Some episodes start light. This one starts with a candle. We begin with Jay’s yahrzeit for his mom, twelve years gone and still deeply missed, and the Rabbi walks us through what the anniversary of a death really means in Jewish tradition. From there we widen out to a fast day heavy with history and a piece of tech that might change how any of us learns Torah.

In this episode, we get into:

• What yahrzeit means and why we say Kaddish for eleven months, then every year after

• The Rabbi’s own story of counting down the days, and the strange sadness when Kaddish ends

• The five tragedies of the 17th of Tammuz and the start of the Three Weeks

• Why you can get engaged during the Three Weeks but not married (and what that says about free will)

• Yochai, the new AI tool that turns anyone into a Torah study partner