Producer Josh Kross is back, bringing a little light into your Saturday night social distancing. If you want to keep these minisodes going, we’d love for you to rate Unorthodox on iTunes and set up a recurring donation—we suggest $5/month, which is to say one fancy coffee a month—at tabletmag.com/donate ..read more

On today’s Unorthodox dispatch, Liel prepares for a much-needed Shabbat with a joke by Columbia University professor Jeremy Dauber, an expert on Jewish humor, as well as a song by the Jewbador, Jim Knable, and a few timely words of wisdom from this week’s parsha. If you want to keep these minisodes going, we’d love for you to rate Unorthodox on iTunes and set up a recurring donation—we suggest $5/month, which is to say one fancy coffee a month—at tabletmag.com/donate ..read more

“They dragged them out of their houses, and led them to their deaths, to a pit right outside town, in Zelyonke. Like cattle. They took them like cattle and then shot them. When they finished them off, the earth kept moving for a few days afterwards. Like cattle.” It was in the winter of last year, in one of the very last conversations I had with my beloved, 95-year-old Grandma Fruma, that she revisited those last moments in the life of her parents, Zeev and Rachel Liond. This experience, like so many others of my grandmother who, at the age of 18, found herself enslaved, starved, and orphaned ..read more

Today’s Daf Yomi pages, Shabbat 14 and 15, usher us into a discussion of a deeply complicated subject: the rules of purity. But what starts out like a seemingly esoteric topic soon grows eerily relevant in this time of coronavirus awareness: Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin joins us to explain how the Talmud’s concept of transmission and infection uncannily mirrors that of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and why we should be grateful for the special place hand-washing has always played in Jewish life. Why should we always rush to scrub our hands as soon as we wake up? Listen and find out ..read more

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” (Roger “Verbal” Kint, The Usual Suspects, 1995) “I will pass through the land of Egypt,” I and not an angel; “And I will smite every first-born in the land of Egypt,” I and not a seraph; “And I will carry out judgments against all the gods of Egypt,” I and not a messenger; “I – the Lord,” it is I, and none other! (Passover Haggadah ..read more

Here in Israel, we are in semi-lockdown at the moment, with the threat of total lockdown looming. And the weird thing is that every time a high-pitched motorcycle whizzes by, our hearts stop for a millisecond, falsely anticipating the sirens to go off. For Israelis, the combination of staying at home, obsessively listening to the news, and constantly feeling a nagging uncertainty and some sort of underlying dread is strangely familiar—even though we know it from somewhere else. Like Pavlov’s dogs, we anticipate the sirens and the missiles. The biggest difference is that during coronavirus-loc ..read more

Today’s Daf Yomi page, Shabbat 13, revolves around a grizzly story of a pious man who studied Torah, served his rabbis, and still died suddenly at a very young age. His bereaved widow walks around from synagogue to synagogue demanding an explanation, until the prophet Elijah delivers a very thorny explanation that has to do with sexual conduct. Dr. Batsheva Marcus, a certified sex therapist, joins us to wrestle with this difficult story, and talk about how we approach the laws of nida, or ritual purity. How to read the Talmud’s plethora of strictures and warnings in the modern age? Listen and ..read more

This week, our hosts are connecting via Zoom conference to discuss their new remote realities and read a lot of listener mail. We also hear from Tablet writer Yair Rosenberg, who composed and recorded an album of original modern melodies for traditional Jewish songs (listen to the first single, a Mumford & Sons-esque “Shalom Aleichem,” here). We’re going to continue dropping mini episodes in addition to our weekly Thursday episodes, so watch your podcast feeds for more (and subscribe on iTunes ..read more

Crises like the coronavirus pandemic reveal the structural weaknesses in a society. But those structural weaknesses can be recognized and repaired only if they are correctly identified. This is easier said than done, given the temptation of human beings to interpret facts in ways that reinforce their existing biases. Predictably enough, we are told by the left that the crisis proves the need for socialized medicine, and by the right that the pandemic shows the need to prevent disease-bearing illegal immigrants from sneaking into the country ..read more

On today’s Unorthodox dispatch, producer Sara Fredman Aeder shares an audio diary recorded over the last week as her family has been living under quarantine in Westchester, NY. If you want to keep these minisodes going, we’d love for you to rate Unorthodox on iTunes and set up a recurring donation—we suggest $5/month, which is to say one fancy coffee a month—at tabletmag.com/donate ..read more