How Should a Religious Community Respond to Its Own Extremists? With Rabbi Yitzchak Blau (282)

How Should a Religious Community Respond to Its Own Extremists? With Rabbi Yitzchak Blau (282)

February 22, 2026 · 1h 5m · Season 9 · Episode 18

About this episode

Rabbi Yitzchak Blau joins Scott Kahn to discuss how religious communities should respond to extremism within their ranks.

Check out Orthodox Conundrum Commentary on Substack and get your free subscription by going to https://scottkahn.substack.com/ - and paid subscribers get this and other episodes of the Orthodox Conundrum Podcast ad-free and with early access and additional bonus content! When disturbing stories emerge from within a religious community, the instinctive response is often immediate: they don't represent us. But what comes after that? In recent weeks, incidents involving religious Jews, from violence connected to Israeli settlers to attacks that shocked fellow Orthodox communities, have forced difficult questions into the open. How should a religious society respond when wrongdoing appears within its own ranks? When does healthy skepticism become denial? And what responsibility do leaders and ordinary community members bear when disavowal alone feels insufficient? In this episode, Rabbi Yitzchak Blau joins me for a thoughtful and challenging conversation about moral responsibility, communal leadership, and the tension between loyalty and honesty, particularly within the Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist world. This is not a political discussion but a religious one. It is a…

People in this episode

Host: Scott Kahn

Guest: Rabbi Yitzchak Blau

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Organizations: Orthodox Conundrum, Substack

Places: Israel

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