Unorthodox

This week on Unorthodox, a crossover episode! We're joined by Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway, hosts of The West Wing Weekly podcast, an episode-by-episode discussion of one of television's most beloved shows. Malina, who played Will Bailey on The West Wing, currently stars in Scandal, which will air its series finale later this month. Hirway, a musician and composer, is the creator and host of the Song Exploder podcast. We talk about revisiting the glory days of early aughts TV programming, being Jewish on Twitter, and, of course, Jewish food. We also talk to Rabbi Rick Eisenberg, who left the pulpit to work as an opioid addiction counselor in the Jewish community.We love hearing from our listeners! Email us or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Show your love for Unorthodox with our new T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baby onesies. Get yours here: bit.ly/Unorthoshirt. This episode is sponsored by the UJA Federation of New York. Join their “Matzah Challenge” on social media. Snap a picture of your matzah using the hashtag #MatzahChallenge. Every photo posted with the hashtag will result in an $18 donation to help someone in need.This episode is also sponsored by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at harrys.com/unorthodox.

Download your free copy of the Unorthodox Haggadah! This week on Unorthodox, everything you ever wanted to know about Passover. We answer listener questions, writer Roya Hakakian tells us about Persian Passover traditions, including scallion whipping at the Seder, and producer Josh Kross’s mother-in-law Elsie Apfelbaum shares the magic of Mimouna, the Moroccan festival celebrating the end of Passover (with some help from Josh’s daughter Stella). Jay Miah tells the story of how his father worked at the Streit’s Matzo Factory upon immigrating to America from Bangladesh, and humorist Adam Mansbach talks about comedic haggadot—he cowrote For This We Left Egypt with Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel—and the enduring power of the Passover story.We love hearing from our listeners! Email us or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Show your love for Unorthodox with our new T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baby onesies. Get yours here. 

Proof that Jews don't control the weather? Our live show was cancelled due to snow in the New York area. But thanks to a pre-Passover miracle we were able to record an interview with our gentile of the week, Bart Campolo, in producer Josh Kross' living room. (With everyone's kids, since school was cancelled.) Bart Campolo is evangelical Christian royalty—his father, Tony Campolo, is one of the most well-known leaders of the evangelical left—and became a believer himself as a teenager. He spent the next 30 years as an evangelical preacher, but his faith slowly unraveled until 2011, when he finally came out as secular. Bart now works as a humanist chaplain at the University of Cincinnati. He tells us about his dramatic journey, explains what a campus humanist chaplain does, and describes his coaching practice with people navigating their own faith transitions. Learn more about Bart and his podcast, Humanize Me, at bartcampolo.org.Head over to www.tabletmag.com/unorthodoxhaggadah to get the official Unorthodox Haggadah.We love hearing from our listeners! Email us or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Show your love for Unorthodox with our new T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and baby onesies. Get yours here: bit.ly/Unorthoshirt. This episode is sponsored by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at Harrys.com/UnorthodoxThis episode is also sponsored by Hello Fresh. Visit hellofresh.com and use promo code UNORTHODOX for $30 off your first week of deliveries.

Our Jewish guest this week is Leah Sarna, a student at Yeshivat Maharat, the first yeshiva to ordain women as Orthodox Jewish clergy. She explains the institutional conflict over female ordination in the Orthodox community and tells us what her role will be at an Orthodox congregation in Chicago after graduation —and what title she’ll go by. Our Gentile of the week is writer Lauren Oyler, who tells us why honest cultural criticism is more important than ever, and recommends some books for our listeners to check out.  New York-area listeners, join us for a live Unorthodox taping with guests Senator Joe Lieberman and Bart Campolo, host of the podcast Humanize Me, on Wednesday, March 21 at 7:30 p.m. at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan. Buy tickets here.  We love hearing from our listeners! Email us or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Show your love for Unorthodox with our new T-shirts, sweatshirts, stickers, and, of course, baby onesies. Get yours here. This episode is sponsored by the Jewish Activism Summer School in Berlin. To learn more about the program, visit www.jassberlin.org.

Be part of our next Ask Unorthodox episode, airing during Passover. Send us your burning questions about Jewish ritual, culture, or traditions by March 9. Email them to Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave us a message at 914-570-4869.Our first guest is Israeli food writer and tv personality Gil Hovav, whose new memoir, Candies from Heaven, is about growing up in Jerusalem in a close-knit family (and not just any family: Hovav's great grandfather is Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who revived the modern Hebrew language). Our second guest is Alan Robert Ginsberg, author of The Salome Ensemble: Rose Pastor Stokes, Anzia Yezierska, Sonya Levien, and Jetta Goudal, about the four Jewish women behind the novel and subsequent 1925 film Salome of the Tenements.Our next live show is Wednesday, March 21 at the JCC Manhattan. Tickets here.  Show your love for Unorthodox with our new T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baby onesies. Get yours here: bit.ly/Unorthoshirt.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. This episode is sponsored by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at Harrys.com/Unorthodox.

This week, we're getting our grogger on for Purim. Returning to the show is film critic Jordan Hoffman, who preps us for the Oscars this weekend and offers his picks for the big winners. We're also joined by former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa, now a CNN analyst an senior lecturer at Yale, who tells us how being an FBI agent is not what it looks like on TV.Be part of our next Ask Unorthodox episode, airing during Passover. Send us your burning questions about the holiday, or really anything—Jewish traditions, baby names, etiquette—by March 9. Email them to Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave us a message at 914-570-4869.Our next live show is Wednesday, March 21 at the JCC Manhattan. Tickets here.  We've got swag! Show your love for Unorthodox with our new T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baby onesies. Get yours here.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. 

Our Jewish guest is Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal, whose new Netflix series 'Somebody Feed Phil' chronicles his eating adventures around the word. He tells about the episode filmed in Tel Aviv—with cameos from chefs Michael Solomonov and Uri Buri—and why he thinks food is such a unifying force. Our gentile of the week is June Thomas, managing producer of Slate podcasts and one of the hosts of the Double X Gabfest. She explains why podcast hosts like talking to other podcast hosts, and presents the panel with a great question: Who’s the best Jewish character in U.S. television history?Mark Oppenheimer will be speaking at the Greenwich Reform Synagogue Friday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m.  More info here. Our next live show is Wednesday, March 21 at the JCC Manhattan. Tickets here.  Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. We've got swag! Show your love for Unorthodox with our new T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baby onesies. Get yours here.We love hearing from our listeners. Email us or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.This episode is sponsored by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at harrys.com/unorthodox.

We're bringing you a special treat in our feed, a taste of our sister podcast, Israel Story.  First, we talk to the creator of Israel Story, and then we share one of our favorite episodes, King of the Hill.From the top of Tell El-Ful, an abandoned hilltop in East Jerusalem, you can see all the way from Amman to Tel Aviv, from Jerusalem to Ramallah. And you can also travel back and forth in time, moving between the biblical King Saul and the bearded King Hussein. Along the way, we'll hear tales of brutalized concubines, murderous tribesmen, biblical archeology, royal families and devastating wars.We're pretty sure that once you're done, you'll want to subscribe to their show as well.  Buy an Unorthodox shirt! Click here and use the coupon code UnorthodoxLaunch2018.Our next live show is Wednesday, March 21 at the JCC Manhattan. Buy tickets here.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. We love hearing from our listeners! Email us or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.

This week, we talk to writer Molly Lambert, who shares the story of her grandmother Margaret Bergmann Lambert , a German-Jewish high jumper barred from the 1936 Olympics. We're also joined by Annette Ezekiel Kogan and Jeremy Brown of Golem, the klezmer-rock band behind our theme music. They perform a few favorites for us, including 7:40, a song based on the "Hava Nagilah of Russia."But wait, there's more! We visited the Harlem Hebrew Language Academy Charter School, a diverse dual-language elementary school in New York City, to see if Liel could keep up with the students b'ivrit.Buy an Unorthodox shirt! Click here and use the coupon code UnorthodoxLaunch2018.Our next live show is Wednesday, March 21 at the JCC Manhattan. Buy tickets here.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. We love hearing from our listeners! Email us or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.

Recorded live at at the Limmud Festival, an international celebration of Jewish learning and culture, in Birmingham, U.K. over Christmas. Mark hosted the show with writer and challah maven Sarah Klegman. Our guests are Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, a vocalist, composer, and arranger specializing in Yiddish art and folk song, and Gabby Edlin, the founder of Bloody Good Period, which provides sanitary supplies to asylum seekers, refugees & those who can't afford them.Tablet is conducting a reader survey, and we'd love to hear from Unorthodox listeners (even if you don't read Tablet and only listen to Unorthodox). Plus, you'll be entered to win a $250 Russ & Daughters gift card! Take the survey here.Upcoming events:Stephanie will be moderating a discussion between Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler about their relationship and how Judaism figures in it on Thursday, February 15th at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City. It's free—RSVP here.Our next live show is Wednesday, March 21 at the JCC Manhattan. Buy tickets here.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more.We love hearing from our listeners. Email us or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.This episode is sponsored by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at Harrys.com/Unorthodox.

Our guest this week is Tova Mirvis, whose memoir, The Book of Separation, tells the story of her decision to leave Modern Orthodox Judaism, a world she recreated vividly for readers in the novels Visible City, The Outside World, and The Ladies Auxiliary.Our next live show is Wednesday, March 21 at the JCC Manhattan. Tickets here.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.Sign up for our newsletter here.

This week's episode was recorded at the Manhattan JCC. Our Jewish guest is comedian and actor Judy Gold, host of the podcast Kill Me Now. Our gentile of the week is Father James Martin, Jesuit priest and editor at large of America magazine.Missed the live show? Join us Tuesday, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. for an intimate, off-the-record chat with Rabbi Sara Luria at Beloved in Brooklyn. Tickets here.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Follow us on Twitter: @tabletmag, @liel, and @stuffism. You can also hear Stephanie discussing immigration and the American Dream under Trump on the Jan 29 episode of WNYC Midday, with two-time Unorthodox guest Negin Farsad.We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.

This week, we've got something a little different for you. In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan 27, we sat down with Sandy Myers and Desiree Nazarian of Selfhelp Community Services, an organization that provides assistance to Holocaust survivors in need in the New York area. There are thousands of survivors living in the New York area today, and they have very particular emotional and physical needs as they age. You can read more about the work of the organization—and how to help—in this extended feature on Tablet.Our next full episode will drop on Monday, Jan 29.Some announcements:Come hang with us on Tuesday, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m! We’ll be joining Rabbi Sara Luria for an intimate, off-the-record chat at Beloved in Brooklyn. Tickets here.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! And subscribe to our newsletter here. (Yep, it's different to the main Tablet newsletter!)We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.This episode is sponsored by Hello Fresh. Visit hellofresh.com and use promo code UNORTHODOX for $30 off your first week of deliveries.

Come see us live at the Manhattan JCC on Wednesday, Jan. 24 at 7:30 p.m., with special guests comedian Judy Gold and Father James Martin! More info and tickets here. And on Tuesday, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m., we’ll be joining Rabbi Sara Luria for an intimate, off-the-record chat at Beloved in Brooklyn. Tickets here.This week on Unorthodox, Mark calls up Roy Moore's 'Jewish lawyer,' and Stephanie sits down with Jeffrey Masters, host of the podcast LGBTQ&A, which documents stories of the LGBTQ community. We're also joined by Anne Edelstein, author of a new memoir about death and grief, Lifesaving for Beginners.Want more Unorthodox in your life? Join our official Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes! We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our new listener line: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.This week's episode is brought to you by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at Harrys.com/Unorthodox.

We have two upcoming events! A live recording at JCC Manhattan on 1/24 (tickets here), and a intimate, off-the-record schmooze with the hosts at Beloved in Brooklyn on 1/30 (tickets here). Plus, we're looking for a new producer—maybe that person is... you?This week, Mark sits down with Rabbi Joseph Hample of the Tree of Life Congregation in Morgantown, West Virginia. We're also joined by musicians David Chevan and Warren Byrd of the Afro-Semitic Experience, who tell us about fusing Jewish and African American liturgical traditions. Want more Unorthodox in your life? Sign up for our newsletter, and join our Facebook group to chat with the hosts and see what happens behind-the-scenes!We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message on our hotline: 914-570-4869. We may share your note on the air.This episode is brought to you by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at Harrys.com/Unorthodox.