Search for Meaning with Rabbi Yoshi
Aug 31, 2026 · 43 min · 14 segments
What can Torah teach us about anxiety, grief, resilience, shame—and the work of healing a shattered heart? On this episode of *Search for Meaning*, I sit down with Rabbi Dr. Tal Sessler, author of…
Tal SesslerGuest
Yoshi ZweibackHost
And when I was reading a little bit about you and I came across the Levinas connection, I wrote my senior thesis in college on Emmanuel Levinas.
So maybe for a future podcast, we'll dive deep and all of the Levinas fans out there.
But for people who've read any of Levinas, you know that this is not for the faint of heart.
I accessed Levinas through his Jewish writings, so I looked at some of his Talmudic lectures that he would give that were a little bit more accessible.
How did you first get connected to Levinas? I'm just curious as someone who's kind of broken his teeth a little bit on Levinas.
When I lived in Manhattan, which is for me, New York City, the last Jewish city in the world, in the sense that Vienna was a Jewish city a century ago, with Freud, Gustav Mahler, and Arthur Schnitzler all living in the same street, and Freud and his circle.
So when I lived in New York City, I was active in modern orthodox circles before I went down the conservative route.
Because he studied philosophy under two of the great masters of 20th century philosophy, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
He had these remarkable Talmudic commentaries, which were very contemporary and pertinent to what's happening in the world.
How Europe that was the bedrock of great ideas for humanity like the French Revolution and universal human rights ultimately took us, humanity, down the path of murderous Stalinist communism and Nazi genocide.
And when I was reading a little bit about you and I came across the Levinas connection, I wrote my senior thesis in college on Emmanuel Levinas.
So maybe for a future podcast, we'll dive deep and all of the Levinas fans out there.
But for people who've read any of Levinas, you know that this is not for the faint of heart.
I accessed Levinas through his Jewish writings, so I looked at some of his Talmudic lectures that he would give that were a little bit more accessible.
How did you first get connected to Levinas? I'm just curious as someone who's kind of broken his teeth a little bit on Levinas.
When I lived in Manhattan, which is for me, New York City, the last Jewish city in the world, in the sense that Vienna was a Jewish city a century ago, with Freud, Gustav Mahler, and Arthur Schnitzler all living in the same street, and Freud and his circle.
So when I lived in New York City, I was active in modern orthodox circles before I went down the conservative route.
Because he studied philosophy under two of the great masters of 20th century philosophy, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
He had these remarkable Talmudic commentaries, which were very contemporary and pertinent to what's happening in the world.
How Europe that was the bedrock of great ideas for humanity like the French Revolution and universal human rights ultimately took us, humanity, down the path of murderous Stalinist communism and Nazi genocide.
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