Julie Wolk is a facilitator, strategist, and creator of
Ashkenazi Ancestral Journeys, a spiritual pilgrimage and heritage program that brings Ashkenazi Jews to Poland to reconnect with ancestral lands, Jewish memory, diasporic culture, grief, and political histories that Zionist narratives often teach us to bypass.
In this conversation, Julie and Ezra discuss what it means to turn toward Eastern Europe not only as a site of Holocaust memory and “the dark place,” but as a place of Jewish life, culture, language, resistance, food, medicine, prayer, and song. They talk about March of the Living and the weaponization of Holocaust trauma, the Jewish Labor Bund and the concept of doikayt, the erasure of Ashkenazi culture through Zionism, and the possibility of building a Judaism rooted not in nationalism or fear, but in solidarity, memory, and accountability.
At the heart of the conversation is a question Julie’s work asks with urgency: can Jewish historical trauma be metabolized rather than weaponized — softening us into empathy and “never again for anyone,” rather than hardening us into victimhood, nationalism, militarism, and the dispossession of Palestinians?
The Thin Veil with Ezra Lipp
Ezra Lipp’s Sites
Thin Veil Theme Music by Magic In The Other
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What is The Thin Veil with Ezra Lipp?
The Thin Veil explores what happens when inherited narratives about history, identity, power, and belonging begin to break down—and what it means to move toward greater moral clarity and alignment in their wake.
Centered around Palestine and anti-Zionism, and rooted in musician/activist Ezra Lipp’s own process of political unlearning later in life, the show features conversations with artists, organizers, and others navigating questions of imperialism, colonization, liberation, and the systems shaping our world.