Rachel Goldberg-Polin
speaker
968 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 6 Sep
Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Why did this happen to us?
And the Talmud explains, well, honestly, starting at the very top down, we had horrific corruption.
and horrific immorality.
The kings, the nobles, the judges, the priests, the kohanim, the people who were running the temple were being corrupt.
There was idolatry, there was immorality, there was murder, there was corruption at the highest levels.
We have the prophet Jeremiah running around in the worst mood saying to people, we are going to lose all of this because we are not behaving right.
We are not behaving as we should be.
And so when Nebuchadnezzar comes in, yes, that is the cause of the actual burning of the temple and the destruction of the temple.
But woven into our tradition is always fire.
We have huge mirrors that we hold up and we say, what part did we play in this?
And that makes some people very uncomfortable.
Don't get me wrong.
No one's giving anyone who does something terrible a pass.
It's just that part of the DNA of being part of the Jewish tradition is
is we also say, what were we doing at the time?
And this piece of the Talmud, it completely enumerates what we were doing and what was so wrong.
And so Nebuchadnezzar destroys the temple, takes many of these holy vessels that we used to use, and everyone who is not killed is exiled to Babylonia.
And so this Jewish community ends up in Babylonia and interestingly ends up prospering there.
We make schools and we make shuls and we make houses of study for advanced scholars.
What's interesting is about 50, 55 years later, knock, knock, who's there?
Showing 661–680 of 968 · page 34 of 49
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