The relegation of Hanukkah merchandise to a tiny corner of the grocery aisle can cause Jews to feel excluded or marginalized by the Christmas holiday season. But the impact of Jews on the history and culture of secularized Christmas is deeper than you might think.

In this exciting new Yuletide episode of Identity/Crisis, host Yehuda Kurtzer and American composer and music commentator Rob Kapilow sit down at the keyboard to better understand the relationship between Jews and Christmas through the holiday music that Jewish composers have contributed to the canon.

Read Maoz Tzur at the End of Christianity

Listen to the accompanying episode playlist HERE

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In times of turmoil, Jewish communities rely heavily on their leaders for guidance. On this episode of Identity/Crisis, guest host Claire Sufrin, editor of Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, sits down with Rabbi Elka Abrahamson to discuss her article in the new Fall/Winter 2024 issue about how Jewish leaders are rising to the challenge of this moment and guiding their communities through turbulent times.

Read Elka Abrahamson’s article in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas The Learning Leader: Orchestrating Organizational and Personal Change

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This political moment may cause American Jews to ask: “Where have we seen this before?”

In this episode recorded live in NYC, Yehuda Kurtzer challenges the impulse to reach backwards for old frameworks to describe our current situation, and instead offers a vision for a new era in American-Jewish politics – one shaped by a culture of compromise and defined by an embrace of kindness.

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Donald Trump’s presidential comeback has many fearful for the future of American democracy. As with most recent election cycles, last week’s process was mired in a discourse of absolute and incompatible truths, creating conflicts in local communities that many are struggling to reconcile.  

Yehuda Kurtzer approached six Hartman faculty, fellows, and staff with the question: What should be the agenda for the American Jewish community in working to repair our democracy in the wake of these elections? In this week’s episode, hear responses from Justus Baird, Deborah Barer, Flora Cassen, Michael Koplow, Akiva Mattenson, and David Zvi Kalman. 

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In addition to their responsibilities as leaders and shapers of local Jewish communities, rabbis are responsible for leading the Jewish people forward into the future. The weight of this work is heavy, but the number of people who choose the rabbinic profession is dwindling.

In the third and final episode of Rabbinic Identities/Rabbinic Crises, our guests discuss the boundaries of the Jewish tent, the importance of interfaith relationship-building, and the future of the rabbinic profession.

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North American Jews are seeking different types of belonging, marked by a steady decline in synagogue membership over the last several decades. What are people searching for in their Jewish communal lives, and how are rabbis adjusting their work to accommodate these new communal needs?

In this second episode of Rabbinic Identities/Rabbinic Crises, our guests discuss the considerations in finding the perfect shidduch between a rabbi and a community, and how they approach drawing the boundaries that define their communities while shaping warm and welcoming environments.

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For rabbis, the line between the personal and the professional is not always clear cut. As leaders of communities, they are in the public eye and trusted as models of Jewish living, while also living in and among the community.

In this first episode of Rabbinic Identities/Rabbinic Crises, Yehuda Kurtzer explores our guests’ paths to the rabbinate and the challenges and blessings of working in and leading a community as both a professional and a private individual.

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In the hours following October 7, 2023, Yehuda Kurtzer reached out to friends and colleagues

in Israel, both expressing his concern and support and asking them to share their personal experiences following Hamas’ deadly attack. He gathered their responses in A Nation That Can’t Sleep, released on October 11.

This year, Yehuda reconnected with those same friends and colleagues, inviting them to reflect on the unimaginable year that has since passed. Their interwoven stories reveal the profound struggle to extract meaning from memory as time relentlessly marches forward and history unfolds with unstoppable force.

Click here to view and download the resource developed by the Ritual Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem to commemorate October 7, 2023 throughout the month of Tishrei.

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As we gather in synagogues across the world for Rosh Hashana this week, we confront human mortality with the fresh memory of so much violent death since October 7, and the threat of more to come. This week Yehuda Kurtzer spoke with Yair Furstenberg, Professor of Talmud at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, about how Jewish tradition can help us confront death’s senselessness.  

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November is rapidly approaching, and with it the end of the tumultuous U.S. presidential election cycle. In this week's episode, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Aaron Dorfman, Founder and Executive Director of A More Perfect Union: The Jewish Partnership for Democracy, about his efforts to mobilize the American Jewish community to strengthen U.S. democracy, what’s at stake in this election, and how American Jews are uniquely positioned to contribute to—and benefit from—a healthy democracy.

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