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Common FaithAuthor: SiriusXM
A rabbi and a journalist walk into not a bar, not a synagogue, but a SiriusXM podcast studio. Each week, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, Senior Rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue, and Jon Frankel, formerly of Real Sports, will banter, question, and explore the big issues of our day through the lens of Jewish tradition and lived experience. The program is designed to be fun, thoughtful, and engagingwhere faith matters, and conversation runs deep. Language: en Genres: Judaism, Leisure, Religion & Spirituality Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Half-Jew, Full Life: Georgette Bennett on Identity, Survival, and the American Dream
Episode 25
Thursday, 5 March, 2026
What does it mean to choose an identity — especially when that identity places you in danger? This week on Common Faith, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove and Emmy Award-winning journalist Jon Frankel sit down with sociologist, author, and humanitarian leader Dr. Georgette Bennett to discuss her moving new book, Half-Jew–Full Life: The Unlikely Journey of a Voluntary Jew from Nazi Persecution to the American Dream. The book traces the life of Gary “Pips” Phillips — born to a Jewish father and Aryan mother in Berlin — who could have avoided deportation under Nazi racial laws. Instead, he insisted on embracing a Jewish identity. “Hitler made me a Jew,” he would later say. Pips went underground in Berlin, was arrested four times, escaped three times, and survived through a combination of ingenuity, unlikely mercy, and relentless will to live. But this conversation goes deeper than biography. Georgette Bennett shares her personal connection to Pips — who became a surrogate father to her after her own family escaped postwar Hungary — and reflects on the moral ambiguities she faced in telling his story. The episode explores survivor consciousness without romanticizing survival, the difference between survivor’s guilt and survival as resistance, and how trauma echoes across generations. Rabbi Cosgrove and Jon Frankel also examine how Jewish identity today must be rooted in more than Holocaust memory — in dignity, responsibility, and the biblical commandment to care for the stranger. In a time of renewed antisemitism and polarized politics, Bennett argues that Jews are not defined only by victimhood, but by civilizational contributions and moral imagination. A story of darkness, resilience, and full-hearted living. Dr. Georgette Bennett: https://bennettny.com/ Half-Jew – Full Life:https://www.amazon.com/Half-Jew-Full-Life-Unlikely-Voluntary-Persecution-ebook/dp/B0FCG82D4Z Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove: https://www.instagram.com/elliot_cosgrove https://x.com/RabbiCosgrove Park Avenue Synagogue:https://www.pasyn.org https://www.instagram.com/parkavenuesyn/# Jon Frankel: https://www.instagram.com/skifrankel Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
