Tablet Studios

Tis the season—for Chinese food and a movie! Our first Jewish guest is Bill Adler, the Def Jam alum who helped Run DMC create their iconic 1987 song "Christmas in Hollis". He tells us how he went from being a music journalist to the second full-time employee at Def Jam in the 1980s; how "Christmas in Hollis," ended up on the soundtrack of films like Die Hard, and how his distaste for cliche holida...

This week on Unorthodox, we're getting over our latke hangovers. Our first Jewish guest is New York Times writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who has written profiles of celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Bradley Cooper, and Melissa McCarthy. She joined us at our recent live show at the Manhattan JCC to talk about how she tries to be a journalist and a mensch, which biblical figure she'd love to profile,...

From warding off the evil eye to rules about whistling, Jews are serious about their superstitions. This week on Unorthodox, we hear from listeners about their family customs, talk to Tablet's editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse about the enduring nature of shtetl superstitions, and take a visit to a very lucky spot in Northern Israel. Ptui ptui! We love to hear from you: Send comments and questions fo...

Today's episode comes out a day early, so you can gobble it up before Thanksgiving. First, comedian Travon Free, a producer on Lena Dunham's HBO show Camping, speaks with producer Josh Kross about anti-Semitic old tweets of his that resurfaced last week. Liel sits down with Jewish guest Frederick Wiseman, the legendary filmmaker, to discuss his latest documentary, Monrovia, Indiana. Our gentile of...

This week on Unorthodox, boy are we grateful. We're grateful for our gentile of the week, Shay Khatiri, the Iranian-born political refugee who raised more than $1 million for the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh following the Oct. 27 massacre. He set up a GoFundMe page, which quickly went viral, and the campaign has so far raised $1.2 million, which will go directly into the synagogue's bank a...

This week on Unorthodox, we’ve got a bit of a mish-mash (mish-mosh?) for you. First, a taste of our visit to Cleveland, where we recorded a live episode at the Mandel JCC (and ate a lot of deli). Then, Stephanie sits down with Jewish author Gary Shteyngart, whose new novel Lake Success is about a Manhattan hedge fund manager named Barry Cohen who abandons his wife and son for a Greyhound road trip...

On Saturday morning, 11 Jews were murdered in a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Like Jews and their friends everywhere, we were heartbroken by this heinous anti-Semitic massacre, the first-ever large-scale attack against Jews on American soil. To grieve with our brothers and sisters in Pittsburgh and hear their stories, We traveled to Squirrel Hill, the city's Jewish enclave, along with a team from Table...

This week on Unorthodox, we're going fer-mental. Liel and Stephanie sit down with chef David Zilber, the director of the fermentation lab at Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant credited with redefining Nordic cuisine. He and Noma chef and co-owner Rene Redzepi just came out with The Noma Guide to Fermentation, which has everything you could ever want to know about fermenting. He tells us about growing...

This week on Unorthodox, we're on patrol. We talk to Ruchie Freier, the founder of Ezras Nashim, the first all-female volunteer ambulance in New York City, founded and staffed by Hasidic women in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Ruchie and Ezras Nashim are the subject of the documentary '93Queen', made by filmmaker Paula Eiselt, who also joins us. Ruchie Freier is a New York City Criminal Court judge, and...

This week on Unorthodox, we're still recovering from all the Jewish holidays. Our Jewish guest is Benyamin Cohen, host of the weekly podcast "Our Friend from Israel." He's also the guy who manages the official social media feeds for Albert Einstein, which might just be the best job ever. He tells us about tweeting for the late genius, plus his journey into megachurches while writing his 2009 book,...

This week on Unorthodox, we're going down to the station. Our guests are Hal Linden and Ryan Ochoa, who co-star in the new film The Samuel Project. Linden is best known for his portrayal of police precinct captain Barney Miller in the eponymous TV series, which aired from 1975-1982 (millennials, you can binge it on Amazon Prime), but his prolific six-decade career has included perfomances on stage...

This week on Unorthodox, we're celebrating the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot! Farmers and Etrogs and more! Who says Jews don't farm? Stephanie Butnick reports from Petaluma, CA, where activist Jews fleeing Eastern Europe in the early 1900s settled and became chicken ranchers. The politically-minded chicken-farming Jews of Petaluma even got a visit from Golda Meir! What's Sukkot all about anywa...

This week on Unorthodox, we're really, really sorry. We're marking the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with our annual apology show. We're joined again this year by Tablet contributor Marjorie Ingall, who runs the website SorryWatch, which analyzes apologies in the news. She goes over the best and worst public apologies of 5778, and offers tips for how to make a meaningful apology...

Happy birthday to us! We're celebrating three years of Unorthodox with a very special episode featuring our hosts, producers, and Tablet staffers reflecting on some of our most memorable segments. Tablet editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse revisits our very first episode, and shares her initial doubts about our audio adventure; host Liel Leibovitz reflects on his contentious Ep. 25 interview  with Jewi...

This week on Unorthodox, we're all about Eichmann. We sit down with Operation Finale director Chris Weitz and actor Nick Kroll to discuss the new film, which depicts the 1960 covert mission to capture Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi architect of the Final Solution, who was living under an assumed identity in Argentina. Kroll, who is best known as a comic actor, plays Rafi Eitan, the Shin Bet leader who c...

This week on Unorthodox, the producers take over while Mark, Liel, and Stephanie are off having summer fun. Shira, Noah, and Josh bring you three stories of people sharing, studying and challenging their faith. First up, Unorthodox couples counseling. Listeners Ken Rosen and Elettra Pauletto came to us to discuss their pre-marriage anxieties about conversion, kids, and Jewish practice. Second, Shi...

This week on Unorthodox, we're wining and dining. Our Jewish guest is author Andre Aciman, whose 2007 novel Call Me By Your Name was adapted into the Oscar-nominated film starring Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet. He tells us about being forced to leave Egypt with his family as a teenager, getting recognized on the Upper West Side after the film premiered, and his absolute favorite coffeemaker....

Tradition, tradition! In honor of a new Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof, we're heading back to Anatevka. Our Jewish guest is Rachel Zatcoff, who plays Tzeitel in The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene Off-Broadway production, Fidler afn Dakh. Our Gentile of the week is James Monroe Števko, who plays Mendl, the rabbi's son. They tell us about learning Yiddish for the show and what it's l...

This week on Unorthodox: Is it OK to say 'JAP'? We were joined by Odd Mom Out's Jill Kargman, Broadway legend Tovah Feldshuh, and Jewish Women's Archive director Judith Rosenbaum at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan last week for a lively discussion and debate about the Jewish American Princess stereotype–its origins, implications, and cultural staying power. We also screened a short film we made...

"Hi, are you Jewish?" It's a question you may have been asked in any number of towns or cities by a smiling bearded man wearing a yarmulke. It's one of the trademarks of Chabad, the Hasidic movement that dispatches its young men around town to help Jewish strangers perform a mitzvah—Jewish women are offered Shabbat candles, and Jewish men are encouraged to put on tefillin. We've always been fascin...

In honor of July 4th, we're celebrating the diversity of American Jewish life—which, as we've learned, goes well beyond eating bagels on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Up first, we get a crash course in the history of Jews in the South from Stuart Rockoff, who created the Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities, a rich online resource from the Institute of Southern Jewish Life. Next, Sammy...

This week on Unorthodox, we have three special guests. Jonathan Ornstein is the executive director of the JCC Krakow, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. With more than 10,000 visitors a month, the JCC is at the center of a Jewish revival in Poland, that Ornstein, a New York native, is witnessing—and cultivativating—firsthand. We also talk with Gabi Birkner and Rebecca Soffer of Moder...

This week on Unorthodox, we’re all about food and futbol. Our Jewish guest is writer and food historian Michael Twitty, whose book The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, won two James Beard Awards this year. He describes being told that a book by a black, Jewish, gay man would never succeed (and how it felt to prove them wrong!), explains how most o...

This week on Unorthodox, we talk to Rabbi Mike Moskowitz, the new scholar in residence for trans and queer Jewish studies at CBST, the world's largest LGBTQ synagogue. He's the first Orthodox rabbi at the New York City synagogue, and he explains how Judaism, even at its most observant, can make room for transgender adherents—and how Jews could learn a lot from the trans community.  We're also join...

For our first book club episode, we talk to Israeli-born writer Ruby Namdar about his ambitious second book, The Ruined House, which won Israel's most prestigious literary award and was recently translated into English. The book is set in New York City, where he's lived for the past 18 years, and follows a charming and successful professor named Andrew P. Cohen as he descends into a very peculiar...