edJEWcation

Leaving Antisemitism Behind with Lucas Gage

Three years ago, if you’d told us we’d spend October 7 interviewing Lucas Gage, we’d have laughed. So would he. Lucas is a former Marine who did two tours in Iraq, then

Murder in Tel Aviv: The Life of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Part 3

This episode starts off with a murder on a Tel Aviv beach, how that murder would fundamentally change the future of the Zionist movement, Jabotinsky’s role within it. In

King Solomon's Book of Proverbs

Hashem offers a 12-year-old king anything he wants. Wealth, power, conquest, all on the table. Solomon asks for wisdom, and nearly three thousand years later we’re still

15 Years for Defending Jews: Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Part 2

Picking up where we left him last time…Jabotinsky is in a refugee camp in Egypt with 12,000 Jewish refugees, who had been expelled from Palestine by the Turks. He survey

What Do Diaspora Jews Owe Israel

In this episode we discuss Compulsory service vs. a Second Temple style tax to Jerusalem, and why the Law of Return covers even Noam Chomsky Israelis flying home to vot

"Why Don't You All Go to Hell?" The Life of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Part 1

Ze’ev Jabotinsky could have been a great Russian novelist. Everyone, including the Russian novelists, said so. Instead, a spring evening in Odessa in 1903 set him on the

Sour Milk, Shots of Gin, and Dual Loyalty

The Rabbi’s Ten Days of Repentance began with a bowl of cornflakes topped with rancid milk, which somehow leads to him doing shots of Gin on Simchas Torah…with an MIT fra

Our Sins of Omission and Commission

In honor of Yom Kippur, we talk about two kinds of sins we commit. Sins of omissionand sins of commission. Sins of omission are the things we should have done and didn’

No Apologies: Antisemitism and Rosh Hashanah

Jay has been doing some reading, and he opens this week with an essay he refuses to attribute until the Rabbi guesses. From there the Rabbi gets on a roll about Mark Ruff

Jonah Ghosted God. It Did Not Go Well.

Jonah gets swallowed by a fish, and that is the part everybody remembers, but the real story is what happens after: Nineveh repents, Hashem forgives, and Jonah sits down

Listener Questions: Elul, Damages, and Israel

Some weeks we pick the topics. This week you picked them for us. The Rabbi opens by informing both of us that the frivolity is over, because Elul has arrived and we hav

Planning a Chabad Wedding

It is just CL and I this week, because we wanted to give her a chance to speak this week (sorry, Rabbi). Her oldest son got engaged a few weeks ago, there has already be

The Book of Deuteronomy: Moses' Last Words

Moses has five weeks left. He starts talking on the first of Shevat, he dies on the seventh of Adar, and in between he delivers the longest, most repetitive, most urgent

Parenting Adult Children: Boundaries & Grace

Nobody warns you that the hardest parenting years might come after your kids are grown. We opened with a story Jay picked up in a Delta Lounge, a man quietly putting on t

Lament This: The Book of Lamentations

Tisha B’Av is coming, and before we sit on the floor with the lights low, we’re doing our homework. This week we open the Book of Lamentations, the scroll Jeremiah wrote

Matot-Masei: Vows, Tribes & Cities of Refuge

The Rabbi opens with a request: can we please put a moratorium on the word “anti-Semitism” until next July 4th? (Spoiler: no, but we try.) Then we celebrate some family n

Yahrzeit, Kaddish & the 17th of Tammuz

Some episodes start light. This one starts with a candle. We begin with Jay’s yahrzeit for his mom, twelve years gone and still deeply missed, and the Rabbi walks us thro

Hillel & Shammai: Judaism's Dynamic Duo

What makes two rabbis who disagreed about almost everything the most celebrated pair in Jewish history? This week we sit down with Hillel and Shammai, the original dynami

The Twelve Prophets, Part 3: Micah to Malachi

We made it to the finish line. After two earlier episodes, we wrap up the Twelve Prophets and tie a bow on them all. Along the way we get into why these texts barely show

The Minor Prophets, Part 2: Hosea to Micah

We picked up where we left off with the Twelve Prophets (Trei Asar), and Hosea throws us straight into one of the strangest stories in all of the Tanakh. Gd is furious th