Identity/Crisis

What happens when liberal democracies stop seeing dignity as a universal right and begin treating it as something reserved for insiders?

On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer sits down with political philosopher Seyla Benhabib to explore the moral, political, and philosophical stakes of migration, borders, and belonging in America today. Against the backdrop of rising cruelty toward immigrants, asylum seekers, and other vulnerable people, they examine what happens when states retreat from their highest ideals and redraw the boundaries
of who counts. Together, they discuss the fragility of human rights, the
difference between borders and belonging, and why Jews—shaped by memories of statelessness, displacement, and exclusion—must take these questions seriously.

This special live episode of Identity/Crisis was recorded as part of In the Face of Cruelty: Jewish Responsibilities to Neighbors and Strangers, a virtual day of learning on March 12, 2026.

You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. 

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Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week:

 
Register to hear Masua Sagiv on Get Your Phil

What do our narratives of heroism do for the Jewish people—and what do they hide?

On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer sits down with journalist and author Matti Friedman to discuss his new book, Out of the Sky: a story about the Zionist paratroopers sent into Europe during World War II. Together they explore the uneasy relationship between myth and history: how failed missions become national legend, why Jewish heroism became so central to Zionist self-understanding, and what gets lost when real people are turned into symbols.

 

You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. 
JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS 

 

Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week:

 

Register for our summer programs for lay leaders, rabbis, and educators!

Secure your spot at the Florida Leadership Conference this Sunday!

What does it mean to tell Jewish stories in a moment of political polarization and distortion? On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela to examine the role of the historian in public life: not to offer talking points or easy analogies, but to deepen public understanding in a time of simplification and certainty. Through a conversation about education, Jewish identity, and the place of Jews in American history, they consider why richer storytelling matters—and what it can offer to students, Jews, and the broader public.

 

You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. 

JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FORMORE HARTMAN IDEAS 

Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week:

Register for our virtual day of learning, In the Face of Cruelty: Jewish Responsibilities to Neighbors and Strangers on March 12.

What does it mean to tell Jewish stories in a moment of political polarization and distortion? On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela to examine the role of the historian in public life: not to offer talking points or easy analogies, but to deepen public understanding in a time of simplification and certainty. Through a conversation about education, Jewish identity, and the place of Jews in American history, they consider why richer storytelling matters—and what it can offer to students, Jews, and the broader public.

 

You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. 

JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FORMORE HARTMAN IDEAS 

Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week:

In the Megillah, Jewish safety depends on proximity to power — passing, hiding, and selectively revealing, and all the fraught calculations that come with minority life.

On this episode of Identity/Crisis, Yehuda Kurtzer is joined by Barbara Spectre, founding director of Paideia: The European Institute for Jewish Studies, to explore the story of Purim  through a lens of existential uncertainty and cultural endurance. Drawing on Barbara’s decades of work with emerging European Jewish communities, they examine the pressures to fit in, the costs of standing out, and the tightrope between assimilation and sustaining culture that minorities have walked throughout history. The conversation offers a diasporic lens on power, vulnerability, and the possibility of choosing meaning even, and especially, when certainty is impossible.

 

You can now sponsor an episode of Identity/Crisis. Click HERE to learn more. 

JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST FOR MORE HARTMAN IDEAS 

Here’s more from the Shalom Hartman Institute this week:

Watch Donniel Hartman and Abby Pogrebin’s conversation on the war with Iran.

Apply or refer a teen you know to the Hartman Teen Fellowship.

Register for our virtual day of learning, In the Face of Cruelty: Jewish Responsibilities to Neighbors and Strangers on March 12.