Everybody is talking about the relationship between American and Israeli Jewry – is the romance over? are we headed for a breakup? This relationship will be central to the Jewish Story in season three, so here is an exploration of where their separate narratives in two parts – Rav Mike’s thoughts and an interview with…
Read More
What better way to wrap up season two than to talk about the messiah? Here is an exploration of the power of the messianic idea and its centrality to Jewish thought. It also includes the introduction of political theology to our discussion, in light of the birth of the State of Israel.
Read More
Every story has a teller, and a good listener knows that you can’t really separate the two. In this podcast, Rav Mike sits down with his old friend and founder of Aleph Male, Eitan Ben Avraham, and answers Eitan’s curious questions about Mike’s childhood, formative years, how Mike ended up living in Israel becoming a…
Read More
Declaring a state is a matter of moments, but birthing it can be a much more prolonged process. The last episode in season two is a look at a series of decisions taken by Ben Gurion in the months following independence and how they still shape the State of Israel today. The story of the…
Read More
1948 was a year of Biblical proportions, which means the stories told about what happened often have more power than the events themselves. This is part one of a two-part treatment of this momentous time with which we will close season two. Listen in for the civil war which precedes the War of Independence and…
Read More
One could say that the Maccabees won the battle but lost the war. How is it that the heroes of the Hanukkah story went from the heights of spiritual power to the depths of corruption in less than 100 years? Here is an analysis of the three disasters that brought down the Hasmonean kingdom, and…
Read More
Once World War Two ended all the promises of the allies were put to test – would they find a solution to the Jewish problem now that the war was won? This episode describes the escalation of the struggle against the British in the land of Israel in the wake of the greatest disaster the…
Read More
As European Jewry was consumed by the Shoah, the Zionists in the land of Israel gradually came to see the British blocking the gates of Israel as their main enemy. The episode explores the split between the Irgun and the Lechi, the rise of Menachem Begin as a leader and the internecine war which almost…
Read More
By 1942 there was no escape from Europe for the Jews, and even if they had managed to run – who would take them in. This second episode on the Holocaust explores the message of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and finally brings American Jewry into the picture of the Jewish Story.
Read More
There are things which need to be spoken about no matter how difficult and questions which need to be asked, no matter how unanswerable. Here is the first of two episodes which engage the role of the Holocaust in the Jewish Story.
Read More