Podcast

A Pew Research Center study found that more than four-in-ten Americans (44%) report that they pray at least once a day, and an additional 23% say they pray weekly or a few times a month. Nearly one-third of U.S. adults seldom or never pray.

It seems that I mostly know religiously indifferent agnostics and angry atheists.That is not surprising, since my life is populated with highly educated middle and upper class people.

But  well over half of Americans spend some of their time seeking divine guidance and love through prayer. Globally, the Pew study found the median across 105 countries was 49% praying daily. Many of the devout are found in poor and developing nations.

So the world is divided, and perhaps polarized, between believers and non-believers.

This podcast tries to explore the gap between two often antagonistic points of view.

Author Tom Soma joins artist Bob Barancik in a discussion moderated by actress Vickie Daignault.

Some of Bob’s art is used as a catalyst to conversation.

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Art by Bob Barancik

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Relevant Web Links

Tallit: A Faceless Jew Under  a Prayer Shawl

Smashing Idols: The Jewish Devotion to Monotheism, Iconoclastic Thinking, and Skepticism

The Shattered Buddhas of Bamiyam: Taliban Destroys World Treasures

This podcast is well over an hour. To make it easier for potential viewers and listeners to access content that might be of interest, a navigation chart has been provided with approximate time designations.

I hope that you find the dialogue with my friend, actress Vickie Daignault, thought provoking and engaging.

We explore the underlying dynamics of the Jewish-Israeli / Muslim- Palestinian conflict. We also revisit predictions that I made in my blog about the evolving hard realities of the October 7th, 2023 massacre and kidnapping of Israeli Jews by Hamas terrorists, as well as discuss the 12- day Israel-Iran war.

These predictions were made in March of 2024, with the help of my Israeli- American editor and friend, Marsha Turken. The podcast with Vickie was produced about 14 months later.

With Marsha’s help, I got some things right, other things wrong and some conjectures proved incomplete.

But writing open-minded and specific scenarios is essential in times of increasing technological change and deep political polarization across the world. Most of the policy-making failures in both Israel and the U.S. stem more from a failure of imagination than intellectual rigor or lack of information.

I welcome all civil and carefully-considered comments.

On a final note, here are my musings on the current situation in the Middle East since my most recent podcast. It is written from the point of a view of an American Jew and longtime supporter of Israel:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is from Charles Dickens’ classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities. And perhaps it best describes the current situation of the Jewish state.

The 12-day war against the mullahs of Tehran was unbelievably successful. The brilliance and daring of the Israeli air strikes, intelligence triumphs and ground attacks inside Iran will be studied at war colleges worldwide for decades to come.

The neutering of much of Hezbollah and the assassination of its longtime charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was a huge plus for both Israel and the Lebanese people.

Another bonus was the collapse of the tyrannical and murderous Assad regime in Syria.

And yet another achievement was the Israeli-American “Iron Dome” anti- ballistic missile system that likely destroyed over 95% of the deadly incoming hypersonic missiles and sophisticated drones.

But, perhaps the biggest accomplishment of all was the bombing of the heavily-fortified underground Iranian nuclear facilities by the U.S. Air Force’s gigantic “bunker buster” bombs on June 21-22, 2025.

Unfortunately, the massacre and kidnapping of over 1,200 Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 has deeply scarred and traumatized Israeli society and the Jewish people.

This topic is explored at https://www.creativeshare.com/exhibits/humanity-inhumanity/october-7th.php.

The October 7th attack necessitated the mobilization of over 350,000

Israeli civilian reservists to defend their country. Many men and women have experienced over 200 continuous days of service. The toll on family life, mental health and the economy has been extremely challenging and may well prove unsustainable.

In addition, over 60,000 Israelis living in the northern tier of the country were displaced by the war from their homes, businesses and daily routines, and about half still haven’t returned. And the various kibbutzes in southern Israel that took the brunt of the initial terrorist attack are yet to be rebuilt into functioning communities.

In terms of Hamas in Gaza, it has been largely degraded as a fighting force for the moment. But widely-disseminated digital images of gruesome Palestinian civilian suffering during the fighting, coupled with absurd statistics provided by Hamas and unvarnished Jew hatred have made Israel a pariah state almost everywhere in the world.

It has also made self-identifying as a Jew in the Diaspora genuinely difficult and increasingly dangerous.

At rock bottom, the strategy of Hamas and radical Islamists across the globe can be summed up as follows:

Israelis and Westerners love life and fear death, and we true jihadists are happy to martyr our children, women and elderly, and especially our young men, in our holy quest to make the whole world strictly observant of Islam.

At this point in time, it is only little Israel with its 7.4 million Jews that is willing to make the agonizing sacrifices to fight for Western civilization and freedom of thought.

Unfortunately, these days Israel is vilified on most college campuses in the West, in much of the mainstream and social media and even in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C.

Where will all this lead?

God only knows…