The Bluegrass Schmooze Louisville Public Media

We’ve been counting up to it for seven weeks, and it’s finally here: Shavuot, in the month of Sivan! On Shavuot, we celebrate receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai after a long journey through the desert. We’ll learn all about it this episode. And we’ll meet some Kentuckians who had revelations of their own. Hal Forbess and Ken Shuck are both Jews by choice, and they share their journeys with us, and with you.

When Ira Glass created "This American Life" in 1995, he wanted to expand on traditional news reporting and tell stories in new ways. Same thing in 2014, when he and members of his production team brought "Serial" to life and changed the podcasting world. But while he's known for innovation, he traces his own storytelling roots to older influences he experienced growing up in a Jewish community in the 1960s and '70s.
Ira joined us for a conversation ahead of his appearance in Louisville on June 1. Find show details at LPM.org/ira

We talk a lot on our show about old times. Like, reeeally old times, from many thousands of years ago. But this month, Iyyar, we explore three holidays that commemorate more recent moments in Jewish history: Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, Yom Ha’atzma’ut, Israel’s Independence Day, and Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day. And we kibitz with three Kentuckians who help educators teach about the Holocaust in ways that are ethical and engaging:
—Janice Fernheimer is Zantker Charitable Foundation Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, and James B. Beam Institute for Kentucky Spirits Faculty Fellow at the University of Kentucky, and co-director of the University of Kentucky Jewish Heritage Fund Holocaust Education Initiative.
—Karen Petrone is Professor of History and co-director of the UK-JHF Holocaust Initiative and a specialist in Russian and Soviet History.
—Alice Goldstein has published widely on demographic studies focusing on population mobility in reaction to modernization, and on contemporary American Jewry. Alice is the author of Ordinary People, Turbulent Times, in which she tells the story of her own family’s resilience and escape from Nazi Germany.
If you’re a middle or high school teacher in Kentucky, you can learn more about the University of Kentucky Jewish Heritage Fund Holocaust Education Initiative and sign up to participate at holocausteducation.uky.edu.

Animator and theatre creator Yehuda Husband shares his journey to Judaism, and how his intersecting identities shape him as an artist and father.

On this episode, we learn the story of Purim & kibitz with "The Bourbon Rabbi," Chaim Litvin.

Two rabbis and a comedian walk into a bar... ok, we're still workshopping the punchline. But this month we're kibitzing with Jewish comedian Ariel Elias! Ariel lives in New York City, she’s been on Jimmy Kimmel Live and featured in Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, and Good Morning America… and she grew up right here in Kentucky.
And we’ll talk about the month of Adar Rishon, or, Adar One. This year there are two of 'em, because it's a leap year — a phenomenon that happens seven out of every 19 years. We'll explain it all in This Month in Judaism, and we won't make you do any math.