A Ceasefire. Now What?

For Episode 10, we ask Shaul Magid to help us understand Zionism, American Judaism, and what he means by exile

The bombs seem to have (mostly) stopped, for now. That’s a good thing. But the conversation must not cease.

This week, we’re honored to sit down with Shaul Magid, Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard University, to continue a conversation we began months ago, with Wisdom of Crowds’ contributor and Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid. Gaza was at the heart of that episode about faith, power, and democracy. Today, we turn to these same concerns, albeit from a specifically Jewish perspective.

Shaul isn’t just a prominent scholar of Judaism but a voice of courage and conscience; religion, in other words, is hardly incidental to his positions. If you listen to a lot of the current American conversation about Israel and Palestine, you could assume Judaism is a monolith. Shaul will certainly surprise you, then. He’ll also challenge you, coming as he does from a place of deep knowledge and remarkable lived experience.

Raised in a Jewish, socialist family, Shaul’s journey covers immense ground—into Zionism, up to and including joining the IDF and then, as he explains, to a sophisticated position not just against Zionism today but looking well beyond, imagining a future anchored in an immense Jewish heritage. What were the reasons for these realignments? What is the cost of such convictions? Where does Shaul stand now? What future does he foresee for Zionism, Judaism, and American democracy?

This week, listen as three men of faith, who take their traditions very seriously, arrive at a place of compelling consensus—not despite our Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but because of these. A conversation that started with heaviness and heartache, Shaul notes, moves us towards shared values and guarded hope. That’s more than a compass to navigate by—it’s what we want Avenue M to be known for: Reflection and contemplation, yes. Debate and disagreement, certainly.

But motivation, formation and community, too. Watch the full episode on our YouTube channel:

You can also listen on Apple and Spotify (as well as other major platforms!)

Better Call Shaul: The Show Notes

Shaul is a true public intellectual, balancing deep scholarship with accessible commentary and analysis. He is the Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, a Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and a co-editor of Harvard Theological Review.

Shaul is also the author of eight books and more than seventy-five scholarly articles. He’s also written over 150 essays, offering insight into the cultural, political, and spiritual dimensions of modern Jewish life. His writing has contributed significantly to broader conversations on religion, culture, and justice.

After spending time in various yeshivot in Israel, where he lived for a decade, and receiving rabbinical ordination in 1984, Shaul completed a master’s degree in Jewish thought from the Hebrew University and a PhD in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University.

His research bridges centuries and disciplines, exploring topics from sixteenth-century Kabbalistic mysticism and Hasidism, including its spiritual ties to Christianity, to contemporary American Judaism, Jewish identity, race, and critical theory.

If you’re new to Shaul’s work, we recommend subscribing to Shaul’s Substack. If you’d like to dive deeper (and we think you should), a great place to start includes his most recent books, Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of An American Jewish Radical (2021) and The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance (2023).

Avenue Moving Forward

When we finished this episode, we felt ourselves full—and full of questions, too, more questions than we had time for; like a good storyteller, we want every Avenue M episode to leave you wanting more. But like men of faith, we also know that faith demands formation, implementation, reflection, and pursuit alongside the talking—not just debating and discussing, but becoming and striving.

That’s the exciting announcement: Avenue M isn’t just a place to talk about our commitments, but a community that shares what those commitments are, how we live them, and how we’re doing with all that.

So, here’s the great news: Alongside frequent stand-alone episodes with remarkable guests, we’re going to add in two more kinds of episodes. Shaul’s is one such, following as it does on Shadi’s. With the conversations we feel most compelling, concerning and critical, we want to keep talking. We want to keep learning. We promise to return, when possible, to add layers, perspective, insight and direction.

Alongside these recurring episodes, we’ve got a simultaneous commitment to faith-forward exchanges, in which Joey and Haroon sit down, often with faith leaders, to bring the bigger issues of our time in contact with life as it’s lived. What are we struggling with? What are we driven by? What are we paying attention to? How are we reconsidering, reflecting and growing?

In other words, Avenue M won’t just be us talking about what’s important, but exploring how we bring about the changes we’d like to see in ourselves, our communities, and our country. The first episode in this series drops next week, as Joey and Haroon sit down with Reverend Adam Fronczek, the Pastor at Knox Presbyterian, a (literally) beautiful church in Cincinnati’s Hyde Park.

Of course, we’ve got teasers and trailers, plus podcasts and more that we love, enjoy, appreciate or vehemently disagree with on our Instagram (@AvenueMPod), X (@AvenueMPod) and Facebook. However you got here, thanks for listening and watching! We hope you like, follow and

This week’s episode is sponsored by The Brueggeman Center for Dialogue at Cincinnati’s Xavier University. Dedicated to deepening understanding across faiths and promoting systemic change, the Center hosts thoughtful conversations about religion, reason, and so much more—visit their website for more information. We’re honored by this support, especially because it’s a sign of our commitment to Cincinnati and Ohio.

Avenue M is produced by Bespoken Live with music by Zach Swelber, who plays in Circle It and Mosant.