Tov! A Podcast About ”The Good Place” and Jewish Ideas

This is an encore presentation of our very first podcast episode, about Chapter 1 of The Good Place after an introduction to our whole project! We’re republishing it primarily for anyone who is just discovering Tov! in time for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year holy day, which is a time for exploring all the themes in The Good Place as they apply to our lives. As you’ll hear in the episode, even though we’re two rabbis talking we are not pushing Judaism here, just kicking it around together. Maybe you’re someone who’s using The Good Place as how you start the new year, with or without our podcast as a guide! If so we’d love to hear about your experience and bet others would too. If you are looking for a community to gather with for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur and don’t know how to connect to one, drop us a note at tov@tovgoodplace.com and we'll find someone who will welcome you. Click here for show notes.

This episode is Jon Spira-Savett’s attempt to collect my thoughts about how The Good Place illustrates, riffs on, critiques and expands on the Jewish concept of teshuvah (personal change as “returning”), especially as taught in the writings of Rabbi Moses Maimonides. What have I learned so far, and has it affected me in my life? This episode is an exposition in one voice and not a conversation, and for those who prefer just to read it the “script” is linked in the show notes.

Yet another “insider” conversation with someone from the Good Place team! Pamela Hieronymi is a philosophy professor at UCLA with whom Michael Schur spoke early on in the show’s development. Pamela talks with Dan Ross and Jon Spira-Savett about some of the moral emotions, like envy, resentment, and blame; whether one can in fact try to be good and whether some people have limits on how good they can become; reframing the matter to center another’s experience of being disrespected rather than the calculation of one’s own rightness or blame; what effect death or immortality have on our moral lives. We of course discuss contractualism and why Pamela thinks it is both the best theory and an inspiring one, despite its sometimes dense presentation in the works of modern philosophers. We get her take on Maimonides and teshuvah (repair as “return), the Torah covenant as compared to modern contractualism -- and the moral superiority of horses! Click here for show notes and links to Professor Hieronymi's website and some selected articles and videos. Click here to listen to our first podcast on a specific Good Place episode, Chapter 1.

Rebecca Rosenthal, Dan Ross, Sari Laufer and Jon Spira-Savett roam around our reflections after this Jewish rewatch of the entire series! We four have been the most frequent co-hosts of Tov! We’re joined by co-host Daniel Kirzane. Some of our topics include which main characters continue to resonate for us or strike us in new ways; aspects of the show that pleasantly surprised us “Jewishly”; things the creators of “The Good Place” explored that we wish Judaism had even more to say about; whether there’s anything theological about the series; and of course even more! Click here for our podcast website.

Listen to or watch the recording of the live show here! Rebecca Rosenthal, Dan Ross, Sari Laufer, and Jon Spira-Savett will be co-hosting a conversation with some of our reflections on rewatching The Good Place with a Jewish lens, and we’ll respond to your questions in the Zoom chat or the Facebook live feed, and we’re happy to have you talk with us live on Zoom too! We can fit 96 more people with us on Zoom. Some of our other co-hosts will be on too. If you can’t be there in real time but have something you’d like us to respond to, or if you have a recorded bit you’d like us to play, send us a note ahead to tov@tovgoodplace.com!

On The Good Place, friends and family arrive, and everyone wrestles with what to do there and whether or when to choose a final, peaceful end. Tahani stays as an architect, Jason and Chidi leave, Michael exits into life as a human, and Eleanor’s sparks go into the universe and perhaps return to earth. On the podcast, Elliot Goldberg and Jon Spira-Savett invoke the Talmud’s heaven-earth straddlers. We Jewishly problematize the water-wave metaphor, and marvel at the role other people play in discerning our personal destinies according to both the Talmud and Michael Schur! Though we’re discussing the last episode of the series, we’ve got a few more podcast episodes to come so we can reflect on what we’ve learned. Click here for show notes.

On The Good Place, our group finally gets to the actual Good Place, where they discover that an eternity of perfection has led to boredom and stagnation even for those who were moral giants on earth. So they propose a new option, that people can stay as long as they like and then choose when it’s time to bring their existence to a peaceful end. On the podcast, Dan Ross and Jon Spira-Savett discuss our own tentative views about the afterlife. We run through a number of Jewish views of what happens with us in Olam Ha-Ba, the World to Come, from Maimonides’ view to Dara Horn’s. Mostly we talk about how we think our individual souls continue to exist somehow for the purpose of giving back to Olam Ha-Zeh, This World, and how others’ souls continue to affect us. Click here for show notes.

On The Good Place, it’s time to pilot the new assessment system and and train its operators. Eleanor and Chidi are both afraid the other will have second thoughts about their relationship after reading their individual file, and Michael has trouble handing responsibility off to Vicky. On the podcast, Savannah Lipinski (new co-host!) and Jon Spira-Savett explore Jewish teachings about judging, and talk about what to take into account and what not to when we judge others and ourselves. We discuss Michael’s situation in terms of when it’s okay to focus on our own growth and fulfillment and when our role in a broader ethical project should be the primary frame. Click here for show notes.

No, the title isn’t a question about your next laptop… On The Good Place, Janet brings everyone including the Judge and Timothy Olyphant into her void, where Chidi presents his concept for an updated afterlife based on multiple reboots and learning from one’s prior lives. On the podcast, Rebecca and Jon talk about how we access and use our imperfect memories, and how Judaism tries to help us retrieve and use our memories for teshuvah -- via Yom Kippur and other practices while we’re still alive the first time. We ponder Jon’s off-the-cuff surmise that the Torah is Team Punishment and the Talmud is Team Learning, and reflect on how the Talmud addresses punishment through careful attention to the individuality of the one who was wronged and the one who did the wrong. Click here for show notes.

Both The Good Place and the podcast are pulling many threads together as the series moves toward its finish! On The Good Place, Chidi gets back all his memories from life and the afterlife, including the questions he has asked each friend, mentor, and partner along the way and how those conversations have informed his quests for truth and a soulmate. On the podcast, Dan Ross and Jon Spira-Savett talk again about Talmudic teachings connecting learning and goodness, this time bringing in other teachings about how the people we learn from affect the ethical ideas and commitments we develop. Picking up on the last episode of the show and the podcast, we add a couple more layers and meanings of the word teshuvah: finding answers by going back to the important people from our past, actively remembering and appreciating what we learned with and through them. Click here for show notes.

On The Good Place, the Judge weighs Michael’s arguments that the experiment has proved successful, and while they wait for the verdict, our humans and Janet hold a series of as-if funerals for each other. On the podcast, Sari Laufer and Jon Spira-Savett talk about their own experiences as rabbis who officiate at funerals, and entertain various intriguing variations suggested by the episode. Why wait until the end of life? Why have only one? Why not get out of the chapel and take it on the road, back to someplace you once lived? (There’s that idea of teshuvah popping up again, from yet another angle!) Click here for show notes.

On The Good Place, Michael’s last-minute attempt to salvage the experiment and win some extra points for the new humans puts Brent alone in a sinkhole. Simone and John decide to leave him there, but Chidi gets in with Brent and ends up face-to-face with him for the final seconds of the year On the podcast, Rebecca Rosenthal and Jon Spira-Savett discuss who might be our “enemies” and what we responsibilities we have to them, in a moment of need or as long as our lives are connected. Click here for show notes.

To coincide with Purim, the festival with masks and costumes, we talk with Kirston Mann, costume designer on “The Good Place”! Sari Laufer, Ilana Schachter, and Jon Spira-Savett talk with Kirston about what her work entails and hear her insights into how costume serves storytelling on television. We delve into the characters of Eleanor, Tahani, Janet and Jason in particular, and what she, the script, and actors all brought to the costume design process. We reflect all together on how what we wear can conceal, reveal, get in the way, help us do our job or help us change and grow. We zero in on some moments in the series where changes in dress are particularly significant. Kirston turns the tables and asks the rabbis some ethical questions about the story of Esther in the Bible. And of course much more! Click here for show notes.

On The Good Place, Michael tells Bad Janet about a week halfway through the experiment that made things worse because of Brent, yet despite the setback the team regroups. On the podcast, Leora Kling Perkins and Jon Spira-Savett mull over the Talmud-era debates on whether humans should have been created in the first place. Does addressing questions like that even matter for our actual moral lives? How can truth, about the big picture or another human being, coexist with hope? Click here for show notes.

On The Good Place, Tahani worries that her entertaining skills aren’t a valuable contribution to the experiment, Michael goes up against Vicky wearing a Michael suit at Demon-Con, and Derek tries to fill in for Janet while Michael and Jason are off trying to rescue her from the Bad Place. On the podcast, Jon Spira-Savett talks with two college students, Sadie Meltzer and Lela Spira-Savett! First we talk generally about how they relate to The Good Place, and where they think Judaism fits into their ideas about personal ethical growth. Then we get Lela’s and Sadie’s perspective on this episode and dive into Reb Zusya of Hanipol’s teaching that on arrival at World to Come, he expects to be asked not “Why were you not Moses?” but “Why were you not Zusya?” Click here for show notes.

On The Good Place, Eleanor and the others have to assess Glenn’s claim that Michael is actually demon Vicky in a Michael suite -- and they have to help keep the neighborhood going in the meantime without Michael and it turns out without Janet, who has been kidnapped by the Bad Place). On the podcast, Elliot Goldberg and Jon Spira-Savett mull over ethics without God and critique King Solomon’s approach to judging others when the most important evidence you’d rely on is ambiguous or just isn’t accessible. Click here for show notes.

On The Good Place, Eleanor tries to orchestrate Chidi’s growth behind the scenes by sending Jason to reveal that he is not a monk and to swear Chidi to secrecy. Yet it only leads Chidi to stomachaches. Tahani tries the same with John by bringing him to various VIP experiences so she can coax him to learn ethics, but eventually she has to figure out how to talk with him directly about his hurtful work on earth. On the podcast, Rebecca Rosenthal and Jon Spira-Savett delve into the Torah’s mitzvah of hochay’ach to’chiach --  a delicate dance of direct feedback, sensitivity to how the other person receives it, and awareness of what is going on within yourself that prompts your feedback in the first place. Click here for show notes.

Our second “insider” conversation with someone who worked on The Good Place! Todd May is a philosopher to whom Michael Schur reached out early in the show because of Professor May’s book Death (The Art of Living). Todd talks and laughs with Jon Spira-Savett about a range of topics, including: motivation (of characters on the show, and of Jon); community and ethical growth; whether the show actually has anything to do with the afterlife; Kierkegaard in a nutshell; how the show gravitated in an Aristotelian direction over time; how Todd’s writings about death connect with the show; how a professional philosopher thinks about the role of entertainment and clergy people in bringing big ideas to a wider public; Michael Schur’s high standards; and the role of Jewish historical experience in cultivating a commitment to justice. Click here for show notes.

On The Good Place, it’s the start of a new and final season! Eleanor poses in Michael’s role as architect and tries various plans to reshape Brent. When she struggles, the group loses faith in her and so does Eleanor herself, until a pep talk from Michael leads her to change her perspective (and her outfit). On the podcast, it’s also the start of a new and final season, so Sari Laufer and Jon Spira-Savett start off by checking in on what we’ve learned through the rewatch and the podcast so far. Then we explore the concepts of the shadow side, masks, and mentors, which turn out to be three different approach angles on teshuvah. We find ourselves revisiting the biblical Purim story, where Mordechai can help Esther find herself because of a key moment where her destiny and her people’s are on the line at the same time — much like Michael and Eleanor do yet again. Click here for show notes.

On the final episode of Season 3 of The Good Place, Tahani encounters John the gossip columnist, and Eleanor leans on the group as Chidi decides he needs to erase his memories of her when Simone arrives in the new experiment. On the podcast, Elliot Goldberg and Jon Spira-Savett return to the theme of friendship – through their experiences as “architects” in schools and camp, and revisiting a Talmudic-era teaching about what friends do for each other’s life and moral development. Click here for show notes.