This week on Unorthodox, we've got food on the brain. Our first guest is Kerry Brodie, founder of Emma's Torch, a cafe in Brooklyn that employs and trains refugees and political asylum seekers. She tells us about her unlikely transition from government work to culinary school, what she learned about refugees by working alongside them in the kitchen, and why she believes food is such a powerful uniting force. Our second guest is Lily Diamond, the Maui-born blogger behind Kale and Caramel, and the...
Nov 09, 2017•56 min
This week on Unorthodox, we're totally bewitched. Our Jewish guest is novelist Alice Hoffman, whose new book is The Rules of Magic, a prequel to her bestselling 1995 novel Practical Magic, which was made into the 1998 film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. She tells us how she re-immersed herself in the magical Owens family 20 years later, the ways in which her Jewish background influenced her interest in rebellious women, and why it's important to her to redefine the popular mythology ...
Nov 02, 2017•58 min
This week, we're live from JCC Manhattan! Our Jewish guest is writer A.J. Jacobs—our first-ever guest back in 2015—whose latest book is It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree. He tells us about his unlikely entry into the world of genealogy, the famous—and infamous—relatives he discovered, and, in a 'Maury'-style twist, reveals which hosts are related to him. Our gentile of the week is actor Kobi Libii, who played Cantor Duvid on Season 3 of 'Transparent' and currently...
Oct 30, 2017•1 hr 2 min
Our Jewish guest this week is David Litt, author of Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years, a memoir about his time as a speechwriter in the Obama White House. He tells us about teaching President Obama to say 'chag sameach' for a Passover video, writing jokes for the White House Correspondent's Dinner, and the time his grandpa sent him a water pipeline proposal to show the president. Our gentile of the week is U.S. Naval War College professor Thomas Nichols, whose latest book is The...
Oct 19, 2017•47 min
This week on Unorthodox, we're all about 5778. Our guest this week is Rabbi Shai Held, president and dean of the continuing education institute Mechon Hadar, and the author of The Heart of Torah, a new two-volume book of essays about each weekly Torah portion. He tells us why he dreaded tackling Leviticus but learned the most from it, explains why he's optimistic about the future of Judaism, and gives us some useful advice for the new year. Come see us live on October 25 at the Manhattan JCC! Ge...
Oct 09, 2017•49 min
This week, we're all about atonement. For our third annual apology episode, we're joined by University of Nebraska–Lincoln professor Ari Kohen, who explains what makes an apology truly bad (and why he stopped blogging about apologies). Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor turned clemency advocate, tells us about the personal journey behind his career change. Vanessa Zoltan, host of the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, returns with a true story about a family apology that didn’t quite...
Sep 28, 2017•49 min
This week on Unorthodox: We recap the Butnick-Cohen nuptials (mazel tov!), Liel has a big reveal, and our guests wrestle with complicated legacies—both personal and political. Our first Jewish guest is Annabelle Gurwitch, the author of Wherever You Go, There They Are, a funny, wise memoir about the families we’re born into—and the families we choose. She talks about growing up with a fabulist father, becoming a drug mule for her elderly mother, her colorful Southern Jewish clan, and the various ...
Sep 14, 2017•59 min
This episode is brought to you by the letter A, for ally. Our Jewish guest is Brooke Kroeger, author of The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote. She tells us about the men whose support helped women get the vote, and what those of us who want to be allies to marginalized communities today should learn from their efforts. Our gentile of the week is German-Danish historian Thorsten Wagner, the academic director of FASPE: Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, wh...
Sep 07, 2017•53 min
If you love listening to Unorthodox, please make a donation before our fundraising drive ends next week! This week: Everything you ever wanted to know about Jewish weddings. Author Anita Diamant tells us about The Jewish Wedding Now, her newly updated guide to planning a meaningful Jewish celebration. Roberta Grossman, director of the documentary Hava Nagila (The Movie) explains how the catchy Hebrew folk song became a staple at Jewish weddings. Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie of New York’s Lab/Shul exp...
Aug 31, 2017•1 hr 35 min
If you love listening to Unorthodox every week, please consider donating to keep us going for another hundred episodes. We put together a bunch of fun gifts, from tote bags to studio visits to an exclusive Sept. 6 cocktail party in New York City with Mark, Liel, and Stephanie. Our Jewish guest is linguist Sarah Bunin Benor, an expert in Jewish languages and the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism, an in-depth study of American Jewish language...
Aug 24, 2017•1 hr 2 min
If you love listening to Unorthodox every week, please consider making a donation to keep us going for another hundred episodes. We put together a bunch of fun gifts for donors, from tote bags to studio visits to a cocktail party with Mark, Liel, and Stephanie. We’re #blessed with three Jewish guests this week: Leah Gottfried, Jessica Schechter, and Danny Hoffman, the team behind the popular web series 'Soon By You,' which depicts the dating drama of young, modern Orthodox Manhattanites. They te...
Aug 17, 2017•59 min
We’re celebrating two years—and 100 episodes!—of Unorthodox with a very unorthodox fundraising drive. We've put together a bunch of fun gifts, from tote bags to studio visits to a cocktail party with Mark, Liel, and Stephanie. If you love listening to Unorthodox every week, please consider making a donation to keep us going for another two years. This week, we turn the show over to Tablet contributor Periel Aschenbrand, who interviews hosts Mark, Stephanie, and Liel about the past two years of U...
Aug 10, 2017•54 min
Episode description: This week, we’re coming at you live from JCC Manhattan, with some very special guests and other fun surprises. But first: If you're a fan of Unorthodox—and if you're reading this, you must be!—please consider making a donation to our fundraising drive so we can keep producing the podcast you love for another 99 episodes. We've put together a whole range of fun gifts to sweeten the deal, from tote bags to studio visits to a cocktail party with Mark, Liel, and Stephanie. Our J...
Jul 31, 2017•1 hr 7 min
First things first: Don't forget to get tickets for our live show Tuesday, July 25 at 7:30 p.m. at JCC Manhattan! This week, we find out Mark isn't the only Oppenheimer who sneaks into movies without paying. And we've got two Jewish guests joining us: First, our favorite film critic Jordan Hoffman returns to tell us all about the summer's best movies, including the new film War For the Planet of the Apes, which he explains is actually a story about Jews. Then we talk to Stacy Berman about her jo...
Jul 20, 2017•1 hr 11 min
Hey J-Crew: Before you do literally anything else today, buy a ticket to our next live show in NYC on July 25! This week we talk Birthright, Hobby Lobby, and Jay-Z—oh my. Our Jewish guest is historian Jenna Weissman Joselit, whose latest book is Set in Stone: America's Embrace of the Ten Commandments. She tells us how the Ten Commandments, which have become so politicized, were actually once a unifying force in America, and dishes on the 19th century drama over a Lower East Side synagogue’s stai...
Jul 13, 2017•1 hr 6 min
Break out the bug juice—it’s summer camp week on Unorthodox! We’re talking campfires, Color War, and Mark’s traumatic summer at a nudist camp. Our first guest is Sandy Fox, a doctoral candidate studying language and everyday life in Zionist, Yiddishist, and denominational summer camps. She’s also the founder of Vaybertaytsh, a feminist podcast entirely in Yiddish. She explains how different Jewish ideologies shaped each kind of camp, tells us about a post-war summer camp for children of Holocaus...
Jun 29, 2017•1 hr 7 min
Back in May, we interviewed L.A.-based comedian and writer H Alan Scott about converting to Judaism, surviving cancer, and his deep love of The Golden Girls. We recently caught up with H Alan by phone to discuss his first trip to Israel (for Tel Aviv Pride!) and his subsequent Newsweek article about "pinkwashing" and the BDS movement. We discussed LGBT politics, Zionism, and anti-Semitism—and of course, hummus. Though we talked before the Chicago Dyke March controversy, this conversation should ...
Jun 28, 2017•11 min
Description: This week on Unorthodox, don’t even think about cutting Israel out of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. Our Jewish guest is journalist and Tablet columnist Jamie Kirchick, who returns to the show to discuss his new book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age. He tells us about the emboldening of extremes on both sides of the political spectrum, the dangers of countries like Hungary rewriting their World War II history, and what it all means for the Uni...
Jun 22, 2017•51 min
This week, we recorded a special crossover episode with Lexicon Valley, the podcast hosted by linguist John McWhorter. John was a guest on our show in December 2016, and when we weren’t interrupting him, we were discussing things like the word ‘like’ and his latest book, Talking Back, Talking Black. We sat down with him again for an in-depth conversation about whether there’s such a thing as Jewish English, the beauty of yeshivish, and, of course, the dinner scene from 'Annie Hall.' Check out Le...
Jun 15, 2017•40 min
Our Jewish guest this week is Fred Kuhr, who hosts The Point, a Toronto-based talk show that brings gay and straight men together “to see what happens.” He explains the stereotypes gay men have about straight men, the difference between American and Canadian homophobia, and adjusting to Montreal bagels as a Brooklyn-born expat. Our Gentile of the Week is Jonathan Frakes, best known for his portrayal of Commander William T. Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He tells us about navigating obs...
Jun 08, 2017•57 min
This week on Unorthodox, we’re still full from all that Shavuot cheesecake. Our Jewish guest is actor Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays Jack Barker on HBO’s Silicon Valley, and whose latest book is My Adventures with God. He tells us about getting recognized in shul (he started going to synagogue twice a day to say kaddish after his mother died), what it’s like to tackle something as intimate as faith while working in Hollywood, and the time he had to shoot a movie on Yom Kippur, even though five of...
Jun 02, 2017•1 hr
This week, we break down Donald Trump’s Holy Land adventure. Our Jewish guest is Yascha Mounk, a lecturer at Harvard whose area of research—how to preserve liberal democracy in the face of populism—has made him extremely popular lately. He tells us how worried we should be about rising populist tides in Europe and the U.S., explains some of the difficulties currently facing multiethnic societies, and tells us how it felt when he became a U.S. citizen in March. Our Gentile of the week is Irish no...
May 25, 2017•46 min
Unorthodox host Mark Oppenheimer recently published an op-ed in The New York Times about our aversion to using the word 'Jew,' as opposed to 'Jewish.' Is 'Jew' still considered a slur? By many, yes. Should we reclaim it? Definitely, says Mark. He discussed his op-ed with On the Media's Brooke Gladstone a couple of weeks ago, and we're pleased to share their conversation with you here in full. (Don't worry, the next full episode of Unorthodox will go live as scheduled on May 25!) As always, we we...
May 24, 2017•12 min
When Maya Jankelowitz and her husband Dean opened Jack’s Wife Freda in New York City in 2012, they mined their respective Israeli and South African upbringings for family recipes and traditional spices. The result was trendy downtown dining with a home-cooked vibe and a dash of nostalgia (the restaurant is named after Dean's grandparents). The pair now run two restaurants, identically named, and just published the Jack's Wife Freda cookbook, which features recipes like peri peri chicken, malva p...
May 18, 2017•43 min
This week's guest is comedian and writer H. Alan Scott, who was raised Mormon in St. Louis and converted to Judaism when he was 31. He’s preparing for his bar mitzvah by immersing himself in Jewish life and culture, and it’s all being chronicled in Latter Day Jew, a documentary by Aliza Rosen. H. Alan tells us about coming out to his Mormon family, how cancer jumpstarted his conversion to Judaism, and his deep love of The Golden Girls. Sign up for for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, b...
May 11, 2017•52 min
This week on Unorthodox: chocolate sausage! Our Jewish guest is Tablet’s food columnist Joan Nathan. Her latest cookbook is King Solomon’s Table: a Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World, which features recipes like schokoladenwurst, a dessert that made its way from Berlin to El Salvador in the 1920s (and doesn’t actually have any meat in it). She tells us about drawing inspiration from the flavors and spices of the ancient Jewish world and why so many Jewish chefs today ar...
May 04, 2017•48 min
This week on Unorthodox, we speak to the author of Donald Trump’s favorite book. Our Jewish guest is Danya Shults, the founder of Arq, a website and community inspired by Jewish culture. She tells us how her own interfaith marriage inspired her to help people “connect with Jewish life and culture in a relevant, inclusive, and convenient way,” and explains where—if anywhere—actual religion fits into the Arq universe. Our Gentile of the Week is Michael Knowles, managing editor of the Daily Wire an...
Apr 27, 2017•1 hr 4 min
This week on Unorthodox, we’re still trying to find those Holocaust centers Sean Spicer was talking about. Our Jewish guest is filmmaker Ferne Pearlstein, whose latest documentary, The Last Laugh, asks comedians like Mel Brooks and Sarah Silverman whether or not we can joke about the Holocaust. She tells us why she decided to tackle such a taboo topic, how gallows humor can be a survival mechanism, and whether it matters if the joke-teller is Jewish or not. The Last Laugh premieres Monday, April...
Apr 20, 2017•59 min
This week on Unorthodox, we’re filling up on chametz before Passover starts. We talk to bagel makers from Montreal to Australia (and Cleveland!), get the scoop on the bagel scene in Israel, and find out how bagels became the unofficial food of the Jews. Our guests span the globe, but have one thing in common: they love bagels. We talk to Ben Pigette, a lieutenant in the Royal Australian Navy who taught himself how to make bagels to impress his Jewish girlfriend. Geoff Hardman, co-founder of the ...
Apr 06, 2017•1 hr
This week on Unorthodox: a Jewish writer and an Episcopal priest walk into a podcast. Our Jewish guest is writer and essayist Daphne Merkin, whose latest book is This Close to Happy: A Reckoning With Depression. She tells us what it was like to write such a personal book—Tablet literary critic Adam Kirsch called it “a hybrid of memoir, case study, and confession”—and discusses the stigma that continues to surround depression in the Jewish community and beyond. Our Gentile of the Week is Father E...
Mar 30, 2017•49 min
