I didn't expect to be this engaged by Kathie Lee Gifford talking about her faith journey. Let me just put that out there.
I was walking the lakefront with Denise on a Saturday morning — one of those early spring Chicago days where the wind off the lake is still sharp enough to make you question every life choice — and I'd queued this up mostly because a colleague at school had mentioned the Rabbi Jason Sobel connection to The Chosen, which my wife and I have been watching. I figured five and a half hours, easy weekend listen. What I got was something more interesting than I anticipated, and also more uneven than I hoped.
When the TV Host Steps Aside and the Student Shows Up
Here's what surprised me: Kathie Lee Gifford is genuinely curious. I've spent twenty years watching teenagers fake their way through assigned reading, and I can spot performative interest from orbit. This isn't that. When she walks through sites in Israel — the Pool of Siloam, the Garden of Gethsemane, the road to Emmaus — she's not doing a travel show. She's doing something closer to what I try to get my AP students to do with a text: slow down, ask what's underneath the surface, wonder why this detail matters.
The structure is smart. Each chapter focuses on a specific site or biblical moment, and then Rabbi Sobel steps in at the end to provide the Hebrew linguistic and cultural context. It's almost like a call-and-response between personal memoir and scholarly annotation. Gifford gives you the emotional entry point; Sobel gives you the footnotes. And I'm a sucker for footnotes.
Rabbi Sobel Is the Reason This Works
Let's talk about what's really carrying this audiobook. Sobel's sections are where the substance lives. When he breaks down Hebrew words — explaining how a single root word connects concepts that English translations flatten into something generic — that's the kind of reading I wish more people experienced with any ancient text. This reminds me of what Hemingway said about prose being an iceberg: the dignity of movement is due to the seven-eighths underwater. Sobel is showing you what's underwater in Scripture.
His narration has this quality I can only describe as rabbinical warmth. Not performative authority, not the booming preacher voice. More like a teacher who's genuinely excited that you're finally asking the right question. There's an authenticity to his delivery that comes from — and you can hear this — a man who has lived inside these texts his entire life. The prophetic cadence is real, not rehearsed.
Gifford, for her part, reads her own sections with the conversational ease you'd expect from someone who spent decades on live television. She's a natural storyteller. But here's where I'll be honest: the celebrity memoir portions occasionally feel lighter than the material around them. When she shifts from describing the emotional weight of standing where Jesus stood to a more casual anecdote about her personal life, the tonal gear-change can feel abrupt. It's not bad. It's just — the book is at its best when it's in study mode, not memoir mode.
The Sunday School Problem (And How This Mostly Avoids It)
The book explicitly promises to go "beyond a Sunday-school approach," and it mostly delivers on that. The Hebrew language breakdowns, the cultural context of first-century Jewish life, the geographical specifics of sites in Israel — this is real content. I found myself pausing the audio more than once to look something up. (Denise was not thrilled about the frequent stops on our walk, but she's used to me by now.)
At five and a half hours, it's compact. Almost too compact. Some of Sobel's sections felt like they were just getting started when they ended. I wanted more depth, more time with the linguistic analysis, more of the rabbi and less of the travelogue framing. That's both a compliment and a criticism — the best parts leave you hungry.
The prose deserves to be savored, particularly in Sobel's contributions. I listened at my usual 1.0x because rushing through Hebrew etymology defeats the purpose. My students would probably listen at 2x and miss everything. But that's a generational complaint I've been making for two decades, so.
Who This Is For (And Who Should Probably Pass)
If you're a person of faith who wants to understand the historical and linguistic layers beneath familiar Scripture, this is worth your time. If you're looking for serious biblical scholarship, this is a good appetizer but not the full meal — think of it as a gateway to deeper study. If you have zero interest in Christianity or faith-based content, this isn't going to convert you, and it's not trying to. It knows its audience.
If you loved this, pick up any of N.T. Wright's audio lectures. And if you want to see what happens when faith memoir leans harder into the personal struggle than the scholarly, Wrestling for My Life is a genuinely surprising listen — rougher around the edges than this one, but the sincerity is the same. This is their spiritual successor in accessible form.
Worth Pausing the Faculty Meeting For
I walked away from this with a genuine appreciation for the collaboration between Gifford and Sobel. It's an unequal partnership — Sobel is the scholar, Gifford is the guide — but it works more often than it doesn't. The dual narration gives the audiobook a rhythm that a single reader couldn't achieve. Not everything lands with equal weight, and the celebrity memoir moments occasionally dilute the stronger material. But when Rabbi Sobel is unpacking a Hebrew word and you suddenly see a passage you've read a hundred times in completely new light — that's the good stuff. That's why we still read the classics. Even the sacred ones.
