When did Jews start covering their heads? Certainly not in the Bible. The practice emerged during rabbinic times, and not everywhere. 

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Why Do Jewish? Love, Obligation, and the Courage to Show Up

Imagine a familiar conversation in any household across the world.

“Do we have to go to the school concert tonight?”
There’s no law. No statute. No external requirement.

And yet—you go.

Why? Because love creates obligation. Not the other way around.

That deceptively simple truth sits at the heart of my conversation with Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, on this episode of Martini Judaism.

For generations, Jews have argued about obligation. Traditional Jews often point to halacha—Jewish law—as the source of Jewish responsibility. Reform Jews, by contrast, have insisted on autonomy, conscience, and choice. So the question remains stubborn and unavoidable: Why do Jewish at all?

Rabbi Jacobs and I explore that question through the lens of relationship—an idea shared by three of the thinkers who shaped us both: Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Eugene Borowitz. Each, in his own way, taught that Jewish obligation does not descend from heaven like a decree. It rises from love, belonging, and covenant.

Buber taught that mitzvot come alive when they are responses to encounter.
Rosenzweig insisted that commandment follows love, not the other way around.
Borowitz reminded Reform Jews that autonomy without commitment is hollow—and that obligation grows out of relationship with God, tradition, and the Jewish people.

You don’t attend your child’s concert because you signed a contract.
You go because you love your child—and because love binds.

Judaism works the same way.

This episode isn’t about guilt or coercion. It’s about relationship. And about the quiet, demanding truth that love creates the strongest obligation of all.

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Historian Pamela Nadell joins us to confront an unsettling truth: antisemitism didn’t come to America—it was born here. In her powerful new book, Antisemitism: An American Tradition, Nadell traces how hatred of Jews took root in the New World, evolved with the nation itself, and continues to shape our politics, culture, and conscience.

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The Days of Awe are upon us. They always hit me with a familiar, bracing urgency: Look at your life. Consider your words, your choices. Where have you failed? Whom have you harmed? What will it take to begin again?

If we’re honest, most of us spend these days trying to clean up the usual messes: the casual slight, the simmering resentment, the careless word that cut deeper than we knew. We rehearse our regrets, and we whisper our promises to do better.

But once in a while, a life comes along that reminds us just how radical, how shattering, how possible teshuvah (repentance) really is.

That life belongs to Arno Michaelis. Check out our podcast with him.

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Former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz on faith, identity, and resilience.

What happens when a White House insider turns her attention to Jewish wisdom, identity, and survival in a turbulent age? Rabbi Jeff Salkin sits down with Sarah Hurwitz—former speechwriter for President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, and author of Here All Along and As a Jew—for a conversation that is sharp, soulful, and deeply relevant. Together they explore the challenges of antisemitism on campus, the tug-of-war over Israel, and why “cultural Judaism” isn’t enough. Hurwitz makes the case for reclaiming Jewish identity on our own terms—with humor, honesty, and hope.

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What if everything you think you know about the Scopes “Monkey Trial” is—well, a little off? Jeff Salkin sits down with Doug Mishkin—lawyer, singer-songwriter, and amateur Scopes trial historian—for a deep dive into Inherit the Wind, the 1960 Hollywood classic that shaped generations of assumptions about religion and science.

They explore what the film gets right, what it gets deeply wrong, and what the real Clarence Darrow, William Jennings Bryan, and John Scopes might say about today’s culture wars. From evolution to eugenics, liberalism to scripture, this episode reveals how a century-old trial still echoes in debates over education, parental rights, and who gets to define truth.

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The late Arthur Hertzberg was one of American Judaism’s greatest rabbis and intellectual leaders.

But he did not start out that way.

More than 70 years ago, he was a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. One of his teachers was Mordecai Kaplan, one of American Judaism’s most seminal thinkers and rabbis, and the founder of the Reconstructionist movement.

The day came for young Arthur to deliver a trial sermon before the student body and the faculty. Afterward, Rabbi Kaplan lambasted Arthur for the ideas that he had presented.

“But, Rabbi Kaplan,” Arthur said. “You, yourself, said those things just a few days ago.”

To which Rabbi Kaplan responded: “Ah, yes. But, Arthur, I have changed since then.”

Let's talk about what it means to change one's mind — even ever so slightly. 

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As we mark Jewish Heritage Month, how do we embrace the heritage of Southern Jews?

Ask Shari Rabin, one of the rising stars of Jewish studies in America. She is associate professor of Jewish studies, religion, and history and chair of Jewish studies at Oberlin College. This "born-in-Milwaukee-moved-to-Atlanta-after-her-bat-mitzvah" woman has just written a new book -- "The Jewish South: An American History." I could not put it down, and you will love our conversation.

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Trigger warning: this episode contains references to sexual violence.

October 7 reminds Jews of what happened in Hebron on August 24, 1929. In her book "Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict," Yardena writes:

On that morning, 3,000 Muslim men armed with swords, axes, and daggers marched through the Jewish Quarter of Hebron. They went from house to house, raping, stabbing, torturing, and in some cases castrating and burning alive their unarmed Jewish victims...Infants were slaughtered in their mothers’ arms. Children watched as their parents were butchered by their neighbors. Women and teenage girls were raped. Elderly rabbis and yeshiva students were mutilated. Sixty-seven Jewish men, women, and children were murdered, and dozens more wounded...The British High Commissioner of Mandatory Palestine, Sir John Chancellor, wrote in his diary, “I do not think history records many worse horrors in the last few hundred years.”

Those attacks were not limited to Hebron, the most ancient place of Jewish settlement in the land of Israel, where Abraham purchased the cave of Machpela as a burial place. Those attacks were in Jerusalem and spread to other cities, as well.

Why should these stories matter?

Because, to coin a phrase: what happened in Hebron has not stayed in Hebron.

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Why does the death of the Pope touch me, as a Jew?

I cannot think of a Pope who had the depth of relationships with the Jewish community as this Pope had enjoyed. As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he had a close working relationship with the Argentinian Jewish community. His response to the 1994 bombing of the AMIA center in Buenos Aires -- until 2001, the most lethal terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere -- was notable for its compassion. He had visited synagogues in Argentina.

Moreover, he collaborated with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, the rector of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano, in the creation of Sobre El Cielo Y La Tierra ("On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-first Century"), which is the transcript of a series of conversations between the two men. For a while, it was Amazon's best selling religion book.

And yet, despite those warm relationships with the Jews, Pope Francis could be inconsistent. In August, 2021, he preached that the Torah “does not offer the fulfillment of the promise because it is not capable of being able to fulfill it." This was classic supercessionism. Judaism was the "old covenant" -- the "Old Testament" -- Covenant 1.0, the beta version. Christianity was Covenant 2.0 -- replacing Judaism. 

So, on the one hand: deep love and respect. On the other hand: some theological issues with Judaism.

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