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Small-tent Judaism: The way of the future?

JL;DR SUMMARY Rabbi Ari Witkin argues against an overly inclusive Jewish engagement approach, suggesting that liberal Judaism's focus on accessibility has resulted in a loss of depth and Jewish literacy. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski.

  • At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself.
  • This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude.
  • Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from.
  • But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
  • And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.
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Tags

LeadershipJewish TraditionReligious PracticeJewish LiteracyInclusivityHistorical PerspectivesAstrologyHoroscopesCommunity Authority

Places mentioned

Montreal, Quebec, Canada
"But the interesting thing, I was in Montreal, and I actually had a lot of people reach out to me, call me, email me."
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
"I grew up in a big conservative synagogue in Toronto that had the, the model, the old like 19th century German, you know, conservative Judaism model of the scholar rabbi."
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
"We have a Jewish school in Winnipeg that goes JK to 12 and they send their kids."
Manitoba, Canada
"It's like, I don't want to say shameful, but it just makes me so crazy that people don't really know what Shavuot is and don't really know when it is."
Israel
"I see people, a lot of kids participate in BBYO. People have mezuzahs on their doors. People come out for rallies for Israel."
United States
"I'm back in the US. It was a good week in Canada."
This podcast episode was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 56535
Cairo Source ID 71
Retrieved 2025-07-10 05:30:27 UTC
Curated 2025-07-10 06:04:36 UTC