Jewish History Nerds
Whoever said history was boring clearly never heard these stories…Welcome to Jewish History Nerds! Join hosts Yael and Schwab each week as they take a dive into some deep cuts of Jewish history. From the Jewish Da Vinci Code to mass suicide pacts, explore true stories that feel larger than life. Be in touch: nerds@unpacked.media
Episodes
August 13, 2026 • 48 mins
As we look back at Jews in the Americas for the 250th, we’re revisiting the story of Ray Frank, the “Girl Rabbi of the Golden West.” In the 1890s, she became a celebrated Jewish orator, leading High Holiday services and filling opera houses across the American West. But her story is about more than a woman breaking into a male world. It’s about how Jewish life was taking shape in the expanding American West,...
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August 6, 2026 • 54 mins
The infamous 1883 Trafa Banquet was meant to celebrate America's first ordained rabbis. But a menu of shrimp, clams, oysters, and frog's legs in cream ignited a firestorm that changed American Judaism. Yael Steiner and Jonathan Schwab tell the story behind one of the most controversial meals in Jewish history.
If you like this show, please rate and write a review wherever you get your podcasts. And be in touch. Write to us at ner...
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July 30, 2026 • 40 mins
As we continue our series exploring Jews in American history, we're revisiting our episode on Emma Goldman, the revolutionary Jewish anarchist who helped shape feminism, free speech, and the American left. Schwab and Yael dive into the life and legacy of Emma Goldman, and ask what role did Red Emma's Judaism play in shaping her worldview?
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July 23, 2026 • 35 mins
She wasn't an immigrant, but Emma Lazarus gave the Statue of Liberty its voice. In Part 2, Schwab and Yael explore how a wealthy poet became a champion for refugees, an early advocate for Jewish nationalism, and the author of the poem that redefined America's most iconic symbol: The New Colossus.
The New Colossus
By Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at...
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July 16, 2026 • 41 mins
Emma Lazarus wrote The New Colossus, the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty. But she was nothing like the huddled masses she described. In part 1 of a two part series, Schwab walks Yael through her short, incredible life: born in 1849 to a wealthy Sephardic family that had been in New York since before the Revolution, a literary prodigy published at seventeen, hobnobbing with Ralph Waldo Emerson and demanding her place in th...
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July 9, 2026 • 44 mins
In Part 2, Yael guides Schwab through what happened after the Revolution, as America's 2,500 Jews became citizens of a brand new nation. Together they explore how the Constitution and the Bill of Rights transformed religious liberty from a privilege into a constitutional right, redefining what it meant to be Jewish in the United States.
Note: All states ratified the Constitution in 1790, the amendments were ratified in 1791.
Thi...
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July 7, 2026 • 39 mins
A broker who bankrolled the Continental Army and died penniless. An officer who refused pork in a British prison. A bill sent to George Washington for a missing fork. In Part 1 of Jews and the American Revolution, Yael and Schwab explore how the colonies' 2,500 Jews helped shape the founding era, and how the new nation’s promise of religious freedom and citizenship was tested from the very beginning.
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July 2, 2026 • 49 mins
Well over a century before the Declaration of Independence, a boatload of Jewish refugees landed in New Amsterdam with no money, no synagogue, and a governor who desperately wanted them gone. What followed was a century of scrappy survival — building communities in port cities from Newport to Charleston, pioneering mutual aid societies, suing for the right to do guard duty, and trying very hard not to disappear into the Ameri...
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June 25, 2026 • 44 mins
Were there really Jewish pirates in the Caribbean? The answer is far more complicated (and fascinating) than the legend. From Samuel Pallache, the so-called Pirate Rabbi, to the thriving Jewish communities of Curaçao and beyond. Schwab walks Yael through the story of Jews navigating empire, trade, exile, and opportunity in the Americas.
This is the second episode in a mini series on Jews in the Americas.
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June 18, 2026 • 49 mins
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Fleeing the Inquisition, Crypto-Jews who had been forced to hide their faith for generations found refuge in Recife, Brazil — and for the first time, rebuilt Jewish life in the open. When Recife fell, twenty-three Jewish refugees set sail for New Amsterdam, launching the birth of Jewish America. Schwab and Yael tell the remark...
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June 16, 2026 • 63 mins
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Jewish History Nerds welcomes its first-ever guest, Noam Weissman, host of Unpacking Israeli History. Yael, Schwab and Noam explore the life and legacy of Yitzhak Rabin through the lens of Itamar Rabinovich's Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman from the Jewish Lives series. Rabin's life is the story of Israel itself. But who w...
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June 11, 2026 • 65 mins
June 12th marks Anne Frank’s birthday, and it was on her 13th birthday that she received the diary that would later become one of the most widely read books in the world. Anne Frank remains one of the most recognizable voices in Jewish history, and one of the most misunderstood.
In this bonus episode sponsored by the Jewish Lives series from Yale University Press, Schwab walks Yael through Ruth Franklin's The Many Lives of ...
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June 9, 2026 • 53 mins
Few figures in all of Jewish history are as celebrated, as contradicted, and as human as King David. But how well do we really know him? We're kicking off new bonus episodes in partnership with the Jewish Lives series from Yale University Press by going back to the Hebrew Bible. Drawing from Rabbi David Wolpe's David: The Divided Heart, Yael and Schwab unpack the shepherd-turned-king who wrote our prayers, betrayed his allies, and...
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June 4, 2026 • 2 mins
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Yael and Schwab are back — and this season, they're diving into the history of Jews in the Americas, just in time for the US's 250th birthday. But first: special episodes sponsored by The Jewish Lives Series.
Catch up on past episodes, subscribe wherever you listen.
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April 14, 2026 • 37 mins
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Yael and Schwab revisit the remarkable story of the Oneg Shabbos archive from the Warsaw Ghetto in honor of Yom HaShoah.
The tins held the second of three caches of the Oneg Shabbos archives: a collection by ordinary people turned archivists who risked their lives to preserve the darkest moment of Jewish history. Among the photog...
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March 31, 2026 • 40 mins
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The Haggadah is the most widely read Jewish book in the world, and yet it was never supposed to be a book at all. Yael takes Schwab through its surprising history: how an oral commandment became rabbinic debate, evolved into illuminated medieval manuscripts, and ended up as 60 million free copies tucked inside a can of Maxwell Hou...
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March 26, 2026 • 50 mins
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Jonathan Schwab and Yael Steiner tackle one of Jewish history's most debated questions: was Albert Einstein a Zionist? From Nazi Germany naming him public enemy number one to eventually being offered the presidency of Israel, Schwab traces Einstein's complicated, lifelong relationship with Zionism. And they explore a question the Na...
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March 19, 2026 • 47 mins
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Before Albert Einstein became the wild-haired icon who changed how we understand the universe, he was a struggling patent clerk with a rejected dissertation, no job prospects, and a messy personal life. But he had time to spare and a mind that wouldn't stop. In this first episode of a two-part series, Jonathan Schwab takes Yael Stei...
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March 12, 2026 • 43 mins
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Ray Frank was a gifted Jewish teacher, journalist, and speaker who became a sensation in the American West in the 1890s. Crowds packed opera houses to hear her preach, newspapers called her the “Girl Rabbi of the Golden West,” and communities begged her to lead them. But Ray Frank refused the title of rabbi. So who was s...
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March 5, 2026 • 44 mins
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What happens when a rabbi becomes a compulsive gambler?
Yael and Schwab explore the life of Rabbi Leone de Modena, a remarkable Renaissance thinker from the Venetian ghetto. A prodigy, prolific writer, and the author of the first full-length Hebrew autobiography, Modena was also a famous preacher whose sermons drew both Jews and Ch...
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