Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchYair Mintzker, "I, Wandering Jew: A Five-Century History of Our Modern Condition" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Episode 200
The story behind the mythical figure of "the Wandering Jew" is one of the most fascinating tales in European history. In I, Wandering Jew, National J…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Am Yisrael High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis
Mentioned in the Bible and discussed in numerous traditional texts, cannabis has long been a part of Jewish life. For millennia, Jews have been buyin…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav, "In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union" (Stanford UP, 2026)
In their anthology, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union (Stanford University Press, 2026), Sasha Se…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Karolina Przewrocka-Aderet, "Polanim: From Poland to Israel" (Academic Studies Press, 2026)
What does it mean to leave one's homeland behind—and how do memories of that place shape the next generation? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits d…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Laughter and Leadership: A Conversation with Tikva Blaukopf Schein, Ph.D.
We laugh without thinking — but what if laughter is one of the most revealing human acts?
In this episode of The Van Leer Institute Series On Ideas, …
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Dybbuks, Golems, S. An-ski, and Jewish Legends in Times of Fear
S. An-ski’s play The Dybbuk, a story of possession set in a shtetl (think The Exorcist meets Fiddler on the Roof), is the foundation of modern Jewish…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
The Barton Brothers, Mickey Katz, and Others: Yiddish-English Bilingual Parody Songs
In the years immediately following the Second World War, the Barton Brothers, an anarchic Catskill comedy duo, began recording humorous macaronic (th…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
Elias V. Messinas, "Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace" (Bloch Publishing, 2011)
Across Greece, once-thriving Jewish communities stood for more than two thousand years. From the Romaniote Jews of Ioannina to the great Sephardic ce…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
Fermenting and Foraging: Resourcefulness in the Historical and Contemporary Kitchen
Today, techniques such as fermenting and foraging are increasingly appealing to those seeking to create economical, nourishing, waste-free meals. Thi…
1 month, 3 weeks ago
Avrom Sutzkever: Ten Poems
In 2017, a cache of Jewish materials was discovered in the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. The discovery included a manuscript of “T…
1 month, 4 weeks ago