IKAR Podcasts

Sukkot Drash - Rabbi Hannah Jensen

Rabbi Hannah Jensen's teaching on Sukkot before the Torah reading on Shabbat 9.26.2026

It's Getting Hot in Here - Rabbinic Intern Jacob Schatz | Sukkot

The Talmud's story of a sweltering sukkah illuminates our urgent need for authentically Jewish answers and action as we face the mounting climate crisis. 

IsraAID’s Yotam Polizer and Rabbi Sharon Brous in Conversation in the Sukkah

Yotam Polizer is the Global CEO of IsraAID, Israel’s leading humanitarian NGO. Yotam oversees IsraAID’s global operations, strategy and partnerships across 15 countries.

Writing Yourself into the Book of Life - Rabbi Dvora Weisberg

One of the central prayers of the High Holy Day liturgy reminds us of the uncertainty we face in the year ahead. But the prayer also offers us ways to maintain equilibriu

How a Bereaved Father Found Solace By Encountering the Humanity of the Person Who Killed His Children

Rabbi Sharon Brous and Colin Campbell in conversation: Choosing Love: How a Bereaved Father Found Solace By Encountering the Humanity of the Person Who Killed His Childre

When What We Love Falls - Rabbi Morris Panitz | Yom Kippur

What does it mean to remain connected to something we love when it disappoints us? How do we hold love, criticism, belonging, and moral involvement in the same hands?

The Torah I Learned From the Pope, and From My Father - Rabbi Sharon Brous | Kol Nidre

From estrangement to engagement: How small, steadfast acts of love will be the bridge to the healing we need.

To Live and Love Well Not in Spite of Death, But Because of It - Rabbi Sharon Brous & Dr. BJ Miller | Rosh Hashanah II

Palliative care specialist BJ Miller helps patients and families face illness and death realistically, comfortably, and on their own terms. Miller is cultivating a model

Avinu Malkeinu | Rosh Hashanah II

"We've tried everything, and we nonetheless fear that it just wasn't enough. Now we are here standing before you with no more plays in the playbook. There's nothing more

Zealots Are Driving Us to the Cliff’s Edge - Rabbi Sharon Brous | Rosh Hashanah I

Extremism becomes palatable only in the absence of robust moral alternatives. That’s where we come in.

This Is Your Life - Rabbi Hannah Jensen | Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon

Don't let your life pass you by. It may be that your life is not what you imagined. Grieve what you need to grieve about where you are. And then invest in the life you ha

Taller On The Inside - Rabbi Deborah Silver

The High Holyday liturgy is full of images of emptiness and abasement, as if to tell us, “You got nothing.” How does this week’s parashah, always read just before the Hig

Read it both ways  - Rabbi Candice Levy

Ki Tavo offers a theology of reward and punishment, of cause and effect, but lived experience teaches us that the world does not work so neatly. What becomes possible whe

Rabbi Sharon Brous and Daniela Gerson discuss "The Wanderers"

Part genealogical detective story, part gripping history, part contemporary reporting on war-torn territories, The Wanderers - A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected

IKAR High Holy Days Bootcamp 5787

Grab a glass of grape juice or wine and a comfy chair, and join your rabbis for a launch of the season. We’ll cover many of the High Holy Day basics (What can I expect if

The Verse That Made Me Want to Throw Out the Whole Book - Rabbi Myra Meskin

What do we do when Torah contains laws that violate our deepest moral commitments? A troubling passage from Parashat Ki Teitzei invites us to wrestle with difficult texts

On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear - Ami Fields-Meyer & Rabbi Sharon Brous in conversation

Ami Fields-Meyer discusses his New York Times best seller "On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear" with Rabbi Sharon Brous. Co-Sponsored by J Street and New

The Relentless Pursuit of Peace - Rabbi Sharon Brous

I hunger for a leadership with the moral seriousness, the moral imagination to recognize that the greatest achievement is not brute force and military victory, but the em

Between Two Mountains - Rabbi Tova Leibovic-Douglas

What happens when we have the courage to really see what is before us—the blessing, the curse, and everything in between? Re’eh invites us to look up, pay attention, and

Perhaps The Word Was For Me - Rabbi Morris Panitz

From the broken brotherhoods of Genesis to the final conversation between Moses and Aaron, the Torah asks what it truly means to become our brother's keeper. Through a re