Starting at around the 25-minute mark of this conversation, Rabbi David Bashevkin, host of the 18Forty Podcast, tells a story that captures the core of his new book and his entire approach to…
David Bashevkin — Podcast Appearances & AI Summaries
David Bashevkin has appeared on 18 podcast episodes in our AI-summarized catalog, including 18Forty Podcast. Every appearance below has a free 5-minute AI summary.
What David said
“There's nothing that gets me more upset than these grand statements – 'this has never happened before.' Where are you getting these statements from? Do you understand what happened in Jewish history?”
— David Bashevkin on why knowing history matters
“The ultimate unchosen identity is not Jewish identity. The ultimate unchosen identity is existence itself. Nobody chooses to be alive. Nobody chooses to become conscious.”
— David Bashevkin
“It's so easy for modern Orthodox American Jews to criticize Haradiv... it's giving you a terrible out to feel good about yourself and your commitment to Israel when you're doing less than them, you're not even there.”
— David Bashevkin
“We very often think of the three blocks that surround us... And then it starts to get more undifferentiated when we look outwards... And very often we think of the three blocks that surround us... It's kind of this undifferentiated blob.”
— **David Bashevkin**, on the "New Yorker" map metaphor for how Jews view other denominations.
“If the rule you followed got you to this point, of what use was the rule?”
— **David Bashevkin**, quoting *No Country for Old Men* to frame the need for strategic change within each movement.
“The goal of Judaism is not to prevent change. The goal of Judaism is to ensure that all of those changes remain anchored in that transcendent, eternal and divine idea.”
— David Bashevkin
Episode appearances
18 Liel Leibovitz, editor at Tablet Magazine and a Talmud teacher with host David Bashevkin, recalls the moment he realized he had a PhD from Columbia, could read Greek and Latin, and yet a single…
“I was the most cynical anti-Hasidus anti-spirituality person in the entire universe,” says Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Pill, describing his mindset before his life unraveled. A childhood friend of host…
A Different Kind of Jewish Gratitude David Bashevkin opens this episode with a confession: he read David Magerman's widely circulated "Dear Children of the Diaspora" letter—a searing critique of…
“If my wife’s not here, it can’t be Gan Eden. It can’t be paradise.” That line, from a 19th-century Hasidic commentary on Adam’s sin, is how Rabbi Dr. David Bashevkin, host of the 18Forty podcast,…
In a recent episode of the 18Forty Podcast, host David Bashevkin revisits the topic of agunot—women chained in Jewish marriages because their husbands refuse to give a get (a Jewish divorce…
In 2026, roughly 3,000 American Jewish students spend a gap year in Israel each year, with over 10,000 passing through the system over a five-year period. This pipeline, now about 30 to 40 years…
When a Parent Becomes Estranged The 18Forty podcast’s Passover series on intergenerational divergence culminates in an extended conversation with a father, his daughter, and estrangement mediator…
In February 2024, a family in Chicago received a middle-of-the-night phone call from their son in a Jerusalem yeshiva. He was hysterical, screaming, describing fluorescent-colored food he had…
The psychologist Donald Winnicott wrote, “Tell me what you fear, and I will tell you what has happened to you.” On the 18Forty Podcast, host David Bashevkin and returning guest Rabbi Yakov…
In 1996, when Rabbi Mark Wildes told people he was leaving his assistant rabbi position at a prominent Manhattan synagogue to start a new outreach organization for unaffiliated young Jewish…
An Orthodox Rabbi Interviews a Reform Rabbi The 18Forty Podcast opens with host David Bashevkin describing a famous 1976 New Yorker cover: a view from Ninth Avenue where New York City is rendered…
Rabbi Isaac Hutner (1906–1980) was a towering but enigmatic figure in American Orthodox Judaism. A product of the Slobodka Yeshiva, he built a bridge between the classical Lithuanian yeshiva world…
In a 1949 paper, Alan Turing proposed an "imitation game": if a person corresponds via text with both a human and a machine, could the machine ever fool the person into thinking it is human? That…
Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin: How Torah Gives Us Faith and Hope On October 7, 2023, Hamas kidnapped Hersh Goldberg-Polin from the Nova Music Festival. He was held hostage in Gaza for nearly…
The central question of this episode is not how religious change happens, but why it so often fails to last. Rabbi Moshe Benovitz, a veteran educator who has shaped a generation of modern Orthodox…
Naftuli Moster was the face of the campaign to force Chasidic yeshivas to teach more secular subjects. He ran Yaffed (Young Advocates for Fair Education), landed a New York Times investigation,…
“The doctrine of evolution, which is currently conquering the world, corresponds to the cosmic secrets of Kabbalah more than any other philosophical teaching,” Rav Kook wrote during World War I.…
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