A calm meditation on exile, diaspora, and home in Jewish life.
Rabbi Sharon Brous frames a wide-ranging conversation with Professor David Kramer around exile, diaspora, and what home can mean in Jewish life.
Jewish learning with moral urgency.
IKAR Podcasts offers Jewish learning in a live communal register, moving between sermons, source study, holiday teaching, and public conversation. Its episodes pair Torah and ritual memory with questions of justice, safety, responsibility, grief, and civic life.
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IKAR Podcasts is a broad audio record of Jewish communal life as it is taught, argued, prayed, remembered, and organized. The show is less a studio program than a window into a live learning community. Episodes often carry the texture of the room: Shabbat greetings, Chag Sameach, dedications for healing or memory, blessings before study, source sheets being passed around, and speakers framing why a conversation matters now. That informality gives the feed its force. It can feel gentle for a moment, then suddenly urgent. Rabbi Sharon Brous appears frequently as a guiding IKAR voice, bringing moral clarity to questions of Jewish safety, Israel, antisemitism, and the responsibilities of a community under strain. Her teaching does not separate spiritual language from political consequence. One episode weighs the claim that protecting Jewish bodies also requires protecting the Jewish soul. Another traces postwar Jewish hopes in Australia through the memory of Holocaust survivors and descendants seeking a life without violent antisemitism. The show also makes room for close holiday teaching. Pesah episodes return to Egypt, the Seder table, Moses, Michamocha, the splitting sea, and the startling power of stories that sound impossible yet shape a people. Rabbi Deborah Silver invites listeners to picture liberation through childhood Haggadah images and ritual gestures. Rabbinic Intern Jacob Schatz approaches song, music, and redemption through text study and personal memory. Rabbi Cheryl Peretz uses humor to open questions about which Exodus stories communities choose to believe and repeat. The feed also includes civic engagement, such as a Lunch & Learn with Senator Ben Allen connected to IKAR's Know Your Reps work. Those conversations keep the show grounded in relationships with representatives, elections, organizing, and shared public responsibility. Guest teaching can be literary and intimate, as in Agnes Borinsky's reflections on an AIDS memorial project, remembered love, recorded testimony, and sacred encounter. Across episodes, the register is warm but not soft. It assumes that Jewish learning should change how people see the world, how they grieve, how they vote, how they remember, and how they protect one another. IKAR Podcasts suits listeners who want Torah with present-tense stakes rather than detached commentary. It is communal, emotionally literate, and willing to ask hard questions out loud.
Made for: For listeners drawn to Jewish study, holiday teaching, and spiritually grounded public ethics. It especially suits people who want communal texture alongside serious reflection on justice, memory, Israel, antisemitism, and civic responsibility.
What sets it apart: The show preserves the feel of IKAR's live communal rooms, where blessings, dedications, source study, sermons, guest speakers, and organizing conversations sit side by side. Its strength is the way ritual language and public responsibility are treated as one conversation.
Sermons, talks, classes, and more from IKAR Rabbis and the IKAR community.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A calm meditation on exile, diaspora, and home in Jewish life.
Rabbi Sharon Brous frames a wide-ranging conversation with Professor David Kramer around exile, diaspora, and what home can mean in Jewish life.




Daily halacha, case by case.


Parsha questions carried into serious Torah argument.
Rabbi Sharon Brous hosts Dr.
This episode announces upcoming Jewish educational events, including a Tanakh intensive in New York and a Talmud study series on justice principles in the West Coast.
Rabbi Sharon Brous co-teaches a Talmud class with her father, Rabbi Michael Panitz, focusing on the complex story from Chagigah 15, highlighting their personal and educational bond.
Rabbi Sharon Brous introduces a podcast episode focused on Jewish teachings about justice and responsibility, starting with dedications and a blessing for learning.
Rabbi Deborah Silver reimagines the Exodus through the Zohar, depicting the Israelites leaving Egypt with broken spirits rather than triumph.
Rabbi Sharon Brous interviews IsraAID global CEO Yotam Polizer in the IKAR sukkah about field work from the 2015 Nepal earthquake to Gaza after October 7, 2023.
Rabbi Sharon Brous and Donniel Hartman examine how Jewish moral criticism should respond to climate devastation, artificial intelligence, violent extremism, antisemitism, and the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Raphael Warnock delivers an Isaiah-centered sermon at IKAR, linking 'every valley shall be exalted' to equity, integrity, and collective belonging.
IKAR's Rabbi Sharon Brous hosts Sarah Glass and Lani Santo for a Pride Shabbat conversation about queer identity, ultra-Orthodox communities, and leaving prescribed lives.
Rabbi Sharon Brous introduces a conversation with State Senator Ben Allen as part of IKAR's ongoing Know Your Reps campaign, focusing on political engagement and community organizing in an election year.
Rabbi Sharon Brous discusses the moral and existential challenges facing Judaism, emphasizing the need to distinguish between sacred and profane values to protect the Jewish soul.
Rabbi Sharon Brous introduces a text study session focused on the themes of song and music in Jewish tradition, particularly around Pesah and the Star of Redemption.
Rabbi Deborah Silver explores different imaginative depictions of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt during Pesach, drawing from personal Haggadah memories, Seder traditions, and cultural references like the movie Prince of Egypt.
Agnes Borinsky shares a poignant story about an interview with journalist David Dunlap for an AIDS memorial project, recounting his memories of his lover Warren P.
This episode explores the power of storytelling in Jewish tradition through a humorous anecdote about a child's exaggerated version of the Exodus story, highlighting how narratives shape faith and community.
IKAR Podcasts features Rabbi Sharon Brous and her father, Rabbi Michael Panitz, teaching the Talmud story of Elisha ben Abuya, known as Acher.
Rabbi Sharon Brous shares a story about a friend's Holocaust survivor grandparents who immigrated to Australia seeking safety from anti-Semitism and a place to practice Judaism freely.