Are You Coming Back? - A Personal Conversation About The Jewish Future With Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer

About this Episode

Rabbi Hillary Chorny asks Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer to share his take on synagogue life in the pandemic and beyond. What have you always loved about shul (and therefore miss)? What have you discovered about shul during COVID, and spiritual practice (or lack thereof), and what are your religious and communal bright lights in this time? What you think are the new horizons in general when it comes to the burgeoning radical equity of synagogue life in an era when a Jew in Portland, Oregon and a Jew on 5th Ave. in NY can practically, but not quite, have the same Jewish experiences?

Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He is a leading thinker and author on the meaning of Israel to American Jews, on Jewish history and Jewish memory, and on questions of leadership and change in American Jewish life. He is the host of Hartman’s Identity/Crisis podcast which can be found at identitycrisispod.com. He is also the author of Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past, which offers new thinking to contemporary Jews on navigating the tensions between history and memory; and the co-editor of The New Jewish Canon, a collection of the most significant Jewish ideas and debates of the past two generations.

This episode was recorded on October 29, 2020 and it is the first in a series of weekly conversations with Jewish thought-leaders across the country.

Episode Links

• Click here to listen to the Identity/Crisis podcast — Launched in early 2020 and hosted by Dr. Kurtzer, Identity/Crisis is a weekly roundtable from the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America that explores the ideas behind the news.
• To learn more about The New Jewish Canon by Yehuda Kurtzer & Claire Sufrin, or to purchase the book, click here