Welcome to Diaspora Dialogues. This is an invitation to lean into some of the most important aspects of Jewish expression: talking, exchanging ideas, wrestling with texts.
This project was born out of a deep concern for the fracturing among Jewish people in Seattle. While our diversity can be a source of a vibrant Jewish life, today we are being pulled apart by political and ideological differences. But as much as we might try to distance ourselves from one another, our fates remain deeply interdependent.
Over the course of this series, we’ll hear conversations between guests wrestling with some of today’s most challenging topics, such as:
Our duty to ourselves vs our duty to others.
Allyship in the fight against antisemitism.
Jewishness with and without Zionism.
The conversations you’ll hear aren’t debates with talking points. We aren’t seeking consensus. There are no final answers. And we won’t be able to cover all perspectives.
Instead, our guests have agreed to bravely engage publicly with one another; and to do so with intellectual curiosity and emotional vulnerability. With a commitment to stay in dialogue, even when it's difficult.
This work is deeply personal to me and my spouse and co-producer, Noa Brazg. It is largely inspired by her grassroots intra-communal dialogue work with Sam Leeds, who she met after a fiery exchange in the Seattle times. We’ll hear from Sam and Noa in one of the upcoming episodes.
Noa and I are deeply committed to Seattle Jewish life. I have been in the Pacific Northwest since the age of 9, when my family emigrated from the Soviet Union seeking refuge from antisemitism. Noa is a 3rd generation holocaust survivor. Her family made Seattle Jewish community their home after a generation in South Africa. She was born at the same hospital in Seattle as our daughters. Which is momentous, considering both of our families have relocated across countries and continents for the past 3 generations.
While we’ve had many experiences that have filled us with hope and pride for our people, we’re also witnessing how ideological divisions are leading our community to self-destructive tendencies.
We’re seeing Jews unable to share space with one another in the same shul, school, community event. Ideas are vilified and those who hold those ideas, or are perceived to hold those ideas, are judged. Many of us are showing up with so much certainty and clarity on questions of immense complexity, questions that hold countless perspectives and contradictions. Questions that are too important to answer with hubris.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel reminds us that "words create worlds." Dialogue, for Heschel, was a sacred act, not just an exchange of ideas but an opportunity to create something transformative.
Similarly, Joshua Leifer writes in his recently published *Tablets Shattered* about the importance of engaging in relationships and dialogue across ideological divides, even when those divides feel irreconcilable. He argues that it is precisely through this engagement that we honor the complexity of our peoplehood and our shared humanity.
We are under no illusions that the conversations on this podcast will hold all the answers or solve our communal challenges. Diaspora Dialogues is our attempt to offer a Jewish space for processing, listening, and engaging across ideological divides. because we are too few to ostracize each other, and the challenges are too great to not leverage our full communal potential.
Thank you for joining us on this journey.
Arthur & Noa
