Rabbis Michael Knopf and Jesse Olitzky are lifelong friends, pop culture fanboys, and lovers of all things Jewish. Join them every other week for a conversation about what’s going on in pop culture from a Jewish perspective and about Judaism through the lens of pop culture.

Dune, now in theaters and streaming on HBOMax, is a sprawling (and some might say overly ponderous) epic adapted from Frank Herbert’s legendary sci-fi series. Featuring an all-powerful psychotropic mineral, a race of space witches, personal force fields, giant sand worms, and (for some reason) a character named Duncan Idaho, Dune explores themes such as power, greed, the nature of heroism — topics about which Judaism also has a lot to say. And the simultaneous release of such a big movie on the big and small screens raises provocative questions about both the future of movies and of religion. Join Rabbis Knopf and Olitzky on a journey to the planet Arakis in the year 10,191 and back down to Earth on this interstellar episode.

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