The U.S. Senate: America’s First and Last Lines of Defense with Ira Shapiro and Rabbi Eric Yoffie

Today’s Senate looks very different from the Senate of the 1960s and 1970s, a time when those serving in Congress put “country over party.” Ira Shapiro, a former longtime Senate staffer and author of the new book The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America, discusses the many functions of the Senate, how it’s failed to provide leadership and what lies ahead of the 2022 elections and beyond. Shapiro is in conversation with Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President Emeritus of the Union of Reform Judaism about how we can return to a time when Senators worked across the aisle.

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The Politics of Being Gay with Congressman Barney Frank, Eric Orner and Ann F. Lewis

Barney Frank was the first member of Congress to voluntarily acknowledge being gay in 1987. Frank joins his former congressional aide, Eric Orner, author of the new graphic novel Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, in conversation about growing up Jewish, his lifelong crusade for civil rights and his 30+ years in the U.S. House of Representatives. With Ann F. Lewis, a champion for women’s rights, a former White House Director of Communications, and the congressman’s sister.

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Zionophobia: A Wide Open Conversation with Judea Pearl

What is Zionophobia and how is it different from Antisemitism—and what can be done about it? Is Israel key to the survival of the Jewish people? Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein speaks with Judea Pearl, who grew up in Israel and is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl who was killed by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.

This program is part of a Moment series on antisemitism supported by the Joyce and Irving Goldman Family Foundation.

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