Good Faith Effort

American society is deeply in need of a moral and cultural revival. Any successful version of that is going to need to be both revolutionary enough to ignite the imagination and true enough to the stories and values of our past, to the liberty and freedom embedded in the promise of America to keep us grounded. What resource can we possibly uncover that could satisfy these conditions? This week, Rabbi Lamm unpacked all of this with returning guest Sohrab Ahmari, op-ed editor of the NY Post and bestselling author of “The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos.”They spoke about the different approaches to Western history found in Catholicism and Judaism; Sohrab’s perspective on the legendary Jewish thinker Rabbi Jonathan Sacks; Bob Dylan’s music; the significance of religious conversion; why Jesus’s Jewishness matters; what wokeness gets right and what it gets wrong; the ongoing relevance of “Fight Club”; and much more!

Digital tech isn’t just another tool for humans to use, no different than a bow and arrow, or a fork. It fundamentally shapes who we are. So what do we do in an era where all information is available to us at the click of a button? Should we want to keep more things secret? Or are secrets debilitating things, and our task should be to find more productive ways to tell them? At the heart of this remarkable conversation between Rabbi Lamm and MIT’s Sherry Turkle is the question of how to always tell the truth virtuously and faithfully.

We live in a society where it’s considered impolite, gauche, or just downright unsophisticated to talk about God and religion in public spaces, or with strangers. So what would it take to ignore all those social conventions? What kind of person does the “weird” thing and talks about God with others? And how might other people, from totally different traditions, get comfortable doing the same as well? This week, Rabbi Lamm broke this down with evangelist, and Founder of Pulse, Nick Hall.

We talk a lot on this podcast about the future of faith and technology, but what does it look like to actually be the one building that future? This week, Rabbi Lamm spoke to Alex Jones, Founder and CEO of Hallow, the #1 Catholic app, devoted to connecting people to prayer. They spoke about different journeys towards faith; what it’s like to be a person of faith in Silicon Valley; what it takes to build faith in the Digital Age; and much more.

Howard University in Washington, D.C., is the nation’s only historically Black university with a Classics department, but in May of this year it eliminated it. Dr. Anika Prather, who taught Classics at Howard, joined Rabbi Lamm to unpack the consequences of this decision. They explored what Classics have meant to Black identity and liberty in America. How the Jewish perspective on Classical civilization, the Greeks and Romans are the villains! can be helpful. And how to create a community around the study of ancient Greek and Latin, similar to the community that has arisen around the study of ancient Hebrew.

Whenever humanity manages to build something worth preserving, whether a family, a community or an entire society, the biggest threat to its future is simply forgetting how you built it in the first place! Forgetting the values and ideas that lie at its foundation. That’s the challenge we have today: we, as a country, got here through the wisdom of the Hebrew Bible and Hebrew civilization. What do we lose by forgetting that? And what can we gain by recapturing that spiritual heritage?

The limits of AI make it clear that humans aren’t about to be replaced by robots. But anyone who reads the Bible understands that humans have a lot of room to improve and even transform themselves! And increasingly, we’re learning that the best way for humans to become better is for us to become closer, and that means more discussion, more conversation, even more disagreement!So how do we get better disagreement? How do we bring the genius of scriptural and philosophical traditions into conversation with the know how of Silicon Valley (or Tel Aviv)? To unpack all this, Rabbi Lamm spoke with Joab Rosenberg, the Founder and CEO of ment.io, which has been called “Israel’s most philosophical startup.”

We’re living in a golden age of using big data to understand and change our world. So how does the Biblical tradition think about data and it’s benefits and dangers for society? This week Rabbi Lamm unpacked all this with Princeton economist Leah Boustan, one of the world experts on innovative uses of data, and a serious religious thinker.They talked the Biblical attitude towards the census; immigration and identity from the Bible through today; Jewish Twitter; and Leah’s project of daily Talmud study.

If the last few decades have felt like a narrative about the slow, agonizing death of togetherness, right now feels like the most exciting moment you could think of for re-imagining the future of community, and re-articulating old wisdom for a new world. So how do we go about doing this?Kinsey Grant, Co-Founder and host of Thinking is Cool joins Rabbi Lamm to talk about all of this, from her experience helping to build Morning Brew, to her latest, exciting venture.

From Numbers 13 to the America in 2021, reporting on what’s happening in Israel, a land so close to the hearts of so many across the globe, has been a fundamental challenge. How should we navigate it, especially during a time of rising antisemitism on social media and in the streets? And what are Westerners missing in their picture of the current round of conflict between Israel and Hamas?Friend of the show, Lahav Harkov of The Jerusalem Post, joins Rabbi Ari again to unpack all of this.This episode is supported by the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Students. Register today at www.yu.edu/revel to study with top professors of Bible, Talmudic Studies, Jewish Philosophy, and Jewish History. Studying any of these topics will give you the foundation for a career in law, business, education, and community service! Enter the code "Faith" to waive the registration fee and receive 15% off the course! Additional financial aid is available too.