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A few years ago, Saul Kaye published a book of interviews with 15 groundbreaking Jewish musicians. He envisioned a series of books of interviews with Jewish professionals, with one devoted to cantors and another to rabbis.

But before he started working on the second volume, Kaye’s wife, Cantor Elana Jagoda Kaye, suggested he start a podcast to reach a larger audience. He took the suggestion and launched “The Holy Sparks Podcast” last year to “illuminate the brightest lights in the Jewish world and beyond,” as its tagline goes. So far he has released 32 episodes featuring mostly rabbis, along with a funeral director, a Jewish camp director and a yogi. All episodes are available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and YouTube, where Kaye has 2,700 subscribers.

“I know so many people in different parts of the Jewish world that are operating in their own lane, and I wanted to expose different people to different audiences,” Kaye told J. this month. “There’s such a need for positivity, for shining a light on things that are affirming about being Jewish right now.”

As for why the guest list includes so many rabbis, the San Mateo resident explained, “It turns out that I have a lot of rabbi friends. If you look in my phone, you’ll find hundreds of rabbis.”

The podcast gets its name from a Kabbalistic idea that when God created the world, Divine fragments were scattered throughout the universe.

“Everyone has holy sparks within them,” Kaye said. “Once you get someone talking, all of their sparks come up to the surface.”

A blues musician and freelance prayer leader at Bay Area synagogues, Kaye has invited a number of locals to appear on the podcast, including David Habib, the funeral director at Sinai Memorial Chapel in Palo Alto; Rabbi Amitai Fraiman, Z3’s director; Nathaniel Solomon, a yoga instructor who found his way to Judaism from Rastafari; Rabbi Yosef Marcus of Chabad North Peninsula; Ari Vared, Camp Newman’s executive director; Rabbi Laurie Matzkin, the chief Jewish experience officer at the Peninsula Jewish Community Center; Rabbi Irvin Ungar, an expert on the work of artist Arthur Szyk; Isaac Zones, a musician; and Michael Kaye, a kosher winemaker who also happens to be Kaye’s older brother.

On a recent episode, Kaye spoke with Adi Hayun Perez, the Bay Area regional director of the Israeli American Council. Perez, who grew up in Ashkelon and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, shared the ordeal that her parents, sister and other relatives went through in Israel on Oct. 7. They spent more than 12 hours hiding in their safe rooms on Kfar Aza,  one of the communities targeted by Hamas terrorists.

“My sister … started to be dehydrated because she didn’t drink water, so she ran out of milk” for her baby, Perez tells Kaye. When the baby started to cry, Perez’s sister grabbed some fabric in case she needed to muffle the sound so they wouldn’t be discovered by the terrorists.

“It’s really important for me to share that, because I was back and forth about how much information to share [on the podcast],” Perez says. “But I truly feel like we are in difficult, very special times in history and it’s our duty to be —”

“Brave,” Kaye offers.

“To be brave and also to hear the testimony,” Perez responds.

The terrorists set her sister’s house on fire, but the family managed to escape through a window and were evacuated by the Israel Defense Forces. Perez has raised more than $120,000 online to help her family members rebuild their lives. Residents of Kfar Aza have been resettled on Kibbutz Shefayim in central Israel, but her sister’s family decided to move further north.

Kaye said Perez’s appearance on “The Holy Sparks Podcast” led to a bump in donations. “To see the podcast doing tikkun olam, that is what I’m most proud of,” he said.

Moving forward, Kaye plans to record a series of interviews with Jewish women who made aliyah from the Bay Area. His wish list for other future guests includes popular podcaster Lex Fridman and comedian Roseanne Barr. (Barr reached out to him on Twitter about a decade ago to compliment him on his music, and the two struck up a friendship.)

Kaye’s wife, the cantor at San Mateo’s Peninsula Temple Beth El and the inspiration for the podcast, will also stop by.

“Elana will make it on the podcast at some point,” he said with a laugh.