The Voices of Emanu El Podcast
The Voices of Emanu El is the podcast from Congregation Emanu El in Houston, Texas. Each week, you’ll hear sermons and reflections from our clergy team, and engaging conversations that explore our faith, traditions, community and the music of Emanu El. Whether you’re joining us for the first time or you’ve been part of our community for years, these are the voices of Emanu El.
Episodes
What makes a rebellion and what makes a revolution? When does passionate disagreement become a holy argument and when does it collapse into a struggle for power. In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, recorded on Juneteenth with America’s semi‑quincentennial on the horizon, Rabbi Josh Fixler reflects on the dissonance bet...
In this episode of The Vocies of Emanu El, Rabbi Pam Silk weaves together summer camp send-offs and the Torah portion Sh’lach L'cha, where twelve scouts survey the Promised Land and declare, “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes.” Their report is factually accurate, but their fearful interpretation keeps a ge...
This week on Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon reflects on Aretha Franklin’s “Call Me,” the Torah portion Beha’alotcha, and the haunting image of a menorah whose flame must eventually rise on its own. Drawing on Rashi’s teaching that Aaron is commanded to kindle the lamp &...
Rabbi Josh Fixler recently sat down with Reverend Katey Zeh, CEO of the Religious Community for Reproductive Choice, for a powerful conversation about reproductive justice and why “reproductive freedom is religious freedom." Together they trace the often-erased history of clergy who helped people access safe abortion care before Roe, examine how white Christian Nationalism has shaped today’s laws and myths, and explore ...
In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon is joined by NYT Best Selling cookbook author Adeena Sussman to talk about “easy-breezy Tel Aviv-y” cooking, Shabbat “forever recipes,” and how simple food became her therapy after October 7. Together they explore Israeli food, how to host Shabbat without exhausting yourself, why great hospitality starts with letting guests bring “good convers...
In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler asks a deceptively simple question: What is the difference between a desert and a wilderness? Through the lens of Parashat B'midbar, he reimagines the midbar as a wild, ownerless space where Torah — and truth itself — cannot be claimed by any one person or ideology...
In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Pam Silk weaves the spectacle of the Kentucky Derby into the timeless teachings of the double Torah portion B’har B’chukotai. From trainer Sherry DeVoe’s history‑making victory and the story of brothers Jose and Irad Ortiz, to the Torah’s radical vision of Shmita and Jubilee, she explores what it means to believe that no win or loss is ever final and that...
In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon reflects on Parashat Emor and the doubled command to “speak” and to “say.” What looks like redundancy in the Torah becomes a profound teaching about how wisdom must be shared with adults and passed along to children.
In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon tells the Jewish story of Isfahan, an ancient community in Iran whose roots stretch back 2,500 years and whose legend begins with exiles carrying soil and water from Jerusalem.
From...
In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler dives into one of Tanakh’s strangest stories: the death of Uzza as he reaches out to steady the ark of the covenant. Framed like a Benoit Blanc-style mystery, moving from Parashat Sh’mini to the haftarah in Second Samuel, he asks not “whodunnit” bu...
In this special Passover Yizkor episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Oren Hayon shares a powerful drash that begins with an unlikely teacher: the Osage orange tree. Once spread across a continent by woolly mammoths and giant sloths, the tree now survives in a narrowed habitat, still bearing the shape of a relationship that has ...
In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Pam Silk invites us to see the seder as “memory with coordinates”—a story that does not just free us from oppression, but brings us toward a concrete sense of peoplehood, land, and destiny. She reflects on how the seder’s symbols and choreography slowly transform o...
On Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat before Passover, Rabbi Oren Hayon explores Jewish memory, identity, and hope. Beginning with a Syrian Passover custom in which a child carries a knotted bundle of matzah and answers, “Who are you and what are you carrying? Where have you come from and where are you going?”, he invites us to as...
In this episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler offers a heartfelt reflection on the life and legacy of his and Cantor Rollin Simmons' teacher, Rabbi Dr. Andrea Weiss, co-editor of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. He recalls her commitment to a multivocal Torah, her embodiment of chesed (loving kindness), and the way ...
After a near-tragedy at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, on March 12, Rabbi Josh Fixler reflects on what it means to be Jewish in 2026, in a world where bollards, cameras, and security officers have become part of walking into shul. From the line “they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat” to th...
In this week's episode, Rabbi Oren Hayon takes us to Belmonte, a small town in northeastern Portugal where crypto-Jews carried tiny pocket mezuzot rather than risk a public sign of Jewish life during the Inquisition. From there, he moves to the Israelites at Mount Sinai and the story of the golden calf and to our own age of war, anxiety, and uncertainty, inviting us to ask what we’re carrying that weighs us down—and wha...
In this powerful episode of The Voices of Emanu El, Rabbi Josh Fixler sits down with indigenous rights advocate Lani Anpo for a wide‑ranging conversation about her life as a multi‑tribal Native American Jew and the urgent questions of peoplehood, land, and identity in our complicated moment.
Guest Rabbi Annie Belford traces Jewish magical practices through history—like protective incantation bowls, mezuzah incantations criticized by Maimonides, and birth rituals—and reimagining magic as the profound wonder of friendships across generations and simple acts of being.
In this special episode of Voices of Emanu El, Cantor Rollin Simmons sits down with her longtime friend, Cantor Shira Ginsburg, to talk about Bubby’s Kitchen—Shira’s acclaimed one-woman musical born from her family’s Holocaust partisan story and a fifth-year cantorial school recital that refused to stay “just” a project. Together they explore how growing up in her grandpa...
In this episode, Rabbi Josh Fixler asks a timeless question: How do you build a sacred community? Beginning at Mount Sinai with the Israelites’ freewill gifts for the Mishkan, he draws a powerful line to the shared project of American democracy and to the importance of voting and showing up.
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