This week on edJEWcation, we go full wandering-Jew with an episode that starts in the December Project (a book about preparing for death) and somehow winds its way through Hemingway, Dostoevsky, Hasidic storytelling, Masada, Jonathan Sacks, the Nakba, Judge Caprio, and why your neighbor’s sukkah is basically Jewish Home Depot cosplay.

In between, we wrestle with:

• Why fiction can sometimes tell the truest stories

• How Jewish stubbornness, sacred texts, and a portable identity kept us alive when every other ancient culture disappeared

• Why Sukkot is the Babe Ruth of underrated mitzvot (and why American Jews still don’t show up)

• The awkward Jewish instinct to love every Jew except the ones on our own block

• Israel as hammer vs. nail…and why too many Jews still prefer the nail

• Judge Caprio, Rhode Island’s saint of traffic court, and why mercy belongs on the bench and in the Beit Midrash

It’s history, politics, theology, pop culture, and K-pop (yes, really) all shaken into one of the most edJEWcation episodes yet.