Search for Meaning with Rabbi Yoshi

What does it mean to be a Zionist today? How do we build a society rooted in Jewish identity, democracy, social responsibility, and a commitment to peace?In this episode of Search for Meaning, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback welcomes Israeli educator and community leader Maya Donner, who is visiting Stephen Wise Temple and Schools through an exchange program with Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, where she is pursuing a master's degree in Jewish Education.Maya lives at Kibbutz Na'aran in the Jordan Valley and leads Kvutzot Habhira, a nationwide movement of cooperative communities dedicated to education, social action, and building a more just Israeli society.Raised in a secular Zionist home in Haifa, Maya has devoted her life to reimagining the pioneering ideals of the kibbutz movement. She shares what it means to live in an intentional community built around collective responsibility, mutual support, and the question: What needs to be done?Their conversation explores the complexities of living in the Jordan Valley, the challenges of reconciling Israel's security needs with the pursuit of peace, and Maya's vision of a humanistic Zionism rooted in Jewish and democratic values.Maya also shares her deeply personal experience of October 7, 2023, when her partner was called into military reserve duty. In the months that followed, she helped organize educational programs for children and families displaced by the attacks, finding purpose amid fear and uncertainty.Ultimately, this is a conversation about the power of education and community, finding meaning through action, and choosing hope even in the darkest times.

What began in a family garage during the COVID-19 pandemic has grown into one of Los Angeles's most inspiring volunteer movements.In this episode of Search for Meaning, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback sits down with Yossi Segelman, founder of Our Big Kitchen Los Angeles (OBKLA), to explore how a simple act of kindness became an extraordinary force for good.In 2020, Yossi and his wife, Chaya, began assembling snack boxes for hospital workers and first responders. Soon, they were preparing meals for people experiencing food insecurity. Today, OBKLA has welcomed some 80,000 volunteers, prepared more than 700,000 meals, and inspired similar kitchens across the country.But for Yossi, the numbers tell only part of the story.Guided by four principles—Meals, Love, Unity, and Community—OBKLA brings people of different faiths, backgrounds, and generations together to prepare fresh, nutritious kosher meals for anyone in need. Along the way, volunteers discover something equally nourishing: connection, purpose, and the joy of doing good together.Rabbi Yoshi and Yossi discuss the Jewish values that animate OBKLA's work, the remarkable story of Holocaust survivor Margaret Feder, whose memory lives on through the kitchen, and the unexpected ways that preparing meals together can build bridges in an increasingly divided world. They also reflect on a recent gathering of volunteers from Stephen Wise Temple and Greater Zion Church Family in Compton, who came together to prepare 900 meals in a single evening.For Yossi, who spent decades in the jewelry business before finding his calling in community service, the work has transformed his understanding of success. Every volunteer represents a world of possibility, and every meal is an opportunity to honor another human being.It's a conversation about gratitude, generosity, Jewish identity, and the extraordinary ripple effects of a simple mitzvah.Because sometimes the most meaningful way to change the world is one meal at a time.Want to get involved? Experience the joy of volunteering at OBKLA! Whether you come on your own, with family and friends, or with colleagues, you'll help prepare delicious meals for Angelenos in need while building connections with others.Visit www.obkla.org to learn more, or sign up for a volunteer session.

Recorded on the third anniversary of October 7, this episode of Search for Meaning features Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback in conversation with filmmaker Kari Hollend, co-director and producer of The Campaign: Disinformation in a Time of War. Created as a companion to Warren Kinsella’s book The Hidden Hand, the documentary investigates coordinated disinformation, digital propaganda, and their role in fueling antisemitism and threatening democracy.Kari shares how the aftermath of October 7 shook her sense of belonging in Toronto’s arts community—and how making the film deepened her Jewish identity and renewed her sense of purpose. Together, she and Rabbi Yoshi explore the challenges of confronting falsehoods, the importance of including uncomfortable and competing perspectives, and what it takes to help people listen across deep divides.It is a candid conversation about truth, responsibility, and Jewish resilience—and the hope Kari finds in community, unexpected allies, and the next generation.Learn more about the film at campaigndoc.com.

What does Zion mean to the Jewish people—and what happens when Jews themselves profoundly disagree about its meaning? In this Kol Nidrei sermon, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback traces Zion through the arc of a Jewish life and explores two ancient teachings: U’vacharta bachayim—“Choose life”—and Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem—“You stand this day, all of you.” At a moment of deep division, he offers three challenges for sustaining the Jewish story: Know it. Teach it. And make room for one another inside it.

Rosh Hashanah morning at Stephen Wise Temple, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback explores an ancient Hebrew word — Hineini, "Here I am" — through the lens of one of the newest challenges facing us: artificial intelligence. Weaving together the Binding of Isaac, a teaching from the Mussar master Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian, and the work of Israeli thinker Micah Goodman, Rabbi Zweiback asks what AI can and cannot give us — and what it means to keep practicing the very human capacities technology can't replace: listening, patience, forgiveness, showing up for one another when there's nothing to fix.A personal reflection on loss, presence, and the difference between a tool that serves us and a person who makes a claim on our lives.

What can Torah teach us about anxiety, grief, resilience, shame—and the work of healing a shattered heart?On this episode of Search for Meaning, I sit down with Rabbi Dr. Tal Sessler, author of Torah for Mental Health: Jewish Wisdom for Psychological Growth. A rabbi, philosopher, spiritual counselor, and psychotherapist-in-training, Tal has spent his career exploring the intersection of Jewish wisdom, philosophy, and the human search for meaning.His new book begins with a striking Jewish idea: brokenness is not an aberration. According to the Kabbalistic teaching of shevirat ha-kelim—the breaking of the vessels—it is woven into the very fabric of creation. From there, Tal brings Torah into conversation with contemporary psychology, exploring Moses’s despair, Jacob’s wrestling, Joseph as a “wounded healer,” and the extraordinary human capacity for resilience and growth.We talk about what rabbis can learn from therapists—and therapists from rabbis; the difference between surviving trauma and growing through it; and whether faith and religious practice can actually help heal what the Psalmist calls the “shattered heart.”We also discuss a particularly moving connection between Tal and Rachel Goldberg-Polin. At the beginning of her memoir about her son Hersh, When We See You Again, she quotes three words from Tal: “Words are redemptive.” We explore what those words mean in the aftermath of unimaginable loss—and why telling our stories can itself become part of the work of healing.It’s a conversation about brokenness and resilience, Torah and psychology, the power of language, and what Jewish wisdom can teach us about becoming more whole.Learn more about Tal at https://www.rabbisessler.com

Rabbi Yoshi’s derash from Beach Shabbat, delivered on Shabbat Nachamu — the Sabbath of Comfort that always follows Tisha b’Av.Beginning with a personal story from his own wedding thirty years ago, Rabbi Yoshi explores what it means to love God “b’chol levavcha” — with all of your heart — and why our tradition asks us to bless God not only in the good times, but in the painful ones too. Drawing on this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vaetchanan, the Mishnah’s teaching on gratitude, and a hidden echo of the Book of Lamentations found in our daily prayers, this message speaks to the moment we’re living through — a “Golden Age” of American Jewish life now shadowed by rising antisemitism — and points toward Tu b’Av, the festival of love, just six days away.🎥 Recorded at Stephen Wise Temple’s Beach Shabbat, Santa Monica

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback welcomes back civil rights attorney and Zioness founder Amanda Berman for her second appearance on Search for Meaning. Recorded days after Tisha B'Av, the conversation opens with the atmosphere in New York following Mayor Mamdani's video calling Prime Minister Netanyahu a war criminal, the mayor's Tisha B'Av statement, and a stabbing on the Upper West Side — and what it feels like, right now, to be a visible Jewish activist in the city.From there, Amanda unpacks the framework she's spent years refining: the distinct categories of Jews, Judaism, Israel, and Zionism, and why collapsing them into one another fuels both antisemitism and bad-faith political attacks — including on committed Zionists like Rahm Emanuel. She makes the case against binary language like "pro-Israel" and "anti-Israel," and argues for why Zionism still matters as a living movement even 78 years after Israeli statehood.The second half turns to hope: the Black-Jewish coalition work Amanda has built alongside Rabbi Zweiback and Bishop Michael Fisher, including their trip to Israel timed to the Ethiopian holiday of Sigd, the "wedge issues" that complicate Black-Jewish solidarity today, and what real, non-transactional coalition-building actually requires.Learn more or get involved at zioness.org.

What really happened to hatred in America after World War II?Most of us were taught that defeating Hitler marked a turning point — that America emerged from the war more tolerant, more unified, more committed to its democratic ideals. Historian Steven J. Ross is here to tell us that story is a myth. And he has the documents to prove it.In this episode, Rabbi Yoshi sits down with one of America's most compelling Jewish historians to discuss Ross's new book, The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy — a USA Today bestseller that uncovers a hidden chapter of postwar American history. When the war ended, antisemitism and racism didn't recede. They surged. Organized hate groups more than doubled between 1940 and 1946, and a network of domestic terrorists set about — in their own words — finishing the job Hitler had begun.But that's only half the story. The other half is about the people who fought back: the citizen-spies recruited by the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, and the Anti-Nazi League, who infiltrated these groups at great personal risk and brought their dangerous work to light. Their names have been largely forgotten. Ross gives them back to us.Rabbi Yoshi and Steve talk about the history, what it illuminates about this moment in American Jewish life, and — in true Search for Meaning fashion — where a man who has spent his career in some of the darkest chapters of human experience still finds hope and meaning.About Steven J. RossSteven J. Ross is Dean's Professor of History at the University of Southern California and the Myron and Marian Casden Director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. The first person in his family to go to college, he holds degrees from Columbia, Oxford, and Princeton.His books include Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Los Angeles Times bestseller; Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, winner of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Film Scholars Award; and Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America, nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.His latest book is The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy (Bloomsbury, 2026).More at his USC Dornsife faculty page: https://dornsife.usc.edu/profile/steve-ross/Learn about the book at https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/secret-war-against-hate-9781635578003/

In this urgent follow-up to their conversation from June 2025, Rabbi Yoshi sits down again with Ambassador Gary Grappo — former U.S. Ambassador to Oman, Chief of Staff to the Middle East Quartet, and one of America's most seasoned diplomatic voices — to make sense of the Iran MOU signed just days before this recording. Together they examine what the deal actually does and doesn't do, why the Strait of Hormuz provision troubles so many observers, and what meaningful nuclear verification would require from a regime that has never won a war and never lost a negotiation. Ambassador Grappo speaks candidly about what disappoints him in this moment — a war he believes was unnecessary, a strategy that attacked Iran at its strongest rather than its most vulnerable point, and an MOU so loosely worded that either side can walk away from nearly any commitment it contains. And yet he finds reason for genuine, if cautious, hope: the Iranian government has never been weaker since 1979, its economy is in desperate straits, and the pressure from ordinary Iranians on their leadership to deliver relief may yet prove to be the most powerful force in the room. Drawing on nearly four decades of experience in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, and Oman, Ambassador Grappo brings clarity, candor, and hard-won realism to one of the most consequential moments in the modern Middle East.Recorded June 24, 2026. Released July 3, 2026.