Jewish Heroism Project

1948 was a year of Biblical proportions, which means the stories told about what happened often have more power than the events themselves. This is part one of a two-part treatment of this momentous time with which we will close season two. Listen in for the civil war which precedes the War of Independence and the origins of the narrative conflict we are still fighting today.

One could say that the Maccabees won the battle but lost the war. How is it that the heroes of the Hannukah story went from the heights of spiritual power to the depths of corruption in less than 100 years? Here is an analysis of the three disasters that brought down the Hasmonean kingdom, and a look at how the modern State of Israel can avoid the same fate.

Once World War Two ended all the promises of the allies were put to test - would they find a solution to the Jewish problem now that the war was won? This episode describes the escalation of the struggle against the British in the land of Israel in the wake of the greatest disaster the Jewish people have ever suffered.

As European Jewry was consumed by the Shoah, the Zionists in the land of Israel gradually came to see the British blocking the gates of Israel as their main enemy. The episode explores the split between the Irgun and the Lechi, the rise of Menachem Begin as a leader and the internecine war which almost doomed their struggle.

By 1942 there was no escape from Europe for the Jews, and even if they had managed to run - who would take them in. This second episode on the Holocaust explores the message of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and finally brings American Jewry into the picture of the Jewish Story.

There are things which need to be spoken about no matter how difficult and questions which need to be asked, no matter how unanswerable. Here is the first of twp episodes which engage the role of the Holocaust in the Jewish Story.

The 1930's saw the hate triangle of Arabs, British and Jews explode into an unprecedented scale of violence known as the Arab Revolt. The revolt brought on yet another cycle of repression and political concessions, and it split the Jews of the Yishuv over the question of whether restraint or retaliation was the proper response to Arab violence. Meanwhile, as violence spirals in the land of Israel,...

In the 1930's the ideological divides between the Revisionist and Labor Zionists grew, and cracks began to appear within the community of the Yishuv. Meanwhile, pressure on European Jewry was increasing with the rise of Nazi Germany. When you put these two processes together, the potential is nothing short of explosive.

One of the hallmarks of the early modern era is mobility, which means we will be jumping around a bit. This episode follows the story of the exiles upon their arrival in Italy. They take with them a messianic hope that the end is near, and they find their the spirit of Italian humanism. When the two unite, new horizons will open for Christian and Jew alike.

Epistemology is not about what you know, but about how you know anything all. The word may seem unsettling, but that is nothing compared to the breakdown which Europeans suffered as the foundations of medieval thought dissolved in the 16th century. Copernicus started a revolution which removed the Earth from the center of the Universe and the Church from the middle of science, and we want to know...

You can tell a historian by where he begins and ends his story. Here is a prologue to season two, which begins at the Expulsion from Spain and ends at the rise of the State of Israel. The question is - why is this episode about the 3rd Temple?

As the Jews of Ashkenaz moved eastward, they brought their customs and language with them. What they found waiting in Poland was a refuge that would allow them to prosper for hundreds of years.

The printing press helped spark a knowledge explosion which changed the world, and of course, less than fifty years after Gutenberg printed his Bible, Jewish presses were already transforming the face of the Hebrew book. As one good revolution deserves another - this episode also explores the role that text played in the dawn of the Protestant Reformation. Europe will never be the same, but is it...

Gracia Mendes was the most powerful Jewish woman since Queen Esther. Defying princes and Popes she amassed a fortune, supporyitng the poor, patronizing culture, and building an underground railroad to aid conversos escaping the clutches of the Inquisition. Here is her story.

Though the early modern era was a time of throwing off tradition for many Europeans, in the city of Tzefat its power was alive and well. This is the story of how R' Yosef Karo became the greatest legal authority of his day, and wrote the work which would "set the table" for the legal discussion of the next 500 years.

The Golden Age of Tzefat had more to it than the writing of authoritative legal texts. There was also a flowering of kabbalistic thought which returned the experience of the Divine to its central place in the culture of Am Yisrael. And the most powerful master of this esoteric wisdom was certainly R' Yitzchak Luria - the Holy Ari z"l.

Hope is a powerful force. The conversos who escaped from Iberia and built a new life were driven by the hope for freedom, prosperity and ultimately redemption. But even once the New World colonies were established, the one place in the world where the Jews were absent was the British Isles. Was their return to England the secret to finally realizing their ultimate hope?

The appearance of Shabbetai Zvi evoked a tidal wave of messianic hope which swept Jews and Christians in its wake. Was his advent just a case of the "perfect storm" conditions in history, or was there something more fundamental to the Jewish story which drove his ascent?

Within two decades after the Baal Shem Tov's death, a movement sprung up from his revolutionary thoughts. This new current of Jewish life did not emerge without controversy; and as the chasidim and their opponents were struggling over the soul of Am Yisrael, the body of Polish Jewry was suddenly split in three by the partition of Poland.

Baruch Spinoza the was the most famous philosopher the Jews ever produced, but he had to leave the fold in order to speak his truth. He crowned reason king of creation at the same time as the mythic imagination of the Sabbatean heretics was coming to a boil.

The institutions of the middle ages have already run their course, and the way ahead into modernity is far from clear for Polish Jewry. Out of this darkness and confusion a new light will emerge, infusing religious life with vitality and joy. This is the first of two episodes on the rise of the Ba'al Shem Tov and the Chassidic movement.

Just when you think the Sabbateans have had their last say in the story, one of the greatest conflicts of 18th century rabbinic culture breaks out. This episode explores the controversy between R' Yaakov Emden and R' Yonatan Eybeschuetz and how it contributed to the crisis of European Jewry's encounter with the Enlightenment.

Moses Mendelssohn was a critical philosopher of the German Enlightenment and the most controversial figure of the Jewish Enlightenment. Whether you think that he was a light to his generation or a boundary breaker who led many to sin, his life story deserves to be heard.

Mendelssohn's story continues, but one man does not a movement make. The Berlin Haskalah was a whole generation of transition, one which struggled with the boundaries of Torah, society and identity. And one which saw some of the first battle lines of modernity being drawn.

The struggle between the parochial and the cosmopolitan is a defining tension of the 19th century - for Europe as a whole and the Jews in particular. In this episode we will update our understanding of chassidut as it battles with the Galician Haskalah, meet the figure of the radical socialist Jew in the person of Moses Hess, and ask the question whether to be a national or international Jew.