The Voices of Emanu El Podcast

In this episode of Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon shares a reflection on Micah’s timeless charge to "do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God" as America begins its 251st year. Through scripture, history, and a memorable story about a visitor to Houston, he invites us to imagine what our country — and our community — might become when guided by humility, generosity, and hope.

On this special Independence Day episode of Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler asks a piercing question first posed by Frederick Douglass: “What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?” and then turns it toward the American Jewish experience. Tracing the bold promises of the Constitution and First Amendment, he explores how religious liberty for Jews in the United States has always lived...

From Babylonian clay tablets to COVID-era conspiracy theories, Rabbi Oren Hayon sat down recently down with vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez and Assyriologist Dr. Irving Finkel for a wide-ranging conversation on how humans have understood disease, healing, and risk across millennia. They explore ancient Mesopotamian medical recipes and divination, the slow birth of germ theory, cycles of mistrust...

What makes a rebellion and what makes a revolution? When does passionate disagreement become a holy argument and when does it collapse into a struggle for power. In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, recorded on Juneteenth with America’s semi‑quincentennial on the horizon, Rabbi Josh Fixler reflects on the dissonance between a nation founded on “self-evident truths” of equality and the brutal...

In this episode of The Vocies of Emanu El, Rabbi Pam Silk weaves together summer camp send-offs and the Torah portion Sh’lach L'cha, where twelve scouts survey the Promised Land and declare, “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes.” Their report is factually accurate, but their fearful interpretation keeps a generation wandering for forty years. Through the lens of Caleb and Joshua’s ruach ache...

This week on Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon reflects on Aretha Franklin’s “Call Me,” the Torah portion Beha’alotcha, and the haunting image of a menorah whose flame must eventually rise on its own. Drawing on Rashi’s teaching that Aaron is commanded to kindle the lamp “until the flame rises by itself,” Rabbi Hayon explores what it means to love our children, students, and friends enough to s...

Rabbi Josh Fixler recently sat down with Reverend Katey Zeh, CEO of the Religious Community for Reproductive Choice, for a powerful conversation about reproductive justice and why “reproductive freedom is religious freedom." Together they trace the often-erased history of clergy who helped people access safe abortion care before Roe, examine how white Christian Nationalism has shaped today’s laws...

In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon is joined by NYT Best Selling cookbook author Adeena Sussman to talk about “easy-breezy Tel Aviv-y” cooking, Shabbat “forever recipes,” and how simple food became her therapy after October 7. Together they explore Israeli food, how to host Shabbat without exhausting yourself, why great hospitality starts with letting guests bring “good co...

In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler asks a deceptively simple question: What is the difference between a desert and a wilderness? Through the lens of Parashat B'midbar, he reimagines the midbar as a wild, ownerless space where Torah — and truth itself — cannot be claimed by any one person or ideology. Rabbi Fixler weaves together rabbinic midrash, the Kabbalistic idea of t...

In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Pam Silk weaves the spectacle of the Kentucky Derby into the timeless teachings of the double Torah portion B’har B’chukotai. From trainer Sherry DeVoe’s history‑making victory and the story of brothers Jose and Irad Ortiz, to the Torah’s radical vision of Shmita and Jubilee, she explores what it means to believe that no win or loss is ever final an...

In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon reflects on Parashat Emor and the doubled command to “speak” and to “say.” What looks like redundancy in the Torah becomes a profound teaching about how wisdom must be shared with adults and passed along to children. Rabbi Hayon lifts up the idea that almost all of us are Jewish teachers — parents, grandparents, educators, clergy, camp co...

In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon tells the Jewish story of Isfahan, an ancient community in Iran whose roots stretch back 2,500 years and whose legend begins with exiles carrying soil and water from Jerusalem. From that evocative image, he invites us to consider the “eternal artifacts” each of us carries — memories, values, and commitments that guide us through a fractur...

In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler dives into one of Tanakh’s strangest stories: the death of Uzza as he reaches out to steady the ark of the covenant. Framed like a Benoit Blanc-style mystery, moving from Parashat Sh’mini to the haftarah in Second Samuel, he asks not “whodunnit” but “whydunnit”—and ultimately admitting that some suffering defies explanation. Rabbi Fixler...

In this special Passover Yizkor episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon shares a powerful drash that begins with an unlikely teacher: the Osage orange tree. Once spread across a continent by woolly mammoths and giant sloths, the tree now survives in a narrowed habitat, still bearing the shape of a relationship that has been lost. Rabbi Hayon weaves this natural history into a meditatio...

In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Pam Silk invites us to see the seder as “memory with coordinates”—a story that does not just free us from oppression, but brings us toward a concrete sense of peoplehood, land, and destiny. She reflects on how the seder’s symbols and choreography slowly transform obligation into connection and awkwardness into a proud, rooted Jewish identity. Rabbi...

On Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat before Passover, Rabbi Oren Hayon explores Jewish memory, identity, and hope. Beginning with a Syrian Passover custom in which a child carries a knotted bundle of matzah and answers, “Who are you and what are you carrying? Where have you come from and where are you going?”, he invites us to ask those same questions of our own Jewish lives. Rabbi Hayon reflects on th...

In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler offers a heartfelt reflection on the life and legacy of his and Cantor Rollin Simmons' teacher, Rabbi Dr. Andrea Weiss, co-editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. He recalls her commitment to a multivocal Torah, her embodiment of chesed (loving kindness), and the way her scholarship opened doors for women and men alike to see themselv...

After a near-tragedy at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, on March 12, Rabbi Josh Fixler reflects on what it means to be Jewish in 2026, in a world where bollards, cameras, and security officers have become part of walking into shul. From the line “they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat” to the teachings of David Hartman’s “Auschwitz or Sinai,” he asks: What story will de...

In this week's episode, Rabbi Oren Hayon takes us to Belmonte, a small town in northeastern Portugal where crypto-Jews carried tiny pocket mezuzot rather than risk a public sign of Jewish life during the Inquisition. From there, he moves to the Israelites at Mount Sinai and the story of the golden calf and to our own age of war, anxiety, and uncertainty, inviting us to ask what we’re carrying that...

In this powerful episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler sits down with indigenous rights advocate Lani Anpo for a wide‑ranging conversation about her life as a multi‑tribal Native American Jew and the urgent questions of peoplehood, land, and identity in our complicated moment.​ Lani explores how the language of indigeneity is being used and misused in public discourse about Jews, Is...

Guest Rabbi Annie Belford traces Jewish magical practices through history—like protective incantation bowls, mezuzah incantations criticized by Maimonides, and birth rituals—and reimagining magic as the profound wonder of friendships across generations and simple acts of being. 

In this special episode of Voices of Emanu El, Cantor Rollin Simmons sits down with her longtime friend, Cantor Shira Ginsburg, to talk about Bubby’s Kitchen—Shira’s acclaimed one-woman musical born from her family’s Holocaust partisan story and a fifth-year cantorial school recital that refused to stay “just” a project. Together they explore how growing up in her grandparents’ home, hearing their...

In this episode, Rabbi Josh Fixler asks a timeless question: How do you build a sacred community? Beginning at Mount Sinai with the Israelites’ freewill gifts for the Mishkan, he draws a powerful line to the shared project of American democracy and to the importance of voting and showing up. You’ll hear: Torah and commentators on why voluntary gifts transform people and communities A clear, access...

In this special episode of Voices of Emanu El, Cantor Rollin Simmons sits down with pianist Phillip Hall to explore their eight-year musical partnership and the powerful bond between Congregation Emanu El and his choir, the Phillip Hall Singers. They reflect on an unforgettable Music at Emanu El concert honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sharing stories behind “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “S...

Rabbi Josh Fixler, with writing partner Scott Esserman, reflects on a childhood story from his grandfather, who once stood outside a Berlin movie theater under a sign that read “Jews not wanted,” and links it to the Torah’s repeated command: “Do not oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Through teachings from Parashat Mishpatim, the Talmud, and Rabbi Kalonymos Kalman...