Hello and welcome to Gabfest reads for the month of August. I am Emily Bachelon, one of the hosts of Slates Political Gabfest. I am here today with Josh Leifer, who is a journalist and editor, whose essays and reporting have appeared in the New York of books, the New York Times, The Guardian, Ha'aritz, and lots of other places.

Hey Josh, welcome.

Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Josh, you are here to talk about your new book, tablets shattered, the end of an American Jewish

century and the future of Jewish life.

And I just want to set the table a little bit.

This is a book in which you weave your family story

into a rich history of 20th and 21st century American Judaism.

So this is a book about how American Jews define themselves in the chief outpost of the diaspora, the United States.

And it moves from the period when American Jews are establishing synagogues and national institutions

into their relationship with Zionism and the state of Israel,

and then into present-day issues, quite thorny issues,

about religious practice, political identity,

anti-Semitism, and then also Israel-Palestine comes up a lot in the modern

portion of the book as well.

And you wrote most of this book before the events of October 7th, but you revised it.

And so I think the text really speaks directly to this moment that we're in, this really difficult

aftermath of October 7th.

And I know you have lots of thoughts about that.

And I especially know that because disclosure up front,

Josh, you are a cousin of my husband Paul. And I have to start by saying that I learned from this

book that you had a really different Jewish upbringing than my husband did. He grew up in

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