Pogroms, Trauma, and the Echoes of October 7

This week, Jay and ChayaLeah sit down with Professor Jeffrey Veidlinger of the University of Michigan — historian, author of In the Midst of Civilized Europe, and director of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute — for a hauntingly relevant conversation about the pogroms that swept through Ukraine between 1918 and 1921.They explore how ordinary neighbors became murderers, why humiliation often cuts deeper than death, and how centuries of trauma ripple through Jewish identity to this day. From the streets of the shtetl to the chaos of modern social media, the conversation moves between past and present — revealing unsettling parallels between old hatreds and new headlines.It’s a deeply human, deeply Jewish episode that asks: what does it mean to live — and rebuild — in the midst of civilized Europe?