Today's guest is one you don’t want to miss. Rabbi Ron Symons has been the senior director of Jewish Life, since July 2015, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, and also the founding director of the organization’s Center for Loving Kindness, since August 2017. In our conversation with Rabbi Ron, we discuss so many pressing matters happening around the world, but especially here in the United States like living wages, demoralizing rhetoric in public discourse, and especially gun violence. Rabbi Ron shares very poignantly about his experiences with an antisemitic terrorist attack in the form of a mass shooting, which took place at the Tree of Life Synagogue, in 2018 – in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the midst of tragedies such as this one, Rabbi Ron reminds us what it means to move from being a bystander to an upstander who ‘Loves your Neighbor as Yourself.’

 From now until the end of 2026, we are going to do some reflection on some of the very special podcasts that we were able to air over the last eight seasons. As we approach our 15th anniversary on January 1st, 2027, we thought that it would be a good time from now until the end of the year to be able to replay some of our favorite and some of the most impactful podcast that we have been able to do. This is one of them.

Stephanie Sarazin understands the unique challenges of grieving the loss of a loved one who is still alive. Through trials and tears, she’s traveled around the United States and Central America in search of understanding this grief and healing her heart. Along the way, she has met so many others who were also grieving a loss not from physical death and found that this kind of grief is largely overlooked and almost always misunderstood. Now her mission is to ensure that no one navigating ambiguous grief suffers alone or forever. Her book Soul Broken won the 2023 Nautilus Award: Books for a Better World in the category of Death & Dying and Grief & Loss.

This bonus episode is a live recording from our spring event, the SouthCentral PA Premiere of the documentary Friends & Neighbors. It is not necessary to have watched the documentary, however, it does add to the richness of the conversation.

If you haven't watched the documentary yet or would like to rewatch it click on the links below.

AMAZON | APPLE | PBS