Mainstream Jewish communal leaders have, for ages, been talking about "skewing younger" with programming. But none of them would dare come near Sinners' Shabbat, a sexy, raunchy burlesque show, ripe with bondage ropes, leather skirts, cleavage and kippot and queer couples. Helmed by Tova Sterling, a chef and influencer in New York City, the events were born out of her feeling not at home in conventional Jewish spaces—and finding a community on the fringes.

Meanwhile, not far away, in Manhattan, Chabad debuted Fins and Scales, a pay-what-you-can kosher omakase dining experience at a Chabad house in Greenwich Village. Diners enjoyed lightly charred madai, sea bream and fresh sashimi, happy to take part in a luxurious fine-dining experience if all it cost was a donation and signing up to Chabad's mailing list.

So what's going on here? Are these sorts of ultra-modern shticks the future of Judaism, or just passing gimmicks? And are they even "Jewish" events if they're totally divorced from religion and tradition? The hosts of Not in Heaven share their thoughts and disagreements.

Plus, the hosts recap the tumultuous trauma felt by hundreds of Canadian teenagers on a recent March of the Living trip: they silently recreated the death march from Aushewitz to Birkenau in a walk led by former hostages and survivors of Oct. 7; they felt the heat from forest fires that decimated swaths of the hills surrounding Jerusalem; and on their way out, in Ben Gurion airport, they witnessed a Houthi missile explode on a runway right outside the building. Have the emotional intensity of these trips gone too far? Are we traumatizing future generations in the hopes of having an impact? Our rabbinic hosts weigh in.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

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Most Jewish holidays date back thousands of years. We commemorate the time when an ancient Persian with a triangle hat tried to kill the Jews, when the Maccabees rededicated the temple in Jerusalem, when we escaped slavery in Egypt and the seas parted ways. But in the past century, Jews have added three new holidays, all of which fall in the span of a week.

We're now at the tail end of the trilogy of "memory days": Yom HaShoah, Yom ha-Zikaron and Yom ha-Atzmaut. And, perhaps because they're recent additions, the way in which we mark them is susceptible to shifting, particularly after Oct. 7. Just this week, former hostages and survivors of Oct. 7 marched in the March of the Living in Poland. The USC Shoah Foundation is expanding its mission beyond the Shoah, collecting testimonies of antisemitism in the modern world.

It begs the question: How do you memorialize events when you're still living through them?

That's the topic for this week's episode of Not in Heaven, a podcast about the future of communal Judaism. Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat and Matthew Leibl join to discuss these traditions, memory engineering, and how the stories we tell about the past shape our present—and our future.

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Marc Weisblott (editorial director), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

Support The CJN

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• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here)

It's election season in Canada, with a record-breaking 7.3 million voters having already cast their ballots ahead of April 28. And between Passover seders and weekly Shabbat sermons, there's been no shortage of opportunities for Jewish communal leaders to weigh in on federal affairs during this high-stakes election cycle.

But should they?

An Israeli think tank recently used AI to analyze 4,400 sermons from 2021 to 2024. Across denominations, about half of all sermons focused on politics—with a clear jump to roughly two-thirds post-Oct. 7, including 80 percent of modern Orthodox sermons.

Rabbis are divided. Some see it as their duty to guide their community and stand up for values they believe to be in the best interest of the Jewish people; others prefer to keep divisive topics out of synagogues, focusing instead on what binds us together.

It's a ripe topic for our first-ever episode of Not in Heaven, The CJN's new podcast about the future of communal Judaism, taking over our previous weekly debate program, Bonjour Chai. Avi Finegold returns with a new panel of rabbinic voices: Yedida Eisenstat is a scholar, writer and associate editor at the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization in Washington, D.C.; and Matthew Leibl is a freelance rabbi in Winnipeg with a background in sports radio.

"How should your Jewish values affect your vote?": Read the new On One Foot column by Avi Finegold in the Spring 2025 premiere issue of Scribe Quarterly

Credits

• Hosts: Avi Finegold, Yedida Eisenstat, Matthew Leibl
• Production team: Zachary Judah Kauffman (editor), Marc Weisblott (editorial director), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
• Music: Socalled

Support The CJN

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to Not in Heaven (Not sure how? Click here)