Tablet Studios

It’s been a whopper of a year: Israel at war with Hamas and Hezbollah, a decisive Trump victory, anti-Semitism on the rise, and formerly great American institution on the decline. Yet as this look back at 2024 in Rootless reveals, we’ve many reasons to be hopeful, at home and abroad. Why? Join us in looking back at the year and find out.

Hosted by Courtney Hazlett, Rabbi Diana Fersko, and Josh Kross, each episode we'll take a look at a current, cultural topic and talk about what it means for us as Jews, and how we react to it because we are Jews.

When Jordan Neely, a mentally disturbed man with a long rap sheet began threatening his fellow subway passengers one day last year, they were all terrified. But one straphanger, a Marine vet named Daniel Penny, stepped up, wrestling Neely to the ground and putting him in a chokehold. Tragically, Neely, who had health complications and was abusing drugs, died shortly thereafter, and New York’s ideologically motivated District Attorney decided to make an example of Penny. Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a columnist for the New York Post, joins Liel to talk about how the progressive obsession with race is crippling the justice system, about the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and about how pro-Palestinian activists are now leading vocal demonstrations about matters that have nothing at all to do with Palestine.

There are few political issues we consider more contentious than abortions. But what if we are getting this critical subject all wrong? Erica Pelman, the founder and director of SHIFRA, a group that helps Jewish women dealing with unplanned pregnancies, tells Liel about her journey from a high-powered job at the Department of Labor to starting her own organization, about the importance of listening to expecting mothers in distress, and about how we should rethink pretty much everything we think we know about abortion and have a more soulful and helpful debate that transcends those deeply flawed labels, “pro-choice” and “pro-life.”