Rabbi YY Jacobson: Why So Many People Feel Empty Today
Meaningful People
Meaningful Minute
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2026
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of the Meaningful People Podcast, and dive into one of the biggest struggles facing the Jewish world today: are we creating people who truly think, feel, and connect… or are we just creating followers? From anxiety and burnout to authenticity, leadership, inner purpose, and the fear-based versions of Yiddishkeit many people quietly wrestle with, this conversation goes far beyond surface-level inspiration. Rabbi YY Jacobson challenges listeners to stop seeing themselves as powerless products of "the system" and instead rediscover the "prophet" inside every Jew.
The episode also explores painful but deeply relevant topics like division within the Jewish community, trauma, parenting, mental health, spirituality, and why so many young people feel disconnected despite living more comfortable lives than any previous generation. Rabbi YY shares powerful insights about anxiety, ego, relationships, healing, and what it really means to have a relationship with Hashem that brings a person alive instead of consuming them. This is one of the most raw, philosophical, and emotionally charged conversations we've ever had, and one that will challenge the way you think about Judaism, identity, and yourself.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have we become firmer than the terror? |
| 0:01.7 | I heard a speech of yours recently where you had said, terror that's real, it doesn't consume you, it warms you up. If I find Yiddishkait dulling my senses, crushing me, making me feel horrible about myself, this is not the divine flame, that's futile. It's not the point, really Yiddishkait. It brings out the best in you. It makes you more creative, not less creative, more alive, not numb and dead, |
| 0:22.1 | more passionate, not frozen and disassociated and detached. |
| 0:25.7 | Have we become firmer than Tatar? |
| 0:27.5 | If Mosherbanu got off a plane and came into Klai Israel today, would he recognize this? |
| 0:31.6 | We can't just have a relationship with Yiddish guy that is skin deep or that is based on pressure, |
| 0:36.6 | or that is based on pressure or that is based on |
| 0:37.6 | fear and doing the right thing in order to be able to conform to the system become part of the |
| 0:43.0 | machine it feels like though a little bit of a stirra between the reality and what you're speaking |
| 0:47.1 | of and the way our system is structured how does anything you just said translate into the systems |
| 0:51.6 | we currently have in the from world in every step of the way from Shiva from Shiva, Bees-Yakov, seminary, Shedohim. How? You drop off your kid at school and it's uniform, |
| 0:59.6 | figuratively and literally. We're not taught to think for ourselves. We've become very good followers. |
| 1:04.4 | Is there room for us to be different? We have to take a deep breath for that. I think the most |
| 1:10.4 | authentic answer I can give to myself and to each and every one of us is. |
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| 1:40.8 | That's possible. |
| 1:41.8 | PZ deals go ahead and download our app today. This episode |
| 1:45.1 | with RuiWi Jacobson is a deep one. We cover a lot of topics. And it's one of those episodes |
... |
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