Every year on Sukkot, Jews around the world read the prophet Zechariah's vision of a future in which all the nations of the earth come up to Jerusalem. Not on Passover. Not on Yom Kippur. On Sukkot — the holiday Jewish tradition identifies with the Messianic era itself.

So what is the Messiah? For an idea this central to Judaism — woven into the daily prayers, enshrined as the 12th of Maimonides' 13 Principles of Faith, built into the structure of Jewish history and Jewish hope — most Jews would struggle to say what Mashiach actually is, what he has to accomplish, or how anyone would recognize the real one.

In part one of this two-part Sukkot and Simchat Torah special, Justin Pines sits down with Rabbi Ken Spiro — historian, author, and senior lecturer at Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem — for an hour that turns a vague idea into something you can actually hold.

Jewish Insights with Justin Pines airs on JBS (Jewish Broadcasting Service), available on Comcast, Spectrum, DirecTV, and Verizon. Watch more episodes at jbstv.org.

Can God be vulnerable? National Jewish Book Award winner Gila Fine explores the stunning talmudic tale of Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, who entered the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur and was asked by God for a blessing (Berakhot 7a). What does it mean for an omnipotent God to ask a mortal for help? Through the lens of rabbinic literature, Shakespeare's King Lear, and modern philosophy, Fine reveals the difference between the God of the Bible and the God of the Talmud — and what divine vulnerability teaches us about the relationship between God and humanity.

Gila Fine is a lecturer in rabbinic literature at Shalem College and the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, and the author of "The Madwoman in the Rabbi's Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud," winner of the 74th National Jewish Book Award and the 2024 Rabbi Sacks Book Prize.

American Jews have lately been sensing the end of their Golden Age — and asking whether the next century will be as kind to them and their children as the last one was. Dr. Mijal Bitton thinks we're asking the wrong question.

A sociologist, spiritual leader, and public intellectual, Mijal is Scholar in Residence at the Maimonides Fund, Rosh Kehilla of the Downtown Minyan in New York City, co-host of the podcast Wondering Jews and author of the Substack newsletter Committed. She recently published the landmark essay "The Future Is Sephardic," [https://sapirjournal.org/aspiration-ii/2026/the-future-is-sephardic/] published in Sapir journal [https://sapirjournal.org/] on the past and future of American Jewish life.

In this conversation, we dig into what the Middle Eastern and North Africa Sephardic model — rooted in family, communal boundaries, an embodied spiritual life, and a confidence that doesn't depend on outside approval — can teach all American Jews as we reimagine our place in America's next century.