IKAR Podcasts

As Israel navigates an uncertain political moment, the question of who belongs—and who gets to shape the country's future—is deeply consequential. Through an exploration of Israel's political landscape and the ancient story of Isaac and Yishmael, we consider the dangers of zero-sum thinking and what it might take to imagine a shared future for Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Source Sheets + Learn More: https://ikar.org/events/1st-session-10-28-26-of-5787-prophecy-politics-in-the-age-of-miracles-a-tanakh-beit-midrash/ The sudden rise of Elijah marks a major shift in the leadership of Israel, from the King to the Prophet. This transition raises all the thorny questions about the relationship between religion and politics that we continue to grapple with today. Fire from...

Source sheet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hlpqp0BKeHkCuogEfSPAeN6BG_EsFr0cQUnJxn5RZiA/edit?usp=sharing This is a recording of the Weekly Parashah - Rabbi David Kasher's Torah study class co-sponsored by Hadar and IKAR. Please note that the first few minutes of this week's class were not recorded due to a technical issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.

This week we are introduced to a tree - the Terebinth of Moreh. A tree that only shows up again once at the end of the Torah. What is there for us to learn from these instances about time passing and about fighting for a future you will not live to see?

IKARite Barry Michels is joined by Rabbi Morris Panitz for a discussion on his new book, Ahead of All Parting: On Learning to Live with an Open Heart, a memoir about how his journey with Lewy body dementia and Alzheimer's disease led him to a spiritual, emotional, and creative transformation.

Source sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nfl-fSyOCyo0dyD8X417K9lBUu56LepJ/view?usp=sharing This is a recording of the Weekly Parashah - Rabbi David Kasher's Torah study class co-sponsored by Hadar and IKAR. Please note that the first few minutes of this week's class were not recorded due to a technical issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Dr. Shoshan Haran & Rabbi Sharon Brous in conversation. Her life's work was met with unimaginable tragedy on Oct. 7, 2023, when she was kidnapped from Kibbutz Be'eri and held hostage in Gaza for fifty days alongside her daughter and grandchildren. Despite the murder of her husband and close family members during the attack, Dr. Shoshan Haran has emerged as a powerful global witness. In her book, M...

Unique among all ancient literature, the Torah rejects a world constrained by rigid cause and effect, manifest by honor, affront and appeasement, instead inviting us into a cosmos of freedom and choice, which makes possible apology, forgiveness, and repentance. 

⁠Source sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y2T1DiQxUoOGxy9u526GfyNrkRc_Z3Nx/view?usp=sharing This is a recording of the Weekly Parashah - Rabbi David Kasher's Torah study class co-sponsored by Hadar and IKAR. Please note that the first few minutes of this week's class were not recorded due to a technical issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Hear from Sima Awad and Maayan Inon as they share their journeys towards reconciliation. Sima is a bereaved Palestinian sister whose brother was killed by an Israeli soldier when she was just 3 years old. Maayan is a bereaved Israeli daughter whose parents were both killed on October 7 by Hamas. Witness the transformative power of empathy in the face of devastating violence in Palestine and Israel...

The Cornell 57 has reawakened critical conversations around violence, complicity, and the bystander effect. It also reveals the failure of the dominant stories we tell around gender, subjugation, dehumanization. This is an urgent reminder that another world is possible.

Source sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JAg6k6KfzAw-1PN1l6Vk7cWxiL13leRM/view?usp=sharing This is a recording of the Weekly Parashah - Rabbi David Kasher's Torah study class co-sponsored by Hadar and IKAR. Please note that the first few minutes of this week's class were not recorded due to a technical issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Rabbi Hannah Jensen's teaching on Sukkot before the Torah reading on Shabbat 9.26.2026

The Talmud's story of a sweltering sukkah illuminates our urgent need for authentically Jewish answers and action as we face the mounting climate crisis. 

Yotam Polizer is the Global CEO of IsraAID, Israel’s leading humanitarian NGO. Yotam oversees IsraAID’s global operations, strategy and partnerships across 15 countries. He became IsraAID’s co-CEO in 2017 and Global CEO in 2019. Polizer is the 2023 Charles Bronfman award laureate. He has 15 years’ experience in education, humanitarian aid, and international development.

One of the central prayers of the High Holy Day liturgy reminds us of the uncertainty we face in the year ahead. But the prayer also offers us ways to maintain equilibrium in the midst of uncertainty. This in turn allows us to be the authors of our own Book of Life.

Rabbi Sharon Brous and Colin Campbell in conversation: Choosing Love: How a Bereaved Father Found Solace By Encountering the Humanity of the Person Who Killed His Children. Colin Campbell is a writer and director for theater and film. He is the author of Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Seraglio, a short film he wrote...

What does it mean to remain connected to something we love when it disappoints us? How do we hold love, criticism, belonging, and moral involvement in the same hands?

From estrangement to engagement: How small, steadfast acts of love will be the bridge to the healing we need.

Palliative care specialist BJ Miller helps patients and families face illness and death realistically, comfortably, and on their own terms. Miller is cultivating a model for palliative care organizations around the world, and emphasizing healthcare’s quixotic relationship to the inevitability of death. He is a hospice and palliative medicine physician and sees patients and families via telehealth...

"We've tried everything, and we nonetheless fear that it just wasn't enough. Now we are here standing before you with no more plays in the playbook. There's nothing more we can do, and we just hope that you can be satisfied with what we were able to fix and forgive us for the rest. Avinu Malkeinu, show us mercy, answer us, not because we're beyond saving, but because we're trying." Intro provided...

Extremism becomes palatable only in the absence of robust moral alternatives. That’s where we come in.

Don't let your life pass you by. It may be that your life is not what you imagined. Grieve what you need to grieve about where you are. And then invest in the life you have and find the beauty in it. 

The High Holyday liturgy is full of images of emptiness and abasement, as if to tell us, “You got nothing.” How does this week’s parashah, always read just before the High Holydays, put itself into conversation with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?