The Jewish futurism Lab

Mike Wirth sits down with Rabbi Danny Burkeman, Senior Rabbi at Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland, Massachusetts, and host of the award-winning podcast Two Minutes of Torah. Danny was raised in the British Reform movement, ordained in 2009, and has spent his rabbinical career making Judaism urgent and alive for the modern world. This episode […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth sits down with writer and creative director Eitan Chitayat, creator of the viral I’m That Jew project, to talk about his new campaign “Zionism Is”, created with former Knesset member and leading Zionism thinker Dr. Einat Wilf. Together, they explore how Jewish creatives can […]

In this episode, we sit on the patio at Lehrhaus, a Jewish tavern and house of learning in Somerville, in front of a mural by Boston based Jewish artist Chloe Rubinstein, and explore the story behind this unusual space. Rabbi Charlie Schwartz shares his Jewish origin story, how he and cofounder Joshua Foer first imagined […]

In this episode, Rabbi Daniel Levine, Hillel rabbi, podcast host, and Jewish history professor at UC Irvine, joins us for a wide ranging conversation about the future of Jewish life on campus and beyond. We talk about how October 7 has reshaped the emotional and spiritual landscape for students, the tensions he feels between pastoral […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth sits down with therapist Shely Rachel Esses, LMFT, to explore the psychology of the future self and what it takes to imagine a life beyond survival mode. Shely brings together clinical psychology, nervous system science, embodied healing, and Jewish spiritual wisdom to show how […]

Mike Wirth talks with Israeli realist painter Avraham “Avi” Vofsi about classical oil painting, Jewish identity, and his AI assisted Theodor Herzl project. They explore how to use new tools without losing the human aura, and what Jewish images might look like in the future. Check out Avi’s beautiful artwork on his website and follow […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth shares the story behind a UX‑driven case study in Jewish ritual. Mike talks about creating the High and Low Ritual at the Greensboro Contemporary Jewish Museum’s Social Practice Institute, and how that work led to speculative ritual objects like a geodesic sukkah dome, an […]

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, I share how the Hineni Project carried me from the shock of October 7 into a deeply personal relationship with one family in Israel: the family of Bar Shechter z”l, a young father and psy‑trance DJ murdered at the Nova music festival. Hineni means “Here I am” […]

This episode explores Franz Rosenzweig’s radical vision for Jewish education through the Frankfurt Lehrhaus (1920) and traces its influence into contemporary experiments in creative, future-oriented learning. Rosenzweig rejected passive transmission of knowledge and instead cultivated dialogical, participatory study rooted in lived experience. His Lehrhaus was not simply a school. It was a reorien...

In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab: Torah, Tech, Tomorrow, host Mike Wirth sits down with his friend, Israeli digital artist and projection‑mapping creator Erez Cohen. Mike first encountered Erez’s work through a projection‑mapping piece called Metamorphosis, where veins and fungi slowly overtake a Jerusalem building and turn the city itself into a living, speculative Jewish [&#8...