Jewish ideas with cultural nerve.
Tablet Studios is a multi-series feed for Jewish ideas, public debate, and cultural life. Its conversations move from weddings and Hebrew to activism, architecture, journalism, hostage redemption, Israel, and Western values.
PRESS PLAY
Tablet Studios functions like an audio magazine rack for contemporary Jewish life. The feed gathers several shows, each with its own temperature, but they share a concern with Jewish identity as something practiced, argued, inherited, defended, and revised in public. How to Be a Jew is the warmer side of the house. It follows Courtney Hazlitt, Rabbi Diana Fersko, and Josh Cross through conversations about weddings, comedy, architecture, Hebrew, print magazines, family, ritual, and cultural memory. The show often begins with something tangible. A bridal boutique, a magazine in the mail, a building, or a stand-up set becomes a way to ask what Jewish belonging means in daily life. That grounding keeps the big claims from floating away. Ruthless is more combative. It takes up activism, Israel, Britain, multiculturalism, Western liberal values, and the failures of institutions with a sharper political edge. Its interviews tend to frame public events as tests of courage, clarity, and moral seriousness. Jewish Studies Unscrolled brings a more scholarly rhythm, taking a text such as Nathan Hanover’s The Abyss of Despair and reading it against hostage redemption, Jewish law, history, and present-day grief. Across the feed, the recurring move is translation. Old obligations are brought into modern crises. Cultural objects are treated as arguments. Political disputes are read through Jewish values rather than detached punditry. The hosts are comfortable with sincerity, and the conversations often let guests build a full line of thought before tightening the point. It can be funny, especially around family, professions, weddings, and crowd work. It can also be grave, particularly when discussing October 7, hostages, antisemitism, sexual violence, war, and political fracture. The feed is best for listeners who want Jewish podcasts that are less about quick takes than about the form and force of Jewish life itself. It is not one mood. It is a studio imprint with range: intimate, argumentative, textual, cultural, and openly invested in why Jewish forms still matter.
Made for: For listeners interested in Jewish culture, ritual, politics, history, and public argument. It especially suits people who like long-form interviews that connect concrete stories to first principles.
What sets it apart: Tablet Studios stands apart by gathering multiple Jewish shows under one editorial sensibility, moving from intimate cultural questions to forceful political debate and close textual study. It treats Jewish life as both lived experience and public argument.
From weekly series examining unique angles on Jews’ place in the world, to inquiries into the details of Jewish text and tradition, Tablet Studios podcasts bring you insight and inspiration for the modern-day Jew. Our shows include How to Be a Jew, Unorthodox, Rootless, Re-Form, and more to come.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Tablet Studios makes Jewish identity tangible by tracing how belief and belonging take shape in ordinary choices, public arguments, and cultural forms.
Tablet Studios turns concrete choices into questions about Jewish identity. On How to Be a Jew, Courtney Hazlett, Rabbi Diana Fersko, and Josh Cross move from dietary prohibitions and wedding customs to architecture, home, language, and print culture.
A pig becomes an identity question, and suddenly your dinner table has homework.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A candid case for why Tablet asks readers to pay.
Tablet editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse uses the episode to explain why the magazine asks readers to pay for its work. The conversation is really about value in a media world where information is easy to find and harder to judge.
A wedding dress conversation that keeps circling back to Jewish ritual and calling.
Tablet Studios turns a wedding conversation into a thoughtful look at Jewish ritual, bridal work, and the pressure a dress can carry. Courtney Hazlitt hosts Rabbi Diana Fersko and Josh Cross in a discussion that centers on a guest who dresses brides, says she was chosen for the…
A film about architecture opens into a searching conversation about Hebrew, Israel, and carried homes.
Jewish identity comes through as a question of home, and architecture gives the conversation its clearest path into Hebrew, family memory, and Israel's place in the guest's life.
A practical look at activism as patient work built through allies, attention, access, and persistence.
Activism comes through as slow, practical work: learning the issue, finding allies with different strengths, earning attention, and getting close enough to institutions to affect decisions.
A grounded comic conversation about Jewish allyship, family expectations, and speaking up when it counts.
How to Be a Jew frames Jewish allyship as something lived in ordinary rooms, not just stated in public. The conversation with a comedian moves from family expectations and useful degrees to kids, dating, and mother-in-law jokes, letting humor do more than soften the subject.
Tablet's print revival becomes a sharp Jewish media conversation about attention, value, and what readers choose to invest in.
Tablet's return to print opens into a thoughtful conversation about attention, value, and the role of Jewish media in an online world where information feels endlessly available.
Oklahoma policy, framed as executive action.
Singapore markets, policy, and daily dilemmas.
School choice policy, close to the ground.
School policy through a parental-rights lens.
Host Liel Leibowitz interviews Professor Kerry Nelson about the ideological and political problems facing American universities.
Journalist Melanie Phillips discusses her new book and the UK's struggle with grooming gangs and the erosion of Western values.
Host Courtney Hazlett interviews actress and painter Lisa Edelstein about her new art exhibition and its Jewish cultural themes.
Host Courtney Hazlett and Rabbi Diana Fersko debate the pig's role in Jewish identity, with Rabbi Fersko expressing disgust and Hazlett advocating for reclaiming the conversation.
Tablet Magazine's editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse joins How to Be a Jew to explain the decision to launch a print magazine.
Courtney Hazlitt, Rabbi Diana Fersko, and Josh Cross bring Alana Newhouse into a season-closing conversation about Tablet's shift.
Wedding season sets the frame.
Courtney Hazlett opens How to Be a Jew with Rabbi Diana Fersko and Josh Cross.
Ruthless uses Jay Ruderman's Find Your Fight to argue that effective activism is narrow, evidence-based, and aimed at decision-makers rather than intimidation.
Courtney Hazlitt and Rabbi Diana Fersko interview Zarna Garg, the first non-Jewish guest on How to Be a Jew, about allyship, Jewish culture, and Garg's memoir This American Woman.
This episode examines Nathan Hanover's 'The Abyss of Despair' and a 17th-century hostage crisis, drawing parallels to modern events.