{"podcast":{"title":"The Five Books: Jewish Authors on the Books That Shaped Them","slug":"the-five-books-jewish-authors-on-the-books-that-shaped-them-7105649","podcast_index_feed_id":7105649,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/TPG5767073783","website_url":"https://www.fivebookspod.org/","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/f4455e5c-a100-11ef-8f4b-5bef350a0955/image/1e4a6b77a187fd738e31e8c0f8dc7ebd.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"Tali Rosenblatt Cohen","episode_count":60,"summary":"The Five Books celebrates the role of books in our lives. Each week we’ll talk with a Jewish author about five books in five categories. We’ll hear about: two Jewish books that have impacted the author’s Jewish identity; one book (not necessarily Jewish) that they think everyone should read - a book that changed their worldview. We’ll get a peek into what book they're reading now, and we’ll hear the inside scoop on the new book they’ve just published. The Five Books creates a space for all listeners to explore what it means to live, write, and read as a Jewish American today.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-21T16:20:27.051592+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-five-books-jewish-authors-on-the-books-that-shaped-them-7105649"},"episode":{"title":"Rachel Goldberg-Polin on Surviving Grief","slug":"rachel-goldberg-polin-on-surviving-grief","published_at":"2026-07-21T07:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-five-books-jewish-authors-on-the-books-that-shaped-them-7105649/rachel-goldberg-polin-on-surviving-grief","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-five-books-jewish-authors-on-the-books-that-shaped-them-7105649","url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/mgln.ai/e/51/tracking.swap.fm/track/tcQd6Q6C0RUUlOHq1Ytj/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.megaphone.fm/TPG7807232882.mp3","audio_url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/mgln.ai/e/51/tracking.swap.fm/track/tcQd6Q6C0RUUlOHq1Ytj/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.megaphone.fm/TPG7807232882.mp3","summary":"As this episode is released in the days before Tisha B'Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, it feels especially fitting to sit with a conversation about grief, faith, and what it means to keep living after unimaginable loss. Tisha B'Av commemorates the destruction of both Temples in ancient Jerusalem, along with many other tragedies throughout Jewish history, and has become a day of collective mourning. Rachel Goldberg-Polin's story reminds us that Jewish grief is painfully present. Rachel speaks to us about the books that shaped her faith, and the ones that offer reprieve and consolation. We also discuss reading Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning after her son Hersh’s death, grief in the poetry of Robert Frost, and Rachel’s hope of finding Shabbat again. On the morning of October 7th, 2023, Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s beloved twenty-three-year-old son, Hersh, was stolen from a music festival billed as a celebration of unity and love—and, in that moment, her life was forever separated into The Before and The After. Over the next eleven months, she and her husband, Jon, would work tirelessly—in public and behind the scenes—to secure the hostages’ release, to breathe some humanity into the situation while they were experiencing relentless emotional and psychological torment. The power of her raw and fervent pleas soon made her the face of the hostage crisis. And when Hersh and five other captives were executed after surviving 328 days of violence and cruelty, she would also become the face of its ultimate cost. Rachel’s memoir When We See You Again feels less like a book and more like a soul portal. It is a modern lamentation: it leads us deeper into the holiness of the universe, into its cruelty and its tenderness, into the unbearable weight of love and loss. R…","meta_description":"As this episode is released in the days before Tisha B'Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, it feels especially fitting to sit with a conversation…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3760,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-five-books-jewish-authors-on-the-books-that-shaped-them-7105649/episodes/rachel-goldberg-polin-on-surviving-grief/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-five-books-jewish-authors-on-the-books-that-shaped-them-7105649/rachel-goldberg-polin-on-surviving-grief.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}