Identity/Crisis

This episode was originally released on October 13, 2025 At a time of unprecedented leaps in technology and ethical questions about artificial intelligence, one scholar seeks answers from an unlikely source — ancient Jewish wisdom.In this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer talks with technology guru, Hartman scholar, and founding Identity/Crisis Producer David Zvi Kalman about the religious and ethical dilemmas AI poses for Jewish life — from sermons written by bots to the erosion of truth and authority. This thoughtful conversation is for anyone wondering whether Judaism can move fast enough to meet technology’s challenges while preserving the core Jewish value of human dignity. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS

Can a Hollywood blockbuster be the most important piece of Passover liturgy produced in a generation? On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer sits down with Rabbi Professor Burt Visotzky, Appelman Professor Emeritus of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary and a lead consultant to the makers of The Prince of Egypt. Together they examine the 1998 DreamWorks film as both cultural artifact and sacred text. They unpack the film's interpretive choices — from casting the voice of God to the rewriting of an Oscar-winning lyric — and ask why this movie has quietly entered the Jewish ritual calendar as essential Pesach viewing. Learn more about our guest here. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Read the newest issue of Sources and subscribe to the print edition.

What happens when liberal democracies stop seeing dignity as a universal right and begin treating it as something reserved for insiders? On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer sits down with political philosopher Seyla Benhabib to explore the moral, political, and philosophical stakes of migration, borders, and belonging in America today. Against the backdrop of rising cruelty toward immigrants, asylum seekers, and other vulnerable people, they examine what happens when states retreat from their highest ideals and redraw the boundaries of who counts. Together, they discuss the fragility of human rights, the difference between borders and belonging, and why Jews—shaped by memories of statelessness, displacement, and exclusion—must take these questions seriously. This special live episode of Identity/Crisis was recorded as part of In the Face of Cruelty: Jewish Responsibilities to Neighbors and Strangers, a virtual day of learning on March 12, 2026. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Register to hear Masua Sagiv on Get Your Phil

What do our narratives of heroism do for the Jewish people—and what do they hide? On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer sits down with journalist and author Matti Friedman to discuss his new book, Out of the Sky: a story about the Zionist paratroopers sent into Europe during World War II. Together they explore the uneasy relationship between myth and history: how failed missions become national legend, why Jewish heroism became so central to Zionist self-understanding, and what gets lost when real people are turned into symbols. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Register for our summer programs for lay leaders, rabbis, and educators! Secure your spot at the Florida Leadership Conference this Sunday!

What does it mean to tell Jewish stories in a moment of political polarization and distortion? On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela to examine the role of the historian in public life: not to offer talking points or easy analogies, but to deepen public understanding in a time of simplification and certainty. Through a conversation about education, Jewish identity, and the place of Jews in American history, they consider why richer storytelling matters—and what it can offer to students, Jews, and the broader public. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FORMORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Register for our virtual day of learning, In the Face of Cruelty: Jewish Responsibilities to Neighbors and Strangers on March 12.

In the Megillah, Jewish safety depends on proximity to power — passing, hiding, and selectively revealing, and all the fraught calculations that come with minority life. On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Barbara Spectre, founding director of Paideia: The European Institute for Jewish Studies, to explore the story of Purim through a lens of existential uncertainty and cultural endurance. Drawing on Barbara’s decades of work with emerging European Jewish communities, they examine the pressures to fit in, the costs of standing out, and the tightrope between assimilation and sustaining culture that minorities have walked throughout history. The conversation offers a diasporic lens on power, vulnerability, and the possibility of choosing meaning even, and especially, when certainty is impossible. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Watch Donniel Hartman and Abby Pogrebin’s conversation on the war with Iran. Apply or refer a teen you know to the Hartman Teen Fellowship. Register for our virtual day of learning, In the Face of Cruelty: Jewish Responsibilities to Neighbors and Strangers on March 12.

When immigration policies turn violent and inhumane, how do we decide when to show up, who we stand beside, and what we’re willing to risk when the stakes feel both immediate and overwhelming? This week, Identity/Crisis follows that moral question out of the beit midrash and into the street. Yehuda Kurtzer passes the mic to Identity/Crisis producer, Tessa Zitter as she attends a Jews against ICE rally in Washington, DC. Through her experience at the protest and interviews with the organizers and attendees, including Executive Director of T’ruah Jill Jacobs, former NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, and Hartman colleague Annie Beyer-Chafets, she explores what it means to bring Jewish moral language into the public square. For more on the day of learning: In the Face of Cruelty, Jewish Responsibilities to Neighbors and Strangers, click here. To listen to America Betrays the Stranger, click here. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS

The question of Haredi military service in Israel has always been about more than the army, and the war has made that unmistakable. On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Yehoshua Pfeffer, a rabbi and public thinker working on questions of Haredi citizenship, work, and service, to unpack why the draft debate has become so volatile since October 7, and why the IDF is more than an institution: it’s a crucible of Israeli identity. Together they explore the fears driving Haredi resistance to the draft, the anger and exhaustion felt across Israeli society, and whether change can happen through trust and politics rather than coercion—before the bonds of kinship and shared fate wear too thin to hold. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Listen to our recent episode “America Betrays the Stranger.”

Hope isn’t optimism—it’s the stubborn decision to keep building even when you can’t see the outcome. On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer sits down with alumni of Hartman’s Hazon leadership program Ayala Dahan and Yonathan Machlis to talk about the civic work of showing up and how young Israeli activists can draw on hope in the face of political, religious, and communal divides. They explore how a generation builds trust and solidarity and what it means to organize not just against what’s broken, but toward a better society. To learn more about Pathways to Hope, click HERE. To learn more about the Hazon Leadership Initiative, click HERE. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Register for this summer’s Community Leadership Program or Rabbinic Torah Seminar. Educators, apply now to the Wellspring Summit for Educators!

What happens when Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” is no longer read as a civic creed, but as a provocation about who belongs—and what a democracy owes the vulnerable? In this episode, Yehuda Kurtzer reflects on the normalization of cruelty toward immigrants in America, the present state violence being carried out in Minneapolis, and the uneasy silence of Jewish institutions when civil rights are clearly under assault. He then turns the lens toward Israel—asking what it means for Jews in both democracies to draw the line not between “us” and “them,” but between cruelty and compassion. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS

Antizionism has become a badge of belonging—and a tool of exclusion. On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Shaul Kelner, professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Vanderbilt University, about how anti-Zionism operates not only as an argument but as a movement culture—shaping who belongs on the American left and what counts as “moral.” Together, they explore what it would mean to respond with clarity without collapsing every critique of Israel into the same category. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Read Shaul Kelner’s article “American Antizionism” and subscribe to Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas. Learn more about Rabbanut North America, our three-year rabbinic ordination program, and the newest cohort!

Did Yiddish ever really die? On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer sits down with Rukhl Schaechter, editor of the Yiddish Forverts, to explore the surprising renaissance of the Yiddish language—from new dictionaries and online media to Duolingo learners and Hasidic vernacular. Together they discuss what is drawing people back to the language, how Yiddish carries culture across generations, and why so many Jews are using it to seek connections to their roots in a moment of renewed searching. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS

What does it mean to defend liberal democracy in a world shaped by power, domination, and moral compromise? In this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with Washington Post columnist and author of The Case for American Power, Shadi Hamid, about whether liberal societies can wield power without betraying their own ideals. From Trump’s approach to Venezuela to the war in Gaza, their conversation asks whether restraint, morality, and democratic purpose can guide power in a fractured political moment. You can find Shadi's book, The Case for American Power, HERE You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Listen to young Israeli changemakers from our Hazon program on the Canadian Jewish News's North Star podcast.

Who pays the price for identifying antisemitism? In this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer speaks with journalist and Canadaland host Jesse Brown about his recent series What Is Happening Here and his decision to investigate the rise of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in Canada. Together, they examine why media and political institutions have struggled to respond and what it costs to name these realities publicly. We're grateful to the Charles H. Revson Foundation for supporting the Shalom Hartman Institute's digital work, including Identity/Crisis. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: If you read our journal Sources, complete our reader survey by January 15. Learn more about the Kogod Research Center, whose scholars develop the ideas of the Hartman Institute.

Why have universities become flashpoints for broader cultural and political battles and what can higher education do to repair a fractured public sphere? In a conversation recorded live at the Vilna Shul in Boston, Yehuda Kurtzer and Harvard president Alan Garber reflect on leadership in a moment of crisis—exploring free speech and protest, institutional neutrality, and the rise of antisemitism on campus. As a university president and a Jew, Garber shares what worries him about the current moment, what gives him hope, and what it will take for universities—and the country—to move forward. We're grateful to the Charles H. Revson Foundation for supporting the Shalom Hartman Institute's digital work, including Identity/Crisis. You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week: Learn more about and apply to the Hevruta Gap-Year Program. Learn more about and register for our 2026 Rabbinic Torah Seminar.