Every summer, thousands of American Jewish teenagers leave their homes to spend weeks making trouble and memories in what might be their favorite place in the world: summer camp. But Jewish camp isn't just fun, games and reenactments of Aliya Bet; it's a place for Jewish kids to learn about history, ritual and belonging, an opportunity for teens to understand themselves as part of the Jewish story. In this episode, host Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Sandra Fox, Visiting Assistant Professor of Hebrew & Judaic Studies at NYU and author of The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Cu ..read more

The Talmud is a messy, playful, and undeniably human text. It's also the bedrock of the genre that the Jewish people call Torah. In honor of the upcoming holiday of Shavuot, the day in the Jewish calendar celebrating divine revelation, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Benay Lappe, President and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, to learn Torah and to talk about what it means to learn Torah. They ask: what would happen if we thought about Torah as the inheritance not of an elite and pious few, but of all Jews, especially those on the margins? How does Torah invite us to particip ..read more

The Talmud is a messy, playful, and undeniably human text. It's also the bedrock of the genre that the Jewish people call Torah. In honor of the upcoming holiday of Shavuot, the day in the Jewish calendar celebrating divine revelation, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Benay Lappe, President and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, to learn Torah and to talk about what it means to learn Torah. They ask: what would happen if we thought about Torah as the inheritance not of an elite and pious few, but of all Jews, especially those on the margins? How does Torah invite us to particip ..read more

For the majority of American Jews today, commitment to halakha (Jewish law) is not the engine that drives religious life. Instead, most American Jews see their lived Judaism as the product of their own choices, which may or may not have anything to do with Jewish law. In this episode, Elliot Cosgrove, rabbi of the Conservative congregation of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City, joins host Yehuda Kurtzer for a conversation about his recent article in Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, which argues that liberal Jewish institutions have not properly responded to ..read more

Israel celebrated its 75th birthday in the midst of one of the biggest crises of democracy that the country has ever experienced and one of the most energetic protest movements in its history. In this episode, recorded live at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan on Yom Ha'atzmaut, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Knesset member Merav Michaeli, the head of the Israeli Labor Party. They engage in a conversation about the current moment in Israel, the ethics of political compromise, and the past and future of the Israeli left. Can liberals reclaim the language and narratives of Zionist thought and h ..read more

American Jews have a long tradition of being anxious about the next generation of American Jews. Are they sufficiently engaged in Jewish communal life? How are they forming opinions about Zionism and Israel? Are they successfully maintaining tradition (whatever that means)? And what does all that mean for what American Judaism might look like in 20, 30, or 50 years from now? In this episode, host Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Sofia, Daniel, and Rivka—three high school students who are currently participating in the Hartman Teen Fellowship—for a conversation about Jewish identity and the America ..read more

A highly competent bureaucrat who conceived the modern Israeli economy, a bungler who mismanaged the Yom Kippur War, or "the only man in the Israeli cabinet:" these are only a few of the many images of Golda Meir that remain etched in Israeli national consciousness. But who was Golda Meir, and how might her story shed light on enduring political and social questions facing the state of Israel? In this episode, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Pnina Lahav, Professor of Law Emerita at Boston University, about her recently published feminist biography of Golda Meir, The Only Woman in the ..read more

It's Passover, a time for new beginnings--and that's especially true for baseball fans, who celebrated this year's Opening Day just a week before the holiday began. In this episode, host Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Ira Berkow, Pulitzer Prize-winning sports writer, to reminisce about formative moments in the history of Jewish baseball and to explore the meaning of baseball for American Jews. Whether through Hank Greenberg's "home runs against Hitler" or Sandy Koufax's famous decision to sit out a World Series game on Yom Kippur, American Jews have looked to baseball as a means of understanding ..read more

Is the Passover Seder the right place for a political debate? Who is the target audience when your guests are generations apart? What kind of book is the Haggadah, anyway? In this episode, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Hartman faculty member Mishael Zion, Director of the Mandel Leadership Institute’s Program for Leadership in Israeli Jewish Culture and co-author of two haggadot, to discuss what is perhaps the most famous and widely practiced Jewish ritual: the Passover seder. They reminisce about their old family traditions, swap strategies for managing Seder stress, and ..read more

It's Passover, a time for new beginnings--and that's especially true for baseball fans, who celebrated this year's Opening Day just a week before the holiday began. In this episode, host Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Ira Berkow, Pulizer Prize-winning sports writer, to reminisce about formative moments in the history of Jewish baseball and to explore the meaning of baseball for American Jews. Whether through Hank Greenberg's "home runs against Hitler" or Sandy Koufax's famous decision to sit out a World Series game on Yom Kippur, American Jews have looked to baseball as a means of understanding t ..read more