Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week, we’re speaking with three different rabbis of Orthodox, Conservative and Reform denominations, in Israel and the US, about their work as congregational spiritual leaders during this high holiday period that began with Rosh Hashana on Monday night.

The first rabbi to speak is Rabbi Seth Farber, an American-born rabbi living in Ra'anana, where he leads the Kehillat Netivot synagogue in his neighborhood. He talks about the logistics of running Rosh Hashana services this year, as well as some ideas from his sermon, including the destiny of the biblical Joseph who spent two years in isolation in an Egyptian prison, a formative period in his life.

Our second rabbi is Rabbi Aaron Brusso of Bet Torah Synagogue in Mount Kisco in New York. He is also grappling with the realities of coronavirus restrictions in his Conservative congregation, which has both strengthened his connection with his congregants of all ages, and limited their physical presence as well.

Rabbi Brusso speaks about his sermon topics, the state of everyone's empathy in this complicated time, followed by his second day open letter to the congregation's college students about Israel.

Finally, we hear from Rabbi Toby Manewith, a Hebrew Union College-ordained rabbi from Chicago, who will be leading services at a nearby old age home and assisted living facility.

Rabbi Manewith speaks about the particular issues confronting her aged congregation, and what they have handled over the last period. She tells one story she'll be relating on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, a folktale that will help people release their thoughts and concerns.

Throughout the podcast, we listen to Ishay Ribo's "Seder HaAvoda" piece, a haunting work based solely on the prayers and liturgical poems of the Yom Kippur service.

Times Will Tell podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts.

IMAGE: Jewish men blow the shofar during the forgivness (Selichot) prayer at the Rashbi gravesite in Meron, Northern Israel, on September 9, 2017, prior to the upcoming Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Photo by David Cohen/Flash90)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week, we’re speaking with Bryan Friedland, an actor on the autism spectrum who recently participated in Kan 11 reality show, "Tnu L'avod," ("Let Us Work").

The show, which aired in August, comprises four episodes about nine people with neurological and cognitive differences. All nine want to integrate into the Israeli workplace, and engage in a months-long process to find their way toward jobs and acceptance in Israeli society.

Friedland speaks with us about the process of participating in the show, working with a social worker and coach to figure out which jobs best suit his skills, and more importantly, the emotional and cognitive challenges of his life, along with his desire for acceptance and a life of meaning.

IMAGE: Bryan Friedland, who appears on Kan 11's "Tnu L'Avod," in Jerusalem's Shekel candle workshop where he worked for ten years.

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week, we’re speaking with Andrew Porwancher, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, and author of the recently published, "The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton," about the founding father's Jewish background and influences.

Porwancher spent the better part of a decade researching "The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton," before Lin Manuel-Miranda's musical hit on Broadway, changing the way millions think about spoken word and the founding father's lasting influence on the American democracy.

We’ll discuss Porwancher's research and his engrossing thesis about American Jewry, including what it meant to be a Jew in Hamilton's time.

A native of Princeton, New Jersey, Porwancher earned degrees from Brown and Northwestern before completing his PhD in history at Cambridge. He currently serves as the Wick Cary Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma and the Ernest May Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center.

IMAGE: Dr. Andrew Porwancher

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week, we’re speaking with Dr. David Sasso. A musician and psychiatrist, David works in the intersection of mental health, music, and the arts and serves as Assistant Clinical Professor at the Yale School of Medicine.

Full disclosure, David and host Amanda Borschel-Dan attended high school together in Indianapolis, after which he studied Music Composition at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and double majored in biochemistry before attending medical school at Northwestern. As a teen, David premiered works with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and later his full-length opera "The Trio of Minuet" was performed featuring children as the main characters.

More recently, David has focused on various traditional folk genres and his duo project -- Kat Wallace and David Sasso -- is releasing its second album in October.

We’ll discuss the idea of the creative genius and hear excerpts of his music, especially two very different pieces he wrote about Noah’s Ark.

IMAGE: Dr. David Sasso (courtesy)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week we’re speaking with Mark Halawa, who -- although Jewish from birth according to halacha or Jewish law -- only after some 11 years in Israel recently gained his Israeli citizenship.

That's because Mark was born and raised in Kuwait to a family of Palestinian refugees. His father, once a colleague of Yasser Arafat, is a secular Muslim. His mother is the daughter of a Jewish woman from the Holy Land who married a Muslim man. So according to Muslim law, he’s Muslim. And according to Jewish law, he’s a Jew.

Hear how Mark learned about his Jewish identity and made his way from Kuwait to Jerusalem, where he is building his own tribe of tolerant citizens of the world.

IMAGE: Kuwaiti-born Mark Halawa receives his Israeli citizenship, August 2021. (Courtesy)

Read more here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-a-kuwaiti-muslim-made-a-jewish-home-in-jerusalem/

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week, we’re speaking with Ariel Zwang, the new CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

Zwang is a longtime CEO of other nonprofits, but for the Jewish world, it is still a real rarity to see a woman at the top. We’ll speak about a life of breaking glass ceilings and what still needs to be done for more gender parity in the Jewish organizational sphere. 

Zwang is just back from a month-long tour of Israel where she visited Lod and other sites of coexistence flar-ups during the recent May conflict. Also, Zwang discusses the JDC’s footprint around the world, among all nations regardless of religion, its work here in Israel, and how the mammoth organization is trying to get more input from the next generation of leaders.

IMAGE: JDC's new CEO Ariel Zwang visits with participants of Hanoch Digital, a JDC program that helps Israeli Haredim embrace technology to confidently enter the job market. (courtesy)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week we're speaking with an up-and-coming high-risk pregnancy specialist Dr. Joshua Rosenbloom. The Harvard Medical School trained magna cum laude immigrated to Israel a few years ago and now works from Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem medical campus.

When we spoke, Rosenbloom was fresh from delivering a baby a few minutes earlier via cesarean section and could have been called at any moment to deliver another, so our conversation is concise, fast-paced and informative.

It is also based on the curiosity of host Amanda Borschel-Dan as a 45-year-old woman who has just entered her 8th month of pregnancy. She has found very little information online for pregnancy in her age bracket and wanted to set the record straight for others.

We discuss high-risk pregnancy, fertility, pre-natal testing, and how Israel compares versus North America.

ILLUSTRATIVE IMAGE: A pregnant woman undergoes an ultrasound in Israel. (Chen Leopold/Flash90)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week, ahead of Sunday's observance of Tisha B’Av on Sunday, which commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples, we go onsite in Jerusalem to the Temple Mount Sifting Project.

We speak with archaeologist Zachi Dvira, who is the co-director of the project. He’ll explain its controversial genesis and continuing struggle. At the end of our conversation, you'll hear as we wet sift a bucket of earth taken from the Temple Mount.

Founded in 2004 near the Mount of Olives, it’s now at a new location called Mitzpe Hamasuot, near the Hebrew University. The new site is easily accessible and has an auditorium and a shady picnic grove, which was made possible with the help of American Friends of Beit Orot.

Dvira calls for all who have not been to help sift through thousands of years of Temple Mount history to "hurry up!"

IMAGE: Visitors sifting buckets of earth from the Temple Mount at the relaunch of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, June 2, 2019. (Yosef Huri)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel.

This week we’re speaking with a dynamic young Israeli filmmaker named Dani Schoffman, whose short “Aye Ko” was filmed in Burma after he lived in the fascinating mysterious country for several years following NYU film school.

Here is a link to the film, so you can watch ”Aye Ko” now, before you hear us discuss it, or following our conversation.

The film follows a 12-year-old Burmese girl as she struggles to bring a blessed goat home to her village for her sister’s wedding. Everything goes wrong and we meet a colorful cast of characters along the way.

Schoffman describes his initial culture shock in arriving in Burma, a country that was essentially closed to the world for 60 years, how he found himself giving an offering to Buddha to ward off a curse while filming, and how the Yiddish phrase “Man tracht un gott lacht” — “Man plans and god laughs” couldn’t have been more true.

IMAGE: A still from 'Aye Ko' by Dani Schoffman (courtesy)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, the weekly podcast from The Times of Israel. This week, at the tail end of Pride month, we're speaking with a leader of IGY — the Israel Gay Youth organization -- Rom Ohayon, who heads up all post-high school programs.

Today, IGY is funded in part by the Israeli Ministries of Education, Health and Social Welfare, in addition to private donations. There are some 400 IGY volunteers who offer support and advocacy for over 4,000 gay youth a year throughout Israel. IGY works in conjunction with the IDF, the National Service programs, and is launching a new pre-military academy named after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg this fall.

But it was not always on the Israeli scene and was only created in 2002 by Yaniv Weizman and Gal Ohovsky, specifically for youth aged 12-23. Its ongoing evolution and spread to all kinds of Israel’s diverse communities means the group is gradually filling a massive void for gay youth and helping them stay integrated within Israeli society.

By 2010, IGY started its post-high school Year of Service group. Some participants continue to the IDF’s Nahal Brigade, which was founded by David Ben-Gurion in 1948 and traditionally combines military service with serving in small communities.

Since 2018, several graduates of the service and army programs have settled in Afula and become IGY leaders. This is where we find 29-year-old Rom Ohayon today.

IMAGE: IGY participants (courtesy)

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