Trailer
Welcome to Left at Sinai, progressive commentary on parshat haShavuah–the weekly Torah reading. This year we’ll be journeying through the Torah with some incredible teachers of our time–scholars, rabbis, mystics, maggidim, activists, students, wrestlers with Torah one and all.
First episode, parshat Beresheet, out October 5 2026.
Support Left at Sinai! Sponsor an episode by giving at the link above, then filling out this form.
Host: Rabbi Ariana Katz | arianakatz.com | @rabbiariana
hinenubaltimore.org | @hinenubaltimore
fortimessuchasthesebook.com | @fortimessuchasthesebook
Editing: Ev Bowen
Music: Gevurah by Molly Bajgot | mollybajgot.com | @mollybajgot
Art: Liora Ostroff | lioraostroff.com | @lioraostroff
TRANSCRIPT:
[MUSIC:Gevurah, by Molly Bajgot plays]
My name is Ariana Katz, and I am really grateful to learn some Torah with you this year. Welcome to Left at Sinai, a progressive commentary on Parashat HaShavua, the weekly Torah reading. This year, we'll be journeying through the Torah with some incredible teachers of our time, scholars, rabbis, mystics, maggidim, activists, students, wrestlers with Torah one and all.
Our tradition understands that we cannot read the text only in the pshat, in the simple, straightforward. Torah makes sense because of the music it is chanted to and the commentary that explains it, opens it up, strings wisdom like pearls, makes meaning of the white fire on the page, not just the black letter.
You get the idea. There are a lot of metaphors. We're supposed to play in Torah, to swim, to build, to deconstruct, to reconstruct, to wonder, to delight, to get hurt, to heal, to recommit. You get the idea. Torah is for us to make meaning of, and this year on Left at Sinai, we'll do it together. Now, we don't know each other, but, uh, one thing you should know is that I'm not so much on objectivity or the objective truth in most circumstances.
And I think that thousands of years of reading Torah and writing down what we think has proven that our tradition can tolerate the same take. By debating with one another and with Torah, we show our respect for it. Multiple perspectives on Torah are preserved and weighed each time we engage with it.
Torah is to be protected, to be built upon, to be wrestled with. But people also love to turn Torah into a weapon, to turn Torah into the permission or blueprint or impetus for conquest and dispossession, the reason to classify entire races of people as inheritors of curse.
Torah is far too complex or too precious to be turned into a weapon of war or anything that is life-denying. Left at Sinai is committed to liberatory Torah, Torah that affirms life and liberation for the Jewish people and all people.
So here you'll hear feminist, queer, trans, anti-colonial, anti-Zionist Torah. You'll hear Torah committed to disability justice, fat liberation, Black liberation, Palestinian solidarity, Earth justice. But you're going to hear it woven into the analysis of the text, not just plopped on top, forced into a reading of the Parsha.
Which is why Left at Sinai and the discussions we're going to have this year feel so important to me. I love a podcast, and when you search for Parashat HaShavua from a lefty feminist perspective, there isn't much. I'm thrilled to add this to the collection of men with very impressive beards teaching Torah each week.
We'll have some very impressive beards on this show too at times, I 📍 promise. And allow me to introduce myself since I have the privilege of being in your ears each week interviewing our guests. I'm a rabbi in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm a queer white Ashkenazi femme. I founded our congregation, Hineinu, in 2018 after graduating from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, my homeland.
With my dear havrusa, Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, I co-authored For Times Such as These: A Radical's Guide to the Jewish Year. I'm working on my next book about the Jewish life cycle, Bless Every Threshold, and hope that it will exist in your hands in the next couple of years. I created the show Kaddish, a podcast about death and identity, which you can find wherever you're listening to this show.
I'm a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council. I'm a mom and a family member. I'm a femme that on the spectrum of femmeness, I'm towards the end that has the platform clogs and glitter. I'm healing from the '90s policing of my body in conservative shul, and now am proudly wearing sleeveless shirts in synagogue.
And in the last year, I have shifted my preferred book of the Torah from Bereshit, Genesis, to Vayikra, Leviticus, in what was to me at least a shocking turn of events.
I hope that over the course of this year, I'll get to know you, too. To suggest a guest for an upcoming Parsha, leave a comment to be read on the show, share a piece of art that relates to the themes that you heard, or to share an idea, email leftatsinai@gmail.com. Transcripts and show notes will be available at arianakatz.com/leftatsinai.
I have one N in my name. You can follow this show on Instagram at leftatsinaipod and me at rabbiariana.
There is a beautiful practice of dedicating our Torah in honor of people and places in need of healing or who we want to honor or remember. I am making this pod out of my basement lair as an independent project. Those who know me know I love an independent project. And I'm thrilled to be working with the wonderful Ev Bowen, who edits the show, and to have the art of Leora Ostroff as our show art, and the music of Molly Baygot woven throughout the show.
This whole operation is out of pocket, so your help to sustain the show is so welcome. To sponsor a week of learning and to dedicate Torah in honor of a loved one, head to bit.ly/leftatsinaisponsor. You can sponsor as an individual or an organization, and I'll read your dedication out at the top of the show.
You can give below the sponsorship level and support the show however you can. All generosity is seriously appreciated Jews around the world are about to celebrate Simchat Torah, in which we read the final words of the scroll and immediately, without barely skipping a beat, turn our attention back to the beginning, in the dark, wet, quiet of the beginning of life coming into creation. Next week's episode begins our learning together in the beginning, in the book of Bereshit, Genesis, the very creation of the world.
I am delighted to share the conversation between me and Rabbi Magi Joe Singer, who calls us back to a time that was and will again be, and sometimes already is, a place of unity. That episode comes out Monday, October 5th. Tune in then. Anyway, happy new year. We're firmly in 5787, and we get to learn Torah together.
What a profound blessing.