Identity/Crisis

For more than three decades, the Bronfman Fellowship has been a crucial incubator of pluralistic thought among future Jewish leaders. As American Judaism and media have changed, however, the work of engendering pluralistic communities has become much more difficult. In this episode Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Becky Voorwinde, the Executive Director of the Bronfman Fellowships about how the program has tried to adapt to these challenges.

In this week’s episode, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Donniel Hartman about how Israeli society and the occupation are testing Zionist ideals. Donniel Hartman's essay in Sources can be found here: https://www.sourcesjournal.org/articles/liberal-zionism-and-the-troubled-committed

In this episode, Yehuda Kurtzer chats with Hartman senior fellow Shaul Magid (Dartmouth College) about his new book Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical which offers an intellectual history of American Judaism and its political challenges – liberalism, race, communism, Zionism, radicalism – the poles through which American Jews have traveled in the past 60 years. Can the story of a radical thinker and controversial politician shed light on the Jewish experience in the US and, later, in Israel? Links: Meir Kahane debating Yitz Greenberg: https://archive.org/details/RabbiKahaneDebatesProf.Greenberg360p Meir Kahane debating Alan Dershowitz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ykrwmaKrLg  

In this episode, Yehuda Kurtzer spoke with Rabbi Annie Lewis and Rabbi Yosef Goldman of Shaare Torah in Gaithersburg, Maryland, about the experience of becoming the rabbis of a new congregation during a pandemic, adapting to limitations on communal singing, and trying to find time to appreciate services while also leading them.

In this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Nachman Shai, Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs, on a range of topics, including differences between Israeli and American historical consciousness, why Israel's relationship with Diaspora Jews remains important, whether Zionism allows for Diaspora to be valuable, and the possible return of a compromise around the use of the Western Wall. Links: Has Israel Let You Down?: https://www.jta.org/2021/09/01/opinion/has-israel-let-you-down-its-minister-of-diaspora-affairs-wants-to-talk-about-it

Looking back at the momentous month of September, 2001, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks to writer and public speaker Wajahat Ali about the impact of 9/11 on the American Muslim community, and to Ron Kampeas (JTA) about the lasting impact of the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa and the anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric that came to dominate it. Wajahat's article: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/how-9-11-destroyed-the-muslim-model-minority-myth.htmlRon's article: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/the-first-durban-conference-devolved-into-a-festival-of-hate-679119Special thanks to Tali Cohen for editorial support on this episode.

Dara Horn, author of 6 novels, many essays, and the forthcoming non-fiction book People Love Dead Jews, speaks to Yehuda Kurtzer about the nature of the phenomenon of Jewish heritage site tourism in countries where Jews no longer live, who we write about when we write about Jewish history, and why she wrote this book now, after 20 years of refusing to center antisemitism in her work.

Rabbis Jessica Lott (Northwestern Hillel) and Charlie Schwartz (Center for Jewish and Israel Education at Hillel International) join Hartman's Director of Campus Initiatives, Danielle Kranjec, to shed light on what has changed in the last, disrupted year of college education. They discuss how generational shifts do and don't inform conversations about Israel, how geography and demographics impact pluralism, and how big the tent is–or should be–on campus.

Internationally acclaimed Israeli science fiction author Lavie Tidhar joins guest host David Zvi Kalman to discuss the relative dearth of Jews in space, the state of the science fiction genre outside of the US, and his recent and upcoming works including the Tel Aviv-set novel Central Station.

Hartman Director of Faculty Elana Stein Hain and Scholar-in-Residence Mijal Bitton discuss the Pew 2020 study, and the conversations Jews are - and aren't - having about it. What about our conversations have changed since the last major survey in 2013, and what's at stake when we guide our communities by the numbers? This conversation was recorded as part of Hartman's summer of learning and is being released here in an edited version.