In the latest edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts Stephen Wise Temple's Center for Youth Engagement director, Rabbi Josh Knobel. From the finer points of the classic summer camp game of gaga (which may very well have a Hebrew origin) to "the Army way,"  to the invasion of Iraq, to the lessons Rabbi Knobel teaches to our youth and to the congregation, the two cover a wide range of topics in their hourlong discussion.

When he was a boy, Rabbi Knobel went to Jewish day school and Jewish day camp, but when his parents gave him a choice one summer of going to Jewish sleepaway camp or working on his grandfather's farm, he chose the farm. After six weeks of working on the same row of lima beans (which brought home all of $5), he swore off farming and signed up for the next summer of sleepaway camp.

Sleeping in the Pennsylvania wilds was nothing compared to Rabbi Knobel's service in the U.S. Army. Rabbi Knobel's father volunteered to serve during the Vietnam War, and his maternal grandfather had served in the Army during World War II. But, by 1997, when Rabbi Knobel secured the recommendation of a local congressman for admission to West Point, the United States had not fought a war longer than 40 days in decades. September 11, 2001, was still four years away when Rabbi Knobel made his first visit to the academy's campus, where he witnessed firsthand the compassion, camaraderie, and support cadets provided one another.

"It was unlike any college tour I'd ever been on," Rabbi Knobel says. "West Point, it wasn't about what they were going to do for you, but what you were going to do for each other ... To a certain extent, it's why I do what I do now. Jewish communal life is about what we can achieve by taking care of each other."

Rabbi Knobel graduated and earned his commission as an officer in June of 2001. Three months later, the Twin Towers fell. In 2003, Rabbi Knobel was deployed overseas. As a junior officer, he recalls the uncertainty surrounding the invasion of Iraq: The day before the invasion, neither he nor his men truly believed it would happen.

Rabbi Knobel served until 2008, having served in Kuwait and Afghanistan. He and Rabbi Yoshi talk about war protests (and the lack thereof), the rationale behind the war, the human cost of the "liberation" of Afghanistan, the aftermath of the United States' military presence in the region, and how Rabbi Knobel's experience helped prepare him for becoming a rabbi, where the lessons he's learned have helped give depth and texture to his teaching.