Join Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback as he talks with an eclectic variety of thinkers, artists, and change-makers about their experiences (Jewish or otherwise) and their own search for meaning and purpose in their lives.
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Episodes
Search for Meaning With Brian Hersch
In this 66th edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts board game designer Brian Hersch. Taboo. Outburst. Super Scattergories. Have you played any of these modern classics at family game night? You have Brian Hersch to thank. Now a General Partner at Hersch and Company, with over $850 million in sales under his belt, Brian didn't set out to design games. His first career was in real estate development, where he honed a keen sense for business. Then came Trivial Pursuit. When the trivia board game first burst onto the scene in the 1980s, Brian was a natural, so much so that his friends urged him to use his creative energies to invent a game of his own. Bringing his business experience to bear on the idea, he set himself to doing some market research, and found [...]
Search for Meaning With Orly Erez-Likhovski
In this edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts Orly Erez-Likhovski, Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center. Erez-Likhovski is an expert in the Israeli judicial system and the reasonableness doctrine, which have been the target of a massive reform push by the far-right current ruling government. Erez-Likhovski helps listeners understand the controversy surrounding judicial reform, which has fueled massive protests and a historic level of civil unrest in the Jewish state over the last seven months. Having graduated from the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University, clerked at the Israeli Supreme Court, and earned her master's in law from Columbia, Erez-Likhovski is a member of both the Israeli and the New York bar, and has argued multiple cases in front of the Israeli Supreme Court. She is, then, perhaps better equipped than most legal [...]
Search for Meaning With Suzanne Horwich
In this edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts artist and educator Suzanne Horwich. Horwich, who hails from Rabbi Yoshi's hometown of Omaha, is the founder of Artists Giving Back, a program she started to bolster the spirits of Ukrainian refugees who have fled their warn-torn country for Poland. Horwich has long been drawn to the Syrian refugee crisis, but felt helpless as the world turned a blind eye to the horrors wrought by the Assad regime. When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, she resolved to take action. She eventually connected with Jonathan Ornstein, a friend of Wise and the head of the Krakow Jewish Community Center, which has pivoted from rebuilding the shattered Polish Jewish community to providing food, aid, medical supplies, and housing to those fleeing Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces. The former Director [...]
Search for Meaning With Ben M. Freeman
In this edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts Ben M. Freeman, author, educator, and founder of the modern Jewish Pride movement. Born in Scotland, Freeman rose to prominence during the Corbyn Labour Jew-hate crisis and quickly became one of his generation's leading voices against anti-Jewish racism. In February of 2021, he published Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People, which became known as the Jewish Pride manifesto. In October of 2022, he followed that book up with Reclaiming Our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride, the second in what will become a groundbreaking trilogy when he publishes his finale in 2024. Freeman's journey to Jewish Pride marries two distinct identities and experiences. For a long time, his identity as a gay man and his Jewish identity were, as he puts it "totally separate." While he was raised in a [...]