Good Faith Effort

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.

There are times in life when we could use a little more stability. And In the wake of a pandemic it seems like stability is just what we need. But these days, we may actually have the opposite problem: complacency and decadence. Society is getting older, we’re having fewer kids, we’re more risk-averse, the rate of entrepreneurship is down, our political institutions and arrangements increasingly feel like they were permanently locked in during the 80s or even the 60s. Terrible injustices in society feel like they keep going longer and longer without being solved. And just as it feels like people need religion the most, the old ways of delivering that to people are increasingly unattractive -- old-school church attendance just dropped below 50% for the first time in American history. Now, at the same time, more young Americans than at any time in a decade or more (according to Pew) say they’re searching for spiritual fulfillment -- but who’s meeting that need?

It’s clear that what we need right now, is not just the stability of religion in response to the pandemic, but also the revolutionary spirit of religion, if we’re going to build a society that we, and more importantly God, can be proud of.

To unpack this, Rabbi Lamm got into it with one of the most passionate, innovative faith leaders in the country: Pastor Michael JT Fisher, the pastor of Greater Zion Church Family, a gospel artist, and an amazing voice for faith in America.

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.

Throughout American history, prophetic “outsider” voices have been major drivers of our moral, social, and even technological progress. We’ve needed folks who are willing, or in some cases have been forced to see the world differently, and who can then communicate their insights back to the rest of society. In the coming generation, those voices will be essential if we’re going to shake ourselves out of our cultural malaise. But where will they come from? Deeply religious thinkers? Crazy-in-the-best-way technologists? Thinkers from minority communities, whether Jews, Catholics, Black thinkers, Hispanic thinkers, thinkers from India? Or maybe just people who care about knowledge for more than just instrumental reasons? To figure this all out, Rabbi Ari spoke with Professor Hollis Robbins, one of the country’s leading scholars of African American history and literature.

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.

You don’t usually hear about big movie stars leading Bible studies, or major business moguls fasting for religious reasons. But somehow, when it comes to sports, some of the biggest stars in the world are constantly thanking God, praying, studying religion, or otherwise proudly living out their faith. Ever wondered why this is? This week Rabbi Lamm speaks to NBA star Enes Kanter, of the Portland Trail Blazers, They talk about taking religious obligations seriously, Enes’s Islamic faith, what he’s learned about Christianity during his time in the NBA, opportunities for friendship between Jews and Muslims, and why the NBA often feels so, well, religious!

Especially in the wake of a terribly stressful and lonely year for so many, now is a critical time to talk about mental health. What role can faith communities and resources play in supporting good mental health? To discuss this, Rabbi Lamm invited on Heather Sells, anchor for CBN’s Newswatch, and co-author of a forthcoming book on church and culture collaboration to address mental health.

We live in a culture that teaches that if you’re not pursuing some practical end — say, wealth, a career, social advancement, physical fitness — you’re wasting your time. So it’s unsurprising that so many of us end up feeling horribly empty, caught in an infinite loop of winning money, power and friends…so that we can win more money, power and friends. How often do we stop and ask ourselves: what has ultimate meaning in life? What are we doing during our short time on this earth that we can be truly proud of? This week, Rabbi Lamm speaks to Zena Hitz of St. John’s College — author of “Lost In Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of An Intellectual Life”, to talk about how to cultivate a love of learning; what differentiates Greek and Hebrew civilization; why “leisure” time is so crucial; whether we owe Shakespeare our attention; and whether your average person should see learning as an “obligation.”

If you’re a consumer of pop culture, the Exodus story seems like something you can easily file away in a box under “freedom” or “liberty.” But the truth is, the Book of Exodus -- and the Jewish holiday of Passover that it birthed -- contains the Bible and Judaism’s answers to so many of the most important questions in life. So if you want to understand what it means to be a Jew, or a believer in the Bible, or an American, or a leader, or even just a good human being in the most fundamental sense -- this is the place to start! As this week, Rabbi Lamm spoke with best-selling author of The Telling, Mark Gerson, all about these major issues.

As tech expands our ability to do both great and terrible things, how do we use the lessons of tradition and faith to exercise wise and virtuous moral leadership? Can religious wisdom help us navigate especially fraught areas of human affairs like the defense sector? Can the tools of tech be a net positive for traditional moral thinking? And why is it important to watch Star Wars and read Rene Girard? This week Rabbi Lamm speaks about all of this and more with Trae Stephens, a Partner at Founders Fund, and Chairman of Anduril Industries, a defense technology company

If we learn anything from the books of Genesis and Exodus, it’s that when it comes to creating the world, God does that for us on His own. But when it comes to creating a society, God demands that we partner with Him in building it. So what will it take for us to do that work? To answer that question Rabbi Lamm spoke with Pastor Sam Rodriguez, the President of the the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (the largest Hispanic Evangelical Coalition in the world) and a #1 New York Times bestselling author.They talked about the legacies of Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr., how Hispanic Americans can help unlock the potential of American society, and how the Jewish and Latin American Christian communities are going to be powerful allies in the generation to come.

We live in a culture that encourages us to live in the moment and forget about tomorrow. In contrast, the Bible taught humanity that societies are strongest when they’re willing to think in long time horizons. When we’re willing to see ourselves as just one moment on a long continuum from past to future -- from our great-grandparents, to our great-grandchildren — we’re able to invest in society’s long-term health. Have we forgotten this in America? Are there those who still remember? And either way, how can we recover this sense of long term thinking for the next generation? This week Rabbi Lamm spoke about all this with the incomparable Jonathan Silver, Editor of Mosaic, and host of the Tikvah Podcast.