Podcast Summary: God as King in an Age of Authoritarianism

Identity/Crisis – Shalom Hartman Institute
Host: Yehuda Kurtzer
Guest: Rabbi Ethan Tucker (President, Hadar Institute)
Date: September 22, 2025

Episode Overview

In this thoughtful and probing episode, Yehuda Kurtzer and Rabbi Ethan Tucker reflect on the meaning and contemporary relevance of invoking "God as King"—particularly in the High Holiday prayer Avinu Malkeinu—in a time when concerns about authoritarianism and gender equality are especially acute. They explore the tension between inherited religious language and the moral, political, and personal values Jews bring with them into prayer, offering a nuanced discussion about ritual, authenticity, humility, egalitarianism, and community.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Avinu Malkeinu: A Common Judaism, a Discomforted Metaphor

[01:06–08:03]

• Kurtzer recounts Avinu Malkeinu’s emotional and communal power, its role in High Holidays, and the discomfort some feel with its “old school monarchy and patriarchy stuff.”
• He introduces Adam Seligman’s distinction between “ritual selves” (acting out of obligation, tradition) and “sincere selves” (seeking intention and meaning), asking:

  “Are we altered or even just informed as political beings in the world based on our religious imagination?” (06:30)

• The enduring potency of metaphors like “king” and the challenge of balancing progressivism and tradition in liturgy is explored.

2. The Prayer Leader’s Role: Sincerity Over Semantics?

[08:03–09:33]

• Tucker confesses that, as a leader, his main job is “to project my sincerity... to project the sense that I am in it. I am not at a remove from it.” (08:11)
• The words matter, but often “the cadence of the words is just as important as their decoding.” (08:44)
• Kurtzer adds that as a prayer leader, he tries to “help people to have a particular religious experience... let's confront the words themselves.” (09:33)

3. Reading Sympathetically: Meaning, Modification, and Humility

[10:40–21:54]

• Tucker champions engaging liturgy with sympathy:

  “The choice to be in liturgy in any form is to say, I'm going to receive something and imagine that by speaking through these words, what I feel and what I have to say will be more profound.” (11:00)

• Modifications (e.g., adding women’s names to prayers) may be necessary, but so is “the humility of realizing you are probably not the first person to have the problem.” (13:59)
• Not everything in liturgy should be changed hastily; sometimes exploring historical or alternative interpretations (as with Rav Hutner’s view of coronating God) can powerfully reframe discomfort.
• Example: Including biblical women like Hannah and Rebecca in supplemental prayers to address gender erasure in traditional texts. (12:57)

4. Limits of Liturgical Elasticity

[15:23–21:54]

• Kurtzer: “Where’s that resistance for you?... where it stretches beyond what you would feel comfortable in?”
• Tucker: The line is crossed when prayer is merely an act of “rebelling and resisting and outsmarting the words,” rather than “genuinely feeling like you are their heir and are speaking a truth they wanted you to speak.” (16:47)
• Modifying liturgy is valid when approached with “authenticity” and sincere engagement with tradition, rather than personal distaste alone.

5. Humility vs. Autonomy in Prayer

[21:54–27:11]

• Prayers that emphasize human smallness (e.g., “I am dust of the earth”) can feel “gross” or “violent” to those struggling with self-worth (Kurtzer, 22:06).
• Tucker: Traditions meant to be humbling may not fit everyone—what’s subjugating to one may be liberating to another.
• Pastoral challenge: “The liturgy is aiming for that broad impact horizontally across the diversity of community and vertically through the axis of time, for challenges and needs that are not yet clear to us.” (27:00)

6. The Power and Risks of Collective Prayer

[27:11–30:02]

• Kurtzer: Prefers communal prayer as “it kind of thatches us together... it feels to me almost like there’s more safety and control in theory. Nobody gets left behind.” (27:11, 27:53)
• Tucker: Communal/individual prayer modes each have strengths; individual expressions in communal settings can hit harder, but there’s value in the plural.

7. Taxonomy of Egalitarian Approaches in Jewish Liturgy

[30:02–40:33]

• Kurtzer presents four models:
  1. Open Participation: All genders lead, but original (often male) language persists.
  2. Retrieval: Historical sources empower inclusive changes.
  3. Axiomatic Principle: “Just say, I’m not saying those words anymore.”
  4. Tucker’s Model (quoted): Law is an “eternal light refracted through changing lenses of reality... gender was a proxy for other categories... a shifting response may be more faithful fidelity to the underlying values of the halacha.” (32:38)
• Tucker: Advocates honesty about both tradition and current reality, stretching tradition by drawing out its core values rather than looking for “stray precedent.”

8. How Change and Continuity Work in Jewish Law and Liturgy

[40:33–45:53]

• Kurtzer: Shares how Tucker’s approach helped him bridge Orthodox and egalitarian contexts, underscoring how communities make conscious choices about tradition and progress.
• Rachel Adler is quoted: “The Torah has to speak to us in a language of human.” (41:49)
• Tucker: His background of “having grown up and davening in those different spaces” (Orthodox and egalitarian) shapes his quest to “articulate language that can unite as much of Amisrael as possible.” (42:51, 44:05)

9. Humility, Leadership, and Who Gets to Lead Prayer

[45:53–46:43]

• Prayer leadership codes value “people who have felt pain and had deep responsibility... you want someone up there who has some skin in the game and can bear the knocks that the liturgy may deal as they're going through it.” (45:56)

10. Advice for Jews Praying Amid Political Anxiety

[46:43–50:22]

• Kurtzer: This year, many will enter synagogue “with a lot of feelings about authoritarianism and politics and truth and all of their values at stake.” (46:43)
• Tucker:
  • Reminds us that divine kingship is originally contrasted with human monarchy—invoking God’s rule “is implicitly a demotion... of the centrality of all the other rulers.” (47:50)
  • Liturgy should not be escapist: “Davening centers us with a certain set of values... but at the end of the day, it's got to be translated into what kind of world are you building on the ground?” (49:09)
  • The greatest long-term impact comes from building just, loving families and communities: “It is going to get you divine favor on the ultimate day of judgment, because that’s what matters.” (50:17)

Notable Quotes by Timestamp

• “If we laugh off the seriousness of this monologue by saying, don’t be foolish, that’s just Judaism... is that meaningful sincerity?”
  – Yehuda Kurtzer [06:59]

• “As a leader, you have to offer... that I am in it. I am not at a remove from it.”
  – Ethan Tucker [08:09]

• “The choice to be in liturgy... is to say, I’m going to receive something and imagine that by speaking through these words, what I feel and what I have to say will be more profound.”
  – Ethan Tucker [11:00]

• “Part of what it is to be a sympathetic reader is to have the humility of realizing you are probably not the first person to have the problem.”
  – Ethan Tucker [13:59]

• “It's the difference between when prayer is an experience of rebelling and resisting and outsmarting the words, as opposed to genuinely feeling like you are their heir and are speaking a truth they wanted you to speak.”
  – Ethan Tucker [16:47]

• “I find it to be like a violent text... who the hell are you to tell that imagined person of the past that you're better than it?”
  – Yehuda Kurtzer [22:14]

• “That can be escapist... the world was the same. It's going to be just a regular Tuesday and Wednesday... Davening doesn’t do all the work.”
  – Ethan Tucker [49:01]

• “The liturgy is aiming for that broad impact horizontally across the diversity of community and vertically through the axis of time, for challenges and needs that are not yet clear to us.”
  – Ethan Tucker [27:00]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Avinu Malkeinu and Liturgy’s Nostalgic Power: [01:06–08:03]
• Role & Responsibility of Prayer Leaders: [08:03–10:40]
• Reading and Modifying Liturgy: [10:40–16:42]
• Elasticity and Resistance in Prayer: [16:42–21:54]
• Humility and Autonomy: [21:54–27:11]
• The Power of Community Prayer: [27:11–30:02]
• Taxonomy of Egalitarian Strategies: [30:02–40:33]
• Change, Continuity, and Halakha: [40:33–45:53]
• Leadership and Liturgy: [45:53–46:43]
• Advice for Praying in Political Uncertainty: [46:43–50:22]

Tone & Style

The conversation is intimate yet intellectually rigorous, marked by respect for tradition, honest grappling with discomfort, empathy, and a hopeful belief in the ongoing evolution of Jewish prayer and community.

Essential Takeaways

• Singing or reciting traditional prayers with troubling language can be both an act of humble fidelity and of creative reinterpretation.
• Healthy tension exists between honoring collective traditions and personal authenticity or ethical sensibility.
• Adding, supplementing, or reframing parts of the liturgy can be powerful, but should arise from an engaged, humble relationship with the tradition—not mere reaction or rebellion.
• Approaches to egalitarianism in prayer vary; the most enduring, per Tucker, seek out and apply the persistent values underlying halacha rather than merely searching for precedent or giving up on the tradition altogether.
• At times of political distress and anxiety about real-world kings and authoritarian leaders, invoking "God as King" can be a rejection of human power, not an endorsement—and the ultimate work lies in building communities and families imbued with justice and humility.