The College Commons Podcast

The College Commons Podcast, passionate perspectives from Judaism's leading thinkers, is produced by Hebrew Union College, America's first Jewish institution of higher learning.

The College Commons Podcast is a religion podcast hosted by HUC-JIR, with 249 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

HUC-JIR hosts The College Commons Podcast, a religion show with 249 episodes published.

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  The College Commons Podcast

  Yael Yechieli: Simple and But Not Easy - 50% Women in the Halls of Power in Israel

  Aug 4, 202624 min

  Yael Yechieli walks us through the process of tangible, effective societal change. Yael Yechieli is founder of 50/50, an initiative of the Tzedek Center, dedicated to a simple and very potent mission: To get women into half of all the decision-making positions in Israel. It even tracks the progress of women’s soccer, an important bellwether of social and economic power, not unlike women’s soccer and basketball here in the US.  50/50 organizes public outreach, lectures, and all-important social and political campaigns to position women to take their place in Israel’s public sphere.

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  The College Commons Podcast

  John Rokosny: Coming of Age from Nazi Europe to the Nascent State of Israel

  Jul 22, 202616 min

  Description: Producer/Director John Rokosny tells the remarkable story of Fred Biermann in his film The Kid Officer . Biography: John Rokosny is an award-winning producer and director of film, television, and music. His previous film, They Survived Together , aired nationally on PBS and earned a NY Emmy Award for Best Historical Documentary. Most recently, John has filmed nearly 100 Holocaust survivors for the USC Shoah Foundation, founded by Steven Spielberg and a partner organization of the Hebrew Union College. His new documentary film, The Kid Officer , tells the story of Holocaust survivor Fred Biermann’s escape from Vienna to Mandatory Palestine.

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  The College Commons Podcast

  Georgette Bennett: The Voluntary Jew

  Jul 7, 202627 min

  Description: Though contemporary individualism means all Jews are, in some measure, Jews by choice, Gary “Pips” Phillips made that choice during the Holocaust. Biography: Dr. Georgette Bennett is at TED Speaker and an award-winning sociologist, author, popular lecturer, and former broadcast journalist. Bennett has founded no less than three interreligious nonprofit organizations, and she served in the U.S. State Department Religion and Foreign Policy initiative’s working group on conflict mitigation. Bennett is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2021, she was selected as one of Forbes’ 50 over 50 Women of Impact. Her book Crimewarps:  The Future of Crime in America , was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and her most recent book titled, Half-Jew, Full Life – The Unlikely Journey of a Voluntary Jew from Nazi Persecution to the American Dream.

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  The College Commons Podcast

  Rabbi Jeffrey Marx: Stereotypes and kernels of truth

  Jun 23, 202626 min

  Description: Jeffrey Marx wrestles with both the truth and the antisemitic fantasy of Jewish Arson in the early 20 th century. Biography: Ordained in 1983, Rabbi Marx served as the spiritual leader of The Santa Monica Synagogue from 1985- 2021.  As an independent scholar, he has examined the out-of-the-way chapters of American Jewish history, from his article titled “Eating Up: The Origins of Bagels and Lox” to his book Smoothing the Jew about Jewish self-representations at the turn of the 20th century,  designed to counteract the classic ethnic stereotypes; and most recently, Jewish Firebugs: Arson and Antisemitism from the Civil War to WWI , coming out in July of 2026 from New York University Press.

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  The College Commons Podcast

  Michael Meyer: Hebrew Union College at 100 Years – 50 years ago!

  Jun 9, 202649 min

  Description: The historian behind the history of HUC: Michael Meyer takes us on a sesquicentennial journey of American Judaism. Biography: Michael A. Meyer received his B.A. from UCLA and his doctorate from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. From 1964 to 1967, he taught at the Los Angeles campus of HUC. Since 1967 he has been on the faculty of HUC’s Cincinnati campus, where he is currently the Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History Emeritus. Professor Meyer also taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem campus of HUC, and the University of Haifa and Ben Gurion University. Professor Meyer’s books have won three Jewish Book Awards, including The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749-1824 (1967); Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (1988); Jewish Identity in the Modern World (1990); and a collection of essays entitled Judaism Within Modernity (2001). He has published more than two hundred articles and longer reviews. Professor Meyer was president of the Association for Jewish Studies, chaired the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History in New York, and served as international president of the Leo Baeck Institute. His two most recent books are Rabbi Leo Baeck: Living a Religious Imperative in Troubled Times (2021) and Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler (2025).

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