Season 1: Episode 29 – Epilogue
The Expulsion from Spain marks a turning point in Jewish history. In addition to a national trauma which evokes the memory of the Temple’s destruction, it challenges the model...
Season 1: Episode 28 – The Expulsion from Spain
A lot more happened in 1492 than Columbus sailing the ocean blue. Upon their marriage, Ferdinand and Isabella are determined to make newborn Spain a unified country, which means...
Season 1: Episode 27 – The Converso Problem
The forced conversion of tens of thousands of Jews may have seemed like a great victory for Christianity, but in reality these conversos were a ticking bomb in the...
Season 1: Episode 26 – The Storm Breaks
When the storm broke in 1391, thousands were dead and even more converted. A new model of identity was born in the century before the expulsion, and it poses...
Season 1: Episode 25 – The Coming Storm
When faced with the choice between the cross and the sword, the Ashkenazi communities of the middle ages chose martyrdom. Why was the decision of their Spanish contemporaries so...
Season 1: Episode 24 – Into the Mystic
In the thirteenth centuries the stories of Ashkenaz and Spain begin to draw together. This is the great age of Christian expansion, which brings on book burning and religious...
Season 1: Episode 23 – Depths Out of Darkness
The twelfth century was a time of spiritual expansion as the Tosafists transformed the Talmud and the Pietists of Ashkenaz awakened new depths of the soul. Darkness grew as...
Season 1: Episode 22 – The Birth of Ashkenaz
The origins of Ashkenazi Jewry are bound up with the rise of Christian Europe. As the kingdoms of the Middle Ages began to take shape, teachers like Rashi gave...
Season 1: Episode 21 – From Moshe to Moshe
The Rambam was the second famous Moses in Jewish History. His accomplishments in Jewish law and philosophy tower over his contemporaries, and are pillars of of the Torah to...
Season 1: Episode 20 – My Heart is in the East
Yehudah Halevi was the poet of a generation, and perhaps the most celebrated poet of medieval Spain. He also swam against the tide of philosophical rationalism and invited his...
Season 1: Episode 19 – Call of the Spirit, Call of the Flesh
The 10th and 11th centuries of Jewish life in Al Andalus were so rich and productive that they were known as the Golden Age. The Jews struck root deeply...
Season 1: Episode 18 – The Origins of Spain
Spanish Jewry viewed itself as the nobility of the Jewish people, whose roots were in the legendary past. This episode traces history of the community from the fall of...
Season 1: Episode 17 – Rav Saadia Gaon
There is a debate whether great individuals shape history or history shapes them, but there is no argument about the role which R’ Saadia Gaon played in shaping the...
Season 1: Episode 16 – Ism and Schism
It as been quite a long while since R’ Yochanan fled the Roman siege of Jerusalem, but now after seven hundred years the Jews have been united under what...
Season 1: Episode 15 – The Rising Cresent
The rise of Islam will offer new opportunities and pose new challenges for the survival of Am Yisrael. On one hand, the struggle to claim the title of true...
Season 1: Episode 14 – Fixing the Conversation
Identity is always a battle. In this episode Rav Mike explores the struggle between Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity, as well the inner struggle of Am Yisrael to...
Season 1: Episode 13 – The Rivers of Babylon
It is the end of an era. In this episode Rav Mike explores rabbinic chronology, textual evolution and socio-political context in order to illustrate the shift between the time...
Season 1: Episode 12 – The Portable Homeland
R’ Yehudah HaNasi redacted the Mishna but he inherited its form and content from R’ Akiva. In this episode, R’ Mike explores the nature of the mishna and traces...
Season 1: Episode 11 – The Indigestible Element
The ruins of the Temple were still smoldering when Judea burst into the flames of rebellion once again. In this episode Rav Mike discusses the final two rounds of...
Season 1: Episode 10 – Through the Flames
In this episode, R’ Mike describes the destruction of Jerusalem from without and from within. In order to do so he compares the perspectives of the great Jewish historian...
Season 1: Episode 9 -The Eve of Destruction
We are on the eve of destruction. As the national vessel begins to fray at the seams and the Temple’s burning looms, the cultural battle within the text of...
Season 1: Episode 8 -Hillel Prince of the Torah
In this episode Rav Mike discusses the persona of HiIlel the Elder. Hillel was named Nasi, prince, at the same time as Herod was king. In addition, Jesus of...
Season 1: Episode 7 – Herod and the Two Faces of Kingship
Herod the Wicked or Herod the Great? In this episode Rav Mike talks about Herod’s kingdom, the final phase of Judea preceding the destruction of the Second Temple. Herod’s...
Season 1: Episode 6 -The Hasmonean Kingdom
Rav Mike discusses the rise and fall of the Hasmonean dynasty, from a kingdom of priests to Hellenestic kingdom. Also hear how Judean society began to tear along lines...
Season 1: Episode 5 – The Channuka Revolt
In this episode, Rav Mike describes the rise of Hellenistic Judaism as the background for the Channukah story. Judah and his brothers rose in revolt because they understood that...
Season 1: Episode 4 – The Greek Encounter
The encounter between Greek and Jewish culture was love at first sight. The two cultures were bridged by language, and one of its great products of their fusion was...
Season 1: Episode 3 – The Men of the Great Assembly
The Men of the Great Assembly lie on the other side of the mists of the Persian period from Daniel. They will begin to lay the foundations of Judaism...
Season 1: Episode 2 – The Return To Zion, Re-building the Walls of Identity, Religion, and Jerusale
In Episode 2 of The Jewish Story, Rav Mike explores the walls built by Ezra and Nechemia, and the power which exclusivity over our story gives in the shaping...
Season 1: Episode 1 – The Time Between the 1st and 2nd Temples – Daniel, The Mythic Link
The opening episode of the Jewish Story! Rav Mike touches his perspective on history and then tells the story of Daniel as the link between the age of prophecy...
Season 2: Prologue – The Third Temple
Want to help tell the Jewish Story? Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/mfeuer