Jewish Holidays
24 episodes
#5978: God Bless, Inshallah, Be'ezrat Hashem: Three Ways to Say Maybe
Same God, same syntax, three completely different social lives — how "God bless," "Inshallah," and "be'ezrat Hashem" do totally different jobs.
#5824: Herod's Four Walls: Why Only One Became the Kotel
Herod built four retaining walls around the Temple Mount. Three survive today — but only one became Judaism's holiest prayer site. Here's why.
#5612: Who Keeps Working During Sukkot?
An ideal of universal rest meets a city that doubles in size. Who kept the lights on during the pilgrim festivals?
#5493: Jerusalem Before Sukkot: Reconstructing the Pilgrim City
What did Jerusalem feel like to residents when Sukkot tripled the city? Archaeology and ancient sources reconstruct the transformation.
#5492: 21 Shofar Blasts a Day: The Temple's Lost Soundscape
The shofar wasn't just a Rosh Hashanah thing. In the Temple, horns sounded 21 times a day — marking work, worship, and water.
#5491: The Night the Temple Courtyard Glowed
What the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Talmud actually say about the Temple's all-night Sukkot celebration — and where the spectacle creeps in.
#5421: Why Secular Israelis Still Fast on Yom Kippur
A majority of secular Israeli Jews fast on Yom Kippur. What the data say about how faith gets handed down — and how observance becomes a weapon.
#5356: Torch Juggling in the Temple: Inside Sukkot's All-Night Water Festival
Fifteen hours of torch juggling, nonstop music, and a rain ritual the Torah never commanded — inside the Second Temple's wildest celebration.
#4119: Guilt as a Feature: How Judaism Processes Failure
Is guilt a feature or a bug in religious systems? One tradition has a built-in protocol for processing failure.
#4027: The Hand on the Head: Blessing Across Millennia
A spontaneous blessing in a Jerusalem cafe opens up 3,000 years of embodied tradition—from Jacob's crossed hands to the Friday night table.
#3608: The Lost Scent of the Temple: Incense in Jewish Tradition
How a core Temple ritual vanished from Jewish practice and became associated with other religions instead.
#3323: The 15-Word Blessing That Survived the Temple
How a three-verse biblical command became a mass spectacle drawing 100,000 people at the Western Wall.
#2950: Barley Beyond Soup: A Grain Guide
Pearl, pot, hulled, hulless — why barley labels matter for nutrition, cooking, and flavor.
#2929: The Radical Economics of the Sabbatical Year
How an ancient biblical debt reset is playing out in real time in Israel today.
#2926: Barley to Wheat: The Original Shavuot Grain Cycle
Before cheesecake and all-night study, Shavuot was a wheat harvest festival built on a barley-counting calendar.
#2870: Pottage, Cholent, and the Eternal Pot
Medieval pottage isn't dead — it evolved into Jewish Shabbat stews like cholent and hamin.
#2813: How Jerusalem Day Went From Thanksgiving to Sovereignty Display
The holiday began as a rabbinic day of thanks. Now 70,000 people march through the Muslim Quarter. How did it shift?
#2304: Walking to Jerusalem: The Ancient Pilgrimage Experience
What did it really mean to journey to Jerusalem in the Second Temple period? Explore the logistics, social dynamics, and spiritual weight of ancien...
#1917: Herman's Music Hour Vol. 2: Seder Remixes for Passover 5786
Herman presents AI-generated covers of classic Passover Seder songs, produced in Suno — the second installment of Herman's Music Hour.
#1825: A Slow-Motion Liberation for Passover 2026
Why does this Passover feel so heavy? We explore the seder as a "metabolic discipline" for a world at war.
#1243: How to Hack a Smart Home for the Sabbath
How do you navigate a smart home when you can't flip a switch? Explore the engineering behind making modern technology Shabbat-compliant.
#1241: The Friday Scramble: When a Nation Runs Out of Time
Explore why Israel remains on a Sunday-to-Thursday workweek and the economic, religious, and labor hurdles preventing a shift to a global schedule.
#1052: Coding the Cosmos: The Hebrew Calendar vs. Unix Epoch
Discover why the Unix Epoch fails when it meets the Hebrew calendar and how developers solve the "Sunset Problem" in modern software.
#924: When a Donkey and a Sloth Explain Purim
Explore the deep themes of Purim in Jerusalem during wartime, from the power of masks to the defiance of finding joy in the face of modern threats.