November 14, 2010

Broadcast Date: 
Nov 14 2010

A conversation with Liel Leibowitz, co-author of Chosen Peoples; Susannah Heschel, the daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, talks about a new play, Imagining Heschel, about her father; plus Jewish activists disrupt Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech at the Jewish Federations of North America's annual meeting.

Episode segments
  • The Chosen People
    Foreign Policy, Religion, National Politics, Israel/Palestine, Jewish Life
    Liel Leibovitz is a ninth generation Israeli who immigrated to the U.S. in 1999, where he works as a journalist and cultural critic and is a senior writer at Tablet Magaine.  In addition to Chosen Peoples: America, Israel, and the Ordeals of Divine Election, co-authored with Todd Gitlin, he is the author of: Aliyah: Three Generations of American Jewish Immigrants to Israel  and Lili Marlene: The Soldier's Song of World War II  (with Mathew Miller).  He next book, co-authored with Matthew Miller--Fortunate Sons: The 120 Chinese Boys Who Came to America, Went to School, and Revolutionized an Ancient Civilization  will be published in early 2011.
    Marissa Brostoff and Kiera Feldman

    We talk with Liel Leibowitz about his and co-author Tod Gitlin's encounter with the concept of chosenness, as it has played out in both Jewish and American histories.

  • Imagining Heschel
    Theater, Arts & Culture, Jewish Life
    Susannah Heschel is Eli Black Chair in Jewish Studies in the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College.  She is the daughter of the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
    Marissa Brostoff and Kiera Feldman

    Imagining Heschel starring Richard Dreyfuss and Rinde Eckhert explores an imagined private conversations between Cardinal Augustin Bea and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from 1962 – 1973, when Heschel was asked to aid the Vatican Council in formally exonerating the Jews for the death of Christ – a crucial repudiation of anti-Semitism.  We talk with Susannah Heschel about her father and the play.

  • Young, Jewish, Proud
    Israel/Palestine, Jewish Communities, Occupation
    Mathew Taylor is one of the activists who disrupted Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech before the annual meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America in New Orleans earlier this month.
    Marissa Brostoff and Kiera Feldman

    We talk with Mathew Taylor one of the members of YoungJewishProud, whose disruption of Netanyahu's speech at the annual meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America made it clear that the Prime Minister and the heads of mainstream Jewish organizations in the U.S. do not speak for them.