Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  Home to the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the city of Jerusalem has unparalleled spiritual significance for millions of people around the world. But in addition […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  Mandatory army service plays an essential function within Israeli civic culture, absorbing and equalizing Ashkenazi, Mizrahi (Middle Eastern), religious, secular, male, female, Ethiopian, Russian, Druze, and more. In the IDF, all of these identities step […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  On June 24, 2021, in the middle of the night, part of a 12-story condominium building in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Florida, suddenly collapsed. Thus far, eighteen people are confirmed dead and 145 remain […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  There’s a distinction often made between two common approaches to the human longing for wisdom. The first approach, philosophy, is considered the unassisted search for wisdom and truth, one that requires boldness, curiosity, and perhaps […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  The Soviet Union was deeply against religion, and deeply against Judaism in particular, so that the full embrace of Jewish religious observance, or the study of Hebrew, or the slightest approval of Zionism were often […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  In 1958, the American author Leon Uris published Exodus, the novel about Israel’s founding that became an international phenomenon. Its hero, though an Israeli kibbutznik, was portrayed as a blond, blue-eyed man of culture and […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  Among European diplomats and public figures in the 1990s, it was universally believed that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians was the central key to understanding the Middle East. It was their view that […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  “Water,” said Israel’s second prime minister, Levi Eshkol, “is to the country like blood to a human being.” From the time of the Hebrew Bible and through the ages, Jews have prayed for water in […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  In wake of President Biden’s inauguration, experienced foreign-policy hands argued over what could be learned about his administration’s approach to Israel and the Middle East from his early statements and appointments. They faced an unresolved […]

Press play below to listen to the podcast, download it in the iTunes Store, or stream it via Stitcher.  The hallmark of the American constitutional system was the idea that all men are created equal. Of course, the American regime did not live up to that ambition for centuries, but the ideal of equality […]