what we do.

So what I started, to answer your question, a big feature on X became posting what I read on Shabbos. And that really was to take advantage of the fact that we have this community of people who are learning Torah at the very highest level, but there are also a lot of Jews on Twitter who can’t read Hebrew. And I want to market Shabbos, the beauty of Shabbos, how accessible Shabbos is, and I want to market reading. So I started posting every Motzei it used to be all on my account, and I would retweet and repost anybody who shared what they read on Shabbos.

And eventually, it was like exhausting, and like like I would dread Motzei Shabbos, have to sit there. So I just created a separate account, have somebody else run it, and what it is is just Motzei Shabbos encouraging people, share what you read over Shabbos. And that became the that’s the name of the account, that became the title of the book, I share what you read and the little caption, I read this over Shabbos. Then of course, all of the the lamdanim, or the lomdim, does I read this over Shabbos, does it mean you read the whole book? You read some of the book? Did you read some of it for Monday, for Tuesday? Means that I read some of it over Shabbos.

Nachi Weinstein: The irony is, and you mentioned my Shabbetai Tzvi series, like I read this over Shabbos, it was organic. When I I started Seforim Chatter, the whole thing we talked about, we talked about the Periscope and the, you know, the first The point I wanted to start a podcast, and I’ve said this on different episodes of Seforim Chatter, I wanted to start a podcast 2019, I think it was before COVID, before I took the LSAT, before I was going to law school. I’m going to start a podcast and we’ll talk about seforim. New seforim, interesting seforim, and so on.

I didn’t know the exact format, myself, and so on. I recorded one part of an episode, it’s buried, I never released it, I have part of an episode way before Seforim Chatter. I’m trying to remember if I No, no one’s heard it, just me. It’s on my computer.

I think I have the recording.

Dovid Bashevkin: Because we used to talk, like even in the in the editing room, we would talk.

Nachi Weinstein: I think I have this recording somewhere, but but but that—

Dovid Bashevkin: Organic nekudah that you just said, that’s our that’s why we have siyata di’shmaya.

Nachi Weinstein: So so I’ll tell you.

So I eventually it was COVID hit, we’re all at home, and I was like, you know what? I told my wife I’m going to go downstairs. Then I was in my basement, not in the attic like I am now, in my old house, and I said, I’m going to go downstairs and I’m going to just record, I’m going to go live. At that point, I don’t know that I had said my name. I definitely hadn’t shown my face.

I’m like, I’m just going to do it.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah, I don’t think you you shared your name either.

Nachi Weinstein: Nothing. It was like probably anon.

I went live, I did that first few episodes. I was talking about the new Ma’agal Tov of Em LaBinah, Rav Yaakov Emden and all that. Rishpei Eish! Rishpei Eish, that was Eliezer Steinberg’s joke. Eliezer Steinberg in the comments, Rishpei Eish, Rishpei Eish! Rishpei Eish zachur le-tov.

Dovid Bashevkin: I still I still associate with the Rishpei Eish.

Nachi Weinstein: That’s it! That’s it. So I after the first few the first few episodes, I think I interviewed, was it Ezra Mizrachi? There was you, and there was a couple, there was Rav Shmuel Schuman, was some other one, Rav JJ Schacter. There was some a few that I did, and I was and eventually, and it was live at that point.

Then at some point someone was like, why don’t you put them on a podcast? Why don’t you do as a podcast? So I did, and then I started doing a podcast, and it took off. When it came to the Shabbetai Tzvi series, until that point, I hadn’t done I never did a series. Yeah. And I was in the kitchen, my old house, and I was talking to Professor Matt Goldish.

Someone said you have to talk to Matt Goldish. So I talked to Matt, and Matt is a wonderful person. Great scholar, wonderful person. Amazing.

Yes. And we were having a conversation. I was like, you know what? Shabbetai Tzvi is not going to be one episode. At that point, I I hadn’t read Scholem’s book.

I wasn’t super familiar, and I was like, you know what? Let me read Scholem’s book. Let’s figure this out. And it went from one episode to two to three, and then I got different people on different topics, and it grew, and it grew, and it grew, and it grew. And you know, later on, the series that I did after that, the Jews of Spain, and the Ten Lost Tribes, and the Zohar, those were all planned series.

Correct. This was totally organic, and it’s—

Dovid Bashevkin: Still—oh, you get extra siyata di’shmaya when it’s organic.

Nachi Weinstein: This is the one that I still get the most comments on.

Dovid Bashevkin: Oh, for sure.

Well, for for me, like, a, I was also afraid of Scholem’s book. Like we’re both readers, but It’s a thousand pages! It’s a thousand pages, but you taught me how to read the book. You gave me the roadmap, which I like I’ve always wanted to to team up on this, of like, how to become an expert in this topic, because it’s very doable. There’s so much good books.

The books are so And you told me, skip the first chapter of That comes from Matt Goldish.

Nachi Weinstein: He told me he taught me Matt said, skip, do not read the beginning, because that’s all the heavy Kabbalah stuff, skip it to page 75 or page 100.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah, and I did. I I read the intro, which is phenomenal, and then I skipped the first 75 pages, and I read you you had another very nice nekudah, you said, read Avner Gold’s The Impostor, because it’s It’s a kitzur.

Yeah, it’s a kitzur of the whole thing of what what And it just take you through the history, the dates, you’ll know what’s what. That’s right. And I I feel like my I reached a second level of not only appreciation of history, but how to share Jewish history from from sticking with you and Seforim Chatter. Now I think you’re revolutionary, genuinely.

Nachi Weinstein: Thank you. I have always tried, and Seforim Chatter is still trying. You know, people say when you talk about podcasts, about any medium, I think, in general, what’s the agenda, right? Yeah. So, wait, what’s 18forty’s agenda? What’s Seforim Chatter‘s agenda? Seforim Chatter has one agenda: I want to teach people history and teach them the the simple truth, not not censored, not Correct.

Not with an agenda. The agenda is to be just teach people history. I think there’s no reason why people can’t learn history as is, as it was.

Dovid Bashevkin: I always reach out to you.

My favorite episodes is when you jump in and explain to the crowd, “This is not revolutionary. This is o-” You have that editing label, which you do sometimes, which is great. No, your revolution is that it’s not a revolution. It’s just like it it’s so organically filled the space, and people feel so safe and comfortable.

Listen, you never you never I’m sure everyone you get you get calls, but it’s so incredible. And both of us kind of came from similar kind of we learned in fairly similar yeshivas. We probably knew of a bigger world. Neither Neither of us were formally into academia.

Nachi Weinstein: No, I certainly I was even more right-wing than you. I learned that from Lakewood. I went to YTT, which wasn’t so much, but then I went to Passaic, Mesivta. Yeah.

Then I went to Philly. Then I was in Reb Sholom Schechter, Ner Moshe, in Eretz Yisroel for a few months. Then I was in BMG and there as a bochur and then there in kollel.

Dovid Bashevkin: So, this I wanted to ask you.

On Purim one year, when I was doing top fives for Mishpacha Magazine, Okay. so I every year on Purim, I would put on social media joke top fives, spicier top fives. So one of my top fives was top five gateways into academic stuff. Yes.

I don’t know if you remember what my top five was. Can I go Can I go through? Go ahead. Go ahead. Here’s my top, and I want to know if you agree.

Number one was Rebbetzin David, aleha hashalom, she passed away, her PhD on the Me’iri.

Nachi Weinstein: I only read a little bit of that.

Dovid Bashevkin: Okay, so that was for sure. Number two is JJ Schacter’s article in Torah u-Madda, “Facing the Truths of History”, where he’s grappling with Okay, that’s that’s number three.

No, no, no, that’s number two. Number three, I think, is Haym Soloveitchik’s Rupture and Reconstruction, which is about how halacha history developed, big one. That was number three. Number four, I’m trying to remember what was number four.

Help me out, like the classic four and five, the like what was your—

Nachi Weinstein: So for me, I think I mentioned I think was Marc Shapiro’s Changing the Immutable.

Dovid Bashevkin: Oh, Marc Shapiro’s on it!

Nachi Weinstein: That’s the one, yeah.

Dovid Bashevkin: No, number four was just Marc Shapiro.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, Marc I think just Marc Shapiro, whether it’s Seforim Blog, or his book on Reb Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, or Rambam, whatever Marc Shapiro’s stuff.

And and I think, I know Mark, I’ve had Mark on the podcast a bunch of times, and, you know, people Mark people either like Mark, they don’t like him, but that’s not the point here. The point is Mark has just inspired so many, whichever direction you want to turn, from what he’s shown us in history. So Changing the Immutable was a big one for me, especially being a text-based person, and seeing the the censorship going on, reasons or not, just seeing that going on. That was one.

For me, it was Avraham Grossman’s book on Rashi. Just just just a classic seminal work on Rashi, and showing how you can have a an intellectual biography of a gadol like Rashi, but really a respectful, wonderful book. I recommend everyone to read it. It’s Littman.

They’re both Littman. Then it was Shimon Steinmetz’s, On the Main Line, just his blog. Olov hashalom, that blog!

Dovid Bashevkin: But I love Shimon Steinmetz.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, Shimon’s great.

But the blog, yes, the blog and Shadal, that he he’s responsible, he got me into Shadal. He was my gateway drug to Shadal.

Dovid Bashevkin: You know, I was he was We know each other from day camp, so I was a CIT when he was a counselor, and then we reconnected. He really, zecher letov, was of the early, like, non-professional academics who brought it to the Yeah, he’s tremendously talented.

Nachi Weinstein: So, it was his, and then Seforim Blog, which goes back to to Marc Shapiro. I think those were like the main ones, maybe forgetting something else, but those like And then slowly I got into, you know, academia and so on. My my real way into the not into academia, but early on, I’ve said this a bunch of times, when I was in Philly, in Passaic, really was in Philly, I would take out, especially Mechon Yerushalayim and Mosad Harav Kook critical editions of the Rashba or whatever the sefer was, and read the intro. Read the little bio, read the intro, and then read the the manuscript the real geeky stuff, like which manuscript, which edition they were using.

I still remember so I would learn with Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky when I was in fourth year beis medrash. We learned once a week, Thursday morning. And before Rosh Hashanah, I said, “Let’s learn The Ramban has a famous derasha for Rosh Hashanah.” I said, “Let’s learn the Ramban.” So I got him the Mosad Harav Kook edition. So Rav Shmuel turned to the the intro of Rabbi Chavel, and he said, “We have to read the intro.” Really? And he read the intro! He was sitting there skimming it like he skims, and he read the intro.

That was like, you know, it showed me that a gadol read the intro! You have to read like what’s going on, what’s the story. And then we went and we read, you know, we didn’t get through the whole thing, but, you know, because he would get calls and interrupted. It was that was a real experience. But yeah, so that was that was one thing, but I was always interested.

Like that was my gateway and then slowly eventually got into academia and academic books and so on.

Dovid Bashevkin: Wow, wow. But but now there’s so much access to so much, and the The depth of of education in our community is, and I’m talking both our, it it’s They’re different. They’re not they’re not crazy different.

I think we could talk about this, but I think that part of what you and I represent in some ways is actually how the differences have gotten much less ideological, and are much more, I think, cultural. But you you could fight me on that at a different time.

Nachi Weinstein: It could be. It could be.

But but I think also there’s we have many more options today, because we have podcasts. We have 18Forty, we have Seforim Chatter, Yehuda Geberer Jewish History Soundbites, Rabbi Dr. Dovid Katz’s podcast, where we have there’s still other ones, I know people listen to Rabbi Aubrey Hersh, Aubrey Hersh, what’s his name, Arnie Wittenstein, I think, his podcast. There’s those. I know there’s a couple other ones.

I mean, there’s there’s definitely others that I’m forgetting. People listen to those. I should mention even just the shiurim. Sruly Bornstein’s shiur with his patented Reid Bites.

So there’s so much so much history that comes into that into the Torah there. But so I think there’s been in general like a revolution in the sense, you said it was a revolution, but not a revolution. It’s not, because it’s simple things that are just available and that are there. You know, when you do a podcast, well like I did with Rabbi Moshe Maimon on my podcast on the Ma’agal Tov, the Chida’s diary and his autobiography, and you read stories that the Chida tells about himself.

Wait a minute, this is this was here, this was printed, but it wasn’t necessarily available. It wasn’t talked about, those stories. We had just kind of sanitized history, sanitized biographies, if you will.

Dovid Bashevkin: But did you ever have a point, I’m curious for you, where you felt not like unsafe, but like, is it like like you did you do you feel that your immersion into this area of Jewish history has affected you, like your very like your avodas Hashem, like the way you are Jewishly?

Nachi Weinstein: I think it helps.

I don’t I don’t think in any way. You know, when you read, again, go back to the Chida. You read about the Chida, and you read about he was, I don’t know what the word is, down, let’s just say, and you know, when different things happened to him on his trip, and you read about him talking about he’s in Amsterdam, and it was snowy, and you know he runs across the street, and the next thing he knows, he’s in shul, and he can’t see, and he cries out to Hashem, clearly had a concussion. You’re reading about when he’s in England, the famous story, he’s going to the bathroom, and he falls in, and he gets stuck, and that’s almost the end of him, and he’s screaming, and a non-Jewish woman saves him.

I think you you you connect with a person Yeah. rather than just like it’s like this Of course, oh God, comparable to the Chida, but you you kind of becomes a little bit more human. And I think it brings that human element, and it’s like, wait, and now you go to the sefarim, it’s wow, this is the Chida, these are his sefarim. Now I’m going to go and read You know, and I I’ve said this in the past also, my first exposure, I mentioned the Chida because my first my real gateway drug to Jewish history was Shem HaGedolim.

The Chida’s, I wrote a Mishpacha many years ago Yes. and Sruly Besser approached me to write, I think it was a small column for Chanukah, and it was about Shem HaGedolim. That was just, I read it in first year beis medrash.

Dovid Bashevkin: It’s like the bibliography—

Nachi Weinstein: Of—it’s bibliography with some stories.

It’s like it it’s just it gives you a lot, and it really brings you into Jewish history. So I I think Jewish history knowing you have to know, you know, ein kol chadash tachas hashemesh. You need to know what happened. I think in my JST series, Professor Matt Goldish said this, like you have to know what happened to understand the present.

Like you have to know what happened. There’s nothing that gets me more upset, probably nothing, than these grand statements, “This has never happened before. Greatest X in history.”

Dovid Bashevkin: The worst ever, it’s never—

Nachi Weinstein: Been this. The worst ever. This is the most antisemitic Where are you getting these statements from? Do you understand what happened in Jewish history? Yeah.

I remember, I mean we can say this example, I think, when post-October 7th, which is a terrible thing, you hear people saying like, “This is the worst whatever, whatever.” I mean we just had the Holocaust. Like I’m not, and and and I should say, I’m not mitigating that. What I’m saying is that people are just forgetting Tach V’Tat, when you had a third of the Jewry killed out in Ukraine, murdered. You’re forgetting the Crusades, you know, when it happened in in the Rhineland.

You’re forgetting what happened to the Jews in in in Eretz Yisroel, the land of Israel, for all the centuries. Just like I’m just bringing one example of like recently, and it was like these bombastic statements. Where are these statements coming from? You know where they’re coming from? Not understanding Jewish history whatsoever, just no understanding. Yeah, no.

Dovid Bashevkin: I I find that deeply, deeply frustrating, and I think the number one question that I always think about, like when I’m listening to you, anytime I’m involved in Jewish history, is, how did we get here? How did we get here? You look around, and the world has like a the the frum world, the Jewish, larger Jewish world, the entire world. Like especially in the moment that we’re in now, it feels like this is how it has always been, and when you like start to dig a little bit, it’s like some things are 20 years old, some things are 50 years old, some things are 500 years old. You start to see the the the stratification. To me, it makes me fall in love over and over again with Yiddishkeit and the Jewish people, genuinely, genuinely.

I I feel like I get very, very like I’m a more like I think I’m a little more I’m—

Nachi Weinstein: You’re chasidish, you’re literally into the Chasidus more than I am.

Dovid Bashevkin: That. But, but how- one question I want to know: how come, like, one thing with my book that I think is very different than what you focus on the Seforim Chatter, you do not, you really try to avoid anything from the last 100 years?

Nachi Weinstein: So, yeah, I do, it’s rare that I do it. I think I did one, kind of two related, Holocaust-related episodes recently, and I think those were like I think those were episodes two and three.

I think I’d only done one before. The one before was like connected with the Pope and the It’s just, it’s not something that interests me. I don’t know why, it’s just So, the podcast, I do try to balance it cuz it’s it’s for me, but it’s not only me, it’s for others. I want other people to enjoy it.

But I am still doing my interests, and there are so many people that tell me that their interest in Italian Jewry is my fault, cuz I’m fascinated by Italian Jews and I push that a lot on the podcast.

Dovid Bashevkin: But what’s the common denominator of what interests you? Like what it’s a it’s a time period?

Nachi Weinstein: No, it’s just a personal interest. I don’t know. I don’t know what makes me tick, what makes anyone tick.

It’s just what I’m interested in. So, modern history is not my thing. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Dovi Safier, Yehuda Geberer, thanks to both of them, that’s their thing. They’re the experts in that. They’re very interested in that. Yossel Hausman, a lot of friends.

It’s just it’s not so much Love Yossel.

Dovid Bashevkin: He’s from the originals.

Nachi Weinstein: Love him. Yeah, of course.

It’s not so much my thing, so when I’m interested in it, when I can get into it, fine, but like I’m it’s just I don’t know, I don’t have that interest. Of course, I was in yeshiva, I knew all the yeshivishe hock, and the different roshei yeshiva of this yeshiva and of that yeshiva. Chassidish history was just never my thing. Yeah.

So, just that I’m not into, and I just was not really into that. Like I’ve tried, I’m doing now, I’ve done some episodes on early American rabbis in the 19th century. I’ve become more interested in the 19th century, not 20th century. There’s no interest.

Dovid Bashevkin: I could I think a lot of it also has to do with like your I don’t I you could decide how you want to answer it. I don’t get the I don’t get the sense that you wish you could immerse yourself in Kabbala and mysticism. Like, does that work Like, do you that limud, aside from Chassidus, it doesn’t really Correct. It’s not your—so, a lot of—you kind of gravitate to the place in history where—

Nachi Weinstein: But, but, but I’m working on a mini-series actually on Kisvei Ari Okay.

And and on Tzfas. That happened a long time ago, and I’ve done episodes on that. I had a wonderful The Tzfas series was phenomenal. The Zohar series was phenomenal.

Right, a wonderful three-part series, you’re probably talking about the Maggid Meisharim, Reb Yosef Karo, with Reb Moshe Kravitz. I got tremendous feedback on it. Tremendous! Everyone’s like, “Do more on this time period.” Yes. Love that.

That’s a long time ago. That’s 16th century, Okay. and that period does interest me. Maggid Meisharim is a fascinating book.

Yeah. Actually, just got I got a seforim shipment from Eliezer Brodt, who I can’t believe I didn’t mention him, and one of the one of the seforim I got was Sefer HaMeishiv. That’s Reb Yosef Taitatzak, also like Maggid Meisharim. The maggid came and told him things, it was printed from manuscript recently.

Another fascinating text. Got you. So yes, even though I’m not immersing myself in that limud, I’m still interested in that. I I find myself interested in in more interesting things.

My interest in Italian Jewry, I think Italian Jewry holds a fascinating place for me because it’s so different. I think we’re so Today, this comes from the sanitization of Jewish history. We’re told Jewish history is rosh yeshiva or someone that looks like a rosh yeshiva, long beards, looks like a rebbe, peyos. Yes.

Yeah. They ran the show, everyone listens. They they they they were in charge of it, you know, this is what they did: they learned Gemara all day, they learned lomdus, Yeah.

Dovid Bashevkin: And so on.

Nachi Weinstein: You look at Italian Jewry, and you go look at Italian Jewry from all the centuries, Italians were interested in They spoke Italian, a lot of them knew Latin, poetry, medicine. poetry, everything. They were doctors, they were mekubalim. You look at there’s so many different things that they were doing.

They were influenced, they read Dante and the Inferno, you see Divine Comedy. You see the different things that they’re interested in, and you look, you know, Azariah de’ Rossi, and you look at what they were upset about was only a fraction of the sefer, not if anyone could have not a lot of the other parts. They knew Philo, many of them were quoting Philo, they called him Yedidyah, but they knew Philo who was this Greek Jew at the right before the churban. So, you you’re talking about Yeah.

Correct. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. there’s so the interests there are so wide-ranging.

You look at people are always shocked to hear Italian Jews, no yarmulke.

Dovid Bashevkin: It nev- it never got sani- it never got sanitized, like always—

Nachi Weinstein: No yarmulke, long hair, dressed like a priest, many of them. Like, I I show people a picture. Yeah.

Yeah. I had someone, I sent someone recently a picture, and I wanted them to make a poster for the sukkah. I said, “I want take these real these are real portraits. I want to have these pictures in my sukkah.” Yeah.

And I said, “Let’s create this portrait.” I—

Dovid Bashevkin: Have no doubt everyone was very mishtomeim.

Nachi Weinstein: And I said, “Let’s create this portrait.” So, Reb Moshe Cheifetz, in the front of his sefer Meleches Machsheves, he has long hair, Okay. he has no yarmulke. The second edition, when they reprinted it, they put on a yarmulke, they changed his features a little bit, and also it says ben me’ah shanah anochi hayom, but there’s an, you know, apostrophe above it, kind of quotation marks rather, and it says, so he’s 46.

But in the second edition there’s a little apology in the back, it says, “We apologize, he doesn’t look 100,” because they didn’t understand. In the third edition, when they reprinted it, they removed that apology cuz they realized that they had no idea what they were talking about, okay? So, for Reb Moshe Cheifetz, you have Rav Shabtai Marini, one of the rabbeim of connection to the Rama, there’s a connection to the Ramchal. So, there’s a there’s a picture of him, clean-shaven. Rav Yishmael HaKohen, who’s the Zera Emes, close friends with the Chida, he was on Napole- Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Napoleon’s Sanhedrin, he actually didn’t go. One of the biggest poskim, the Chida quotes him extensively, She’eilos U’teshuvos Zera Emes.

He’s clean-shaven, he’s actually his secular name he went by Laudadio Sacerdoti. That’s that this was his name. Yes. This was his name, Yishmael HaKohen of Modena.

Dovid Bashevkin: You got very good at pronunciation.

Nachi Weinstein: My pronunciation was terrible, it still isn’t great.

Dovid Bashevkin: No, it got very good. It’s grown over the years, not shy at all.

Hopefully I’m pronouncing… I’m afraid, I’m afraid to pronounce anything cuz I know I butcher it all.

Nachi Weinstein: Listen, I’m a kid who grew up in Lakewood, and I grew up pronouncing baseball, when I would talk about sports, it was Jim Thome and Brett Favre. I didn’t know it was Jim Thome and Brett Favre! That’s what I would say.

And people like, what is wrong with you? And I was like, listen, I think you’ve said this also, never be afraid to make a mistake. I tell people, don’t be afraid. I tell my kids, you can you can pronounce the name wrong. It means you’re trying, and also it means you’re reading.

For sure. And you’re getting it from reading.

Dovid Bashevkin: Exactly. Back to the book, you get it from reading.

Exactly. Exactly. I pronounced the word awry instead of awry until I was like in my twenties, I think. That means you’re reading, but that’s you’re I’m afraid to pronounce these words.

Who’s Elijah Ben Benmo… what what what what’s his name? The old… Malavita? No, Elijah Benamozegh?

Nachi Weinstein: Benamozegh. Eliyahu Benamozegh.

See, he was a rabbi in Livorno.

Dovid Bashevkin: I know, he was a… I know, but I’m afraid to…

Nachi Weinstein: You tried it.

So, so, there’s these Italian rabbis. There’s a couple of… Rabbi David Nieto, who was from Venice, Livorno, then he went to London. You know the picture of him? He’s got his little goatee.

He’s got a wig. Okay? Long wig. You have Raphael Meldola. He He’s got He looks like George Washington.

He’s got the curly wig with a hat, and he’s got… Meldola, he writes Chuppas Chassanim, which everybody learns Chuppas Chassanim. This is still under production. We’re trying to have someone try to do it.

As of this recording, it might be out, you can check. If we find it, we’ll put a link. I’m working on to try to get it. And so when I sent these images, and I sent this to the to the guy, so he was going to tweak it up.

I don’t know what he’s doing, you know, with his AI and kind of, you know, getting it into a nice poster. Sure. Now the old-fashioned was just like the picture. He’s like, “No, I’m not doing that.

I’m making this look nice.” So, he and these these these are reputable images. I’m not taking some of these images like the Rambam, which we don’t know where it’s from. Correct. Yeah.

So he he he sends it back to me… The Ba’al Shem Tov. First, yeah, that’s Well, that’s that’s the one from London, yeah. The Baal Shem of London.

Correct, from London. So he sends it back to me and they all have like hats. I’m like, “Why?” He’s like, “I can’t have gedolim not have some head covering.” And I said, “Well, well they didn’t have They printed it in their own sefer without a head covering! What are you doing?” So, and I’m not faulting him. It was It’s more we’re so taught that our history that the gadol can’t be clean-shaven with long hair and no yarmulke and have like that high collar.

Yes. It It can’t be! But why not? Why can’t it be? Because you don’t understand that. It can’t be that he read Latin, read Italian. You know, one of the things, Reb Moshe Kravetz, who is now doctor also, he has a PhD on the Sforno.

Phenomenal Yid. I had him on to my show, he’s tremendous. He’s the Sforno. For those that are that are familiar with Sforno, not Sephorno, the Sforno, Rav Ovadiah Sforno, first of all we have his doctorate from University of Bologna.

And the Sforno, he he also taught Reuchlin, he was a rebbe of non-Jews. But the Sforno, what’s so interesting about the Sforno is if you learn if you learn Sforno, he almost never quotes anybody. Yeah. So, Rabbi Kravetz found this, I think he called Amar HaGaon, which is these notes that were on the side of a Ralbag, a first edition, where a talmid of the Sforno, where the Sforno was saying shiur and he’d write it down, and so he saw now, he could see, oh, it says the rebbe is coming from the Akeidah and so on and so forth.

Okay. Akeidas Yitzchak, that is. It was Arama. Sure.

However, if you look in the printed Sforno, there’s almost nothing that’s quoted. However, if you look in Noach, he quotes Berossus. So he’s quoting a secular source. Not only that, as Rabbi Kravetz has shown, this Berossus was a ancient writer.

The source that he’s quoting is not there. There was a notorious forger in the 16th century that was that was forging texts, including this text that the Sforno cites, which shows the Sforno was reading contemporary texts coming off the press in Latin or Italian. For sure, yeah. So the Sforno knew Latin.

The Sforno wrote a book called Or Amim. This was a book on really against philosophy. He he wrote it in Hebrew. He also wrote it himself in Latin, dedicated it to Catherine de’ Medici, the Queen of France, who he knew, or was a patron, or whatever it was.

Wow. Yeah. Sure. So, when you’re like, “Wait, this is this is the Sforno, right? The rishon?” Yeah, he was writing in Latin, sending it to the Queen.

So we have no understanding of what Italian Jews were. So this is also you can tell part of my enthusiasm… No, I love it. I genuinely…

So I’m so fascinated by Italian Jews that this kind of Jewry doesn’t really exist. I have a friend that’s a big listener of the podcast, Avi Dienna, lives in Lakewood. His family’s Italian ben achar ben, of Israel Dienna. They he he davens nusach Italki, he does, but there’s not really a lot of Italian…

Dovid Bashevkin: Five Towns Chatter is probably the closest thing to Italian Jewry that we have now.

Nachi Weinstein: Not a lot of It’s cuz in the beginning there was a lot of Sefardim and Ashkenazim. Like the Ramchal, the Luzzatto family, were Ashkenazim originally. They became Italian, though.

Yeah, there’s a big shibbush that—

Dovid Bashevkin: Whether or not he’s Ashkenaz or Sefard.

Nachi Weinstein: They were Ashkenazi, the Luzzattos. So, again, just we’re like off track, but like that’s what interests me. So I’m always interested in like knowing different parts of history.

And it wasn’t just… So when it comes to modern history, I don’t know why, I think recently I’ve gotten more interested, still not in the 20th century.

Dovid Bashevkin: No, you’re not there yet.

Nachi Weinstein: But I think your interest, let’s let’s turn to the book a little bit.

I read I read this over Shabbos, and these were things you wrote every week, you published them on your Substack. Yeah. Sure. And there’s a lot more of the modern history, because you’re someone that’s interested in modern history, and then also how it impacts us today.

Dovid Bashevkin: Correct, correct. I’m really trying to figure out the key stories that are hashing through some of the biggest controversies in not in Jewish history, but like where does the Torah want us to go with this, and using contemporary Jewish history to illuminate the way that we learn Chumash. I think a lot of times a lot of Chumash works we we’re like in this Renaissance where we have a lot of like halachah in the parshah, where you quote a pasuk, a Rashi, and then it’s like, okay, let’s talk about like saying Shalom Aleichem during Kiddush Levanah, like totally like a different thing.

Nachi Weinstein: Not pshat in parshah.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah, and then there’s a lot of lamdus in the parshah, Chavatzeles HaSharon like really like revolutionized that space, maybe the Minchas Asher to a certain degree, but it’s comes with like Kli Chemdah, the earlier works. And I wanted something different that would open up the parshah to the masses with a new a new angle, and I saw there really were not that many works that were using the parshah Really, I only found one that was using the parshah as a springboard for the study of Jewish history. Let me Each parshah, let me take some idea from the parshah, open up with questions, like a real like exploration of the parshah. Let’s hold the questions.

Let’s go in-depth in some incident in Jewish history, and then we’ll circle back, and through this perspective of some battle in Jewish history, we will come back and and and readdress those questions that we started with. And I developed essays starting from Bereishis to Vezos Haberachah, really creating a springboard of being able to learn the ideas in the parshah through the lens of Jewish history. That’s the basic idea.

Nachi Weinstein: It was week by week, and it culminated in this book.

But then you’ve stopped since, right? You’re not still Are you still writing those essays every week?

Dovid Bashevkin: No, what I want to do now is I want to do one on the Moadim, because there’s history, there’s such geshmak history, especially from very contemporary. Every yom tov has something, has like the thing that they fought over, the battles and all that. But to me it’s the same thing, meaning it’s take it’s showing you that the values in the parshah, in the Moadim, that we’re grappling with, it’s it’s mamash still today we’re being mevarer this. It’s right here, it’s right now.

And that’s that that that’s how I how I structured this. It’s heavy. Be careful. But I think, you know, Physically heavy.

It’s physically Like you literally It’s a lot to lift up, ’cause they use like they have fancy paper.

Nachi Weinstein: They put in They use nice paper. They did a great job. You published it, Maggid and 18Forty both, in conjunction.

So they they did a great job. There’s color, it’s nice. And you have So for those that didn’t see it, you also have You start off, like you said, with some questions, you go through the history, and then you have a suggested reading list at the end as well. Exactly.

So if you want to dive ‘Cause it’s seemingly like a podcast. You know, people, when I did a series, they’d be like, ‘Well, you didn’t discuss XYZ, right?’ And I’m like, this is a podcast. This is not a book, this is not This is not a This is not a university lecture series. Go further research.

Dovid Bashevkin: But And this Yeah. But one thing that I that I give credit to you and really you alone, ’cause a lot of the others do not do this, and I love everyone, you know that, we we love, we get along with everybody, but you show your work much more than everybody else. Meaning you tell, ‘This is the book that I am getting this from, that I’m getting this information.’ It’s not I don’t have a secret Kabbalah. I’m not like I’m not going to the Oxford library.

This is available to the public. So to me it was very important. I want to show you could find all this stuff, too, all the vignettes and the You know, when I learned in in I learned in Sha’ar Yashuv in the summertimes. And I remember Sha’ar Yashuv, it was like a very different clientele than Ner Yisroel, especially in the summertimes.

It was like a more like It was like a community beis medrash. It was, especially in the in the summer, you weren’t get everybody was away. And I remember I would listen to the way people would talk about the rosh yeshivah, who’s a incredible baki, Rav Naftali Jaeger. There’s a term that people would use, and it’s a colloquial term that people always use.

They’d be like, ‘It’s not shayach. It’s not shayach! Oh, my gosh, how much he knows, it’s unbelievable.’ And I would often tell people, not chalilah to knock down any rosh yeshivah, but actually to put them up, be like, you could also find a lot of this stuff. A lot of what he’s do You don’t yet If you did a little bit of the work, you would actually appreciate how much he knows, but you didn’t do any of the work, so you just sit back like a deer in the headlights, say, ‘It’s not shayach. It’s not shayach.’ And it bothers me, because it is shayach.

There’s no secret sauce, the secret formula. I want to hand you the keys. You You Find the stories and the incidents and the personalities that interest you, and then you go and read the books.

Nachi Weinstein: 100%.

The number one thing that I’ve learned from academia and academic books, because I’m not an academic, I’m a lawyer, I’m not an academic, is that read the sources. Make sure there are sources. Books without sources, the bane of my existence. Those books are not trustworthy at all.

Correct. You totally It’s just not trustworthy, ’cause maybe it was tweaked or changed. So, when you have a book with a source, someone’s like, ‘Well, how do I know the professor or so-and-so?’ Some yeshivish world, a professor’s like a bad word. Yeah.

How do I know he didn’t tweak it? I’m like, okay, Show your work. go to Read, read the source. Exactly. And if he twisted it, great, you saw it.

And you’ll find mistakes, like in anything. And, and what you’re saying also is a key point, is that it’s so easy today. Pick up books, pick up primary sources, read it. Go read that primary source, right? Read the Chida, read, read Rav Chaim Vital, see what—

Dovid Bashevkin: He’s saying, whatever you want.

You show this with your series. You show this with your series. You say, look, any topic, if you spend five hours just listening on the topic, you’re going to be in the 99% now. Yeah.

Now, now you at least know your way around, and I think that’s true of everything. That’s something I heard from Reb Berel Gershenfeld. Reb Berel Gershenfeld, who runs a yeshiva for ba’alei teshuvah, Machon Shlomo and Machon Yaakov, he always tells, like there’s newly minted ba’alei teshuvah, they have, so there’s this sense of like impostor syndrome, “How are we ever going to make it in the community?” He always tells them, “Pick one teeny, tiny little subtopic and spend one year just, just on that one topic, so when you enter into the community, you’ll feel I also have something that I know, you know, like,” and that’s what I feel like you’re doing constantly, that’s what I’m trying to do, of just giving the keys. It’s all there.

It’s all there for you to learn. And if you people just, I think, were more disciplined and strategic about how they read, what they read, and just take a little bit of To me, I have my own system, but how you organize the information in your head. Like, what I like reading the same top multiple books on the same topic right next to each other, because the Because there’s going to be overlap. Because now, I’m not going to forget the main events.

Okay, I’ll forget the details, I’ll remember it’s in one of these two books. But to me, I I want to be very, you know, 52 Shabboses a year, there’s not that much time to read, I’m very strategic. What do I want to read? What do I want to learn more about? Like, how do you choose what books you actually spend You have to like want it, but like, even now, it’s like very hard, because they probably send you like You You get 10 books a week, I’m sure, in the mail.

Nachi Weinstein: I get crazy amounts of stuff, and I I don’t keep all of them, I don’t read all of them, but some of them are interesting.

Dovid Bashevkin: I wanted it to be clear to all of your listeners that if you’re not getting the response that you want from Nachi when you sent him free books, you could also send me free books, try me. Because I’ll put it on I’ll put it right on Twitter. I have like That’s You What What do you have? The small talks? Yeah. So, I look I posting it as I read this over Shabbos, that’s like even smaller talks.

You know what I mean, like? Right, even smaller, there you go.

Nachi Weinstein: Everybody gets a little blurb. But I But But I But I put No, but I post them all. They all go up, posted on the WhatsApp chat, and on Twitter, and the status.

They get posted that this book is new, and and so on. So, I do post about them. So, I think what I’m So, either Sometimes there’s a new book, “Oh, I see that book’s coming out, I want to have a conversation about this, let me read it, I want to talk on the podcast.” Sometimes it’s just like, “I want to learn about that.”

Dovid Bashevkin: And when do you read? Are you mostly reading on Shabbos, or you—

Nachi Weinstein: Get to read through the week? Most History is usually on Shabbos, sometimes snatches during the week, usually on Shabbos. If there’s time, you know, my wife, who doesn’t usually listen to the podcast, I don’t know if she’ll listen to this, but she, you know, I have to help out, the kids, you know.

Dovid Bashevkin: It is a davar pashut that we are both married to women who do not listen to our podcasts.

Nachi Weinstein: They do not.

Dovid Bashevkin: They’re like You could tell because we because we have a shemetz of being still normal people. If we were married to people who were fans, I think we would pashut be meshugeneh, unhealthy people.

Nachi Weinstein: The only episode my wife listened to I think the entire, the in its entirety was when I had on my uncle, Eli Rosenfeld, who kind of is behind The Haggadah, yeah. I remember that episode. My wife listened to the entire episode. I said, “Great, you listened to my uncle, but not to me?” Like, “No, Eli is on, I’m listening to him.” That’s so funny.

The Haggadah, I remember that episode, sure. No, not listening to me. So, yeah, correct, but my wife, my kids My kids actually listen to the podcast sometimes. I’m not sure if they’re actually listening or just like, “Oh, that’s his podcast.” That’s what, yeah.

They go on 24Six and they’re like, “Oh look, that’s his podcast.” Cool, cool, cool. So, so it it’s really I I I don’t know. It’s a good question. Sometimes I’m just what I’m in the mood what I’m in the mood of.

Like I’m in the mood of reading this, I’m reading that. Also, sometimes I read things that aren’t history-related. I need to read a novel or something else, and it’s okay to read something that’s not history-related.

Dovid Bashevkin: I almost I I have a hard time reading fiction now because of this.

Nachi Weinstein: So, I did. There was a There was a There was a tekufah a few years ago where I was really just like reading and it was almost like pressure, like I have to be for the podcast, and there still is some sort of pressure that I need to do the podcast, even though I’m like I have like 40 episodes recorded that aren’t being released. You’re living the best life, like that. It’s crazy.

But it’s best, but it’s bad. But then I’m still recording new. I wish I had that. “Why are you recording new? Are you crazy?” So, and some of them are really good, and they’re like sitting in the vault.

But I sometimes I I started reading novels again, fiction. I mainly read fantasy and science fiction. I need kind of like a just like, “Okay, break. I got to just shut this down.”

Dovid Bashevkin: The only thing I read outside The only fiction I read is is science fiction.

Nachi Weinstein: So, like I need a good science fiction, I need to just be done with this. I need to read something else and zone out.

Dovid Bashevkin: Can I Can I Can I recommend one science fiction author who is unbelievable? Okay. Go ahead.

Ted Chiang.

Nachi Weinstein: Heard of him, I think, but I haven’t read—

Dovid Bashevkin: Story of our lives, a lot of his stories have, have religious themes to them. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

You’ll, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll enjoy it. Ted Chiang. Maybe he doesn’t do interviews. I don’t think you could get him on Seforim Chatter.

Nachi Weinstein: Seforim Chatter, yeah.

Dovid Bashevkin: When you do a series on science fiction.

Nachi Weinstein: Seforim Chatter did not do—there’s no series on Tolkien and—

Dovid Bashevkin: No, no, no, we’re not doing that.

Nachi Weinstein: And The Wheel of Time.

C.S. Lewis, no. Yeah, The Wheel of Time took me years to get through because in between the podcasts Yeah, yeah, yeah. 14 books.

It’s crazy. It’s slogging on, and if anyone’s read it, can commiserate with that. So, yeah, I still read some of that. But like, so how pertains to Jewish history, I think it’s whatever interests me, whatever I’m in the mood of reading at that point.

Sometimes it’s something new, This is an important question.

Dovid Bashevkin: When you read on Shabbos and there’s a passage or something that you want to remember—

Nachi Weinstein: So, you have those book darts.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah, are you a book dart person?

Nachi Weinstein: Sometimes, not really. So, I’ll tell you like this.

Dovid Bashevkin: If it’s a book I should have brought you book darts. I feel terrible.

Nachi Weinstein: Book darts are great. You could still send them.

If I have a book where it’s okay, this book, I have to read for the podcast and I need to know it really well, so then I’ve perfected it, it’s kind of bad, this speed reading. It’s like I’m just like Yeah, yeah, I’m like that. Yeah, exactly. Don’t need this part, this, and then I’ll tab it up.

I have my stickies. I like the colorful stickies. And so, do that during the week, and I’ll just run through something, cuz I know like I can conduct the interview like on something. Also, there’s a topic related to Italian Jewry, I know a lot of that.

So, like okay, whatever. And there’s some topics I don’t know, so then it’s harder, I have to really read, and I’m kind of like, it’s also a chesron because then I’m stuck to the book, and I’m like well, I just know this. Now, you know my interview style, I try not to be overbearing on the guest. And here we’re having more of a shmoozy conversation.

I usually try to let the guests talk, not to you stayed.

Dovid Bashevkin: Oh, you let them go! You let them go! Like the Professor Kanarfogel episode. Oh, my gosh! You’re just like, “Hi, you know what to do.” And you I I assume half the time you’re in the kitchen, you’re making yourself breakfast, lunch. You’re sitting there with a sandwich.

They’re just going. But that was part of the kesheim shekibalti sechar al derisha, kach akabel sechar al perisha. Podcasting, and I’m you’re much better at this than me, you pull back and say, “Fill up the canvas.

Nachi Weinstein: This is your space.” I’ve learned that people, when I’m interviewing a guest, me more I think this is also not only the stylistic difference, it’s also this is the nature of Seforim Chatter.

I’m bringing on a guest on Shabbetai Tzvi. I’m bringing on a guest on Jews of Venice. The guest is the expert, not Nachi Weinstein. Nachi has what to add, Nachi will conduct the conversation, but I’m not the expert.

They are. They’re what the listeners are here to hear. So, I always remember that. I imagine myself as the listener.

I started listening to podcasts 2010, probably, a very long time ago. Sports podcasts, Pittsburgh Steelers podcast. Okay. So, there was not a lot of—I’m a big Steelers fan, there’s not a lot of—

Dovid Bashevkin: You have Pittsburgh roots?

Nachi Weinstein: No, it’s just I’m a Steelers fan.

I’m a Pirates fan, so you can feel bad for me. Yeah. So, so, when I I would listen to I would download podcasts and I would take them with me to yeshiva, to Philly, because I would like listen to like back episodes, and the real like real analysis, not like on sports talk radio. I listened to fair enough sports talk radio, so I hopefully it panned out.

And Oh, wow. That is early.

Dovid Bashevkin: Ah. Gotcha.

Okay. Yeah. Sports talk radio shaped a generation of yeshiva of yeshivaleit, for sure. Of course.

Nachi Weinstein: Of course. Mike and the Mad Dog, and so on and so forth.

Dovid Bashevkin: Sports radio and and Rush Limbaugh. Like, those were the two I—

Nachi Weinstein: Never listened really to Rush.

Dovid Bashevkin: But those were the two that it shaped discourse in the yeshivas.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, for sure. So, I would listen to the podcast, and I would always see like I guess I intuited whether I should be cutting off, whether I shouldn’t be, and where to go. So, I think I’ve learned that in in the podcast early on.

You know, I’m a person, those that know me and shmooze with me, I know how to cut people off and say what I want. But in the podcast space, I’m like no, let them finish. Also, when I was beginning of the podcast, I was in law school, and we had these different classes, you know, they tell you about like, you know, oral argument programs, kind of like a fake jury is. So, so, you learn also then where you have to like open-ended questions and and So, I used a lot of that also.

And they teach you like in cross-examination or direct, right? When you’re allowed to use the direct question, when you’re allowed to use the the only open-ended question, you have to be like, “So tell me about your book,” rather than, “Why did you pick the title? I read this over Shabbos, and what about it,” right, and then you like narrow. So, so, therefore, not only not a leading question, I would start with the open-ended question, and then let you talk for 10 minutes, and I would jot down on a paper That’s part of the reason why I guess, maybe depositions.

Dovid Bashevkin: That’s so interesting. I noticed that.

Yeah. All right, a leading question. Are you taking notes during your interviews?

Nachi Weinstein: So, my interviews are not on video. So, I have a piece of paper in front of me with a pen, with a list of questions that I want to ask, and I don’t I don’t always hit on all of them, because sometimes they’ll answer them, sometimes I’ll skip them.

But, I’m always Okay, Dovid just said that. Quickly jot down a note, I want to, and then when he finishes talking, I’m going to interject, “By the way, when you said that, this is what he meant over there. This was the place he was talking about.” Gotcha.

Dovid Bashevkin: That’s exactly what you do.

You’re like you give them 10 minutes, then you jump in for like a 45 second edit, and then you redirect. You say, “Okay. The next thing I want you to talk about is 30 years later, whatever.” So, so—

Nachi Weinstein: I think the biggest criticism of that sometimes I get is, well, like it’s could be a little start-stop-ish because you’re just like saying, “Well, let me, and then let’s redirect.” You know, you’re not like picking up sometimes on what they’re saying. But on the other hand, and I’ve I it seems like the listeners like this, I’m letting them talk and then interject, as opposed to, and I found this when I sometimes I have to do it, if if I stop you and I’m like, “By the way, that’s whatever,” then I might knock you off your train of thought, and or were you getting up to the good part and the listener was like, “Great.

He’s going to Oh, come on! He just stopped it.” Now he just messed it up. What did he do?” So I’m like I don’t do that. This is like my style and this is what I do. And it’s not like not ask leading questions, sometimes I do ask pointed leading questions, but sometimes it’s just open-ended questions, and then you drill down later.

So I think it’s kind of evolved over time, but I let the guests kind of talk, and they’re the expert. They’re what people are here to listen to. Also, when then you listen to enough episodes of Seforim Chatter, I think people hear me enough and they hear my opinions enough, once they’re listening to it.

Dovid Bashevkin: They get to know you, and it’s nice cuz you get to know you through through your interests, through your questions.

You’re not biographical on the, you’re not like talking about yourself at all, but you get a very nice feel for your your personality, the whole vibe.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, it’s very rare that I do. That’s more reserved for those that are on my personal status, which is not, I get messages, “Can I join your status?” No, it’s not, you’re not allowed to join my status. You can stay on the on the chat and on the podcast where we stay very apolitical, buttoned up, very straightforward.

It’s just we’re talking about this, we’re talking about new books, new sefarim, and so on. History.

Dovid Bashevkin: I want to talk, and I want you to, these are your questions, but I want to talk a little bit about the aesthetics about what you’re seeing in Jewish publishing. This book, the first time somebody picks up, will note it’s very heavy cuz they used a very fancy kind of paper, and the binding, and this and that.

And at first I was very nervous about it, it is kind of hard to put in a tallis bag or whatever it is, but then I was looking at like where publishing is heading now, and I actually think that now is actually the time to publish books that feel a little bit more like an entity because we get inundated by so much stuff, and everybody’s doing like, “Free download this. Free download that.” You print out 30 pages and then you know what, it winds up in the genizah or in the garbage.

Nachi Weinstein: So I think there’s been some articles on this in the in the secular press. I think in the secular world this is the case, especially talk about fantasy and science fiction, where they’re doing a lot of these kind of deluxe editions, special editions, stenciled endpaper, stenciled edges, special maps and pictures in endpapers.

There’s nothing, they’re not doing this at all. There’s, you know, glossy covers and so on, they’re not doing any of this. The Jewish world is being very generic. And also what you’re seeing a lot in the academic world is that you’re seeing a lot of print-on-demand, which is horrible, terrible quality.

They basically take a paperback and they stick it in two boards and put it on. It’s horrible, terrible quality. $75 books are doing it, certain presses.

Dovid Bashevkin: Some of the nice books, A, the book that you just put out, Keser Achilim, which we can talk about—

Dovid Bashevkin: Beautiful, genuinely.

Nachi Weinstein: That’s Machon Aleh Zayis. Yes, it’s right here. You can show show it show it to the camera. Well, I think also we worked very hard on the on the cover, shout-out to my friend Kalman Biederman who helped me on that.

And they did, we put kind of… So these are endpapers, and I think we’re getting this more and more, but I think to do like a design… these are Italian rabbis, no yarmulkes. But I think when you’re, and that is the city of Trieste, but when you’re doing that, I think it adds a lot of character and a lot of flavor.

Also, we try to do more modern fonts. Certain publishers, we won’t name names, use a certain font that is just not modern, not interesting. And this paper is actually very white. One thing maybe we could have done is make it a little more yellow, maybe it’s a little white.

You can make it a little bit more yellowy or warmer. The paper, also could do a bookmark, which we didn’t do, yes. Thickness, yes, nice paper. There’s different thickness to the paper.

This is also a six-by-nine and we did kind of a printed cover rather than a stamped cover. So there’s a lot of aesthetics. Actually I’m planning…

Dovid Bashevkin: I care about aesthetics for—

Nachi Weinstein: Books, I think it’s really important.

I’ve been planning for a while, I can even mention, I actually spent three hours one Thursday night, I think it was a Thursday night, preparing this with Reb Shimon Shimanowitz of Aleh Zayis, we’re going to be doing a practical print series on Seforim Chatter. If anyone’s interested or wants to sponsor, yes, which will go through like how do I pick a name of a sefer, what font do I use, do I use an editor, do I not, what color paper, how thick should the paper be, do I do a printed cover or stamped cover? By the way, what is a printed cover and a stamped cover? How many copies should I print? How do I, where where do you print, what country, how do we ship it here? Paperback, hardcover, six-by-nine, bigger size, bigger than that? Do we do UV? This cover has something called UV on it, on the Keser Achilim, the words, colors, and so on. So there’s a lot of different things, and I want to get involved in real, real practical print. What do you write by the copyright page, do you put your phone number, do you put your email, all these kind of practical things that I’m that I want to do.

So I’m planning on that. Should be two or three episodes, which will be I think very helpful for a lot of people, that I think people will be interested in. Yeah, so I think as I said in the secular world you’re seeing a lot of this, especially with fantasy.

Dovid Bashevkin: But I’m davening, I’m begging you, the one area, a mamash, a formal petition, do a series on how to write Torah and history in English.

Please. It’s a big issue. Just the writing quality. I think you could do a great job.

Interview a couple of people who write, know how to write.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, but And we didn’t even get into the whole AI thing, and how we’re headed with and the amount of AI slop coming out, especially in the Jewish world with all the slop being printed. And I I I publ- I posted because it was on Amazon, I posted it. Yeah.

But listen, you’re you’re put all these AI translations now, everybody’s translating it. No, but I tweaked it, I I don’t mind—

Dovid Bashevkin: The AI transla-

Nachi Weinstein: I mean, so I think there’s a difference, I will point out.

Dovid Bashevkin: I think the difference between translation Very big difference.

Nachi Weinstein: Vs. a book.

Cuz translation means they’re just translating into English.

Dovid Bashevkin: And AI’s really good at that.

Nachi Weinstein: Correct, versus, and that’s not AI slop, versus when you have AI literally writing the book.

Dovid Bashevkin: Telling the story.

Nachi Weinstein: Telling the story in AI style, there’s it’s no creativity. Something’s really lacking there. So yeah. So that that’s something also.

So anyways, talking about aesthetics, I think aesthetics is important. I think the one chisaron to heavy books like you said, can someone take it to shul or take it to a house, maybe there’ll be a paperback version of this one day, b’ezras Hashem, which then you can carry easily. But this is kind of a deluxe edition, with the color, we can show you have like the the colors on the side.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah, the lines on the side.

There’s pictures inside.

Nachi Weinstein: The design is very nice. I think a lot of that is is really nice, the way that was done. And I like this picture on the cover.

Dovid Bashevkin: It has that like old, nu, this of, it was painted.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, the the painting is nice. I think that is very nice. I think also what I always like that Koren does is they do the, kind of matte Yeah, the matte, yeah.

Which I I like matte, I think it’s modern. This is bound nicely. So I think a lot of is I think aesthetics are important. You know, the the old this one of the, is the word falsest? One of the wrongest statements is, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

Ugh. Everybody judges a book by its cover. Everyone. Everyone goes into the bookstore and says which, they look at the cover.

That’s what everybody does.

Dovid Bashevkin: Pini Stieglitz showed this to me, Pini Stieglitz who I interviewed, who’s a one of the from the ziknei sefarim collectors, he’s an unbelievable person, but he one time pulled me over, I think it was right when I was publishing my first book, and he said, he showed me, he has the first edition of Teshuvos Reb Akiva Eiger. And he said, “If you read the introduction to Teshuvos Reb Akiva Eiger, Reb Akiva Eiger tells his kids, ‘I care about the ink quality, the paper quality, the font, what font, cuz this it helps people learn better when it looks beautiful.’” So he showed me the first edition Teshuvos Reb Akiva Eiger when when the when there’s blank space on the page, they literally put like a picture of like a flower, a bird, a swan, a lighthouse. And the kids that this was his kids, who were also gedolim in their own right, they did it because the they lo- looked at what their father said, that he wants this to be beautiful.

Nachi Weinstein: Also, I think what you’re pointing out is, is that, so in the age of downloads and PDFs and WhatsApp and so on, you want the book to be a little bit bigger than a regular book, glossy paper, color. There’s something unique about owning the book. Yes, yes! Now that does raise the price of books, and I don’t know if you’ve seen the price of sefarim lately, cuz it’s crazy. How’s that? Has it? The price of sefarim is like average $30 a sefer.

And that has to do with the dollar-shekel, printing in Eretz Yisroel, air shipping from Eretz Yisroel is crazy. Crazy. So there’s a lot of issues.

Dovid Bashevkin: There’s a paper shortage, that There’s a there is.

Nachi Weinstein: There’s a lot of there’s there’s a lot of issues. So, there’s a lot of issues there. And then, naturally, that’s why people are turning to print-on-demand. People printing stuff on Amazon more and more.

Dovid Bashevkin: I got a I have a printer in my house. I don’t like the print-on-demand books.

Nachi Weinstein: Well, print-on- Right, well, some of the Amazon paperbacks are okay, cuz it’s a paperback. It it’s schwach, even for a paperback.

You can tell right away on the cover. Yeah, you can tell right away. It’s poor. No, also the the the binding is poor.

So even even the paperbacks are not great. So that is a problem. I think I think that is a problem. I think aesthetics, listen, I’ve pushed certain publishers, I don’t know if I want to say here, to do kind of these kind of specialty, even with novels.

I was like, “Why don’t you try it? I know you Try doing a special run with special endpapers and they don’t want Yeah. It’s hard to get It’s hard to get the old The old Jewish guard They don’t want to change. And I’m like, but it works in the secular world, why don’t you try it? But we have a smaller market. So try it! Try it, see if there’s going to be an interest.

They always do a little bonus material, like I come from the fantasy world, so I mean they’re this is huge there. Walk into any Barnes Noble, you’ll see this. Yeah. Yeah.

For sure! And what happened there was, there were these small niche publishers doing this. Folio Society and you were having whatever, others. Yeah. Now, the big publishers decided, “Hey, we should get in on this, there’s money there.” So now they’re re-releasing, so they’ll have a hardcover and then a paperback and then they’re going to release the special edition.

The special edition, with the bonus and and they change and then the all the bonus material and the extra and and the colored endpapers, they’re all doing this. Yeah. And they’re charging a little more money, and people are buying it.

Dovid Bashevkin: That’s what I want.

We have not yet had that Renaissance of I think the Renaissance of Hebrew Torah publishing, we we we have explosion, but Torah in English.

Nachi Weinstein: For English-language Torah, I think there’s a lot. I think there’s a lot. I I don’t know, interesting, especially you talked about history and Torah and history.

Like I think, you know, we’ll point to Mosaica Press, won’t say a name, Mosaica’s publish- publishes a lot of stuff.

Dovid Bashevkin: I love, we love, we love everybody.

Nachi Weinstein: We love everyone. A lot, Mosaica prints many interesting books, and many books that are not necessarily so interesting.

You know, you look at all the publishers, I think it depends, some of them the books are very interesting, you know, Koren has some interesting books and not so interesting. Yeah. And so, it depends. I think there’s a lot of Torah books, though, like in what you see from Mosaica and from Koren and from ArtScroll, you see a lot of Torah books.

Yeah.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah. I’m a feinschmecker when it comes to books.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah.

To the writing quality. I, I, for me, again, now I’m not naming any names, when it comes to quality writing, quality topics, I think there’s very little. And I made the mistake of putting on—Seforim Chatter a few days ago, I said, really before Yom Tov this year, schwach to recommend new stuff. And I got, wait, I got into, “Hey, what about this? What about that?” And I deleted it.

So I deleted the comment, but I really stand by the comment. The writing, there’s just not a lot of like, “Oh, that’s a great new book. I’m going to pick up…” And it keeps you—

Dovid Bashevkin: And it grabs you.

Nachi Weinstein: …there’s not a lot.

So you have things like this, your book which is let’s, no one’s picking up your book, probably, probably not, and saying, “I’m going to read this now,” the whole—

Dovid Bashevkin: Thing, “the whole year.”

Nachi Weinstein: No, they’re going to buy it, I read this over Shabbos, and they’re going to read every week an essay because it’s fascinating and it will be the gateway—

Dovid Bashevkin: And they’re short, and they’re doable, yeah—

Nachi Weinstein: And it’s the gateway now to explore the topic with the further reading list. Exactly. Exactly. But like a book that you could just like pick up and read, like when’s the last time you picked up a book from a major Jewish publisher, you’re like, “That’s a great book.

I want to recommend that to everybody.” I’m sure there are, but—

Dovid Bashevkin: Some of the stuff that you recommend is probably the stuff that I’ve gotten through.

Nachi Weinstein: I, I try to recommend like when, when Littman published Rabbi Dr. Yosie Levine’s Chacham Tzvi book, I like, yeah, you know how many people bought that book? I, I, for me, I put, I said, that’s a phenomenal book, phenomenal book. It was so good. Yeah.

But even in academia lately, it’s been kind of—

Dovid Bashevkin: Weak, very weak, very schwach.

Nachi Weinstein: In English language. In Hebrew, there is.

Dovid Bashevkin: In Hebrew, it’s a lot.

Nachi Weinstein: There’s a lot coming out in Eretz Yisroel.

Dovid Bashevkin: That’s where all the best stuff is.

Nachi Weinstein: There’s a lot coming out in Eretz Yisroel. And we’re eagerly awaiting Rabbi Dr. J.

1. Schacter’s Megillas Sefer, which should be out very soon.

Dovid Bashevkin: But the problem with the Israeli books, which are phenomenal, is the publishing houses look like they still have their original website from the early 1970s.

Nachi Weinstein: I know, Magnes, Magnes is new, Bialik is new, Bar-Ilan is new, yeah, yeah.

Dovid Bashevkin: And they ship like Magnes—

Nachi Weinstein: So Magnes you can order to America, they ship.

Dovid Bashevkin: I still feel like I ordered a book on Magnes maybe a couple years ago. It’s still on its way.

Nachi Weinstein: Ships.

Magnes ships, Bialik ships, Bar-Ilan ships. They’re really the only three though, and it is expensive, but they do ship. Okay. Otherwise, you’ve got to go to Biegeleisen or you can message Eliezer Brodt from Eretz Yisroel.

That, that’s your only options. You, you can’t get these books in America, very, very, very rare, unless like, you know, Mizrahi brings it in. And it’s the best stuff. Yeah, so some of this stuff is great stuff.

There’s really interesting material coming out, and it’s just, it’s not available here. Correct, correct. Unfortunately. So, but, but, again, many people don’t read Hebrew books.

And Hebrew, even for me, Hebrew books are more of a slog to get through.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah, especially because now so much of Hebrew is very modern—

Nachi Weinstein: Very modern, very modern.

Dovid Bashevkin: Even if you, even if they’re charedi, the words that they’re using, you, you can’t scan so quickly because you have to like—

Nachi Weinstein: Transliterate. Took me a while when I was reading—

Dovid Bashevkin: To get the English words.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, when it was like sobyektivi and obyektivi, oh, that’s subjective, that’s objective.

And I’m like reading it like sobyektivi. Subyektivi, obyektivi, what is it? Exactly. So it took Exactly. rule of thumb that I’ve learned as a native English speaker, if the word is long and really weird-looking, It’s probably an English academic word that they it’s probably an English—

Dovid Bashevkin: Academic word, so—

Nachi Weinstein: Then start reading it in English. Yeah, exactly.

Not in Hebrew, and you go, “Oh, I know that word.” Yes, yes, yes. Spatzifi, Exactly, so you’ll get Spetzifisi, yeah, exactly. it’s like, oh, it’s specific. I don’t know how they even pronounce these words, like it’s, we’re talking about reading.

So I think, yeah, I don’t know, it’s kind of we need people have to write books that are more interesting.

Dovid Bashevkin: This is your work. This is the work that we do together, trying to make sure that, you know, when, when Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasa came out in a time there’s, modernity was all coming, so Rav Neuwirth wrote in the introduction, he says, “I’m writing this so we don’t forget Toras HaShabbos.” So I’m not, I’m not writing and neither of us are, are making sure people don’t forget Toras HaShabbos. I think generally our work, people should not forget Toras reading.

And, and, it really is a she’as sakana for, for everybody. This is the dor, we could, chalilah, forget about reading. We both grew up, we read Fahrenheit 451. Aha, yes, Bradbury.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah. That’s a, it’s a scary book. But, but, a lot of these books, the dystopian, you read 1984, and you’re like, “Wait, are we living in Orwell’s world?” But I think—

Dovid Bashevkin: And this was the piece I wrote about.

Nachi Weinstein: You wrote in the Wall Street Journal, and this was the cover story in The Atlantic, a month ago.

“The End of the Age of Reading.” There’s actually a new book out about this also. This is, this is a thing that people are scared. I mean, look how many people, and if you read the article, you read all those things, everyone reads, right? They have text messages and online, but are people sitting and reading books? And the one thing we’re protected as Jewish people is we have Shabbos and Yom Tov.

We don’t have the phones, we don’t have that. Correct. That’s why I wrote that. But you need to sit and read and, and disconnect and read, and even read long-form, you know, magazines.

Read quality, yeah. I think, I think there is an interest, you’re seeing this resurgence, I think The Atlantic went from 10 months a year to 12 months a year recently. Correct. So there is, there is an interest in print.

Yes. You know, people are still reading The New Yorker, people are still reading print. There is an interest in print, you know, in print magazines, but I, I think in quality, quality, especially when it comes to history and, and, I think it’s important that people really read, and that’s another thing we didn’t discuss. When it comes to like academic books, so me and you will read these kind of jargon-filled, dry academic books, and they’re hard to get through.

Look, they’re hard to get through. You have to get through, it’s hard. Yeah. So there’s something to be said for an enjoyable academic book.

I don’t know if academics are like trained to write boring and like tedious like Yeah.

Dovid Bashevkin: Some of them are—some of them are really good, like I like—a lot of them are more modern, a lot of them are like the biographies are sometimes more—

Nachi Weinstein: But biographies are out of vogue in academia.

Dovid Bashevkin: It’s not considered I know, it’s not choshuv.

Nachi Weinstein: Choshuv to write a biography.

Dovid Bashevkin: I know, but those are the ones that can be written very well. Some of the books that you read, what’s his name?

Nachi Weinstein: Paweł ma Oh, Paweł Maciejko?

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah, I can’t pronounce his last name. But you introduced me, I love his writing. Mixed Multitude.

He writes beautifully.

Nachi Weinstein: That was a terrific book.

Dovid Bashevkin: He writes so beautifully. But you notice when you’re reading it, you’re like I’m not feeling that like krechtz of like that I’m like mamash like trying to get through a Rashba when you’re reading in English.

And sometimes you feel that when you read academic books.

Nachi Weinstein: There’s some certain academic books. You know, we talk about The Pursuit of Heresy by Elisheva Carlebach. Yeah.

Dovid Bashevkin: She’s a phenomenal writer.

Nachi Weinstein: Terrific book. Her Palaces of Time was very good also about like calendars. Really really good book.

Dovid Bashevkin: For sure. You never read that?

Nachi Weinstein: I did. That’s a great book. It’s phenomenal.

That’s a great book. Spicy also. Yeah. That’s a great book.

Dovid Bashevkin: Some of the calendars are very spicy. She has a lot of pictures in there. Her books are very beautiful also.

Nachi Weinstein: Yes.

They did a great job. That one was I think that was the Belknap Press of Harvard. That’s like a division of Harvard Press, which doesn’t publish many Jewish books anymore unless it’s Harvard, but that was that’s well done. Their books are all well done.

Yes, yes, yes. So that was that was a good book. I think there are some books, you know, recently, the shochet autobiography that came out, that was great. Those two volumes, I think That was Academic Studies Press.

Dovid Bashevkin: That’s who did my synagogues book.

Nachi Weinstein: Yes, Michoel Rotenfeld. I interviewed him on both books. That’s a great book that came out.

Like I said, the Chacham Tzvi book was good. A little heavier, but Elisheva Carlebach’s book with Debra Kaplan about women, the early modern woman. Yeah, you had them also, on 18Forty. That was a very good book.

It’s a little heavier because the subject matter is heavier, but it’s—yeah—

Dovid Bashevkin: I liked that, I liked the pictures.

Nachi Weinstein: That’s a very good book. Fascinating, important book. But a lot of books, again, so sometimes books are dry.

You have to know Readability, I think, is a key point. When I recommend to people, especially laymen, right, we’re getting into like what do you recommend them to read? Yeah. I do factor in readability. I can’t just tell them to read some, you know, tedious microhistory of the Jews of, you know, Modena, Italy.

Dovid Bashevkin: But you don’t This actually shocks me, cuz you must get, and I used to have this, where yeshiva guys would reach out to me and be like, what’s your starter pack? What’s your starter pack of like And I had a starter pack of like, here are the books that really contributed. And my starter pack wasn’t exclusively Jewish history. Some of it was like more like Jewish communal. I put like Jew vs. Jew by Samuel Freedman.

I think it’s a brilliant brilliant book, structured really well, all contemporary. But you should come out with that. Like a start You should have, if I’m just giving you unsolicited advice, starter packs on every major topic.

Nachi Weinstein: I still think the starting point on a lot of these topics are golden oldies.

Even if they’re outdated a little bit. You know, read Cecil Roth on the Jews in the Renaissance and the Jews in Italy. He doesn’t have a lot of endnotes or footnotes. It’s outdated, a lot of it, but he’s such a wonderful writer.

Yeah. He’s great. So, yes, take it with a grain of salt. There’s cutting-edge scholarship.

Dovid Bashevkin: My friend Menachem Butler, zichrono l’tov, who played a big role in my own understanding of Jewish history, he would recommend always to read the old Encyclopedia Judaica.

Nachi Weinstein: Do you have the old one? Yeah. But that’s a little boring, to be—

Dovid Bashevkin: I think to read—

Nachi Weinstein: Listen, Menachem is a fountain of He knows everything in that knowledge. He knows every He knows every PDF ever, right?

Dovid Bashevkin: Ever.

But he’s the one who told me, he says, if you want to get that like really strong foundation, have the old ’70s—

Nachi Weinstein: Listen, Wikipedia is a good starting place, as a starting place, especially Hebrew Wikipedia, not English. Hebrew is much better. Yeah, exactly. That’s a good starting place.

Now everyone just does AI, and they’re just, oh, well, AI I have a friend writes for a publication, not going to name names, and no, he’s a great guy. I know who it is. And he sent me a comment. Nachi, what do you say to this? And I’m like, well, I mean, maybe.

It depends on one, two, three, four qualification. He’s like, so, yes? I’m like, well, this one paragraph requires a lot of research. Did you get this from AI? Well, yes, it cited one thing. I wanted to I’m like, okay, look, you can’t write this.

You have no idea You’re not You’re not analyzing this. You’re just giving me this and like, maybe. Yeah. It just requires knowing XYZ.

So he’s like, okay, I revised it. I took it out. But at least he asked me, so not that I’m anybody. He could ask whoever the expert is, but like don’t don’t do that.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yeah. But where did you learn how to write so well in English?

Nachi Weinstein: Like I I don’t I don’t write I don’t know that I write so well in English.

Dovid Bashevkin: You write You I’ve read your stuff.

Nachi Weinstein: I write I write I write, not enough.

I don’t think I have enough time cuz I’m so busy with the podcast, and baruch Hashem, family and and work. But it’s not write I think it’s reading. The more you read, the more you see how to read, the more you know how to think critically and know what you’re reading and what you’re quoting. So I I think Correct.

As I going back to the way you asked the starter pack. I think let’s say like again, someone like some simple The Rashi book you mentioned is good. golden oldies. Yes, so Rashi book is good scholarship.

Is there newer like Sometimes you academic is a little pedantic. Well, Yeah. on this Fair, fair. So whenever you see the word Marrano, think Converso, right? Right, exactly.

Exactly.

Dovid Bashevkin: Now, there’s a kri u’chsiv, you know.

Nachi Weinstein: There definitely are like arguments. Like if you’re going to read Netanyahu on on on Spain, or any Abarbanel, there’s a lot of pushback, and a lot of Netanyahu’s work you can kind of read both sides and see where you want to fall and what you think.

So that is an issue with reading older books, but you there’s a starting point like these global kind of books that you can just start off at. Like I mentioned, Grossman’s Rashi is a great book to start on with Rashi. And all all the books like So, I mean, it depends on the topic you’re looking at. You know, Shmuel Feiner’s The Jewish Enlightenment is great and reading up on on about the Haskalah period and you want to read about the Enlightenment.

I like some of the books in the Jewish Lives series from Yale. The Yale. Some are good, some are not good. Fair.

Like the Menasseh ben Israel book by Steven Nadler, wonderful book. Loved it. Rembrandt’s Jews is not in that series, wrote by by Nadler, also a great book. Also great.

You can learn all about the Jews of Amsterdam.

Dovid Bashevkin: Thank you for bringing mentioning Yale Jewish Lives series. I I have great love for it even though I know they strike out, like air ball a couple.

Nachi Weinstein: I asked this to so Pawel Maciejko is writing a biography of Shabbetai Zevi.

On Shabbetai Zevi, yeah. So I said, Pawel, you’re like an expert on Shabbetai Zevi, it makes sense they hired you. Professor Yehuda Mirsky on Rav Kook, excellent. Steven Nadler on Menasseh ben Israel, great.

And then there’s like the Rambam one, the Spinoza one. Who The Freud one. Who did they have write these books? Why do they pick non-experts sometimes? I don’t understand this. Take an expert.

Martin Goodman on Herod, wonderful book. He’s an ex- He’s one of the world experts in Oxford on the time period.

Dovid Bashevkin: They missed a couple.

Nachi Weinstein: But why on some of them do they just take nobodies?

Dovid Bashevkin: You know what’s a good one, though? Houdini is excellent.

Nachi Weinstein: See, I don’t read a lot of the secular ones. You like that kind of stuff.

Dovid Bashevkin: Deep dive. Deep dive in Harry Houdini.

I loved it. Oh, very rich material.

Nachi Weinstein: So some of these books are better. What What’s great about that series, though, is cheap and affordable, and they they make them in 200 pages.

Those are like perfect for over a Shabbos.

Dovid Bashevkin: Oh, they’re my favorite Shabbos reads.

Nachi Weinstein: Yes. Like, to get in and get out.

So, I wish they would do some better ones, also some more classical Jewish—

Dovid Bashevkin: Figures.

Nachi Weinstein: They don’t They kind of don’t always do that. There’s only a limited amount. And like I said, the Rambam one was like, I don’t know, I think it was like a swing and a miss, I think.

Yeah, that was a miss. I don’t know who who the guy was who even wrote it. Like, why why’d they have to get that person to write it? I don’t know. I I don’t want to speak bad about the author.

I don’t know who the author is. It’s just like I I It’s just No, no, no.

Dovid Bashevkin: They’re not all They’re not all They’re not all hits. Freud is a strange one a little bit, yeah.

Nachi Weinstein: Right. So things So things like that are a good starting point. Like, if you’re going to start off like in these kind of more overview kind of books. And kind of what you want to read this over Shabbos, like start off in kind of these overview essays, and then go into the you know, really the answer is it depends on the topic.

Like, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite’s book on The Ten Lost Tribes is amazing. Like, on certain topics, there are books that you should start with and you should read. Exactly. And certain topics, you know, no.

So, I don’t know that there’s one answer. There’s no one like grand history of the Jews that I’m going to recommend to someone to just sit and read. I don’t I don’t think there really is that.

Dovid Bashevkin: I benefited a lot, and he gets rocked by academics.

I to just get the the the big picture, the old school Berel Wein books are Yeah. No? Doesn’t do it for you? No. Just to get like the the canvas right.

Nachi Weinstein: Listen, Berel Wein, zichrono livracha, who was niftar recently, deserves a lot of credit for really interesting many people, especially the general Jewish public, in Jewish history.

Dovid Bashevkin: The first time I heard a Jewish history lecture, I was driving from the Five Towns to New Hampshire to Loon Mountain. That six-hour drive, that’s where we went in the summertime. My father popped in on his Rambam series, and I was probably nine years old. But you know what? I still He had that good Chicago voice and the accent, and I got hooked.

Nachi Weinstein: Not for me. I think for me, maybe I was familiar with Berel Wein a little bit from the school, it was like dreadfully boring. I I wasn’t It wa-

Dovid Bashevkin: It didn’t It didn’t do it for you. It didn’t do it for me.

Nachi Weinstein: Academically, it doesn’t do it for me. I still, how many people are like, “Oh, Berel Wein! He’s the historian!” I’m like, no. Yeah, okay. Like, but I don’t I don’t I don’t think he viewed himself as like this academic historian.

Dovid Bashevkin: No. No, bringing to the like he Yeah. Especially to the Torah world, which was just emerging, and it was hard to talk about history, because for most of Jewish history, this is not what Yidden were involved in at all.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, I I think he’s owed a lot of credit.

Really, really is. So, again, it really depends on the topic. I don’t know, like I If I would create and curate a starter pack on each topic, like tell me about the Ba’alei Tosfos and Ashkenaz and Rashi, so that Rashi is easily Grossman’s book. Like, on some of these there is, you know, the Geonim, Robert Brody’s book on Rav Saadia and Robert Brody’s book on the Geonim.

Dovid Bashevkin: Geonim in general, yeah.

Nachi Weinstein: Phenomenal. Phenomenal book. That really will tell you.

That’s not such a light read, but it go- it does read and it’s really foundational. It tells you exactly what was going on by the Geonim, and so on and so forth. So, it really depends on the topic. It really does.

I I I think that that’s something that’s that’s there. So, I mean, that Listen, I read this over Shabbos. Who Who’s the book for?

Dovid Bashevkin: It’s a great question. I I think the book I think my target demographic is actually always the same, which is I’m trying to build a coalition of curious Jews.

Jews who are curious about their own Jewish identity, about other Jews’ Jewish identity, and they have that natural curiosity where they want to learn more. So, I remove a lot of the barriers for entry when I speak. I don’t use almost any, like, yeshivishisms, I don’t ask what the nafka mina or mima nafshach or all all of the classic I try to avoid them, and I translate them at 18Forty, because I want to remove those language barriers, which are very they’re very recent. So, I try to remove them as much as possible.

And this is this to me is an introduction for somebody who who has a curiosity for Jewish history, but is not yet ready to sit down with one of like the the major books. I’m trying to give you like, what would be an example for what I’m exactly trying to do here? Remember, you know what it used to be? There used to be something this is so dated they used to come out with a CD at the end of the year, Now That’s What I Call Music, where at the end of the year they would take the top 10 hits and put them out on their own CD, and they had Now That’s What I Call Music 1, That’s What I Call Music 2, and just like the greatest hits. Like, this is very geshmak. I tried to do that with Jewish history itself.

I cut out anything that’s like even hints of like, this is a shtikel boring, where’s the where’s the drama? I veered towards the drama, not because I think all of Jewish history is a drama, and everybody’s fighting in machlokes, is because I want to engage people. I want people to see how geshmak and lively and enjoyable learning the story of the Jewish people is. I have like a very, almost like a mystical motivation, where, you know, the the phrase that the Ramchal popularized from the Zohar of Kudsha Berich Hu, Yisrael, v’Oraisa chad hu, I am trying to show people that there is a window through Torah to learn how to study Klal Yisrael, how to really look at the collective entity of the Jewish people, and what I’m trying to do are find the stories that are number one, informative, substantive, and instructive, but number two, geshmak. There are two sides, they’re fighting, I want to show this is enjoyable.

This is the most interesting stuff in the So, I I loaded it specifically, specifically, in a way that is going to, like like any smart rebbe, is going to get the classroom a little bit excited. Going to get the classroom a little bit excited, stay But again, like I also try to do with my writing, somebody who has a background and is a big they’ll also find something new in there. They’re not my target audience, I’m not just talking to the one percent, but but but that’s really what I’m trying to do.

Nachi Weinstein: There are academics that listen to Seforim Chatter.

For sure. And they tell me all the time, “I love that episode. I knew nothing about that topic.” I think people think like academics, they know all of Jewish No, a kol bo. No, they’re in their specific topic.

Yes! There are so many things. I read some of these when they were coming out, and I was like, “Whoa, that’s fa- I never knew any of that.” Like that, and especially you write more modern history, that’s not my thing. I’m like, “God, I didn’t know that, I didn’t know that, I didn’t know that.” And also, it’s bite-sized, which is nice. Breaking up with the parsha, it’s like related tangentially to the parsha, Exactly.

And so you can read it and go through—

Dovid Bashevkin: You’re not going to get lost. And all the essays are between, you know, two and five pages. Nothing is like really long, and I always show my work. Meaning, at the end, you’re going to get a list.

If this was an essay that you loved, “I want to dive more into this,” here’s every single book that contributed to this.

Nachi Weinstein: You’re working now on Moadim, is that the plan?

Dovid Bashevkin: I hope to Well, no, now the plan right now is, im yirtzeh Hashem, we’re finishing the entire Daf Yomi is coming up with its next cycle. My next book, which im yirtzeh Hashem will be out before the next Daf Yomi cycle, is my book on Talmud, meaning I wrote an I’ve been publishing those, too. I write an essay at the end of every masechta with Daf Yomi that really tells you the the central theme of each masechta.

That’s the next time I’m going to try to pull the shtick and this favor on you. But starting from Berachos, ending with Niddah, God willing, it’s already Koren has it. I already finished it.

Nachi Weinstein: Also Maggid and 18Forty?

Dovid Bashevkin: I think so, yes.

And it’s going to be an overview of the entire Talmud, one one essay per masechta, but every single masechta in a way that, again, same way, somebody without a background is going to be able to understand this, what is the Gemara, what are each of these masechtos about, but even somebody who’s seasoned, there’s stuff in there for you, too. It might be buried a little bit deeper.

Nachi Weinstein: Got it. And then, hopefully, Moadim, maybe down the road.

Dovid Bashevkin: That’s Yeah, and that that that’ll be my I don’t know, like I I, yeah, then the, at some point, I want to write about, I feel like I very often get very misunderstood. Like, what’s Bashevkin trying to do? What are you trying to be, an iconoclast? I think I want to, I’m still gathering my own thoughts, but eventually, I would like to write a formal book, what is it that I am trying to accomplish here? And that really would require its own, but for real.

Nachi Weinstein: Interesting. Interesting, yeah.

It’s always a question. Listen, and we’re all busy, and no time, and that’s why part of the reason that I put this out, I’ll mention myself here, I’ll give myself a plug, is that I fell into the K’eder HaRechailim, which the name is courtesy of Moshe Maiman, who’s the co-editor with me on this. This volume, this was six weeks before my grandmother’s first yahrtzeit. So, I had an idea of a sefer last year, I started working on a sefer, I was going to redo an old sefer a few hundred years ago.

It’s still my plan to do it, but I have a lot of work to do. So, about six weeks before the yahrtzeit, at that point, it crystallized. My mother, my parents are making a first yahrtzeit seudah here in Lakewood. I said, you know what? I should publish a book.

So, okay, I’m going to publish a book now. I have a good friend of mine who had some material, so we started off with some material, and I decided I’m going to do that. So, we sat down, and it really came about organically. So, we had some material, Moshe started working on his, I started working on I had for a while wanted to work on this autobiography that I found that was censored of Rav Moshe Yitzchok Ashkenazi Tedeschi.

He is a student of Shadal. So, Italian kind of maskilic milieu in the in the 19th-century Italy. Fascinating autobiographical document which I ended up editing with notes, pictures, a lot of work on it. And I was editing, and I think, by the way, editing a book in a way is harder than writing your own book.

Way harder! I totally agree with you. And in six weeks, I had to chase down authors, I had to review articles, That’s one thing. You, I don’t edit. to edit it.

But I had to I had to chase I had to chase people down, I had to I was involved in the cover, in the endpapers, I was involved in the font, in in the in the typos. May I ask you a real question? It was crazy.

Dovid Bashevkin: Did you find any mistakes in here? Yeah, sure. When you find your first mistake, does a little piece of your neshamah?—

Nachi Weinstein: A little bit, but I knew krechts? I knew that there would be some mistakes because we did it so quickly, and full credit to Eliezer getting this done.

There was so much work that went into this. We got it out in a paperback for the yahrtzeit, and then we had to get it out to print, and I wanted to make sure it’s here for Yamim Noraim and Sukkos, because this is a time when people are looking to buy a journal like this. And so, it’s English and Hebrew. And we ended up with there’s a lot of material, all different things.

We ended up getting, my mother suggested that I reach out to my grandmother’s first cousin in Eretz Yisroel, Sholi Kohn, which I did. My grandmother’s grandfather, so my great-great-grandfather, Rav Eliezer Predmesky, he was a Rav in the Bronx. He was also, what we found out, was a he was in the menahel of the Agudas Harabbanim in Lita, and then the menahel of the Agudas Harabbanim in America. And there was many letters that she had No, I read this.

Dovid Bashevkin: I loved it.

Nachi Weinstein: So, there’s letters of gedolim, and then a lot of articles, my friend Moshe Demberitzer edited, found a lot of a lot of this interesting material. Yossel Hausman also edited the letters, and then I got from Moshe Kravetz, who I mentioned, two derashos of the Sforno edited from manuscript with notes. I put in the Italian autobiography.

Then, a friend of mine, Adam Rosenberg, submitted a—he bought a—you’re pushing you’re—

Dovid Bashevkin: Pushing your own product a little a little too hard for me right now.

Nachi Weinstein: It’s started it’s—

Dovid Bashevkin: Starting—it’s start—it’s starting to—I’m like, oh no, are people only going to buy K’eder HaRechailim? We have to make sure that they all—cuz I can’t compete with you.

Nachi Weinstein: You’re so—but what I do want to say also, there’s English in here, and so I really pushed as a journal, as a as a—

Dovid Bashevkin: The English articles are so geshmak in here.

Nachi Weinstein: So, if anyone wants to submit some article, they can reach out to me, and they can purchase it also from seforim stores, Judaica Plaza, and Beigeleisen, and so on.

Yeah. Your book, what I think is, like you said, what’s nice about it is the aesthetics. I think we both did that, like the aesthetics, and I think you did a great job of We should we should pick it up over here cuz we’re on video here for this, so we have to show a little bit. I think you did Careful.

I don’t I don’t want you to throw—I don’t want you to—

Dovid Bashevkin: Throw out your back.

Nachi Weinstein: Why? We can’t we can’t dent it? We can’t We can’t Yeah, no, it’s pretty heavy. So, I think that you did Let Let, you know, I happened to just turn to this one, this is the Vayechi one, look how Mr. You have You did really nice. It’s always nice when it’s kind of colored, and you can see here the different Menasseh ben Israel from the one in England.

And you have kind of you in the gray box, you have the articles that are mentioned. Yeah, there’s like a nice—

Dovid Bashevkin: Gray box at the end of each that says Shabbos reads for further ones.

Nachi Weinstein: Correct. So, if you go to like we’ll go right to the beginning, for Bereishis, Scientific Revolution and Jewish Mysticism, that’s right up your alley.

Yeah. Totally. And here, you’ll have just you know, you’ll have your further reading. Yeah, Matt Goldish has a book about Isaac Newton, it costs like $500, by the way.

Dovid Bashevkin: And I lost it. I lost Matt Goldish’s, and somebody, one of my somebody who comes to my shiur bought me the second copy. Thank you so much, Janet. We love you.

Nachi Weinstein: That’s That’s really nice. So, it’s a very, very nice book, and let’s see, this book is over 500 pages, so it’s a big book, and it weighs a lot. Do you know how much it weighs?

Dovid Bashevkin: It’s a lot.

Nachi Weinstein: How much? 5 lb?

Dovid Bashevkin: This got to be 5 lb.

I think this is 5 lb. 5 lb? Like, I feel I feel this. I feel this right now. Like, I am flex- Yeah.

Nachi Weinstein: So, like if you want to take this to shul, and you want to be like You know, during leining, you’re standing there like with Hirsch’s pshat, it’s a little heavy when you’re going to be holding it like this. Ah, to ah Like if you’re trying, but they did a great job. No, you need a shtender.

Dovid Bashevkin: You need a shtender for this.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, you gotta bring you gotta get a shtender. If you’re going to bring it to shul, bring the shtender. But the design was really The design was really well done. That’s what you were talking about before about aesthetics.

Like look at this, you can see like a lot went into this, and, you know, when you put together these articles, you were trying to do that on your Substack, and you really found a lot of stuff. I think it always adds a lot when you do this to a book where you bring in like little kind of—just—

Dovid Bashevkin: Just to show you in real time Yeah. especially if you’re talking modern Jewish history, where we have so many interesting relics. One thing that I really used a lot in here is the old archives for the Jewish Observer, which are all online, and the Jewish Observer is such a that was the magazine of Agudas Yisroel, and they had so many fascinating just like issues that they would deal with for the public that I was going into these old Jewish Observer issues and just seeing in the letter section they’re fighting about this or that, I absolutely loved it.

Nachi Weinstein: What has your response been in general to I Read This Over Shabbos? Because we didn’t go in I want to go into that at the end here of the podcast, which is, not the book so much. Yeah. I don’t know how much you’ve got The book The book is new, so I don’t know how much feedback you’ve gotten yet on the book. But the movement in general, and I think you mentioned this in the intro, so let’s talk about this.

I’m going to look at how much we get into this, where it’s like, is this an egotistical thing, “I read this over Shabbos“? And then you get the inevitable, “You read that whole book over Shabbos? No way, Dovid!

Dovid Bashevkin: What are you, a liar?” Yeah. Exactly. No, it’s impossible. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I I used to get very offended when people I’m like, look, that’s not what I’m trying to do. Like, come on. Come on.

But, A, number one, is I love the shtick. The shtick is very important. You know this, too. Whenever you’re trying to get something and and get the masses interested in something, you need culture.

You need to be able to be imitated. I’m sure people when you meet them, they imitate you, they imitate your voice, the phrases that you say over and I have no idea. I don’t know. For sure they do.

You don’t have anybody who could do a great imitation of you?

Nachi Weinstein: I don’t know.

Dovid Bashevkin: I efshar. Nobody comes to you and says like Uzi? Oh, for sure. They’re doing it behind They’re doing it behind your back probably.

But they But for I Read This Over Shabbos, I knew that it was a good thing when people post “I read this over Shabbos” like it’s a shidduch date. Or they post “I read this over Shabbos” and it’s their children’s book, or it’s a this, or it’s a that. So, I I I think that it has been very successful. What I love is that if you open up on Motzei Shabbos, and you go to Twitter, and you see who’s posting, you see clearly there are people from chassidishe communities and they’re posting not just chassidus, they’re, you know, maybe a little something more a little slightly academic, but they’re But then you see people posting like regular run-of-the-mill comic books, you have people who are professors, they’re not they’re not frum, they’re and this became a place where people are, number one, we’re we’re advertising Shabbos.

To me, that’s the most important thing in the world. The connector right now in the Jewish world, to me, is like: are you in, are you out? Are you part of a community that can sustain Shabbos observance? Do you have that? That is not a small thing. That’s not a milsa d’zutrusa. That is the main event for me is to advertise Shabbos every single week that you feel it on social media.

That’s why I say “Good Shabbos” on social media. That’s why Motzei Shabbos I’m posting this. I want people to to know, and it should be on their radar every single week. But when you see the participants and you see the variety of books that people are are publishing, it’s the biggest joy in the world.

That’s what we’re trying to do. Shabbos as literally a gathering place, no matter where you are, there is a place where you can come together after Shabbos and share that experience. And the experience isn’t your avocado sandwich, it’s not your fancy vacation. What are you sharing? The ideas that inspired you.

That’s the most important thing in the world. And it gives substance to our community. Our community gets a lot of knocks, but the number one thing of our community is, number one, Shabbos to me is number one. We sustain Shabbos.

The whole world is trying to figure out how to unplug from their phones. We figured this out. It’s not a small thing. Like, I think we we should have scientists and leaders coming, “How did you guys make this work?” We’re the only community in the world consistently, and it’s not just the rosh yeshiva.

My three-year-old knows when it’s Shabbos. He complains sometimes, but he knows. And once it starts, he’s excited. He’s excited.

So, that’s number one is Shabbos, but number two, it it genuinely worries me, if we descend into a culture where we’re not reading, it means we’re not thinking, and we can become shallow. And there is such a thing of somebody who is might know a lot of Torah even, but the way they’re they’re not thinking critically. They’re not they don’t have that depth. And I think the way that we preserve depth is by preserving quality reading.

And that’s what I’m trying to do with I Read This Over Shabbos, that’s what I’m trying to do with this book, to to to offer the readings, but the ultimate goal is to preserve the depth of the Jewish community.

Nachi Weinstein: Okay, so hopefully you did that with this book. It can be purchased in seforim stores, online, Koren’s website. Is it on 18Forty’s website?

Dovid Bashevkin: It should be.

Nachi Weinstein: It should be. It will be. What’s the list price?

Dovid Bashevkin: Thirty-something bucks. It’s expensive.

Yeah. It is, but it’s a great it’s a great gift. It’s a It’s a nice thing. It’s a good gift item, yeah.

It’s a really nice gift item, which was also true of my top five books, which not enough people bought as as gifts. But it’s like it’s bigger. You feel like you’ve been handed something. Instead of a bottle of wine, you get somebody this book, they’ll enjoy it.

Nachi Weinstein: Right, it’s on Amazon, and I’m sure, not that people are waiting for that, I’m sure by the YU seforim sale eventually it’ll be cheaper, and then eventually Koren will have, you know, sales, Yom Tov season. For those that, you know, don’t want to pay $30 for a book. Yeah, those don’t listen to us also, we all know those.

Dovid Bashevkin: We know them.

When it gets marked down in the algorithm at, you know, 67% mark down and selling for like five minutes for like $8—

Nachi Weinstein: You know why it’s for five minutes? When I post those, the people say, “Hey, I thought it was sold out,” cuz people bought it. Correct. The algorithm marks it down, people go in droves and order it.

Dovid Bashevkin: But how do you know? How do you, Kettle? You don’t want to reveal your secrets, but I do I do want to know how it’s—

Nachi Weinstein: There’s There’s It’s very simple.

You can do what a lot of people do, you can do CamelCamelCamel. But I don’t do that. You can do a price alert on CamelCamelCamel. What? CamelCamelCamel.

It’s a website.

Dovid Bashevkin: Camel is a—

Nachi Weinstein: Is a CamelCamelCamel.

Dovid Bashevkin: Like a gamal. Yeah, gamal.

The animal with the hump on the back.

Nachi Weinstein: Yeah, hump. There’s a website, and you can set like price alerts for things, and it will like alert you. But I don’t I do manual searching all the time.

It’s a waste of time, but I do I manually search.

Dovid Bashevkin: You search up random books and see if it’s marked down?

Nachi Weinstein: No. Yeah. So, not random books.

Search publishers, search names, search different things.

Dovid Bashevkin: Ah, gotcha. And sometimes the publisher probably lets you know.

Nachi Weinstein: Also.

No, I I usually check, but it’s also knowing what to post. You just have to know what to look for, when, and and what to post. Like I decide what to post. Like there are books that are marked down, I just don’t post.

Mhm, gotcha. Cuz I’m like that that’s not, I’m not going to post that.

Dovid Bashevkin: No, you’re excellent. And so many That’s I’m not going to post.

My library, you’ve you’ve made you’ve made a very real impact on my library, on my life, and I’m very grateful Thanks, David. for allowing me to come today, plug a little of the book, push product, which a lot of people want your your platform. This really means a great deal to me.

Nachi Weinstein: Yes, I’m happy to help.

Dovid Bashevkin: And it’s amazing to see you, and I have so much hakaras hatov to what you have done for the masses and for me individual, but really the revolution without a revolution in bringing depth to the Jewish community.

Nachi Weinstein: Thank you, Dovid, for joining me.