Judaism

Lyonne is up for an Emmy for her role as a woman who keeps dying and coming back to life on Russian Doll. It's a premise that she finds particularly resonant. Originally published March 27, 2019.

Nastaha Lyonne co-created, co-wrote and stars in the Netflix series Russian Doll, about a woman who keeps dying the same death and comes back to life to do it again. The idea of dying and coming back to life has personal resonance for Lyonne.

Barbara Brown Taylor is an ordained Episcopal priest who left the pulpit to become a professor of religion. She is also the author of a couple of best selling books. Her new book is about how teaching the religions of the world changed her understanding of her own faith, and how her Christian students responded when she took them to mosques, synagogues, and buddhist temples.

Safran Foer's latest novel, Here I Am, is told from the points of view of different members of a Jewish family. Originally broadcast Nov. 10, 2016.

The Seven Good Years spans the time between the birth of his son and the death of his father. Keret says his father, who was a Holocaust survivor, taught him to "look reality straight in the face."

In an interview with Terry Gross, taped in front of a live audience in New York City, the Daily Show host deconstructs his upcoming "Rally to Restore Sanity" on the National Mall and explains how The Daily Show comes up with material.

Jerry Bock, the composer of the score for shows like Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello! and She Loves Me, died Nov. 3. He was 81. Fresh Air remembers the composer with highlights from a 2004 interview conducted with Bock and his writing partner, lyricist Sheldon Harnick.

What does it mean to be Good Without God? Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, asks this question in his new book, which explores the faith of the nonreligious. It may sound like a contradiction, but Epstein believes that human ethics are independent of belief in a supernatural power.

Fresh Air's book critic reviews the latest novel from the author of Nine Parts of Desire.

Novelist Chaim Potok died Tuesday at the age of 73. Potok was raised in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, was ordained as a rabbi, and later became a best-selling author of the novels The Chosen, The Promise and My Name is Asher Lev. Much of his writing explored the conflict between spiritual and secular worlds, a subject that earned him readers from all faiths. This interview first aired in 1986.