Show Notes
As we prepare our fifth season of Exile, we’re looking back at our favorite episodes from seasons 1-4. Each re-release brings back a unique, fascinating, and often heart-wrenching story from the Leo Baeck Institute Archives. Known for her candid talk and blunt advice about sex, Dr. Ruth Westheimer is the world’s most renowned psychosexual therapist. But beneath her joyful demeanor is a chaotic story about her youth—a girl named Karola Ruth Siegel left orphaned and stateless. How does she harness all of this uncertainty - and the sexual awakenings of adolescence - to make it in the world? Dr. Ruth shared her diary for the first time with the Leo Baeck Institute – and with all of you – for this episode of Exile. We are grateful for her generosity with her time and her story – and for the decades of sound advice. Learn more at www.lbi.org/westheimer. Exile is a production of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York | Berlin and Antica Productions. It’s narrated by Mandy Patinkin. Executive Producers include Katrina Onstad, Stuart Coxe, and Bernie Blum. Senior Producer is Debbie Pacheco. Produced by Brian Rice. Associate Producers are Hailey Choi and Emily Morantz. Research and translation by Isabella Kempf. Sound design and audio mix by Philip Wilson, with help from Cameron McIver. Additional sound by Violet Lucca. Theme music by Oliver Wickham. Voice acting by Lucy Hill. Special thanks to Cliff Rubin, Barbara Schmutzler for translating Dr. Ruth’s diaries, Dr. Ruth and Ben Yagoda for All in a Lifetime, and Soundtrack New York.
More from Exile
Exile released its first episode in November 2022, but the tale of how it came to be started long before that. On this special episode, we’re pulling back the curtain to tell the story of how this podcast gets made. From its origins in the mind of a dedicated board member, to the months of research and planning to select and shape episodes, to the music and sound effects that bring listeners into a time and place long past, Exile is truly a labor of love.
This is part 2 of the remarkable story of Rabbi Leo Baeck.
Rabbi Leo Baeck looms large in German-Jewish history, but he began his career as a smalltown rabbi in present-day Poland. Baeck quickly earned a reputation for moral clarity and quiet resolve, even in the face of a powerful opposition. As World War I gave way to the rise of the Nazis, the pressures on German Jewry intensified, and Baeck was thrust into an impossible role: guiding a community through its most dangerous and devastating hour. This is the first chapter of a two-part story.
In 1933, German author Lion Feuchtwanger wrote the first ever novel about the experience of Jews under Hitler. The book became a global sensation. When he finally received an offer in 1938 to adapt his most popular book for the screen in Stalin’s Russia, he jumped at the chance. The film was a success, but the decision would come to haunt him when he lived in California during the Red Scare.
In the late 1930s, one of the few places in Berlin that still allowed Jewish visitors was the Zoological Garden, which was established with the support of many Jewish donors. As antisemitic laws took over elsewhere, the Zoo remained a space for community and childhood joy. Eventually, however, even the Zoo would betray the Jews. Sixty years later, one man with fond memories of the zoo realized that an injustice had occurred against his family, and did everything he could to right the wrongs of the past.