What happens when we take the art of questioning out of the ritual and into the world? In the debut episode of Four Questions, Ayin Press cofounders Tom Haviv and Eden Pearlstein turn the show’s four questions on itself. Joined by executive producer Ave Carrillo, they explore the Passover seder’s tradition of the four questions, what it means to begin from not knowing, and why a ritual about asking might offer a model for conversation far beyond the Jewish table. Over the course of this candid, funny, and searching conversation, they ask and answer four questions: (2:53) Why Four Questions?(15:55) Why Ayin?(25:53) Why now?(33:36) Where is Ayin going?And, true to the spirit of the show, there’s a fifth: Ayin’s Director of Programs, Penina Eilberg-Schwartz, calls in with a surprise question at the end. Along the way, they discuss how disagreement can be a form of closeness, as in a seder where three people never settled on a definition of God; how a friendship between two poets grew into a publishing house; and why real conversation, rooted in not knowing, feels like a radical act in a polarized moment. At a time when so much media is transactional and reductive, Four Questions, a podcast from Ayin Press, offers a glimpse of another kind of discourse. Grounded in Jewish wisdom, yet reaching far beyond it, Four Questions brings together diverse thinkers for wide-ranging conversations that explore the act of questioning as a spiritual, artistic, and universal practice. ++ Tom Haviv is a writer and artist, and the cofounder of Ayin Press. His debut book of poetry, A Flag of No Nation, was first published in 2019. He is also the creator of the Hamsa Flag Project and the author of the children’s books Woven (Somewhere, 2018), The Porcupine Prince (Somewhere, 2023), and the forthcoming How the Sun Was Won (Spring 2027), illustrated by Jessica Tamar Deutsch. His work has been exhibited internationally, and his writing has been translated into Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Spanish, and Greek. He lives in New York City. Eden Pearlstein is an interdisciplinary language artist and cofounder of Ayin Press. Over the past two decades he has created an eclectic portfolio of audio, visual, textual, and curatorial works and projects. Eden is the author of Nothing Is for Everyone: Poems, editor of Selah: A Báyò Akómoláfé Reader, and creative contributor to SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide by Cannupa Hanska Luger. Eden currently lives with his wife and two kids in Philadelphia. Penina Eilberg-Schwartz is a writer and editor based out of the Bay Area, and the daughter of two very different rabbis. With her partner Marty Piñol, she is co-author of the chapbook Everything in the Speaking of It (Alley Cat Books, 2019). Her first full-length work, In This Place Together (Beacon Press, 2021), is a literary book about joint nonviolence and imagination in Israel|Palestine, co-authored with Sulaiman Khatib. She is the director of programs at Ayin Press. Ave Carrillo is Executive Producer of Ayin Audio. She’s been telling stories through radio and podcasts since the late 90’s. At WNYC-FM, she launched the daily podcast NYC Now and oversaw investigative reporting on decades long sexual assault allegations at Rikers Island that became a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Before that, she served as Senior Producer of The New Yorker Radio Hour and has made stories on nearly every subject imaginable, for various public radio programs. Ave lives in Brooklyn with her husband and twin children.
