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Listener Feedback with David Bashevkin

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SUMMARY

In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we hear questions, criticisms, complaints, thoughts, and feedback from our listener community.

We respond to your comments about the direction of the podcast, the diversity of Jewish experience, and the increased centrality of Israel of our lives. In this episode we discuss:

  • How has the 18Forty mission evolved in light of changes in the world and in Jewish life?
  • Is there an opposite phenomenon to “gvir culture”?
  • How should we discuss important issues that are contentious and divisive, such as the Haredi draft and the identity of the messiah?
Tune in to hear a conversation about how 18Forty might become “a beis medrash for the Jewish People.”

Voicemails begin at 19:23

References:

Transcripts are lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections.

David Bashevkin: Hi friends, and welcome to the 18Forty Podcast, where each month we explore a different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities, to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host, David Bashevkin, and today we are listening, finally, to our listener feedback, all the emails, voicemails that we have gotten over the past few months. We always try to do this at least a few times a year. It has been way too long since we did this.

This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big juicy Jewish ideas, so be sure to check out 18Forty.org, that’s 1-8-F-O-R-T-Y.org, where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. Before we get to the voicemails today, I wanted to at least spend a few moments talking about where we are right now with 18Forty. We began this project five years ago. This initiative started off kind of small, actually.

I remember our first episode, I remember how many listens it got, and we are now five years in. And a lot of the language that we’ve been using to almost describe what it is that we are trying to do. That’s probably the most frequent question. Maybe, why do you call it 18Forty? Which we’re not going to get into right now.

It’s after the calendaric year, if you’re listening now for the first time. But what is the object of our study? What are we doing on 18Forty? And I think this has always been the question that guides us. We are a very purpose-driven initiative. And I think when we first started, what was at the heart of 18Forty was addressing the most difficult questions, controversies, issues that relate to the Jewish community.

And we spoke in those early episodes about all sorts of theories that I think address so many of the more sensitive, controversial, everything that we’ve spoken about. And the imagery that we used when we first started, imagery that I believe I heard in the name of Rabbi Taragin, who we had as a guest. When people would ask me, what are we doing on 18Forty? My answer would always be this imagery of a car that is careening, that is skidding. And our gut reaction when a car skids is to grab the steering wheel and jerk it in the other direction, pull it with all of our might in the other direction.

And I said on 18Forty, we do the opposite. We steer into the controversy. And what were those controversies? We spoke about three points of dissonance, three points that are often misaligned in people’s lives, whether that is emotional dissonance, where we feel we’re not getting the nourishment, the spiritual satisfaction from our religious lives that we had hoped for, whether that is theological dissonance of really not understanding Jewish practice, Jewish thought, how it developed, what is one supposed to believe, what is one supposed to think about Jewish life, practice, law, thought, etc., etc. And aside from emotional dissonance, aside from theological dissonance, we also talk about sociological dissonance. Sometimes when you grow up and you’re, especially nowadays where you’re in yeshiva day schools, you’re in seminary, you’re in yeshiva, and then you go out into the wider world and you see maybe non-Jews aren’t the type of people you thought they were.

Maybe Jews who didn’t get a Jewish education are not quite as distant as you thought they were. Whatever preconceived notions you have from the stories, from the narratives that we receive as children, which are true narratives, but sometimes they’re maybe a little bit more simplistic. But regardless, oftentimes when we are an adult, there is a sociological dissonance. And whether it’s sociological dissonance, theological dissonance, or emotional dissonance, any one of these three can be behind that proverbial steering wheel as the car, God forbid.

But as we get older, sometimes as we grow up, as we develop, as we mature, the ideas that we found nourishing, maybe in our teens, maybe when we were children, maybe in our early 20s, don’t always align perfectly into our adult lives. When 18Forty started, the biggest controversy in the world at the time, the biggest issue we were facing was Covid, was the coronavirus. We started in May of 2020. And now we are in a very different world in the year 2025, in this new year.

And I think my thinking and how I explain 18Forty has evolved as well, and what it is that we are trying to build, what it is that we are trying to become. It is a long way there. I didn’t pursue this project. It almost found me.

And it is through the, honestly, the siata dishmaya, the divine assistance of our listeners and what we talk about and how we talk about it, that I’m very grateful that we’re even at this moment, five years later, touching thousands of lives and hundreds of guests and whatever it is. And we’ve really built an online community of sorts. But my thinking about 18Forty has changed and has changed because we’re no longer in a world reeling over a global pandemic. We are reeling over a world where there is the tectonic plates of Jewish communal life are shifting in a post-October 7th world, where we are seeing the Jewish community realign in ways where how we affiliate the borders of our community are all shifting.

I recently shared this on social media, a headline that was actually published previously by somebody named Sergey Kadinsky. Sergey Kadinsky wrote an article in the Queen’s Jewish Link, which documented a Solomon Schechter. The first ever Solomon Schechter Day School in North America has recently become Orthodox. And afterSergey published this in the Queen’s Jewish Link under the title “Switch to Orthodoxy, Continuity Rather Than Triumph,” there was a follow-up article probably got even more attention because it was in a national news outlet and it was called “First Ever Solomon Schechter Day School in North America Goes Orthodox.”

And that was published by the JTA. And what I wrote at the time was this is an extremely significant development in my humble opinion. The tectonic plates of Jewish communal life continue to shift. I hope everyone is ready.

And then I followed it up with really how I see this is affecting, you know, we’ve been in this world, in this world where Jewish identity is no longer taken for granted, where our station, where the Jewish people feel most comfortable, most secure is evolving. And the means through which we think about affiliation, how are we going to perpetuate this? You know, this experiment of Judaism in America really thriving, maybe, you know, a hundred years old, not say that there were Jews before, you know, a century ago, but real strong Jewish communities really only started evolving in the turn of the 1900s, the 20th century. It’s not that old and things are beginning to realign. And I said that non-Orthodox communities should be paying closer attention to the retention of the Orthodox world.

Not everyone is likely to become Orthodox, right? Like, I don’t know that the current structure of our communities would allow everyone to let’s all become Orthodox. But personally, even if that’s not possible, I wrote, I think every Jewish family in America should be taking a closer look at Jewish education and communal Shabbos. And I was addressing those Jews who come from non-Orthodox home, like many, many, many of our listeners and trying to make the case why even if someone isn’t going to become Orthodox at the very least, can we examine, can we consider some of the key strategies, the key approaches that the Orthodox world has sustained in order to create what I believe is a generation of extremely well-educated, extremely joyous generation of Jews. I mean, you look around, there is a great reservoir of Jewish pride.

Now, not all of that is attributable to the Orthodox community. I’m not saying it’s the only way, but there are certain methods. And that’s why I highlighted specifically Jewish education on a mass scale in the Orthodox community is really the miracle of our community. And secondly, communal Shabbos, creating communities where Shabbos observance is something that everyone joins in on, everyone is involved in.

But my advice or kind of my concern was not just for the non-Orthodox world. I also wrote, I hope there are Orthodox communities that can still service non-yeshiva graduates. As families migrate, we need shuls that welcome new families that don’t have the same educational background. And then I added a bunch of stuff, which my dear friend, Rabbi Shmuel Hain teased me about.

I’ll share that in a moment. But I said, you know, Orthodox shuls, you go into a lot of Orthodox shuls, not all. I travel a lot. When you go out of town, they still have, you know, what page number it is.

They have sometimes the system where it actually, they scroll, it has a big four, one, eight, you know, page 418. I remember the first time I saw that I was probably in my mid-20s. And I remember this is a thousand percent true. I walked into a shul where they have one of these big devices.

You kind of like scroll the different page numbers and then it displays them in the front of the shul. I promise you, I saw it. I was like, is that the attendance? I thought they were taking attendance of how many people were in shul. You know, it was like Pesukei D’Zimra was the beginning of the prayer services on Shabbos morning.

And I don’t know, it was on page 38 or 55. And I looked around, it’s like 55 people. Like, yeah, it sounds about right. And I’d look around later and you’re on page, I don’t know, 184.

And I’m like, I don’t know. I think they’re pumping up the numbers, but whatever it is, having shuls, having shuls in the Orthodox community that are able to serve as beyond those who grow up in the Orthodox world. And the things that I wrote were extra yarmulkes. You want to make sure that your shul, when you have extra yarmulkes, it should be yarmulkes that the rest of the shul also wear.

I poked fun at those silk yarmulkes. I know some of my Sephardic brethren actually prefer those. They’re not as common in the Ashkenazi world. I wrote doilies.

I don’t even know if doilies still exist. I just, that’s what I grew up with. Those are those little white hair coverings, like a little, it looks like a napkin almost. I don’t know how those got invented, but they used to be all over shuls.

I remember growing up, they had that extra tallesim announcing the page numbers and a strong youth department. And I shared that because of this realignment. I see the tectonic plates shifting. And as communities get closer, as people are looking to find deeper and richer Jewish involvement and Jewish engagement, we sometimes need to look beyond our own communities or what has worked until now and find other means of affiliation.

Taking the best of all worlds, we all have access to the successes of all the different communities, ones that we belong to and one we’re adjacent to and ones that we have to, so to speak, look over the proverbial mechitza to see what else is doing. And I feel like there is a unique opportunity specifically for 18Forty, because there are very few media outlets, Jewish media outlets, whose focus specifically is on the diversity of Jewish experience. And that is why in many ways, I feel like the way I understand what it is we are trying to do is evolving. It is not just controversial issues that we are trying to approach.

We’re not studying issues. I believe that we have switched and we are studying people. We’re studying Amcha Yisrael, the Jewish people themselves. The language that I used earlier in this year was allowing people to imagine what would it look like, what would it mean to have a beis medrash, a house of study for the Jewish people, a beis medrash, where the object of study is not a text, is not an idea, but is actually the lives of the Jewish people.

Not so we can become and imitate our guests, not so we can explain to people where they have gone wrong, not so we can hold up people and say everyone should be like so and so, like this community, like this individual. But having a place anchored in tradition, anchored in a commitment that I have had from day one, which is 18Forty, should always be facilitating and helping people embrace their Yiddishkeit more fully, finding another step forward in their Yiddishkeit. That has always been our mission. And instead of just focusing on the controversial issues, which we certainly will get back to, I’m almost my conception of what it is we’re trying to do is not study the issues, but study the way the more sensitive areas of Jewish life affect us, the Jewish People.

And that is why we’ve been doing series on different Jewish communities. We focused on Chabad, we have focused on the Dati Leumi community. God willing, we will have series on the Sephardic community, a community that I have woefully overlooked, and we’ve gotten so much great feedback on the importance and how pathetic my attempts of really highlighting the entire breadth of the Jewish community has been. We cannot do this without the Sephardic community.

I want to do a series, hopefully very soon, on the American yeshiva world, which I think is a titan for the future of Yiddishkeit, not just in America, but throughout the world. It’s a community that has invested so much in Jewish education and in Torah learning and really understanding what it represents and what is it grappling with, I think could be extremely, extremely enlightening. But regardless, I think we’re going to be approaching a lot of things in a similar way. But to me, what is evolving is the focus of what we are trying to accomplish.

Instead of looking for a concrete answer of how some modern issue can be squared away with traditional thought and traditional life, which is definitely a part of what we’re trying to do. But what we’re trying to do in the most essential sense is understanding the diversity, understanding the spectrum of Jewish engagement, of religious engagement, of how the Jewish people engage with their Yiddishkeit, to become, so to speak, a beit midrash for the Jewish people. And this is why I was so excited this year that we launched our 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers. And this is going to be a yearly model where we pick a new topic.

We have a questionnaire of 18 central, essential questions, and then we try to present a very wide spectrum of how different people who are leaders in that field think about that. This year, we began with Israeli thinkers. And in order to kind of show that spectrum of Jewish thought that can help enrich, because there’s no one answer for everybody, that is just the truth. 18Forty doesn’t have it.

I don’t think anybody has it. Nobody has the one answer that is for everybody. But there are spectrums of thought, there are spectrums of engagement that if we learn to understand the interiority of our religious lives, we not only learn how to confront the other better, how to become a more unified people, how to become a more understanding people, how to become a more gracious and more sensitive people. But we also learn how to make our own Yiddishkeit, our own Jewish life more enriching, more engaging, how to respond to our children, our family members, the struggles that we have in our own lives.

And that is why we’re going to be launching so many new initiatives in this area, becoming the beit midrash for the Jewish people where we’re able to study the interiority of our lives without the need to adopt the lives of our guests, without the need to say, hey, that’s not how I live or how I do things. We’ll obviously highlight that. But in order to really show, and I believe this to the bottom of my heart, that the next frontier of redemption is not a new understanding of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, of God, is not even necessarily exclusively a new understanding and a deeper understanding of Torah. But as we have said before, in mystical literature in the Zohar and in the writings of Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, the Ramchal, it says, Yisrael Oraita v’Kudsha Brich Hu Chad Hu, that God, the Torah and the Jewish people are one.

And it’s not enough to just have an understanding of God and it’s not enough to just have an understanding of Torah. If we want to complete that final leg of redemption, we have to learn how to understand one another. And I know in 18Forty and the people that we surround ourselves by are people who are able to approach the other with that type of curiosity, courage, fearlessness, and really ask questions about their lives, about their future, about their past and where they came from, to help us create that mutual understanding of Amcha Yisrael, of the Jewish people. And it’s with that charge that I am so excited to really dive into our mailbox.

We have so many exciting messages to get to and we are so excited about 18Forty’s future. There are so many exciting initiatives happening and I just want to remind our listeners, I really only try to do this once or twice a year. I don’t do it so much. I am so grateful to our listeners, but 18Forty is really a listener-sponsored initiative.

And I’m really asking from the bottom of our heart, we’re going to formalize this more. We’re not kids anymore. We didn’t just start. This is really trying to grow into a major force to bring mutual understanding of the most sensitive issues of our lives, of what our Yiddishkeit should mean.

And as a community-funded project, I do feel it’s necessary to ask our listeners, if you’re able to give and support our work to help build that collective communal understanding, to be the window through which we’re able to see one another and see ourselves. Please consider donating at 18Forty.org/donate. That’s 1-8-F-O-R-T-Y.org slash donate. It is you, our listeners, our community that allow us to continue to grow.

And we are so, so grateful for all of your support. And I just want to say, if you’re not able to give, and we try to make it as easy as possible, we do it in denominations of 1840. So as little as $18.40 goes a long way, though people who want to sponsor a series or an episode, that is really the major type of funding that allows us to continue what we do. But even if you’re unable to give a dollar, I would ask.

It is totally free. You could subscribe to us on YouTube, subscribe to us on your podcast channels. That really helps us reach new listeners. It helps grow our platforms, leave us a review, leave a positive word.

All of this helps with the algorithms in the sky. So even if you’re unable to give a dollar, we so appreciate your support in any way that it comes, whether it is recommending the podcast, recommending the work that we do, giving based on your level of comfort, subscribing to any of our channels. I am so grateful to our community. And without further ado, here are some of our communal members and their questions and responses to 18Forty.

Voicemail: Hey, David, hope all’s well with you. I started listening to the Sabbatean episode with Dr. Pawel. It starts at 18 minutes or so. And at 18 minutes, you said twice you’re going to butcher his name.

It just doesn’t look good to say, hey, I’ve got this guest and I can’t even pronounce his name. Just find out in advance. I have to believe you have always known how you pronounce his name. There’s all these videos where he says his name.

So it’s a very minor point, but just if you can have someone on the show, at least don’t do a Candace Owens and butcher the name. 

David Bashevkin: I absolutely love this feedback. Pronunciation has never been my strong suit. I remember someone one time asked me or they were pushing back on some of the work or some episode that we did.

And they said, are people just listening to 18Forty to get heresy or bad ideas or whatever it was? It’s an accusation that I deal with a lot and take very, very seriously. But I remember at the time I answered half in jest. I said our podcasts are like an hour and a half long. I use big words and I mispronounce nearly all of them.

I don’t think anybody is listening to us just for our heresy. God forbid, I would never. Honestly, I’m not looking to share that. But I do know we do have plenty of listeners who tune in for what is the obvious faux pas, which is a word that I think I did pronounce correctly, which is the obvious mistaken pronunciation that I am going to deal with first.

We appreciate whatever reason you listen, whether it’s for the ideas, our guests or for our mispronunciations. I will continue to do my best both in pronouncing some words correctly and keeping you on your toes and pronouncing some words incorrectly. Our next guest comes from an email. This is the email to whom it may concern.

I am now in the middle of listening to the Israel and diaspora series. While most of the diaspora related content that I’m hearing is American and I’m in Canada myself, my parents being American, I’d be very interested in hearing of the differences frum-wise, meaning in terms of people’s religiosity from between North America on the one hand and the Commonwealth, UK, Australia, South Africa, France, Latin America, and the differences frum-wise between those non-North American parts of the diaspora and Israel. This not only completes the portrait of diaspora Jewry and goes beyond North America, but more importantly, there are salient differences between North America, particularly the U.S. and other parts of the diaspora, such that other parts of the diaspora can even said to be more typical and the U.S. quite atypical. Thank you for your kind consideration.

Best regards, Yosef Dov Robinson, named more directly after relatives than after the rav himself. His name is Yosef Dov, so he’s saying he was not named after Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. And P.S. I’m in Montreal, which in many ways is more like the other parts of the diaspora, particularly the Commonwealth, than like the U.S. or even the rest of Canada. I think this is absolutely an excellent piece of feedback and I can say definitively, having been both to London fairly recently in the last two, three years, and also I spent significant amount of time, I don’t know if I’ve really spoken at length about this, in Sydney, Australia.

There is a program that many of the yeshivas do called Seed, which is a summer educational, I forgot what it stands for, and I was lucky enough that my second year in Eretz Yisrael in Baltimore, I got to go with a group of guys to Sydney, Australia. That was the town we went to. Of course, we made the joke that in the summertime in Australia, it is actually not the summer, it is the wintertime, which would make the program not Seed, but Weed, classic yeshivas joke that we were very excited about. But there is no question that when we were in Australia, the strength, particularly of Bnei Akiva, of a real youth Zionist movement was much more similar to what we have heard from Israel than anything in America.

There is a real sense of responsibility that I saw with my own eyes among teens there, the people who serve as camp counselors, who really saw themselves as a part of a movement where aliyah rates, where people’s consideration of moving to Israel is so much stronger. The cultural gravitational pull, the religious gravitational pull of Israel is so much stronger when you are not in, the farther I think you get away from the tri-state area, or these major metropolitan Orthodox communities, where you feel like you’re in the diaspora, but you have everything, and the farther you get away from that, the more that you go to towns where it doesn’t feel the permanence that we are convinced that we feel in the tri-state area, that we are convinced that we can feel in a Florida, in a Chicago, in an LA, in a Toronto, in these major metropolitan areas in North America, the gravitational pull of Israel is simply not as strong. Our communities here have shaped so much of how we understand our own Judaism, that it becomes much harder to actually make the leap and consider Israel your actual home. We may call it our proverbial home, but it is much harder to really feel, and I think that the farther you go, and this is something that we should really explore, but I have seen this and felt this in my heart, just with the people I’ve interacted with when I go to London, and for sure when I spend time in Australia, this is something that you feel deeply, that sense of our home is not here.

We have a community here, we have a house here, but there is a pull, I can only describe it as a gravitational pull to Israel that I’ve never felt in the same way in the tri-state area. It definitely increased after October 7th, but to the same degree, I don’t think it has ever caught up to what is naturally felt in the environment outside of North America. That’s absolutely something that we should discuss further. Okay, another email, some strong but fair criticism.

Hi, I’m writing as a former dedicated listener of your show, currently living in Israel where I’ve been for the past 10 years. While I greatly appreciated your earlier work, my interest has significantly declined to the point where I no longer listen to the show. Obviously I always find that hard to hear. We want to service and be a place for as many people as possible. But let’s hear why. 

Over several seasons I was generally okay with your message, even though I didn’t agree with everything, and that’s perfectly fine. However, I’m really disappointed that Israel has become almost the only topic of discussion. There’s a striking disconnect here.

If you and your listeners are so passionate about Israel to the point where it compromises 90% of your content, perhaps consider actually moving to Israel. Words and actions seemed misaligned. While loving and talking about Israel is wonderful, and this podcast is certainly your space, the show’s current focus no longer reflects its original message, notably absent is an authentic Israeli Haredi perspective. Has there been any in-depth discussion about why the rabbis are opposing the draft law, not just in the 40 questions segment, but in the main podcast itself? You’ve transitioned from a show that shared and answered questions about Torah and Judaism to what has essentially become an Israel-only podcast.

Additionally, I have concerns about the opening dialogues. Perhaps these can be limited to three minutes or moved to the end of the show. Better yet, consider creating a separate podcast for sharing host views. I want to thank you for your work as I was a big fan during the first two years of the podcast.

I hope this feedback proves helpful. Best regards, Eli. There’s no question that we have shifted a great deal to talking a lot of issues about Israel because I think part of this is obvious, but a part of it is different. I think Israel, not the geography of Israel, not the politics of Israel, but the religious shadow that Israel now casts over our own identity in a post-October 7th world is so much greater and there’s so much more to contend with as it relates to our relationship with Israel.

So I certainly, I’m not going to apologize for our focus on Israel. I’m not sure there was an option to focus on anything else. It obviously makes me feel very sad and I don’t want to say pained, but yeah, you never want to lose listeners and we get this kind of feedback and you want to be able to reach people where they are. I certainly have no intent whatsoever to just focus on Israel.

That is not going to be our long-term focus, but there is no question that Israel plays a larger role in 18Forty than it did when we first started. I have evolved as a person and so I really do appreciate this feedback. I also want to know that this sentence, noticeably absence, is an authentic Israeli Haredi perspective and I do want to say somewhat my own limitations. There are areas or guests that are harder to find than others and I certainly don’t want to say it was impossible, but the efforts that I have made, we have had plenty of Haredi guests and we’ve also gotten feedback that we’ve had too many Haredi guests.

There is a Goldilocks syndrome where we’re not going to be able to have the porridge of our weekly episodes and our series at the exact right temperature for everybody, but the commitment that I will make is that we’re not turning into a Israel podcast. If anything, as I said in our opening, I see ourselves as a beis medrash for the study of the Jewish people and all of the issues that are manifest in their lives. And Eli, if you are still listening every once in a while, I do hope that you return for the series that you find interesting and skip over those that you don’t. I’m sure you understand where we are coming from.

I certainly understand where you are coming from and I do hope you reach out again if you ever listen to an episode and it does resonate, or even if it doesn’t, I do very much appreciate that feedback. 

Our next email, Dear David, I am just listening to your podcast with Tuvia Tenenbom and listening to the feedback that you received from your previous podcast with Josh and Shaindy. You may remember those were our guests, Josh and Shaindy Leifer. That was a fairly controversial episode because they were anti-Zionist activists who then embraced a more traditional means, a traditional way of Jewish life, though they still remain fairly left-wing as it relates to Israel.

And this is what the letter is reacting to that episode. And it continues, I don’t generally write these types of emails or give this type of feedback, but since you were reading out some negative feedback, I wanted to tell you my thoughts. And we did get a lot of negative feedback for that episode. First and foremost, it’s great to see that you’re able to have a conversation with someone even if you disagree with their opinions and even when they quote those opinions that you disagree with.

You are able to move the conversation on to the point that you want to discuss without getting bogged down with the point that you disagree with, which is something that a lot of people struggle with. More importantly, people should know that there is room for lots of different views within Orthodoxy. Personally, I do associate myself with some of the views that Josh and Shaindy express, and it’s wonderful to hear that there is room for me as a frum Jew. Kind regards, Aaron from London, Aharon from London.

That’s obviously the type of positive feedback that I appreciate extremely, extremely deeply because it relates to everything that we are trying to accomplish here. I think if you are ever listening to my podcast and you become so upset, and we’ve had listeners like this, so upset about a specific view of being, this must be wrong. How could they share that? Not always. I certainly make mistakes and I’m not always correct, but more often than not, it is coming from a misunderstanding of how we’re trying to listen.

We’re not trying to convince anyone that anyone is right. What we are trying to do is allow people to share their issues, whether they are theological, emotional, sociological, but really share how Yiddishkeit emerges in their lives and whether they’re just kind of regular, you know, somebodies, you know, don’t have big followings, aren’t big rabbis, scholars, Jewish leaders. We really approach our guests in the same way where we’re trying to have an organic, non-hierarchical conversation. 

How do you make sense of these issues in your life? How do you create a Yiddishkeit that is nourishing, that is positive in this modern world? So it’s not just about the opinions we share, but really learning and myself more than anyone is really learning how to listen. And I don’t always do it well and I get a lot of feedback that people want me to push back more and stronger and sometimes you get feedback of appreciation, it was exactly right, and sometimes you get feedback that you want to push back less, we want to hear less from you. I’m always listening, always adjusting, and always trying to be better. Let’s go to our next email.

Hello Rav Bashevkin, what a wonderful series reflecting on subtle yet important religious differences between communities. I do not, chas v’shalom, God forbid, want to take away from the importance of engaging deeply with Eretz Yisrael or aliyah. However, amongst communal leaders and my peers, I do not see a positive vision for the American Orthodox community, especially within the Modern Orthodox community. According to the JLIC website, that’s an organization of the OU that places people on college campuses to service the Orthodox students there, and I think the Orthodox adjacent students, according to the JLIC website, a majority of the rabbinic educators are Israeli, even a significant amount of the ones on American campuses.

In your series, you mentioned the negative version of not making aliyah for religious reasons. What does a klal focus mean in klei kodesh, in the American community, or in the aliyah decision itself? Is there a positive version based on a humanistic vision and continued relationship with the American non-Orthodox community that will remain here? The version of Modern Orthodoxy that was the strongest proponents of that vision is now in Israel. Now it feels like the last one here turns out the lights kind of approach in many ways. I think the American Jewish community increasingly externalizes all Jewish meaning into Israel.

The foundational American Jewish experience institutionally is in Israel. I would be interested in your thoughts about the way American Jewish community can, without taking away from the importance and miracle in Israel, provide affirmative and future-oriented vision and resources to the American Jewish community. There seems to be much to learn from the Jewish community in Israel besides making aliyah. I look forward to continually learning from you and hope we can meet at some point.

Kind regards, David S. 

I love this. I think it’s a very, very thoughtful email, though I agree with its premise and not with its conclusion. I am one of the few, I think there are a lot of naysayers about the future of Modern Orthodoxy, particularly in North America, and I am actually one of the few who is long on Modern Orthodoxy.

Why am I long on Modern Orthodoxy? Yes, there, God willing, we have a series coming out later in the year on attrition on those who leave the community, and there are fairly significant attrition rates in both the modern Orthodox and the American yeshiva community. I think a lot of the doomsaying, the last one here turns out the lights, is overstated. Number one, I think the modern Orthodox community in many ways is growing. I think that very often we are gerrymandering the lines of what’s considered Modern Orthodox, what’s considered yeshivish, what’s considered right-wing, or whatever words you use, there is a lot of gerrymandering of the boundaries of who’s considered within which community.

I happen to think there is an extremely positive vision for Modern Orthodoxy in America, and it does not just entail aliyah, but it does entail looking towards Israel and looking at the way the Dati Lumi community has stationed itself in Israel as being the community that really sees the entirety of the court. They share a great deal in common with the Haredi community, most notably the primacy of halacha, of Jewish law, as the expression of Jewish life and the way halacha integrates into their life, and yet they also have a great deal in common with the Hiloni community, with the secular community. I know I’m oversimplifying, there are more than three communities in Israel, but in the Hiloni community, broadly speaking, there is also a great deal of understanding within the Dati Lumi community, as they both have similar, though sometimes competing, but similar conceptions of the importance of the state of Israel. I believe we need a similar model in America where Modern Orthodoxy, those who are, I don’t want to be overly rigid in stating what the ideology of Modern Orthodoxy is, but I think as a vision of what the Modern Orthodox community, broadly speaking, introduces to our community is twofold.

Number one, it is a community that is engaged, I believe, with the entirety of the American Jewish community, or could be engaged with the entirety of the American Orthodox community. Through our schools and fellowships and experiences in the workplace, we’re much more integrated with the rest of the world, and we have the capacity to listen in ways that more insular communities may not. I think the future of modern Orthodoxy, and I mean in the most broadest sense, I don’t mean people who call themselves modern Orthodox versus people who call themselves yeshivish. I mean people who are Orthodox but deeply involved in communal and world affairs.

It could be in Lakewood, in Williamsburg, in Monsey. I also would consider that a part of the vision of what Modern Orthodoxy should be bringing to the world. It’s not about an institutional affiliation insofar as a shared mission in being able to engage with the entirety of the Jewish world and being able to almost like pass notes from one world to another of not giving up on any Jewish community definitively, but helping each community, no matter where they are, address those issues. That doesn’t mean the Modern Orthodox community itself doesn’t have its own issues.

Of course it does. Every community does. The strength of the Modern Orthodox community, in my opinion, is our ability to engage more deeply with a wider variety of Jews to understand their experience. Secondly, and this is really important, and I think there’s actually something else that Modern Orthodox communities can do, and particularly Modern Orthodox communities that are not, let’s say, the strongest, most intense Modern Orthodox communities, not the ones who are, you know, what I would call YU-adjacent.

But there are other modern Orthodox communities that maybe they’re a drop more progressive, maybe they’re a drop more left-wing, but they also, I believe, have a really important role to play, and that is in particular in serving as a model for non-Orthodox Jews in how they can integrate serious Shabbos observance, shul attendance, Torah study into their own communities. Sometimes it’s too out of reach, not always and not for all, but for many it can be too out of reach to look to a Hasidic community, or even look to a Lakewood yeshiva community, or even frankly look to, you know, like a more very serious Five Towns, Bergenfield community and say, oh, this is what we can do in our shul, in our community, in our synagogue that has been, you know, non-Orthodox for the last half a century. That sometimes is a bridge too far, but I do believe there are many rabbis and specifically community members. My brother-in-law is not a rabbi, that’s a hard no, all caps and bold underlined, not a rabbi.

But I told him many times, I said the way you live is really a positive and attainable vision for what Jewish life can mean for a much wider cut of our community than we oftentimes consider. And I think in both of those respects, both as a mission in connecting and engaging with the entirety of Jews, I want to see, God willing, the next generation, we should see more people with a yeshiva education getting involved in federations, in AIPAC, in philanthropy, to make sure that American Jewry does not repeat the same mistakes that we have made the last 75 years, that we can have new ideas, new approaches to building Jewish life. And secondly, as modeling what Jewish life can be, I do think it is not just, you know, the strongest Jewish communities that have that ability, sometimes they’re the ones that have the least of that ability. Sometimes it is the Orthodox communities that are smaller cities, out of town, less intense in many ways, but those are the very communities I believe that can have a positive vision for what Jewish life, what your next step in Jewish life can be.

Let’s continue some fair feedback on the Tuvia Tenenbom episode. Fair feedback, but brace yourself, it is long. Here is the email. 

Hi, David, I happened upon your podcast interview of Tuvia and overall, I enjoyed it.

But I find Tuvia’s and your comments about why there was so much tension between Haredim and other Jews in Israel quite simplistic. Tuvia basically said there’s an age-old hatred. I wouldn’t want your listeners to think non-Haredim in Israel resent Haredim simply because they are religious. The reason for the tensions are that the rest of Israeli society is directly impacted by the Haredi lifestyle in numerous ways.

One, Israeli taxpayer money goes to pay for yeshivas. In those yeshivas, there’s no study of liba curriculum, meaning the boys and men there do not study math, science, English, etc. That might be like STEM in Israel, and they do not work. So most are on the dole. Some of their wives work, but not full-time because of the many children.

This creates a cycle where Israelis, Orthodox and secular, and everyone in between, have to pay tax to finance their lifestyle. All the while, these boys and men are not going into the workplace and are not going to the army or doing Sherut Leumi, which the Israelis, who have to fund them, are all forced to do. I grew up in the US, and there wasn’t resentment towards the Haredim because we didn’t need to support them financially. And nobody in the US at the moment has to serve in the army or do community service.

They lived separately and did not impact any of our lives whatsoever. Live and let live is far easier when you do not have to financially support them. Plus, in the US, many Haredim work because the government doesn’t support them. What I saw in the US was generally neutral or positive feelings towards Haredim at the 47th Street Photo and B&H camera and other places where they were semi-integrated with the world, and the reproach was mostly for the fanatic groups in places like Kiryas Yoel.

By the way, you guys mentioned Unorthodox, and she left Satmar, which are considered extremely extreme. Sadly, most readers, viewers of her book and movie might not understand the difference, but those of us who do know, there’s a huge difference between Satmar and other Haredim. This is a long email. I’m going to continue.

Israelis, secular and Orthodox, this is number two, serve in the army or community service. The vast majority of Haredim do not. There is no law in the Torah that says men cannot serve in the army. Lehefech, the opposite, the writer says.

There is massive resentment over this, and there is a lot of truth to this, and I’ve heard it and seen it myself. It has grown exponentially since October 7th. There were more than 2,000 Haredim who volunteered for the army right after the attacks, and the media covered this extremely positively. Sadly, I don’t know of one single yeshiva rabbi who told his students to serve, and from what I gather, the Haredim that did volunteer were already somewhat mainstream, people who work, not ones who are in yeshiva.

Beyond the feeling that they don’t pull their weight and the rest of the community has to provide defense and also fund this community, add to this the fact that the reservists are now being called for duty for more than one year. Can you blame people for losing their patience? There are men who have been serving in the for 10 months or more because there are not enough soldiers, and those men are of a mix of secular, Orthodox, traditional, Druze, Bedouin, etc. They haven’t seen their families. They’re endangering their lives daily, and it’s shocking that the rabbis in the yeshiva and the politicians are not changing their tune. If they don’t, then the odds of a change are small because even men who want to serve might not because they don’t get a good shidduch.

Three, Tuvya makes it seem like communities in Me’ah She’arim and Bnei Brak are all live and let live. This is not the case. The year I moved to Israel, this was in the news. He links to an article about some of the divisions that were taking place in Beit Shemesh.

I know that there are extremists in every group, but the Haredim ran their own mayoral candidate, and the entire face of Beit Shemesh changed so much that tons of Orthodox people left. Many of them came to Modi’in, where I live. What happened a few months or so after the Beit Shemesh incident in Modi’in, we had a concert in the park sponsored by the city. People from Modi’in Illit Haredi came, and a handful yelled at a female singer to get off the stage.

Again, extremists. But judging by what happened to the face of Beit Shemesh, Modi’in’s politicians took quick action, making it clear that this city would remain welcoming to all, and nobody will dictate who can’t perform. These are just two examples, but there are many more. Israeli law forces people to get married and divorced through the Rabbanut.

They also decide which restaurants are kosher. They do not accept Tzohar, which is Orthodox, and other rabbinic bodies. It’s a racket, and everyone can tell that it is. It’s about control and funds.

Otherwise, how could they say that Orthodox rabbis in Israel and the U.S. can’t determine if a restaurant is kosher? I don’t want your listeners to walk away thinking that secular people hate Haredim. Some do. Mostly, there’s massive resentment from Orthodox Israelis as well as secular and traditional Jews, and the fact that the Haredi politicians continue during the war to push for a Haredi exemption from army service, or Sherut Leumi, and are pushing for increased funding to yeshivas when the Knesset Finance Committee announced that taxes on other Israelis will go up due to the war expense means that their chosen lifestyle directly impacts other Israelis. And I assume you understand that Haredi birth rates mean that in the not-so-distant future, they will be a majority.

We wonder who will defend the country and who will work to support the economy. We hope very much that the Haredim will find a way to pull their weight. If not in the army, then volunteering in Sherut Leumi, and we wonder why the government has to fund the yeshiva study. Anyone else who wants to study, maybe get a PhD, has to pay it for themselves.

I don’t think people would resent the yeshiva lifestyle if it was funded privately. Sincerely, Liron. 

This is a very, very heavy subject, and I think at the heart of one of the biggest divisions that we are witnessing in all of Jewish history. I don’t think there has been a greater division in all of Jewish history than the question of Haredim serving in the Israeli army.

This is bigger, as I’ve mentioned in the past, in my opinion, than the divisions that happened in the late 1600s regarding Shabtai Tzvi, even Shabtai Tzvi. He didn’t start an army, and I’m not comparing Shabtai Tzvi to Zionism as a false messiah, God forbid, but I am just saying the way that our community divides in this question, are we ready to join an army to protect the future of the Jewish people? I can’t think of a debate that has higher stakes than this, and my approach is really twofold. Number one, because I am American, I do believe that I am limited in what I am able to criticize, because I do not live in Israel. I do not feel that I have the moral standing to criticize Haredim.

I don’t agree with the Haredi position. I think it should change, but I am limited in how I’m even able to express that, given the fact that I think Haredim ultimately are doing more for the state of Israel by the very fact that they are living there and raising families there than I living in Teaneck. Personally, I don’t think the American Jewish community should be condemning any community that has built their lives in the State of Israel. That doesn’t mean that we need to financially support the status quo.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t make efforts to change and ensure that the state of Israel remains secure, to ensure that the Haredi community is able to endure, because I think they do and continue to add a tremendous amount. Not just add, I mean, they’re a vital part of the state of Israel. We just need to figure out a way where those communal sensitivities can be preserved while not jeopardizing the security of the State of Israel. That obviously is going to require, in some way and at some point, more Haredim serving in the army.

How that is going to come about, I am not entirely sure. I do believe that there are winds of change that we are already seeing. I think we underestimate how much can change generationally and how strong and resilient the Jewish people and Yiddishkeit in fact is. I remain optimistic.

Where I’m actually most concerned in terms of our relationship to the state of Israel is not in the Israeli Haredi community, but in the American yeshiva community. I think the American Yeshiva community, because of divisions with Zionism that are well over a hundred years old, has always kind of distanced itself from overtly supporting the State of Israel. Now that has begun to change, and we’ve seen a great deal of change after October 7th, but I am still somewhat concerned, I would say, or worried. What is it like to grow up in a non-Zionist American yeshiva, where we have hundreds of thousands of young students there? When you grow up and you are a product of that world, what is your relationship to the State of Israel? My concern is not who is or is not saying Hallel on Yom Ha’atzmaut, and my concern is not who is marching in the Israeli Day Parade.

My concern is, are we going to have a generation that grows up, that feels an instinctive responsibility to support Yiddishkeit in Eretz Yisrael, and supports Yiddishkeit in Eretz Yisrael, that also prioritizes in a strategic way the security of the Jews who stand in Eretz Yisrael. There are some extraordinarily positive developments in this regard, and I’ve already seen a great deal of change, but that’s really where I am most concerned, to make sure that the next generation of American Jews, they’re growing up, forget about the memory of the Holocaust, they’re growing up without the memory, without witnesses to the establishment of the State of Israel. Somebody who cognizantly remembers the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 could be approaching 90 already. What that means, and what that means for Yiddishkeit, and how to ensure that we’re not repeating an old fight, but trotting and creating new ground for more Yidden to thrive in their Yiddishkeit, I think is the main goal, and my main concern is ensuring that the next generation of Jews, particularly the American yeshiva world, have guidance and have an approach for how they should be relating to the State of Israel.

Let’s continue. Some general feedback on the Israel topic. I’ve been listening to the 1840 podcast for a while now, and although I really enjoy your content and I’ve learned a lot, I haven’t felt a strong need to send an email until now, and I just want to say how grateful we are for hearing from our listeners. It is an integral part of our podcast.

It’s our most important guests are our listeners. I grew up in an out-of-town community in the States, went to Bais Yaakov and seminary, and was in the modern yeshivish, Modern Orthodox Machmir world. I made aliyah and eventually met my husband, who’s from the Dati Leumi Chardal world. What a beautiful story.

Although there are so many things I love about this very special community, I don’t really understand it, especially coming from my background. Your conversation with Shayna Goldberg was a real aha moment. So many things that puzzle me now make so much more sense and have given me more appreciation for the hashkafa that I’m still getting to know, the worldview. Thank you so much for this conversation, as well as the amazing content you create, Shabbat Shalom from Israel.

There is nothing that I am more proud of than helping somebody embrace their hashkafa, meaning their religious worldview, help somebody embrace where they are, to allow their Yiddishkeit to cohere with the present reality of their life. I am so grateful for that, listener, for reaching out. 

Here’s another email. In one of your recent podcasts, you touched upon Sliding to the Right, a book that came out several years ago.

Do you have any recommended reading on anything more current that touches on the current state of American Modern Orthodoxy and its slide to the right? Okay, people love sliding. The book Sliding to the Right was written by Samuel Heilman. I don’t love the book. It’s interesting, has a lot of great sociology.

There is definitely more to read. If I were to make another recommendation, I would probably choose the book by Adam Ferziger. It is called Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism. Again, it’s called Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism.

I would also recommend any of the books or articles of my dearest friends. I’ve mentioned him a whole bunch of times, and that is Zev Eleff. Zev Eleff writes on this a lot, and if I were to recommend one of Zev Eleff’s books, it would either be his book Authentically Orthodox: A Tradition-Bound Faith in American Life. Again, that’s by Zev Eleff.

Or he has another great book called Modern Orthodox Judaism: A Documentary History. I have both. I’ve read both. I love the documentary history.

It’s really interesting. It is just key documents related to the emergence of Modern Orthodoxy in America with a little bit of commentary. Either of those is great. Let’s keep going.

Another email. Hi. All the episodes in this series were great, especially for me as an American Oleh living in Israel. Keep up the great work, Danielle.

And now let’s get to a voicemail on Gvir Culture. Here we go. This is a Gvir Culture voicemail. 

Hey, David.

It’s Ben Roski walking now the streets of Yerushalayim, and over the last few days here, a thought occurred to me. You spoke extensively about Gvir Culture, and the question here is what about the opposite, you know, Ani Culture? Baruch Hashem, there’s a lot of wealth in the U.S. which supports a lot of Aniim, but just walking and seeing, you know, people collecting, guys who seem normal, able-bodied individuals who really should be working, collecting tzedakah. Clearly the amount of tzedakah given to the Mosdos, etc., I think are at historical high, which is, Baruch Hashem, a good thing. But just as there’s issues with Gvir Culture, perhaps they’ve created an air show in Ani Culture that, you know, might be to a degree, these people should be working perhaps, but that they’re collecting.

Never take them at all. They’re like, you know, what do you do? You know, a 40-year-old guy is going to make X amount of money collecting. If he tries to enter the workforce, he’ll perhaps make a third of it. That’s sort of throwing an idea out there.

No idea if it has any merit to it … or, you know, definitely worth considering, but just wanted to throw it out there. So, Kol Tuv, have a good Shabbos. 

This is a fascinating remark. You know, we spoke about Gvir Culture, which is how, kind of, materialism can grab hold of our spirituality, almost this spiritual materialism that sometimes takes hold in our Yiddishkeit, where an authentic Yiddishkeit becomes synonymous with wealth and what wealth can buy and achieve.

It’s not demonizing wealth, but it is reminding our community that we should not become the danger, that orthodoxy frumkeit cannot become a socioeconomic status. And that’s what I spoke about so long ago when we were talking about Gvir Culture. Now, Ben, who is wonderful, and I’m so happy that he called in and he writes these amazing book reviews that you can get on his Goodreads site, or you can look him up online. Ben does some really fantastic work.

This concept of, an Ani culture, I happen to think is actually the opposite side of the coin of Gvir Culture. It is where we aggrandize and kind of make poverty into an achievement. And I don’t think that it is. I don’t think poverty should be idealized.

Poverty is very scary and takes an incredible toll on families and children. And we have to be careful about the way that we talk about poverty. I’ll just say two things about this. I remember when I first started talking about Gvir Culture, somebody incredibly obnoxiously, I remember, I could probably find it, he messaged me on Facebook, really obnoxious person, and reached out.

I forgot if it was in text or through voice and said, you know, we don’t have a problem with Gevir Culture here. We support a kollel guy and this and that. And we give a lot of tzedakah and we don’t have a problem with Gvir Culture. And I don’t know what you’re talking about, and have a great Shabbos.

It was on a Friday, that much I remember. And I remember listening to this person. And aside from, you know, they kind of approach in a very obnoxious way, which may have biased my response. But when I thought about that, I said, no, that’s the same problem where you think for some reason, if you give food to the poor, that excuses the lifestyle that Yiddishkeit has become.

I don’t think that it does. I think that what we need and the only way to really address Gvir Culture is by highlighting and idealizing the middle. And this is very hard for all organizations. It’s hard for everyone, including 18Forty.

We all subsist on the gratitude and the very real gratitude we get from our donors, who generally are people who have expendable wealth. This is not demonizing those who have wealth, but it is reminding our community that we should not live on the extremes, either being in abject poverty or turning Yiddishkeit into a gorgeous country club affair. We need a Yiddishkeit that is sustainable for all. And we have to remind ourselves that even if, thank God, nobody in your community is struggling, either from poverty or from wealth, there are many who are.

And there is something for each of us to do to make sure that we approach finances in our community with an ayin tov, realizing it doesn’t define who we are and ensuring that the arbiter of engagement in a nourishing Jewish life is not your checkbook, is not your wallet. Judaism costs a little bit of money for sure, but it can’t be to the point where the only people who are able to participate are people with extreme wealth. And creating a community of two extremes of the haves and have-nots is not a sustainable vision, in my opinion, for the Jewish community. So just as we have to be concerned about Gvir Culture, I think we also have to be concerned about Ani culture.

And now some feedback from our Chabad series, which I was so proud of, and I’m so grateful to our listeners from within the Chabad community. It was just totally eye-opening for myself, the series that we did. And let’s listen to a voicemail about that episode. 

Voicemail: Hi, this is actually my first time listening to any of your episodes.

My name is Simcha Fish. This is about the episode from Eli Rubin about if the Rebbe is Moshiach. So this is something that comes up a lot with different, so to speak, Lubavitcher speakers, and it baffles me. I grew up after Gimel Tammuz, but I’m a Lubavitcher.

And just the facts, I don’t think, are very arguable that the Rebbe definitely considered himself to be Moshiach. And I don’t really think there’s any room for a differing opinion as far as that’s concerned, just a lot of obfuscation. So just to set the record straight, the Rebbe considered himself to be the Nasi HaDor, the leader of the generation, meaning that he possesses the soul of Moshe Rabbeinu, the, so to speak, master soul, over which every single Jew must be connected to him, just like Moshe was the one who connected all the Jews to Hashem. So the Rebbe was filling that role.

That’s what it means that he’s the Nasi HaDor, the leader of the generation. And the Rebbe explained how Moshiach is the master soul of all generations, so that it figures that whoever will be the Nasi HaDor, the leader of the generation at the time when Moshiach comes, he will be Moshiach. And the Rebbe stressed already from the very first maamar, the very first discourse, that this generation is the seventh generation of Chabad, and this will be the last generation of exile. And this is something that he reiterated many, many times, that our generation, the one that he’s heading as the leader, will be the last generation of exile and the first generation of Geulah.

So it was kind of implicit that he was going to be Moshiach. That was already baked into the cake. Admittedly, for the first 40 years of his leadership, he specifically told people not to talk that he is Moshiach, not to talk about it, because it would stop people from spreading Chassidus and learning Chassidus. As it may, in the later years, in the 1990s, the Rebbe started talking more about this and discussing more things in his own sichos that he edited, saying things that very much sounded like he is Moshiach, until even to the point where the Rebbe actually said that Moshiach has already been appointed by Hashem, Hashem already sent Moshiach to take the Jews out of exile, and he just hasn’t been able to do it yet.

Similar to the burning bush, Hashem gave Moshe the job to take the Jewish people out of Geulah. It took him 11 months to get the job done. A similar situation here, and that it’s already appointed, and it’s the Nasi HaDor. We know the Rebbe always referred to his father-in-law as the Rebbe, as Eli mentioned, even throughout his whole leadership.

So he says, my father-in-law, the Rebbe has already been appointed to be Moshiach, and now our whole job is to greet Moshiach, to help him to do his job, to take us out of exile. So it’s not even really at this point a question of if the Rebbe is Moshiach, the Rebbe is absolutely clear that Moshiach has already been appointed, the Rebbe said Moshiach is already fighting the wars of Hashem, and he’s winning. We’re already in Yemos HaMoshiach. Again, these are all things the Rebbe himself edited, that we’re already in Yemos HaMoshiach, the Rebbe said that after we have someone who’s already with us as Moshiach, he should very soon become Moshiach … meaning Moshiach is already here, he’s on the job, he just didn’t actually take us out of exile yet, he didn’t finish the job.

So the idea that the Rebbe is Moshiach and so much so, that people actually went around collecting signatures accepting the Rebbe as Moshiach and the Rebbe actually, this is on video, encouraged it and told them to bring more. So this, you know, is all stuff that happened. And then obviously, that for an entire year on the porch, and this was the year, even though it was after the Rebbe’s stroke, he was half paralyzed, he couldn’t speak, people would all the time would ask the Rebbe yes and no, he would shake his head yes and no, and they would ask life and death questions that everyone took without question. The Rebbe was very much with it, obviously, and so a tzadik, and every movement of his is holy, by all the sudden, this was obvious at the time, for sure.

And the Rebbe for an entire year sat on the porch in 770 and came out and encouraged the singing of the Chasidim, long live our Master, Teacher and Rebbe, King Moshiach forever and ever. And this happened, the Rebbe encouraged vigorously the singing of Yechi for over a year. The notion that it’s even a question as if the Rebbe was ambiguous, if he is or isn’t Moshiach, is preposterous. If any Chasidim still believe that we’re still in the seventh generation, the Rebbe is still the Nasi, then he certainly also still believes that the Rebbe is still Moshiach.

For those people who want to say that the whole thing is a big bracha l’vatala and it didn’t pan out, I don’t have enough common ground to disagree with those people. But for people who hold that the Rebbe is still the Rebbe, that he’s still the leader of a generation, and that the mission is still going strong, there can be no doubt that the Rebbe is Moshiach. And this is just fake, to be honest, that people are either lying to themselves or lying to everyone else when they pretend like it’s ambiguous. I hope this has been helpful.

Thank you for the podcast.

David Bashevkin: This is a fascinating voicemail from somebody who feels convinced that the Rebbe is Moshiach. That’s not quite the stance that I am taking or took on 18Forty. But what I did want to deliberately introduce, particularly in the Modern Orthodox community, but really for all of our listeners, regardless of your affiliation, was having real substantive conversations about redemption, about Moshiach.

We should be able to talk about these things. And I don’t know if the Rebbe was Moshiach, is Moshiach. What I do know is that the Rebbe had a very real vision for what Moshiach is supposed to do for the Jewish people, what the Messianic revelation is and is not. And I’m very grateful to my teachers in this area, most notably Rav Eli Rubin, my dearest friend Yosef Bronstein, and Professor Elliot Wolfson, all three of them who disagree and have different approaches to this question.

But for me, at least, helped concretize what Moshiach is all about. I think in some ways, after the interview I did with one of the more public figures in Chabad, I asked this very great scholar and rabbi, very well known, I asked him, what do you think Moshiach is? Do you think Moshiach is the Rebbe? Do you think it’s more like a consciousness? Or do you think it’s a third person? And they weren’t sure, they didn’t give a definitive answer. But they said, if anything, my belief is in line with one and two, where the Rebbe and the vision of the Rebbe is what allows us to have that consciousness of what the Moshiach is supposed to represent. Now these topics of what Moshiach is and is not are extremely Kabbalistic, are extremely important and have been debated by works throughout Jewish history.

I don’t feel like I want to take a firm stand on 18Forty declaring definitively who the Moshiach is. But I do want to be a place where we can have serious conversations about Yiddishkeit, about religion. There are so many political podcasts, there are so many podcasts about just interesting and inspiring personalities, and they’re all doing incredible work. And what I really want to focus on is our lives, like our lives, the lives of us, our listeners, you, me, and how Yiddishkeit interacts with our lives, how our religious decisions and affiliations and ideas create lives of meaning, of nourishment, create struggle, controversy, all of these things.

That’s what I love to talk about and we will continue to talk about, and I have no doubt, it’s on my bucket list to do an entire series on Moshiach, Messianism, Redemption. I think it would be absolutely fascinating. I’ve spoken to my dear friend Nachi Weinstein from the Seforimchatter podcast about collaborating on a series focusing on Shabtai Tzvi and Messianism. God willing, we will get there, and I’m very grateful to our listeners, both within Chabad and outside of Chabad, for their feedback and thoughts.

Another email, Dear David, thank you so much for the 18Forty podcast. While I don’t manage to listen to every episode, the ones I do catch, I thoroughly enjoy. For some reason, when people reach out, they very often feel they need that disclaimer. You can reach out even if you only listen to one episode.

The Chabad series was incredibly interesting, and I especially loved the episodes with Tuvia and the Conservative rabbi. Those two in particular stood out for me, as they were filled with a deep love for all Jewish people. This sense of Ahavat Yisrael is what I treasure most about your podcast. It’s always a central theme in your interviews, and it’s something I sometimes find missing in conversations with other Jews, where the love for all the Jewish People, wherever they may be religiously, isn’t as palpable.

Another thing I truly appreciate is how your show offers a glimpse into the yeshiva world in the US. Coming from Germany, we don’t really have that, so it’s fascinating to gain that perspective through your podcast. To give you a little insight into myself, I’m a goy on the path to giyur, and I began attending shul regularly during the high holidays last year. Your podcast, and especially the deep love for Kol Yisrael that you express, has played a part in making me pursue this journey more seriously.

Thank you again for everything. With deep thanks, Oscar.” 

Wow! That was a really, really special email, and in some ways really encapsulates our own shifts and our own change in emphases of what we’re trying to do on 18Forty. Yes, I think Ahavat Yisrael, love of the Jewish people, is at the center of what we are trying to do, but I want to make something very clear. Ahavat Yisrael is not easy.

It is not this wave your hand, what it’s become, I think, in some corners of our community. You know, just love them. Oh, I love all Jews. I love everybody.

That’s a very easy escape, to just say I love all Jews without making an effort, without acknowledging why some Jews bother you, without acknowledging why some Jews grate on you, why some Jews seem to threaten your Yiddishkeit. I think these are part of the questions that get us towards a deeper and more serious understanding of Ahavat Yisrael. We can’t paper over our differences. That’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid on 18Forty, of just some Kumbaya unity fest.

It’s like, hey, let’s all just get along, like Rodney King. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re actually trying to look and examine our differences, look at those points of distinction, of controversy, of sensitivity, and be able to ask ourselves, do we have room? Is there something we can learn from this? Is there a way that we can approach this differently? How can we avoid this mistake or this issue or this concern in the future? How can we ensure that these issues do not hurt or do not undermine our own lives? I think that is the messy, difficult work of loving each and every Jew. I think anybody who makes it into a slogan that’s just easy and you snap your fingers is not really immersing themselves in the work.

And I can tell you from my own life and what I’ve been really dedicating my entire life to, and what has been especially on my mind the past couple of weeks, is the difficulty of Avhavat Yisrael. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to flinch from this focus even one iota, because our object of study is the Jewish people. And we have to look at our differences, we have to look at our difficulties, we have to look at our controversies, if we are ever to come to some glimpse of a recognition to appreciate and love every Jew. The language that I often come back to is from Rav Menashe Klein, who was a Hasidic posek, the Ungvar Rebbe, who wrote a series of responsa, maybe like 15 volumes, a ton of volumes, called Mishneh Halachos.

I must have quoted it before, but he has a quote in the sixth volume of Mishneh Halachos at the very end of the 30th responsa, where he is talking about some people who advocated davening for other Jews, who they felt were wicked Jews to die. And he responds and says, God forbid, we don’t pray for other Jews to disappear, to leave, to vanquish, to be gone with. No, we have to always be praying for every Jew to feel connected, to feel inspired. And this is what he writes, with the help of God, listen to this, many, many, many.

He repeats the word three times. I’ve put in many, many, many efforts into this characteristic, the characteristic of loving each Jew. I got a little bit of a gift from God. And I got this little bit of a gift to love each and every Jew and to daven for those Jews who are distant, who are abandoned, who are lost, that they should be able to return completely and faithfully with a full heart.

That is what Rav Menashe Klein says. And that is how I approach and I think about Ahavat Hashem. It is of the hardest works and mitzvot to confront. But if you put in harbe, harbe, harbe kochos, because it’s not easy, I’ll say it bluntly, there are Jews that are hard to love depending from where your station is.

But everyone has the Jew, so to speak, that’s opposite them, that is their foil, that is the Joker to their Batman, that seems their adversary to what they’re trying to accomplish. And sitting with your feelings of hatred, honestly, of not liking certain Jews, of feeling certain Jews are dangerous, and some Jews may be dangerous. But sitting with those feelings, I believe is the only difficult, messy way to come to a deeper understanding of Ahavat Yisrael, and it’s everything that we’re trying to do here on 18Forty. Here is one more 

Dear David Bashevkin and the 18Forty family.

And I just want to stop here and just spend 10 seconds of real gratitude for our 18Forty family. This is not a one man show, we would never be able to pull this off as consistently as we do. If it was just me, I assure you that anybody who listens to me or knows the way I run my life knows, we would never be able to do this. And really, the accomplishments that we have had over the past few years is a testament to our larger 18Forty family.

At the head of that is, of course, Sruli Fruchter, who you may know from the 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers series that he’s doing this year. We have someone else who’s gonna be doing the 18 questions of next year. It’s not Israeli thinkers, it’s somebody else. It’s very exciting.

But Sruli is really the manager of all the day to day of everything that happens, everything that goes out. He’s really running everything. And I’m so grateful for his work. Of course, Denah Emerson, who we thank at the end of every single episode is the one who edits all of our audio to so much of our audio engineering, our troubleshooting.

And I’m so grateful for her. And I’m so grateful, specifically for her kindness, because I’m not always the easiest person to work with. I’m always behind schedule. And I’m so grateful for Denah, and all of our other staff, all of our interns, Yehuda Fogel, who’s doing incredible work finishing up his doctorate in psychology.

I’m so grateful to him and his perspective, as well as of course, all of our listeners who I very much consider part of the family. And I got to remember Cody, Cody, none of you have met Cody, I don’t think, but he does a tremendous amount for our work. And let’s get to this email. This email is mainly just to thank you and show appreciation for this podcast, whether it is ideas that are discussed that I also have that resonates so deeply with me, or it’s the new perspectives and concepts, the raw, authentic, sincere conversation is really what makes this podcast so special.

I only recently actually fully process that all these honest dialogues are being made public for all the world to see the fact that people are willing to share such personal intimate experiences and feelings is really something quite astounding. And so therefore, I think David and his team profusely for really providing such a platform for all types of people to gain insight from. PS, just a quick question for David if possible. I just recently left yeshiva after a number of years as a bochur and I’ve recently joined the workforce as a manager. Well, I’ve got quite a busy day.

I’m not even married yet doesn’t have any tips or ideas to share about balancing all the integral parts of life that make life survivable and enjoyable. I’m currently balancing 9 to 5 job with studying on the side, davening three times a day in a minyan and learning bechavrusa morning and night trying to stay healthy, go on walk, self care, exercise, etc. Time to wind down and relax time with family. It just seems that there’s so much to balance. And if I miss one, it seems like I’m missing it all would appreciate any pearls of wisdom.

Again, an incredible amount of appreciation to David and the 18Forty staff for providing consistently excellent content and keeping us forever thinking and evolving Jews as it should be. Sincerely, Meilech.

I am so so grateful for that email. And if I had to give you know, a short answer, depending where you live, you know, somebody who’s just starting life, it’s really only twofold. Number one, find Torah learning that you love and enjoy.

I think the transition, it’s almost easier to learn in yeshiva when you have a full day, you know, 10 hours a day, it’s much harder to figure out what do I want to study in a half hour and find something that gives you a sense of accomplishment and growth that you keep on going find topics and ideas that you love that gives you nourishment. I think having that connection with Torah learning that you love and enjoy gets you through these periods where it feels like everyone is pulling at you and you feel like you’re disappointing everybody and everybody has, you know, some responsibility towards everybody. There’s something really special about having something for yourself and a connection and a relationship to Torah learning, specifically with a chavrusa, somebody who you can catch up with what was once described in a Tablet article, a chavrusa is the metronome of life that kind of gives you this steady beat and rhythm that you can go your life to. I think it’s what kept me through … the light of Torah is what was what returned me to good, you know, there were years where I didn’t really feel like a real part of the Jewish community.

I also got married late and I felt very lost and it was my chavrusa learning, particularly during those years, I would learn Maharatz Chajes, a very random work with my chavrusa at the time, Aryeh Westreich, and we would learn once a week and gave me a reason to get out and to have friendship, to have chevra, to have somebody in my life that wasn’t approaching me as a nebach or wasn’t approaching me as a boss, that non-hierarchical conversation of being able to talk to somebody and bond over Torah learning to me is everything, and secondly, I know this sounds really simple and really almost like easy, but learn how to fall in love with Shabbos, especially when you’re single and we’ve spoken about this. The observance of Shabbos can sometimes feel suffocating, sometimes feel isolating, and learning how to create a Shabbos experience that feels like a vacation that you love, buying special wine, special meat, special candy, whatever it is, buying yourself a book, I read this over Shabbos, whatever it is, I always try to read a new book every Shabbos, it helps me look forward to it, but learning how to fall in love with Shabbos, where Shabbos is not a day of dread and isolation, but a day of just total freedom. That’s the Shabbos that I was able to find for myself, it did not come easy, but Shabbos for me, it’s the one day where I bounce out of bed, every other day I’m like nervous, my phone is Shabbos, I bounce out of bed, and I love it, and learning and how I learned how to fall in love with Shabbos is something that I think can help everyone. This is really such a privilege to be invited into other people’s lives, where our listeners, where our guests, where our community allow ourselves to become a part, to become the text of the beis medrash for the study of the Jewish people, that collectively we can learn how to navigate the most sensitive issues, we can learn how to navigate the most difficult, tumultuous times for the Jewish people, as those tectonic plates continue to shift.

Every community, every individual has a role to play in creating a world, and specifically a Jewish world, with more understanding, with more depth, with more substance, with more empathy, and that 18Forty can play any sort of a role in this is my absolute privilege and pleasure, and I am so grateful for this community. I hope that we’ll be doing many more and more frequently doing episodes like this, where we get to listen to you with more initiatives coming out that will allow more of our listeners to have voice, to react, to debate, to discuss, and to meet with one another. Stay tuned, I am so grateful for all of you. Again, a reminder for anyone whose lives have been touched by 18Forty and the work that we’ve been doing, I want to invite you again to support us in any way that you feel appropriate, whether that’s a donation on 18Forty.org/donate, or by recommending our podcast, recommending guests, subscribing to our YouTube channel, subscribing to the podcast, leaving positive reviews.

There are so many ways where our listeners can help our work, and I am so grateful to each and every one of you in the work we are doing to build that mutual understanding of understanding ourselves, understanding one another, and hopefully taking one step closer to that ultimate redemption. 

So thank you so much for listening. This episode, like so many of our episodes, was edited by our dearest friend Denah Emerson. And as I mentioned, if you enjoyed this episode or any of our episodes, please subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends about it.

You can also donate at 18Forty.org/donate. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue putting out great content. You can also leave us a voicemail with feedback or questions that we may play on a future episode. That number is 516-519-3308.

Once again, that number is 516-519-3308. If you’d like to learn more about this topic or some of the other great ones we’ve covered in the past, be sure to check out 18Forty.org. That’s the number 18, followed by the word 40, F-O-R-T-Y, 18Forty.org, where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. Thank you so much for listening, and stay curious, my friends.

This transcript was produced by Sofer.AI.