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Recommended Podcasts
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Yakov Danishefsky: Transmitting the Jewish Story with Emotional Health
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Einat Wilf: ‘Jews Are Never Allowed To Win, and Arabs Are Never Allowed to Lose’
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Yakov Danishefsky: Religion and Mental Health: God and Us
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Aaron Kotler: Inside the Lakewood Yeshiva
We speak with Rabbi Aaron Kotler about the beginnings of the American yeshiva world.
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Micah Goodman: ‘I don’t want Gaza to become our Vietnam’
Micah Goodman doesn’t think Palestinian-Israeli peace will happen within his lifetime. But he’s still a hopeful person.
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Haviv Rettig Gur: ‘Hamas is upset the death toll in Gaza isn’t higher’
Haviv answers 18 questions on Israel.
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Pawel Maciejko: Sabbateanism and the Roots of Secular Judaism
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to historian and professor Pawel Maciejko about the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi, Sabbateanism, and the roots of Jewish secularism.
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The Dardik Family: A Child Moves Away From Zionism
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Bruce Feiler: The Stories That Bind Us
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to author Bruce Feiler about family narratives.
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Alon Shalev: How Rav Hutner Found Existential Meaning
Shalev, Author of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s Theology of Meaning, talks existentialism, individualism, and more.
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Elisheva Carlebach & Debra Kaplan: The Unknown History of Women in Jewish Life
We speak with Professors Elisheva Carlebach and Debra Kaplan about women’s religious, social, and communal roles in early modern Jewish life.
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Bari Mitzmann: Social Media and Agunah Advocacy
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Bari Mitzmann – Instagram content creator and host of the Women of Valor podcast – about social media advocacy, particularly in regard to the agunah crisis.
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On Loss: A Spouse
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Rabbi Josh Grajower – rabbi and educator – about the loss of his wife, as well as the loss that Tisha B’Av represents for the Jewish People.
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Daniel Statman: Can War Be Moral? On Moral Philosophy and War
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Daniel Statman, a professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa, about what it means to wage a moral war.
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Mikhael Manekin: ‘This is a land of two peoples, and I don’t view that as a problem’
Wishing Arabs would disappear from Israel, Mikhael Manekin says, is a dangerous fantasy.
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Shoshana Judelman: ‘Our greatest challenge is as individuals facing our own demons’
Shoshana Judelman joins us to discuss Jewish mysticism and the power of prayer.
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Marc B. Shapiro: Where Does Orthodox Judaism Come From?
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to author and historian Dr. Marc B. Shapiro about the blurry borders that distinguish Reform, Conservative, yeshivish, Modern Orthodox, and the many other Jewish sects from one another.
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Anshel Pfeffer: ‘The idea that you’ll obliterate Hamas is as realistic as wanting to obliterate Chabad’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not surprise Anshel Pfeffer over the last 17 months of war—and that’s the most disappointing part.
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Bethany S. Mandel: Jews without Community
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In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Liel Leibovitz and Lisa Ann Sandell about what happens when one partner wants to increase their religious practice.
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Haskel and Josh Lookstein: Finding Your Path in a Rabbinic Dynasty
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we sit down with an intergenerational rabbinic pair: Rabbi Haskel Lookstein and his son, Rabbi Joshua Lookstein.
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Gadi Taub: ‘We should annex the north third of the Gaza Strip’
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3 Arguments for God’s Existence
Perhaps the most fundamental question any religious believer can ask is: “Does God exist?” It’s time we find good answers.
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Pekudei: The Completed Work
At the conclusion of the Book of Exodus, the Tabernacle reminds us that holiness requires both building and stopping.
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(What) Do Jews Believe About the Afterlife?
Christianity’s focus on the afterlife historically discouraged Jews from discussing it—but Jews very much believe in it.
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From verses in Parshat Bo to desert caves, tefillin emerge as one of Judaism’s earliest embodied practices.
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Children cannot truly avoid the consequences of estrangement. Their parents’ shadow will always follow.
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Rising from the Ashes: Pekudei and the Rebuilding of Jewish Sacred Space
What post-Holocaust synagogue reconstruction reveals about the Torah’s model of rebuilding after catastrophe.
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What is the Megillah’s Message for Jews of the Diaspora?
For some, Purim is the triumph of exile transformed. For others, it warns that exile can never replace the Land of Israel.
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Joy and meaning can be found not only despite the brokenness, but even because of the brokenness.
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Reading, reading everywhere, but not a drop to be remembered
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Your Attachment Style, Applied to God
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The Talmud is complicated and difficult to decipher. Is there a method to the madness? How can we benefit from it by…
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The Erasure of Sephardic Jewry
Half of Jewish law and history stem from Sephardic Jewry. It’s time we properly teach that.
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As the holiday of Passover approaches, we take a look into a man whose life was marked by questions: Edmond Jabès.
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Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon wrote this special prayer for Israel for Jews to recite at their Pesach Sedarim this year.
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The American Yeshiva World: A Reading Guide
A guide to the essential books that tell the story—past and present—of the American yeshiva world and its inner life.
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How the Lubavitcher Rebbe Teaches Us to Transcend Ourselves
I consider the Rebbe to be my personal teacher, and I find this teaching particularly relevant for us now.
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Is Judaism Fundamentally Zionist?
God promised the Land of Israel to the Jewish People, so why are some rabbis anti-Zionists?
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Rabbi Moshe Gersht first encountered the world of Chassidus at the age of twenty, the beginning of what he terms his “spiritual…
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In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we speak with Mark Wildes, founder and director of Manhattan Jewish Experience, about Modern Orthodox…
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Why Naftuli Moster Left Haredi Education Activism
We speak with Naftuli Moster about how and why he changed his understanding of the values imparted by Judaism.
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In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, David Bashevkin answers questions from Diana Fersko, senior rabbi of the Village Temple Reform synagogue,…
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Mysticism
In a disenchanted world, we can turn to mysticism to find enchantment, to remember that there is something more under the surface…
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Talmud
There is circularity that underlies nearly all of rabbinic law. Open up the first page of Talmud and it already assumes that…
