In the wake of Israel’s stunning victory over Iran—an event many have called miraculous—Jews around the world are reflecting on the nature of divine intervention and the power of prayer. Can we, and should we, pray for miracles? In this deeply thoughtful episode, Rabbi Shlomo Brody joins Scott to explore the halachic and emotional dimensions of tefillah in desperate times. What does it mean to ask for something that defies natural law? Is there a spiritual cost to praying for impossible outcomes...
Jun 30, 2025•1 hr•Season 8Ep. 33
When the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear sites this week, the Middle East—and the world—entered a new phase of conflict. In this urgent episode, Scott speaks once again with Yaakov Katz, former editor of The Jerusalem Post , about what these strikes mean for Israel’s war effort, the potential consequences of regime change in Iran, the risks of escalation, and how this moment may redefine the geopolitical landscape. This is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand what’s really ...
Jun 23, 2025•39 min•Season 8Ep. 32
Two Israeli embassy staffers shot in Washington. Jewish activists burned in Boulder. A mayoral candidate in New York who refused to condemn the Holocaust gaining momentum. Antisemitism in the United States is no longer hiding in the shadows — it’s on the march, in broad daylight. In this urgent bonus episode of Orthodox Conundrum , Scott Kahn speaks with Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz and Andy Weiss about the troubling rise in antisemitic violence and rhetoric, the mainstreaming of hate, and how American...
Jun 19, 2025•1 hr
In this spontaneous and unfiltered episode of Orthodox Conundrum , Scott shares heartfelt reflections on Israel’s war against Iran—not from a political or military perspective, but through personal experience and the lens of faith. What does it mean to believe in Divine providence during a time of fear and uncertainty? How should we grapple with the moral and spiritual implications of war? Without a script or agenda, this episode wrestles with the difficult questions that arise when religious co...
Jun 16, 2025•36 min•Season 8Ep. 31
Twenty months into the war with Hamas, many Israelis and supporters abroad are asking the same urgent question: how will this end? In this in-depth episode of Orthodox Conundrum , Scott Kahn is joined by Yaakov Katz, one of Israel’s most respected journalists and author of While Israel Slept , to examine whether Israel’s military goals are still realistic — or even defined. They discuss the uncertain state of the war, Netanyahu’s political maneuvering, the role of the Chareidi parties, internati...
Jun 09, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Season 8Ep. 30
Megilat Rut — the Book of Ruth — is one of the most beloved and widely read books in the Hebrew Bible. Because we read it annually on Shavuot, many people are familiar with its basic storyline. But its very familiarity can sometimes obscure its most powerful messages. In this episode, I’m joined by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman of Bar Ilan University, who offers a fascinating lens through which to revisit Ruth’s story: the world’s most popular fairytale — Cinderella . By comparing the two narratives, ...
May 26, 2025•49 min•Season 8Ep. 29
Can science be a vehicle to get closer to God? The Rambam famously answered in the affirmative. In the second of the 1000 chapters of his Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah chapter 2, the Rambam writes, “What is the method towards loving and fearing God? At the moment that a person investigates His wondrous and massive actions and creations, and sees through them His endless and infinite wisdom, he immediately loves, praises, and extols, and desires tremendously to know the great Name. In th...
May 19, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 8Ep. 28
Please note that this episode discusses sensitive topics and uses explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Today, the Orthodox Conundrum is releasing a new episode of Intimate Judaism that my Intimate Judaism co-host, Talli Rosenbaum, and I recorded with Yonina Rubinstein, where we explore how parents can approach conversations about sexuality with sensitivity, clarity, and confidence. How can we talk to kids about sex in a way that’s honest, healthy, and grounded in Jewish values? Yon...
May 14, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 8Ep. 27
Last Thursday, Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago became Pope Leo XIV. While Jews may believe that this shouldn’t matter to us at all, this is most likely false. The pope commands the allegiance of well over a billion Roman Catholics worldwide, and his ability to help shape their opinions about the Jewish people and Israel should not be underestimated. To discuss what his election means for the Jewish people, and to review his predecessor Pope Francis’s record towards Jews and the Jewish state, ...
May 12, 2025•22 min
The thought of Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, who died in 1935, remains extremely influential today in religious Zionist circles. Rav Kook’s ideology, particularly as interpreted by his son, Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, in books like Orot, has helped to set the agenda for much of the dati leumi world. Over the past couple of decades, however, additional works written by Rav Kook have been published, and some of the ideas they contain are extraordinarily fascinating and at times radical, even as the...
May 05, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 8Ep. 26
Colonel John Spencer, one of the world's leading experts on urban warfare, joins me for a wide-ranging conversation about Israel’s war against Hamas. We dive deep into the realities of modern combat, the strict standards of international law, and the false accusations of "genocide" being leveled against Israel. Colonel Spencer also shares insights from his recent high-profile debate alongside Dave Smith on Piers Morgan Uncensored , where he pushed back against the misinformation dominating media...
Apr 28, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 8Ep. 25
The Orthodox Conundrum Podcast is off this week, and we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. In the meantime, enjoy this classic episode about Orthodox Jews who leave Orthodoxy. There’s a phenomenon in the Orthodox world which is called by various names, though most commonly “Off the Derech” or OTD, and “Datlash,” short for “Dati Leshe’avar” - that is, formerly religious. For a community which prides itself on continuity and on passing the tradition from one generation to the next, the...
Apr 21, 2025•1 hr 20 min
I’m doing something a little different this week. Instead of discussing an issue in the Jewish world, I want to offer some inspirational words about the Seder as we enter the final week before the beginning of Pesach. To that end, I invited several of my podcast guests from the past year to present ideas that they find meaningful, with the hope that they will enhance your own Seder as we navigate celebrating Pesach during this challenging moment in Jewish history. In this episode, you will hear ...
Apr 07, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 8Ep. 24
We are now less than two weeks away from the night of the Seder, which is almost certainly the most widely practiced example of Jewish education in action. And that raises the issue of how we should define healthy Jewish education in general, and how best we can achieve it. These questions are doubly important because while there are many wonderful Jewish schools, there are, unfortunately, numerous educational institutions where religious growth and educational goals are met through the use of f...
Mar 31, 2025•1 hr 40 min•Season 8Ep. 23
This conversation with Rabbi Moshe Taragin presents an introduction to the profound - and profoundly human - religious philosophy of Rav Yehuda Amital zt'l, the founding rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion. Rav Amital's ideas fill a unique niche in the Religious Zionist world today, and in many ways stand as a corrective to some of the ideology that has become dominant in the dati leumi world. His teachings grapple with some of the most pressing tensions in Jewish thought and life: universalism ...
Mar 24, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 8Ep. 22
When hundreds of students enthusiastically sing and dance about dodging the draft, while thousands of others protect those same students by spending more and more time in the IDF because of a manpower shortage... something has gone seriously wrong. When institutions that receive millions of shekels of government money actively undermine the State of Israel by encouraging and celebrating draft dodging... something has gone seriously wrong. When a minister in the Knesset is involved in creating a ...
Mar 17, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 8Ep. 21
Several recent articles have raised a troubling question: Is Rabbi Meir Kahane making a comeback? In the wake of the horrific murder of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, some influential pro-Israel voices have turned to Kahane’s ideas, reviving a debate that many thought was long settled. In this episode, Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Sinensky and I dive deep into why this is a dangerous trend—one that must be confronted head-on from a Torah perspective. While many may be invoking Kahane’s philosophy with Israel’s...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 8Ep. 20
Domestic abuse is one of those topics that, sometimes, we simply wish would go away. It’s certainly among the very worst experiences that a person can have, yet it brings forward feelings of shame and failure, such that people are often reluctant to acknowledge that they are victims. Sometimes, they can’t even name it - either because they don’t recognize it for what it is, or because they are embarrassed and don’t want to admit it. Yet we can’t ignore it, and all of us need to better recognize ...
Mar 03, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 8Ep. 19
The act of talking - dignified and informative conversation, where people connect on a serious level with one another - is essential to the Jewish experience. This goes back to the very creation of Adam; the Torah describes God as breathing a breath of life into Adam, after which he became a nefesh chaya - a living soul. Targum Onkelos famously translates that phrase as ruach memalela - a speaking spirit. Accordingly, the fact that man is able to converse is part of his very essence. In a simila...
Feb 24, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 8Ep. 18
The Torah is very clear that theft is forbidden; no one doubts that this is true. It is, accordingly, very disturbing that religious Jews as a community don’t seem to be more ethical in these matters than people who don’t see the Torah as their guide to life. I am not suggesting that Orthodox Jews are worse than anyone else in these matters; I cannot possibly know if that’s true. It does seem, however, that Orthodox Jews as a whole are not better than any other community when it comes to honesty...
Feb 17, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 8Ep. 17
Ever since President Trump presented his plan (or his idea, as it’s unclear how planned out this really is) about resettling the Arab population of Gaza, the Jewish world has been in an uproar. Very loud voices on both sides of the issue have been talking not so much about its feasibility - many are extremely skeptical that this could ever come to fruition - but about whether it is ethical. Some insist that this is nothing less than ethnic cleansing, with all the negative implications that the t...
Feb 10, 2025•51 min•Season 8Ep. 16
What is it like for a doctor, who has spent his life treating patients, to become a patient himself? That was the experience of Dr. Avi Rockoff when he learned that he had a very serious form of prostate cancer, and which he chronicles in his new book, When the Doctor Becomes the Patient . He was exposed to what he terms “the medical industrial complex” from the other side of the physician's desk, and learned about some of the aspects of healthcare that he had taught for years, but from a very d...
Feb 03, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 8Ep. 15
William Faulkner in Requiem for a Nun famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” I repeatedly thought of that line as I read Dr. Malka Simkovich’s recent book, Letters From Home: The Creation of Diaspora in Jewish Antiquity . In that book she investigates the relationship of Jews living in the Land of Israel and Jews who remained in the diaspora after the conclusion of the Babylonian Exile, when the majority of Jews chose to remain outside of Judea rather than return back to t...
Jan 27, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 8Ep. 14
I recorded this episode hours before the first three Israeli hostages were slated to be released, and as a ceasefire was just beginning to be implemented by Israel and Hamas. Many people have noted that while Hamas is parading throughout Gaza and claiming victory - which is an absurd inversion of reality - and while the vast majority of the world is celebrating the end of hostilities (at least for now), the population which is the most muted about it are the residents of Israel, who have extreme...
Jan 20, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Season 8Ep. 13
With the news that Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire deal, Scott spoke to counterterrorism and intelligence expert Dr. Matthew Levitt to learn what the ceasefire entails, in what ways this falls short of Prime Minister Netanyahu's insistence upon total victory, how victory should be defined, why this ceasefire is happening now, whether Hamas is deterred, the the possibility of another October 7th taking place, what happens if a power vacuum forms in Gaza, the future of Palestinian stat...
Jan 16, 2025•33 min
Do Jews outside of Israel care enough about Israel? This is a loaded and perhaps unfair question. How could anyone make that determination? Nevertheless, it’s something I’ve been grappling with for some time, and I decided to pose this question on the Orthodox Conundrum Discussion Group on Facebook. Many people commented, both on the group and in private communications. And today's episode confronts that question directly through a panel discussion with Israel-engaged individuals in both Israel ...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 8Ep. 12
This episode of the Orthodox Conundrum discusses sexual abuse and child sexual abuse material. Listener discretion is advised. Sexual abuse is a problem everywhere, and the Orthodox community is no exception. While there unquestionably is more awareness of the problem today than there was in the past, there is still a long way to go before we can be proud of our record. One of the ongoing and very upsetting issues is when people in power cover up and downplay sexual abuse perpetrated by people w...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 30 min•Season 8Ep. 11
We live in times in which, I believe, we in the Orthodox world need to open ourselves to new ideas and new thinking that will help enhance our love and appreciation for God and His Torah. Maybe the best example of a contemporary thinker who has opened the doors of perception while remaining fully committed to Torah, halacha, the Jewish people and the Land of Israel is Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, colloquially known as Rav Shagar. I spoke with Rabbis Zachary Truboff and Yehoshua Engelman about...
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 8Ep. 10
An almost insidious problem that affects so many kids is being “under the radar”... that is, they’re generally ignored in school, camp, or other social settings by the teachers or group leaders because they’re doing “fine” - and I use that word advisedly. He or she is not the class genius, not the kid who asks questions, not the troublemaker, not the class clown. I’m talking about kids who likely have so much more to offer, but are never given that opportunity when the people who should inspire ...
Dec 23, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 8Ep. 9
Is Jewish education too focused upon a rationalist and scientific worldview, such that we sometimes don’t leave enough room for the imagination? I think that this may be true for large segments of the Orthodox world, particularly among the Modern Orthodox population. While we dare not undermine the great advances that our scientific worldview has given humanity, an overemphasis on rationality can also eliminate wonder and mystery from our understanding of the universe - and that can undermine ou...
Dec 16, 2024•52 min•Season 8Ep. 8
