Identity/Crisis

For many American Jews, Thanksgiving is another high holiday. We celebrate our obligations of citizenship and show appreciation for all that America has granted. Perhaps, in turn, our tradition may have lessons to teach America. Could the Jewish model of interpreting our stories for the present, and our conceptions of memory, gratitude, and redemption, heal our divided country? In this special episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer reflects on the Jewish significance of Thanksgiving.

How do we help people see democratic values as endemic to Judaism?How do we make Jewish values an integral part of Zionist governance? At the intersection between Judaism and politics, author Mikhael Manekin (Alliance for Israel's Future) and Yehuda Kurtzer debate a virtue ethics for Judaism in a time of power.

The Jewish community is being pulled apart by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both the left and the right are driving the debate to extremes, pushing the majority of Jews in the center to disengage. Yehuda Kurtzer and Dov Waxman, (UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies) examine this shift and ask if the positions of the new Jewish left are still compatible with liberal Zionism.

As the U.S. Supreme Court considers the highest-profile legal challenge to Texas' new abortion law this week, Yehuda Kurtzer and Michal Raucher (Rutgers University) examine the Jewish communal conversation around abortion. Jews have historically been both pro-natalist and pro-choice. And that's not an obvious combination. How does this dichotomy manifest in attitudes, social policy, and legislation around issues of abortion in the U.S. and Israel? 

In mid-October, the OU officially rejected certification of Impossible Pork, causing a flurry of contention from kosher-keeping consumers. What does it mean for rabbis to declare a product of 100% kosher ingredients treif based on name and taste alone? In this episode, Yehuda Kurtzer sits down with our very own producer, David Zvi Kalman, to explore the origins of this rationale and discuss the ethical factors that weave through Jewish dietary law as the climate crisis careens us toward an uncertain future of sustainable protein. David’s opinion piece on the subject can be found here.

For more than three decades, the Bronfman Fellowship has been a crucial incubator of pluralistic thought among future Jewish leaders. As American Judaism and media have changed, however, the work of engendering pluralistic communities has become much more difficult. In this episode Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Becky Voorwinde, the Executive Director of the Bronfman Fellowships about how the program has tried to adapt to these challenges.

In this week’s episode, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Donniel Hartman about how Israeli society and the occupation are testing Zionist ideals. Donniel Hartman's essay in Sources can be found here: https://www.sourcesjournal.org/articles/liberal-zionism-and-the-troubled-committed

In this episode, Yehuda Kurtzer chats with Hartman senior fellow Shaul Magid (Dartmouth College) about his new book Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical which offers an intellectual history of American Judaism and its political challenges – liberalism, race, communism, Zionism, radicalism – the poles through which American Jews have traveled in the past 60 years. Can the story of a radical thinker and controversial politician shed light on the Jewish experience in the US and, later, in Israel? Links: Meir Kahane debating Yitz Greenberg: https://archive.org/details/RabbiKahaneDebatesProf.Greenberg360p Meir Kahane debating Alan Dershowitz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ykrwmaKrLg  

In this episode, Yehuda Kurtzer spoke with Rabbi Annie Lewis and Rabbi Yosef Goldman of Shaare Torah in Gaithersburg, Maryland, about the experience of becoming the rabbis of a new congregation during a pandemic, adapting to limitations on communal singing, and trying to find time to appreciate services while also leading them.

In this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Nachman Shai, Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs, on a range of topics, including differences between Israeli and American historical consciousness, why Israel's relationship with Diaspora Jews remains important, whether Zionism allows for Diaspora to be valuable, and the possible return of a compromise around the use of the Western Wall. Links: Has Israel Let You Down?: https://www.jta.org/2021/09/01/opinion/has-israel-let-you-down-its-minister-of-diaspora-affairs-wants-to-talk-about-it