61 min listen
The Sermons I Needed to Hear Right Now
ratings:
Length:
57 minutes
Released:
Nov 17, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
This is a conversation about the relationship between Jewishness and the Jewish State. About believing some aspects of Israel have become indefensible and also believing that Israel itself must be defended. About what it means when a religion built on the lessons of exile creates a state that inflicts exile on others. About the ugly, recurrent reality of antisemitism.You know, the easy stuff.In these past few months, I’ve been moved by the sermons of Rabbi Sharon Brous, which have managed to hold these paradoxes with more grace and prophetic wisdom than most. Brous is the founding and senior rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish community based in Los Angeles, and the author of the forthcoming book “The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World.” And so I asked her to be on the show to talk about things that are deeply uncomfortable to talk about.We discuss the “great dream” that Israel represents for generations of Jews; Brous’s Yom Kippur sermon reckoning with the moral cost of Israel’s decades-long occupation and its increasingly right-wing government; the “existential loneliness” she and many in her community felt on Oct. 7; the antisemitism she witnessed in the wake of Oct. 7; how experiences of exile throughout history have shaped the Jewish psyche and speak to us now; stories from her visit with residents of the Kfar Aza kibbutz as they mourned their dead; why “bearing sacred witness” is a core spiritual commitment; and more.Mentioned:“This Is the Moral Earthquake” by Rabbi Sharon Brous (sermon delieverd on Sep. 25, 2023)“We’ve Lost So Much. Let’s Not Lose Our Damn Minds” by Rabbi Sharon Brous (sermon delieverd on Oct. 14, 2023)“We Are Hebrews. We Must Act Like It.” by Rabbi Sharon Brous (sermon delivered on Oct. 28, 2023)Book Recommendations:The Prophet by Abraham J. HeschelTo Bless the Space Between Us by John O’DonohueHomegoing by Yaa GyasiThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Emefa Agawu and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.
Released:
Nov 17, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Why Adults Lose the ‘Beginner’s Mind’: Here’s a sobering thought: The older we get, the harder it is for us to learn, to question, to reimagine. This isn’t just habit hardening into dogma. It’s encoded into the way our brains change as we age. And it’s worsened by an intellectual and economic culture that prizes efficiency and dismisses play. Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where she runs the Cognitive Development and Learning Lab; she’s also the author of over 100 papers and half a dozen books, including “The Gardener and the Carpenter” and “The Philosophical Baby.” What I love about her work is she takes the minds of children seriously. The child’s mind is tuned to learn. They are, she writes, the R. & D. departments of the human race. But a mind tuned to learn works differently from a mind trying to exploit what it already knows. So instead of asking what children can learn from us, perhaps we need to reverse the by The Ezra Klein Show