Search for Meaning with Rabbi Yoshi

What does Zion mean to the Jewish people—and what happens when Jews themselves profoundly disagree about its meaning? In this Kol Nidrei sermon, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback traces Zion through the arc of a Jewish life and explores two ancient teachings: U’vacharta bachayim—“Choose life”—and Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem—“You stand this day, all of you.” At a moment of deep division, he offers three challenges for sustaining the Jewish story: Know it. Teach it. And make room for one another inside it.

Rosh Hashanah morning at Stephen Wise Temple, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback explores an ancient Hebrew word — Hineini, "Here I am" — through the lens of one of the newest challenges facing us: artificial intelligence.
 
Weaving together the Binding of Isaac, a teaching from the Mussar master Rabbi Eliyahu Lopian, and the work of Israeli thinker Micah Goodman, Rabbi Zweiback asks what AI can and cannot give us — and what it means to keep practicing the very human capacities technology can't replace: listening, patience, forgiveness, showing up for one another when there's nothing to fix.

A personal reflection on loss, presence, and the difference between a tool that serves us and a person who makes a claim on our lives.

What can Torah teach us about anxiety, grief, resilience, shame—and the work of healing a shattered heart?
On this episode of Search for Meaning, I sit down with Rabbi Dr. Tal Sessler, author of Torah for Mental Health: Jewish Wisdom for Psychological Growth. A rabbi, philosopher, spiritual counselor, and psychotherapist-in-training, Tal has spent his career exploring the intersection of Jewish wisdom, philosophy, and the human search for meaning.
His new book begins with a striking Jewish idea: brokenness is not an aberration. According to the Kabbalistic teaching of shevirat ha-kelim—the breaking of the vessels—it is woven into the very fabric of creation. From there, Tal brings Torah into conversation with contemporary psychology, exploring Moses’s despair, Jacob’s wrestling, Joseph as a “wounded healer,” and the extraordinary human capacity for resilience and growth.
We talk about what rabbis can learn from therapists—and therapists from rabbis; the difference between surviving trauma and growing through it; and whether faith and religious practice can actually help heal what the Psalmist calls the “shattered heart.”
We also discuss a particularly moving connection between Tal and Rachel Goldberg-Polin. At the beginning of her memoir about her son Hersh, When We See You Again, she quotes three words from Tal: “Words are redemptive.” We explore what those words mean in the aftermath of unimaginable loss—and why telling our stories can itself become part of the work of healing.
It’s a conversation about brokenness and resilience, Torah and psychology, the power of language, and what Jewish wisdom can teach us about becoming more whole.
Learn more about Tal at https://www.rabbisessler.com

Rabbi Yoshi’s derash from Beach Shabbat, delivered on Shabbat Nachamu — the Sabbath of Comfort that always follows Tisha b’Av.
Beginning with a personal story from his own wedding thirty years ago, Rabbi Yoshi explores what it means to love God “b’chol levavcha” — with all of your heart — and why our tradition asks us to bless God not only in the good times, but in the painful ones too. Drawing on this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vaetchanan, the Mishnah’s teaching on gratitude, and a hidden echo of the Book of Lamentations found in our daily prayers, this message speaks to the moment we’re living through — a “Golden Age” of American Jewish life now shadowed by rising antisemitism — and points toward Tu b’Av, the festival of love, just six days away.
🎥 Recorded at Stephen Wise Temple’s Beach Shabbat, Santa Monica

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback welcomes back civil rights attorney and Zioness founder Amanda Berman for her second appearance on Search for Meaning. Recorded days after Tisha B'Av, the conversation opens with the atmosphere in New York following Mayor Mamdani's video calling Prime Minister Netanyahu a war criminal, the mayor's Tisha B'Av statement, and a stabbing on the Upper West Side — and what it feels like, right now, to be a visible Jewish activist in the city.
From there, Amanda unpacks the framework she's spent years refining: the distinct categories of Jews, Judaism, Israel, and Zionism, and why collapsing them into one another fuels both antisemitism and bad-faith political attacks — including on committed Zionists like Rahm Emanuel. She makes the case against binary language like "pro-Israel" and "anti-Israel," and argues for why Zionism still matters as a living movement even 78 years after Israeli statehood.
The second half turns to hope: the Black-Jewish coalition work Amanda has built alongside Rabbi Zweiback and Bishop Michael Fisher, including their trip to Israel timed to the Ethiopian holiday of Sigd, the "wedge issues" that complicate Black-Jewish solidarity today, and what real, non-transactional coalition-building actually requires.
Learn more or get involved at zioness.org.