I had a phenomenal conversation with these seven Black Jews and my co-moderator Nate Looney. First question was actually, do you even LIKE that label in the first place, and unsurprisingly, their answers were varied.
As with all of my episodes, the conversation was interesting, and a mixture of seriousness as well as laughter. I learned plenty, and hope you’ll take the time to watch or listen! Always available on Youtube and most podcast sites!
The participants:
There are irreplaceable aspects of the human experience — empathy, creativity and genuine connection — that technology cannot replicate despite the overwhelming profit motive to do so.
There are many Americans who support us and might even increase that support if the Jewish community creates fertile ground for cultivating their support.
If we shrug this off as harmless youthful ignorance, we’ll be teaching the next generation that nothing matters —that the suffering of others is just another costume to try on.
Though Lincoln himself was not Jewish, his words of support drawn from the faith of history’s first Jew continue to serve as a chord of comfort in the American consciousness.
The dream is simple: that every person who wants to read Torah, teach Torah, or hear Torah should be able to do so with ease, confidence, and joy.
The Obergefell litigation and its aftermath is a perfect illustration of how the legal theory of cultural analysis can move us beyond the endless spiral of polarization and strife we now face.
As long as either the Republicans or Democrats are willing to harbor the haters, they should no longer be rewarded with knee-jerk loyalty from our community.
The tracking poll, which has been ongoing since the war’s outset, shows the lowest favorability for Israel ever measured among U.S. college students, as well as a persistent climate of intolerance toward Jewish identity and expression.
The movement that once defended women from oppression now routinely excuses or even celebrates their oppressors — so long as those oppressors aren’t perceived as “white” or Jewish.
At UCLA, faculty and departments have moved anti-Zionist activism from the margins into university life, becoming a core engine of campus antisemitism.
Lincoln understood that nations endure not through might but through meaning. Israel’s strength, too, must rest on moral conviction — that a Jewish and democratic state in the Holy Land is not an accident of history but a moral necessity.
Mamdani’s election should be seen as the tipping point that made the Jews go all-in to save their city. Is there any group better suited for this task? Has any group done more for this great city?
There’s nothing objectively controversial about the ADL’s plan to set up a website and a hotline to keep an eye on the Mamdani administration. There is good reason to monitor Mamdani.
If looming bankruptcy, social unrest and violent crime are part of Mamdani’s prescription for a more progressive New York, people will leave—not just the wealthy looking for safer tax havens, but everyone if they discover that the New York City of 2026 is as unlivable as it was in 1976.
When you base a movement around something immutable in a country that is all about aspiration and the possibility of change, your movement becomes a hope-killer without a future.
What sets Rabbi Elchanan Shoff apart from his colleagues and predecessors is his unquenchable desire to find out everything about everything.
Notable people and events in the Jewish LA community.
The lesson of Sodom is that one cannot live by law alone.
