…we should “politicize” it, cast blame, and be specific. The Pacific Palisades and Pasadena didn’t have to burn. The LA firestorms were a consequence of politics and governance, not nature.

Southern California is a desert. Deserts are dry. Santa Ana winds blow in every year. One spark caused by human negligence or malevolence is all that’s needed. Nothing new.

Millions of Jews—countless souls whose names we may never know—sacrificed everything to ensure I could stand here today, boldly declaring: I am Jewish. I am proud. And I will not let our story be reduced to a tragedy.

Because here’s the truth: We owe them more than survival. We owe them vibrancy.

Since there isn’t any evidence to prove Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, what’s the next best thing? Invent a new kind of “cide” and see how many scholars are gullible enough, or malevolent enough, to go along with it.

That, it seems, is the strategy of former PLO official Karma Nabulsi, who recently invented the term “scholasticide” to describe damage Israel has caused to college campuses in Gaza.

Whether they’re pro-war, anti-war, memorial songs, or descriptions of life during wartime or on the battlefield, war songs are an integral part of Israel’s music, in every genre of popular music.

The Oct. 7 war, of course, is no different. YouTube is filled with playlists dedicated to it: songs about lives lost, fighting songs, songs longing for the hostages’ return.

The Brain – is wider than the Sky – / For – put them side by side – / The one the other will contain / with ease – and You – beside –,” wrote Emily Dickinson. To all that the world presents to our senses, the mind effortlessly adds things that will not and cannot ever be. We can’t help it: imagination is humankind’s unbidden superpower, perhaps the capacity that most distinguishes us from other animals.

Self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century in America. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many observers have reduced this phenomenon to the topic of loneliness. In 2023, Vivek Murthy, Joe Biden’s surgeon general, published an 81-page warning about America’s “epidemic of loneliness,” claiming that its negative health effects were on par with those of tobacco use and obesity.

Parashat Vayechi, despite its name (“vayechi” translates to “and he lived”) is a portion that deals mostly with death. First, we learn of the death of Jacob, who has Joseph promise that he will not bury him in the land of Egypt, but will rather carry him up to Israel and bury him in the place of his ancestors—the cave of Machpelah where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rivka and Leah are all buried.

At the end of his life, after much familial strife Jacob blesses his sons and meets Joseph’s sons — his grandchildren — Ephraim and Manashe, for the first and last time. He experiences this varied-ness, because they are half Israelite and Half Egyptian, and it could have been easy for the story to go in an unfortunate direction here, but Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manashe without hesitation.

The commentators question the word “Vayechi,” as in “Jacob lived in the land of Egypt.” We might expect the text to say, “Vayehi Ya’akov b’eretz mitzrayim / And Jacob was in the land of Egypt,” which is how the Torah describes most of the other sojourns of our ancestors. Why use the verb lechayot (to live) here? As the Sfat Emet teaches, the Torah uses the word vayechi specifically to point out that life was possible even in Egypt, outside of the land of Israel, where Jacob is a stranger or “ger.”

A few days ago, we all learned of new details and viewed footage from one of Israel’s most high-risk and complex commando operations. The operation was a covert mission conducted by the IDF on September 8, 2024, targeting an underground missile production facility near Masyaf, Syria.

Vanessa Ochs, a scholar of Jewish ritual and the second-ever guest on Judaism Unbound way back in episode 5, makes a grand return to our podcast! She connects with Dan and Lex to discuss an upcoming UnYeshiva mini-course she’s teaching, entitled Jewish Ritual Lab: Experiments in Jewish Creativity and Invention.

With over 100 hostages still trapped in Gaza, Daniel Gordis says, that is Israel’s greatest failure to date—even if it’s unclear that any deals would have gotten them back.