This used to be my favorite podcast. I listened every week with joy while preparing Shabbat dinner. But over the past year and a half, it’s become unbearable. At the very moment when Palestinians in Gaza are facing slaughter, this podcast has chosen silence, evasion, and self-pity.
Instead of grappling with the reality of Gaza
, the hosts prefer safer topics: campus politics in the U.S., anecdotes about estranged friends’ children, or the endlessly recycled question of whether Netanyahu even believes his own lies. Week after week, Noah ties himself into knots to preserve the illusion that his politics are still moral, while ignoring the enormity of what’s happening just miles away.
What’s most galling is the self-satisfaction. They nitpick Americans who speak out on Gaza, seizing on minor misstatements to undermine those perspectives, rather than acknowledging their own refusal to face the truth. It’s all very polite, very “progressive,” and ultimately deeply complicit.
History will not look kindly on this silence. This period will be remembered as a stain on Judaism and these episodes will stand as testimony that genocide can unfold in plain view while self-described progressives busy themselves with anything but the victims.
