Good Faith Effort

If you’re a tech entrepreneur, or an aspiring startup founder, and you have one book to read, why should it be the Bible? On this episode, one of Israel’s leading venture capitalists, Michael Eisenberg, makes the case for the Book of Genesis as essential for building the next generation of prosperity, virtue and human flourishing. Along the way, Rabbi Lamm and Michael Eisenberg talked about: Proph...

Why is being human better than being a robot? That’s really the defining question of the Digital Era. And it’s the one we’re going to need to answer if we’re to promote human flourishing in an age where our rate of technological progress threatens to outstrip the rate at which we can grapple seriously with new and challenging moral questions. This week, Rabbi Lamm unpacks all of this with James Po...

What will be the challenges and opportunities of telling the American story in the coming generation? And why is the Bible essential for that national telling and re-telling? Rabbi Lamm is joined by New York Times columnist David Brooks to discuss: America’s unique relationship with the Book of Exodus Why the Hebrew prophets are essential for understanding race and racism in American history Why B...

American policymakers tend to treat faith, community and local belonging as dispensable luxuries that can and should be sacrificed to maximize some other metrics, like GDP, mobility, or net worth. What are the consequences of this kind of thinking? Is this trend reversible? How would this impact the most vulnerable among us? To unpack all of this, Rabbi Lamm spoke with Chris Arnade, the best-selli...

How do we confront the new antisemitism in American life, including the rise of anti-Israel animus on the New Left? Rabbi Lamm has actor and comedian Elon Gold join him, to do a deep dive. They talk Elon’s own experiences with antisemitism; the rise of social media-based anti-Jewishness; Elon’s confrontation with Seth Rogen; why " In The Heights" and "Ramy" are much better Jewish film and TV than...

American society is deeply in need of a moral and cultural revival. Any successful version of that is going to need to be  both  revolutionary enough to ignite the imagination  and  true enough to the stories and values of our past, to the liberty and freedom embedded in the promise of America to keep us grounded. What resource can we possibly uncover that could satisfy these conditions? This week...

Digital tech isn’t just another tool for humans to use, no different than a bow and arrow, or a fork. It fundamentally shapes who we are. So what do we do in an era where all information is available to us at the click of a button? Should we want to keep more things secret? Or are secrets debilitating things, and our task should be to find more productive ways to tell them? At the heart of this re...

We live in a society where it’s considered impolite, gauche, or just downright unsophisticated to talk about God and religion in public spaces, or with strangers. So what would it take to ignore all those social conventions? What kind of person does the “weird” thing and talks about God with others? And how might other people, from totally different traditions, get comfortable doing the same as we...

We talk a lot on this podcast about the future of faith and technology, but what does it look like to actually be the one building that future? This week, Rabbi Lamm spoke to Alex Jones, Founder and CEO of Hallow, the #1 Catholic app, devoted to connecting people to prayer. They spoke about different journeys towards faith; what it’s like to be a person of faith in Silicon Valley; what it takes to...

Howard University in Washington, D.C., is the nation’s only historically Black university with a Classics department, but in May of this year it eliminated it. Dr. Anika Prather, who taught Classics at Howard, joined Rabbi Lamm to unpack the consequences of this decision. They explored what Classics have meant to Black identity and liberty in America. How the Jewish perspective on Classical civili...

Whenever humanity manages to build something worth preserving, whether a family, a community or an entire society, the biggest threat to its future is simply forgetting how you built it in the first place! Forgetting the values and ideas that lie at its foundation. That’s the challenge we have today: we, as a country, got here through the wisdom of the Hebrew Bible and Hebrew civilization. What do...

The limits of AI make it clear that humans aren’t about to be replaced by robots. But anyone who reads the Bible understands that humans have a lot of room to improve and even transform themselves! And increasingly, we’re learning that the best way for humans to become  better  is for us to become  closer , and that means more discussion, more conversation, even more  disagreement ! So how do we g...

We’re living in a golden age of using big data to understand and change our world. So how does the Biblical tradition think about data and it’s benefits and dangers for society? This week Rabbi Lamm unpacked all this with Princeton economist Leah Boustan, one of the world experts on innovative uses of data, and a serious religious thinker. They talked the Biblical attitude towards the census; immi...

If the last few decades have felt like a narrative about the slow, agonizing death of togetherness, right now feels like the most exciting moment you could think of for re-imagining the future of community, and re-articulating old wisdom for a new world. So how do we go about doing this? Kinsey Grant, Co-Founder and host of Thinking is Cool joins Rabbi Lamm to talk about all of this, from her expe...

From Numbers 13 to the America in 2021, reporting on what’s happening in Israel, a land so close to the hearts of so many across the globe, has been a fundamental challenge. How should we navigate it, especially during a time of rising antisemitism on social media and in the streets? And what are Westerners missing in their picture of the current round of conflict between Israel and Hamas? Friend...

There are times in life when we could use a little more stability. And In the wake of a pandemic it seems like stability is just what we need. But these days, we may actually have the opposite problem: complacency and decadence. Society is getting older, we’re having fewer kids, we’re more risk-averse, the rate of entrepreneurship is down, our political institutions and arrangements increasingly f...

Throughout American history, prophetic “outsider” voices have been major drivers of our moral, social, and even technological progress. We’ve needed folks who are willing, or in some cases have been forced to see the world differently, and who can then communicate their insights back to the rest of society. In the coming generation, those voices will be essential if we’re going to shake ourselves...

You don’t usually hear about big movie stars leading Bible studies, or major business moguls fasting for religious reasons. But somehow, when it comes to sports, some of the biggest stars in the world are constantly thanking God, praying, studying religion, or otherwise proudly living out their faith. Ever wondered why this is? This week Rabbi Lamm speaks to NBA star Enes Kanter, of the Portland T...

Especially in the wake of a terribly stressful and lonely year for so many, now is a critical time to talk about mental health. What role can faith communities and resources play in supporting good mental health? To discuss this, Rabbi Lamm invited on Heather Sells, anchor for CBN’s Newswatch, and co-author of a forthcoming book on church and culture collaboration to address mental health.

We live in a culture that teaches that if you’re not pursuing some practical end — say, wealth, a career, social advancement, physical fitness — you’re wasting your time. So it’s unsurprising that so many of us end up feeling horribly empty, caught in an infinite loop of winning money, power and friends…so that we can win more money, power and friends. How often do we stop and ask ourselves: what...

If you’re a consumer of pop culture, the Exodus story seems like something you can easily file away in a box under “freedom” or “liberty.” But the truth is, the Book of Exodus -- and the Jewish holiday of Passover that it birthed -- contains the Bible and Judaism’s answers to so many of the most important questions in life. So if you want to understand what it means to be a Jew, or a believer in t...

As tech expands our ability to do both great and terrible things, how do we use the lessons of tradition and faith to exercise wise and virtuous moral leadership? Can religious wisdom help us navigate especially fraught areas of human affairs like the defense sector? Can the tools of tech be a net positive for traditional moral thinking? And why is it important to watch Star Wars and read Rene Gir...

If we learn anything from the books of Genesis and Exodus, it’s that when it comes to creating the world, God does that for us on His own. But when it comes to creating a society, God demands that we partner with Him in building it. So what will it take for us to do that work? To answer that question Rabbi Lamm spoke with Pastor Sam Rodriguez, the President of the the National Hispanic Christian L...

We live in a culture that encourages us to live in the moment and forget about tomorrow. In contrast, the Bible taught humanity that societies are strongest when they’re willing to think in long time horizons. When we’re willing to see ourselves as just one moment on a long continuum from past to future -- from our great-grandparents, to our great-grandchildren — we’re able to invest in society’s...

February 2021 is both Black History Month and the month during which Jews celebrate the holiday of Purim. So it’s a month during which both the Black and Jewish communities in America will reflect on a past marked both by deep pain and injustice, and courage in the face of oppression. What can we teach each other about this process? And what can we, together, teach America? This week, Rabbi Lamm s...