
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


What does Hashem actually want from us, a life of total immersion in Torah, or engagement with the world?This is one of the oldest machlokos in Jewish thought.
And Rav Rafi Dembovsky was torn.
He struggled with the issues, and wrote a book with his findings.
You can order it here.
Episode Description
Rafi was raised in Edgware. Educated at Hasmonean. Spent years all-in at Torah-only yeshivos and kollel. Then came time to choose a school for his son — and the tension he'd quietly carried for years exploded into a full-blown existential question.
So he went back to the sources. And wrote a sefer.
We trace Rafi's personal journey alongside the intellectual one — from teenage brachos in Bnei Brak to law school at Hebrew University. We get into the sefer itself, the haskama drama, and the Rabbanim who quietly loved it but wouldn't sign their names.
In this episode:
By Yaakov Wolff4.9
2727 ratings
What does Hashem actually want from us, a life of total immersion in Torah, or engagement with the world?This is one of the oldest machlokos in Jewish thought.
And Rav Rafi Dembovsky was torn.
He struggled with the issues, and wrote a book with his findings.
You can order it here.
Episode Description
Rafi was raised in Edgware. Educated at Hasmonean. Spent years all-in at Torah-only yeshivos and kollel. Then came time to choose a school for his son — and the tension he'd quietly carried for years exploded into a full-blown existential question.
So he went back to the sources. And wrote a sefer.
We trace Rafi's personal journey alongside the intellectual one — from teenage brachos in Bnei Brak to law school at Hebrew University. We get into the sefer itself, the haskama drama, and the Rabbanim who quietly loved it but wouldn't sign their names.
In this episode:

218 Listeners

471 Listeners

39 Listeners

2,001 Listeners

236 Listeners

669 Listeners

569 Listeners

310 Listeners

1,079 Listeners

282 Listeners

819 Listeners

235 Listeners

1,123 Listeners

68 Listeners

337 Listeners