Member Spotlight on Geoffrey Stern

BY ELISE MEYER

613 commandments. In the introduction, the anonymous scholar explains that he wrote the book to “awaken the hearts” of his teenage son and his peers, hoping to foster in them a connection to the Torah. I don’t judge my podcast based on how many people listen to it. But if one of my kids, someone in my family listens to it today, or sometime in the future, that’s all the satisfaction I need. Although I started it as a blog, one of my kids said, “Dad, you know, it’s kind of hard to read, why don’t you just record it?” That’s when the podcast took off. Then I discovered my sidekick, Rabbi Adam Mintz, on a platform called Clubhouse, and the rest is history. So far, I think I am up to 125 posts and podcasts — half hour each. So you could do the math. I’ve done a lot of talking.

E: Do you have favorites among the podcasts that you’ve done?

many years. It was kind of interrupted by COVID. I’d love to go back to it. The Rabbi made a comment to me recently that maybe we should reconstitute, so you never know.

I am really excited by the new social hall in the synagogue. I think that it has so much potential. It has intimacy, it’s somewhere where people can gather. And my dream really is that Adult Ed and other groups within the synagogue form and use it for learning opportunities. I think there’s also a potential for taking part in the bigger learning community. I personally belong to an egalitarian yeshiva called Hadar. Hadar offers many classes that they do Chevruta style (small group learning) or online. I’m hoping that we can sign up for some courses where we can gather in the social hall and possibly take a class together and then discuss it afterwards. I think that would be wonderful.

Today I am talking to Geoffrey Stern, a very visible member of TCS who hosts a popular podcast called Madlik every Thursday night on the Clubhouse Platform. Geoffrey and Orna Stern, their three grown children, and four grandchildren are frequently seen around TCS.

E: So, Geoffrey, tell us a little bit about Madlik.

G: Well, I call Madlik “Disruptive Torah” and what we try do is to look at the weekly Torah portion, the parshah, from a slightly different angle, so that by the end of the discussion, if we’ve done our job, you think about it differently, no matter how many times you have considered that portion. Hopefully, you might think about your Judaism a little differently. And come back again next week.

E: How long have you been doing it?

G: Well, it really began as a blog. But Torah study has been an important part of my life since the age of 14, at which time I left my Upper East Side private High School and enrolled in an Orthodox Yeshiva for six years, postponing college for three years. So, studying Torah is a big part of my life. Even though I’m not an Orthodox Jew anymore, they say that you can leave the yeshiva, but the yeshiva doesn’t leave you. So, it’s a big part of my life. And I literally enjoy looking at the parshah every week.

So Madlik started as a blog, maybe six years ago. There’s a wonderful book called The Sefer Ha Chinuch where a 13th century scholar wrote in detail about the

G: Oh, am I supposed to say that like, favoring your children? I love them all. I don’t know. There were some that I very much enjoyed. And that’s the beauty of it. I look at sources that I studied when I was a kid. So it’s like, either making new friends or revisiting old ones. But I think pretty much every week I discover something that I didn’t know before, so I really enjoy preparing for them. But I can’t think of one in particular that is my favorite. I have a few, a few ones that I regret, but nothing that sticks out as a favorite.

E: How long have you been part of the TCS community?

G: We’ve been members since our daughter Abigail became a bat mitzvah. Prior to that we were members of an Orthodox shul in town, where our two older sons became bar mitzvah. And then we decided to go to the other side, so as to be totally egalitarian. There’s no going back. So probably about, oh, I don’t know, 20 years.

E: You’ve had some wonderful roles in the synagogue — a frequent Torah and Haftorah reader, the chair of Adult Ed, and are somewhat famous for your Purim costumes. But you also started the Kavanah group, could you tell us a little about it?

G: Kavanah was, for a time, an opportunity for members of the congregation to get together for an occasional study session. It met on Shabbat morning, before the Torah service began. Kavanah means “intentionality,” so we tried to rediscover our prayers a little, and members of the congregation would prepare sessions. And we did it for

E: Final question. What does Madlik mean?

G: So we all know how on Chanukah and Shabbat we light the candles with the words “ Le Hadlik n’er shel (Shabbat). Well, if you go to a really cool party or a disco in Israel, in slang, you say, “how was it?” the answer might be “Madlik!” or “baby that was LIT!” So we’d like to bridge the gap between lighting the candle on Friday night and going to a disco. It’s somewhere in between. We hope you’ll find it yourself.

Ugit ut odis conse et et aut aut aut lantiaectis reperumquis seque imus, sunt, quis molupta velland icianis dunt aut. Gia placcatio ma volore omni.

E: Well, thank you, Geoffrey, as one of your most faithful students, I try to tune in every Thursday night. Do you have anything else that you’d like to say?

G: Just come experience Madlik. You can come on to Clubhouse every Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern so you can participate in our weekly live discussion of the Parsha and join us live. Or you can listen to a recording of the Clubhouse session as a Madlik podcast online at https://madlik. com. But if you do, give us a few stars and say something nice.

Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe to the Madlik podcast on your favorite platform, including Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Audible

Here is the link to Clubhouse: https://www. clubhouse.com/join/Madlik/Yyi9cR3C