Podcast Summary: Identity/Crisis – Yehuda Kurtzer on Arc: The Podcast

Podcast: Identity/Crisis (on Arc: The Podcast)
Host: Mark Oppenheimer (with interviewer David Sugarman)
Guest: Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute
Date: September 30, 2025
Theme: The State of Contemporary Jewish Life, Rabbinic Leadership, and Cultural Shifts

Episode Overview

This episode features Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, in conversation with journalist Mark Oppenheimer and interviewer David Sugarman on Arc: The Podcast. The conversation is wide-ranging and inquisitive, delving into the current realities of North American Jewish communities, the meanings and materialities of Jewish life, and institutional challenges—particularly focusing on the rabbinic pipeline crisis, Jewish identity performance (starting from the humble kippah), consumerism, and the Israel-diaspora relationship. The tone is alternately playful and profound, rich with lived experience, wit, and philosophical inquiry.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Symbolism and Semiotics of the Kippah

Timestamps: 09:52–19:17

• Kippah as Identity Marker:
  The discussion opens with playful banter about the many shapes, materials, and sizes of Jewish skullcaps, and what they may (or may not) signal about politics, religiosity, or aesthetic commitment.

  • “Things that have aesthetic qualities are sometimes ideological, and sometimes they're just aesthetic... I struggle with this a lot as a bald man. There's a whole adhesive question.”
    —Yehuda Kurtzer [03:09, expanded at 18:49 and 19:17]

• Decoding Styles:
  The conversation touches on how kippah styles used to signify more rigid community boundaries, which have since blurred considerably:

  • “There's all this… performative ultra Orthodoxy with certain types of kippot…”
    —Kurtzer [10:35]
  • “It's hard to kind of use a kippah to map on a person's ideology.”
    —Kurtzer [10:55]

• The Tiny Disc:
  They have fun parsing the cultural signal of the “tiny disc” kippah—its ubiquity among good-looking, “style-conscious” young men and its meaning in Israel as a liminal token for those loosely connected to Orthodoxy.

• Kippah and Public Representation:
  Discussion branches into the public presentation of Jewish identity, especially among politicians (e.g., Joe Lieberman never having worn a visible yarmulke in Congress):

  • “The Jews always present as gentile in Congress…if you go online, you'll find more photographs of Barack Obama in a Kippah than of Joe Lieberman.”
    —Oppenheimer [11:14]

• Beards, Shaving, and Tradition:
  The beard as another signifier; cultural and religious meanings in Orthodoxy, Halacha about shaving, and modern practices.

2. The Crisis in the Rabbinic Pipeline

Timestamps: 21:23–44:39

• Rabbi Shortage:
  Yehuda and Mark explore why American Jewry faces a real shortage of clergy, despite a stable (but not booming) institutional scene.

  • “There’s a wide array of hypotheses…the thing I’m most cynical about…is people who come up with a single hypothesis—which is usually just an inverse of some program they want to start.”
    —Kurtzer [21:23]

• Structural Drivers:

  • Decline in clergy across religions
  • Organized religion’s weakened hold in America
  • Rising expectations and burnout for rabbis (“what is expected of them from their congregants in terms of a wide variety of competencies…” [22:24])
  • Gender dynamics—“The feminization of any profession leads to the decline of men who want to do it.”
    —Sugarman [23:33]
  • Consumer culture around religion making the job less appealing as a stable career option.

• Changing Notions of Rabbinic Calling:

  • Shift from a pastoral model to “prophetic leadership”—rabbis as activists (linked to the 1960s, social justice, and the civil rights movement).
  • “Jobs are about pursuing justice [now], which is very different than jobs that are about providing care, pastoral service, spiritual wisdom, etc.”
    —Kurtzer [24:42]

• Recruitment and Training:
  The model of recruiting “those who love Judaism” to the rabbinate is flawed; sometimes, passion must be married with skills like textual learning or pastoral care.

• Compensation and Economic Realities:

  • The cost of rabbinic training is described as a “scandal.” Most Orthodox rabbinical trainees have education subsidized, while most liberal seminary students bear massive costs.
  • “Communities put their dollars where they consider their priorities...In our community, philanthropic dollars unfortunately go primarily towards defensive agendas related to the state of Israel, to fighting anti-Semitism. They don't go toward…the basic spiritual needs…”
    —Kurtzer [36:05–37:28]

• Local, Targeted Philanthropy:
  Anecdote of a Brooklyn Syrian community investing hundreds of thousands to “grow” their own future rabbi—suggesting that community-centered, long-term investment matters.

3. The Broader Consumerist Trap in Jewish Life

Timestamps: 46:28–55:51

• Modern Orthodox Cost of Living:
  The price tag on full participation (neighborhood, kosher food, day school tuition, Israel trips, summer camps).

  • “The cost of living associated with being a modern Orthodox Jew in America is stratospheric...the way that I do that is by guaranteeing a kind of AGI of $300,000 and above.”
    —Kurtzer [44:39]

• Parental and Cultural Aspirations:

  • Jewish day schools not only expected to provide affordable and excellent Jewish education, but also elite programs (“they want it to look like Horace Mann” [47:12])
  • The ambition for assimilation into mainstream American success, even at spiritual cost.

• Passover Packages and the Inversion of Tradition:

  • From grandma’s table to luxury cruises in Cancun—traditions transformed by affluence and competition.
  • “How does the community not know that’s fucked up? I said it. You didn’t. But how did they not know we’re broken. We’re broken if that’s what we’re doing.”
    —Sugarman [53:56]
  • Kurtzer concedes the practice is sometimes enjoyable but warns of unhealthy materialist creep: “That is a choice to live in very particular and extravagant ways that have nothing to do with your religion…” [54:18]

4. The Hartman Institute: Present Projects and Vision

Timestamps: 57:13–59:28

• Focus post-October 7th on Israel, the crisis in liberal Zionism, the broader American Jewish relationship to the state of Israel.
• New rabbinic ordination pilot: mid-career, fully subsidized, designed to address the pipeline crisis.
• Launching a new center in Washington focusing on Judaism and public policy, aiming to transcend partisanship and reclaim the American Jewish tradition as an agent of pluralism and moral leadership.
• “What it means to be a Jew in America right now, what it means to be a Zionist right now, what it means to care about human rights, what it means to think about our liberal Jewish commitments…there’s a real hunger for that.”
  —Kurtzer [57:17]

5. Is This a Golden Age of American Jewry?

Timestamps: 59:28–62:44

• While Yehuda agrees that “nothing’s great right now,” he insists that by all historic and global metrics, this remains the best era for Jews in the diaspora.

• He pushes back against narratives of decline and self-fulfilling prophecies:

  • “When you're in something good, people tend to have a lot of fear of its disappearance…It feels like a big mistake to embrace a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that it’s gotten away from us instead of saying, how do you get back to work now?”
    —Kurtzer [59:52]

• Strong criticism of “anti-Semitism industrial complex” in Jewish institutional life—especially those embracing anti-democratic measures in response to campus challenges.

  • “The industry that claims to be fighting anti-Semitism in America…by embracing anti-democratic measures…that is just a total abandonment of the Jewish project.”
    —Kurtzer [61:10]

6. Quick-Fire Personal Reflections

Timestamps: 66:15–72:23

• Belief in God:

  • “I don’t know that I conventionally believe in God…God cares about me, it doesn’t make sense to me…I identify most with the rabbis who tried to build a Jewish world that was rooted in taking responsibility for it and giving back God, God’s autonomy.”
    —Kurtzer [66:24–67:22]

• Alternate Careers:

  • Might have stayed in academia or run for office but suspects he would’ve disliked both.

• Advice to Young People:

  • “Your career is more of a jungle gym than a ladder…Not a huge believer in long term planning. Don’t burn bridges. Don’t paint yourself into a corner because of the ideological convictions of your youth.”
    —Kurtzer [68:08–69:45]

• Nostalgic Song:

  • Sang his wife down the aisle to “Tapuach Zahav” by Eric Einstein.

• Book and Show Recommendations:

  • Watching: “Yellowstone”
  • Reading: “Fleishman Is In Trouble” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner; also recommends her book “Long Island Compromise”.

Memorable Quotes (with Timestamps & Attribution)

• “[The kippah] used to be a more coherent pattern…now it’s all falling apart. Because there’s all this, like, performative ultra Orthodoxy with certain type of kippot, because people kind of like the aesthetic, but it’s not actually their values or their community.”
  —Yehuda Kurtzer [10:24–10:35]

• “To love Judaism can make you a great congregant…It becomes like, you love Judaism, you must be a rabbi. As opposed to us saying…who are actually our best and brightest…”
  —Yehuda Kurtzer [27:48]

• “It’s a scandal of a Jewish community that does not say: we have a very, very essential role for the spiritual health of our community, but we're actually not willing to pay for people to be able to do this in ways that are different from any other graduate job.”
  —Yehuda Kurtzer [36:05]

• “You’re just not going to find [spirituality] through the consumer orientation which characterizes this country. The market capitalist orientation, synagogues are thriving when they can be market capitalists. And I think that's like a short term win and a long term loss.”
  —Yehuda Kurtzer [49:43]

• “I feel bad that I implicitly signaled that lives built of professional meaning in service to the Jewish people are like, I'm supposed to feel bad about that?”
  —Yehuda Kurtzer [42:26]

• “The Jews always present as gentile in Congress…in fact, you’ll find more photographs of Barack Obama in a Kippah than of Joe Lieberman.”
  —Mark Oppenheimer [11:14]

• “I take very seriously the God of our tradition and I identify most with the rabbis who tried to build a Jewish world...and giving back God God’s autonomy.”
  —Yehuda Kurtzer [66:24–67:22]

Important Segment Timestamps

• Kippah styles, meanings, and public Jewishness: 09:52–19:17
• Rabbinic pipeline, job requirements, and economics: 21:23–44:39
• Day schools, Modern Orthodoxy, and consumerism: 46:28–55:51
• Hartman initiatives and Jewish public policy: 57:13–59:28
• Golden Age of American Jewry: 59:28–62:44
• Quick-fire personal Q&A: 66:15–72:23

Closing Note

This episode is an incisive, often candid exploration of what it means to build and sustain Jewish life today. Kurtzer and his interviewers cover the shifting sands of Jewish ritual, institutional leadership, American Jewish exceptionalism, and the deeply human challenges beneath the surface. Listeners come away with a nuanced portrait of a community in flux—one blessed with unprecedented comfort and possibility, yet challenged by internal contradictions, changing values, and the paradoxes of 21st-century pluralism.