JAM Podcasts & Audiobooks

Episode 5: Ilsa Pinkson-Burke & Briane Pinkson  – Recorded August 6, 2025  Courtesy Photo: Briane on the left, Ilsa on the right

Ilsa Pinkson-Burke and Briane Pinkson grew up going to “shula”, a Cooperative Jewish Children’s School teaching Jewish history, ethics, art, music, and politics – everything except Hebrew, liturgy, or religion. The school was in the tradition of their parents and grandparents, Yiddish-speaking “left-wingers from the twenties and thirties”. Most weekends they all went to political demonstrations, and once – once – they made a field trip to a synagogue. Today, both sisters feel a need to reinforce their sense of Jewish community and to learn more about the history of Israel, while distancing themselves from Zionism.  

Episode 5 Notes: 

• Rabbi Dov Taylor leads Chavurat ki-tov and can be reached at [email protected]  
• Jewish Voice for Peace, New Hampshire/Vermont Chapter: “We envision a world where all people — from the U.S. to Palestine — live in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity.”
• Letters:
  • A Letter from Over a Thousand Rabbis Worldwide 
  • Organizational responses to the suffering and starvation in Gaza:
    • Statement from the Reform Movement
    • Statement from the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly
    • Statement from 80 Orthodox Rabbis (unlike the other statements, this one was international and signed by individuals)
  • Israeli military and security leaders strongly denounce government-directed military action in Gaza, demand an end to pointless death and destruction, and a deal to return the hostages
  • Artists and intellectuals: much reporting on statements, overt or covert boycotts, and reactions from within Israel. Hard to trace back to the statements by artists and intellectuals. 

Camp Kinderland “Summer camp with a conscience since 1923”

Episode 4: Ben Thresher's Mill: A few miles off the interstate, on the banks of the Stevens river in Barnet, Vermont is a bright yellow mill. The rooms are crammed full of old tools, machines, parts, and pieces of a bygone age. One man, Ben Thresher, kept the mill going into the 1990s. Stan Crane, and a team of volunteers, helps to keep this place alive today.

Series Description: Roadside Vermont is a podcast series about the historical monuments, markers, and plaques that are all too easy to drive by and never stop to read. In each episode host Kelby Greene travels to the far corners of Vermont to talk to local storytellers, historians, and community stewards about the quirky, quizzical, and surprising events of the history hidden down the dirt roads and rural highways of the Green Mountain state. From vampires to missile silos, to pencil mills and famed fiddlers, this season will span all fourteen counties of Vermont. This season is supported in part by a grant from Vermont Humanities, in partnership with the Vermont 250s Commission and Junction arts and Media—JAM. Special thanks to story editor Sophie Crane. 

Bio: Kelby Greene (she/her) is a Norwich, Vermont based journalist and independent radio producer. Her work is about explaining the present through the past—looking for the precedents to seemingly unprecedented times. Rooted in a passion for rural places and their unique histories, she hopes to tell stories worth talking about: in the car, over dinner, and passing by the state's hundreds of roadside markers. 

Recorded August 12, 2025  Photo: by LA

Being a Jew is central to Gene’s identity. He seeks to be a better Jew as a way to be a better person, practices kyudo, goes to sabbath services as a way of meditation, and attends to the little things. In this interview, he contrasts what was worth dying for prior to the nation state, and what is so valued today. Gene is also one of the organizers of the Healing Circles held by the Upper Valley Jewish Community since October 7. 

Episode 4 Notes: 

• Peter Beinart appearing on Jon Stewart show
• Books referenced: 
  • Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, by Peter Beinart, 2024. Here’s a link to the author’s substack where he talks about the book. 
  • The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance, by Shaul Magid, 2023. Here’s a link to a discussion with Magid at Harvard Divinity School. 
  • Impossible Takes Longer – Israel at 75, by Daniel Gordis, 2023. Here’s a link to a discussion on the book. See also Gordis’s Substack where he surfaces media from across the Israeli spectrum that reflect the national discourse: Israel from the Inside  including this 22 minute standup routine on PTSD by Udi Kagan. 
• Newspapers: 
  • Ha-aretz, English Edition
  • Times of Israel 
• Organizations supporting a shared future: (just those mentioned in this Episode)
  • New Jewish Narrative
  • Standing Together
  • New Israel Fund

Listen in to the inaugural episode of Pass the Torch featuring a special introductory interview with co-host Sen. White digging into Sen. McCormack’s legislative legacy. Highlights include advice on when to stay in the fight and when to pass the torch, and music played by Dick.

A podcast co-hosted by Windsor County Vermont Senator Becca White and Senator Emeritus Dick McCormack. Listen in for stories of political traditions in Vermont, and from guests who have passed the torch to the next generation.

Episode 3: Joy Gaine – Recorded July 29, 2025  Photo: Courtesy Joy Gaine

Joy defines herself as a teacher, musician, and mother. Her sense of herself as a Jew rose post October 7th with questions on whether being Jewish makes her think differently about the conflict than her progressive friends? And why should that be true? Isn’t it enough to be pro-peace with good will for all who believe in human rights for all? She challenged me greatly on where to see a good outcome, all the while probing where and why “the Jews” are so often at fault. It was a great conversation, do tune in!

Episode 3 Notes: 

• Out of Eqypt, 1994, is a memoir and the first book published by André Aciman, better known for his fiction. “Out of Egypt is a love letter to the Jewish diaspora in its portrayal of a Jewish society that has now practically disappeared.”  Here’s a fabulous short interview with Aciman where he talks about his enduring love for Alexandria and for Egyptians, “...the nicest human beings I have ever met in my life and will ever meet.”  (Oh, and the correct title of the novel he is best known for is Call Me By Your Name.)
• It’s Time, “… a coalition of over 60 peacebuilding and shared society organizations, working together with determination and courage to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a political agreement that will ensure both peoples' right to self-determination and secure lives.”

Status of IDF soldiers: Can’t find a link to the interview mentioned in the podcast. This article, also from July 29, anticipates the current (September) wave of refusals to serve and points out the poor fit of the iDF for protracted combat. 

Daniel Intraub – I knew Daniel solely through a series of graphics projects, both professional and protest-related, that he supported at Gnomon Copy in Hanover, NH. It was the latter type of project that got us talking about the conflict in Gaza where he mentioned that he was Jewish and we quickly fell into a discussion that led straight to this episode of the podcast. Recorded July 19, 2025  Photo: LA

Episode 2 Notes: 

• Birthright Foundation: Founded to help give Jewish young adults the gift of a transformational and educational trip to Israel.
• Dates of the Second Intifada: roughly September 2000 through February 2005. 
• Clip of President Obama that starts, “If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something…” Take a listen. And here’s the link to the full episode of Pod Save America.
• American Friends of the Parents Circle – Families Forum, Palestinian and Israeli Bereaved Families for Peace fosters a peace and reconciliation process and is affiliated with the corresponding Parents Circle in Israel.
• Standing Together: A grassroots movement organizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the occupation, for full equality for everyone in this land, where true social, economic, and environmental justice are possible. 
•  What’s So Funny ‘bout Peace, Love, and Understanding: Links to a video of the David Broza version of the Nick Lowe song, recorded in East Jerusalem with Palestinian, Israeli, and American musicians and the Palestinian & Israeli Jerusalem Youth Chorus – which itself is a pretty interesting find!

In the early 20th century one Vermonter found fame as a traveling musician, humorist, and recording artist. Charles Ross Taggart was at the height of his career in the early 1920s, touring the country and talking so much about Vermont he earned himself a nickname: the Man from Vermont. Across the country he shared his stories, music, and dialect with his fellow Americans, and helped preserve disappearing parts of the Green Mountain State's culture. Historian and fiddler Adam Boyce brings Taggart to life.

Roadside Vermont is a podcast series about the historical monuments, markers, and plaques that are all too easy to drive by and never stop to read. In each episode host Kelby Greene travels to the far corners of Vermont to talk to local storytellers, historians, and community stewards about the quirky, quizzical, and surprising events of the history hidden down the dirt roads and rural highways of the Green Mountain state. From vampires to missile silos, to pencil mills and famed fiddlers, this season will span all fourteen counties of Vermont. This season is supported in part by a grant from Vermont Humanities, in partnership with the Vermont 250s Commission and Junction arts and Media—JAM. Special thanks to story editor Sophie Crane.

Episode 1: Susan Russo

Susan is a émigré, coming to Claremont in 1975 from Brooklyn where being Jewish was an effortless part of life, ethics, culture, and family politics. Finding herself and raising her children in a profoundly non-Jewish Upper Valley, her identity has been expressed in friendships, noodle puddings, and the rugelach she bakes and gives out at Christmas time. Her exposure to Israel and the contradictions of that society were shaped by visits with a childhood friend who moved there to marry a Tunisian Jew. We discuss her experience of October 7, her shifting relationship to Judaism and to the post-October 7 conflict, and we fantasize together about where we might find the light. Listen to the stories that are the sign posts of this journey and you’ll also learn the secret identity of “Moe Levine”, the Catholic priest of Claremont, NH.

Recorded July 8, 2025

Episode 1 Notes:

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, By Sandy Tolan. Here’s  a link to the author’s website where he writes about the origins of the book. 

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, by Peter Beinart, 2024. Here’s a link to the author’s substack where he talks about the book.

Episode 0: To geo-locate me, Jewishly, I grew up in a WASPy suburb of Chicago, touched down in Pittsburgh for a couple years, then, at age 17, fled this country, my family, and lived in Israel for four and a half years, mostly in Jerusalem with the last year living in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, returning in December, 1972. These years colored my experience of Israel, and all who live there, and in an oblique way – since I don’t recall ever setting foot in a synagogue – broadened immensely my experience of being a Jew. Since returning, I have found it profoundly difficult to talk about Israel, about being a Jew, inside or outside the country, with just about anyone, no less with my fellow Jews. Until now, and now, while not always easy, I think it’s time. The three pillars that anchor my Jewish life today:
• Chavurat ki-tov: a small group convened by Rabbi Dov Taylor who can be
reached at [email protected]
• Upper Valley Jewish Community/Kol Ha’Emek: “An eclectic, welcoming,
egalitarian congregation providing Jewish spiritual, educational, social and
cultural opportunities.”
• Etz Hayyim: The only synagogue today in Crete, lovingly revived decades after
the Nazi destruction of a 2000 years-old Jewish community.

Season 1 wraps up by sweating it out (for good!) with Positive Tracks' Founder and CEO Nini Meyer. Take this episode on your next walk, scoot, or dribble as high school friends (shoutout Hanover High) Samantha and Nini have a cathartic chat about physical activity as a means for social change, youth empowerment, mental health, and better media habits. This episode is JAM-packed with emotional electrolytes and digital-age wisdom for all generations.