Discover the critical moments and big concepts at the intersection of world and rabbinic history, with Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Galinsky and Gedalia Guttentag. This is the Jewish past and present – as you’ve never heard it before.
In an era when intellectuals were celebrities, Dr Nathan Birnbaum was a household name across the Jewish world. When one of the most famous secular Jews of the age rediscovered Hashem, assimilationists were confounded and Orthodoxy received a shot in the arm. Rabbi Efraim Zalman Galinsky and Gedalia Guttentag trace the impact of one of the modern era’s most famous Baalei Teshuva.
Ten years before Theodor Herzl attended the Dreyfus Trial, a Jewish law student from Vienna coined the term Zionism, and effectively founded the movement that Herzl later took over. But the titanic figure of Dr Nathan Birnbaum has been forgotten, because he abandoned Zionism, and underwent an odyssey that comprised Yiddish nationalism and ultimately led him to Agudas Yisroel. 90 years on, it’s clear that Nathan Birnbaum wasn’t the erratic personality that some detractors saw, but a visionary whose leadership should be remembered today.
A century ago, Elul in the great yeshivas of Europe was soaked with the spirit of the Mussar movement, which was soon to vanish in the flames of World War Two. Rav Yisrael Salanter’s innovations preceded Freud in his focus on the subconscious, producing Torah scholars of towering genius and saintly character – yet the movement as a whole is now history. Or is it? Join Rabbi Galinsky and Gedalia Guttentag as they debate the case of the missing Mussar movement.
If Hitler’s rise brought German Jews back to shul, and 1967 to 1973 triggered the baal teshuva movement, what does October 7 mean for Jewish faith? Join Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Galinsky and Gedalia Guttentag as they discuss the crisis of secular Jewish identity, and whether we’re witnessing a historic turning point in our millennia-long story.
As public pressure mounts to draft yeshiva bochurim in the wake of a war, the Israeli defense minister meets a delegation of senior roshei yeshiva. The late 1960’s encounter between Dayan Abramsky and Moshe Dayan was a precursor to today’s headlines, and illustrates the irony of a gadol who grew to greatness without a yeshiva, becoming the yeshiva world’s strongest champion.
In the mid-20th century, the Reform movement conquered America, yet in Britain it failed to make headway – and a key reason for that failure was a talmid of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. Join Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Galinsky and Gedalia Guttentag as they discuss the legendary Rav Yechezkel Abramsky’s clash with an Anglo-Jewish tycoon, Sir Herbert Samuel’s religious granddaughter, and why British rabbis were long called Reverend.
As the police phalanxes moved in to evict Gush Katif’s bereaved inhabitants two decades ago, a court battle heated up that drew in major halachic authorities and the United Nations. Rabbi Galinsky and Gedalia Guttentag discuss Gaza’s Jewish history and the tragic struggle over its doomed shuls
