This week on How to Be a Jew, we have questions, and answers too. As we all get ready for Passover we’re tackling some of the thorniest… and tastiest questions we’ve gotten. Need to save your matzah balls? What’s up with Christian Seders? Should we feel guilty about the plagues? Tune in for answers to these and other important questions.
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33:45
How to Be a Jew … Like Ayelet Zurer
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33:21
How to Be a Jew… Who Contemplates the Pig
For more than 3,000 years, prohibitions against eating pig has been central to Jewish dietary laws, but it’s also been a potent symbol of Jewish identity. Other non-kosher animals, like horses, rabbits, squirrels, and even vultures don’t carry the same weight that the pig does in the Jewish imagination.
Jordan Rosenblum, Jewish Studies professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, joins us to talk about why. His new book, Forbidden—A 3,000-Year History of Jews and the Pig, traces the history of the pig as a symbol of Jewish identity, and recently won the National Jewish Book Award for Food Writing and Cookbooks.
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40:45
How to Be a Jew ... At the World Championships
A few weeks ago, we brought you a conversation with AJ Edelman, the first Orthodox Jew to compete in the Winter Olympics and the pilot of the current Israeli bobsled team.
Shortly after that interview, Tablet signed on as a sponsor for his bobsled team, complete with merch you can find at https://tabletmagstore.com/
This week, we’re bringing you a dispatch from his time at the World Bobsled Championships and the three things you need to know about bobsledding.
For more information about the Israel Bobsled team, visit israelbobsled.team.
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How to Be a Jew ... And an Accidental Gunslinger
Salvador Litvak, also known as the Accidental Talmudist, is the filmmaker behind the 2005 cult classic When Do We Eat and the author of Let My People Laugh: The Greatest Jewish Jokes of All Time!. He joins us to discuss his new film, Guns and Moses, in which a small-town rabbi becomes an unlikely gunslinger after his community is attacked. Guns and Moses premiered at the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival in 2024 and is expected to release nationwide this summer.
Sponsors:
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality invites you to Mindfulness for the Climate Crisis: Resilience in a Changing World. Register at Jewishspirituality.org
Join the American Technion Society for an exclusive briefing with Technion Professor Brigadier General Jacob Nagel, as he shares key finding from his report to the government on Israel’s defense technology and security needs, and the Technion’s vital role in this evolving strategy. Register at link.ats.org/security
Hosted by Courtney Hazlett, Rabbi Diana Fersko, and Josh Kross, each episode of How to Be a Jew takes a look at a current, cultural topic and what it means for us as Jews, and how we react to it because we are Jews. We interview actors, artists, and other creators about their work, Jewish thinkers about the most pressing problems facing us today, and once in a while, the Jewish-adjacent icons who occupy an interesting space in our world.
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