What Matters Now

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Israel is at war. And, while we are fighting on our southern, and increasingly, our northern borders, one of the biggest battles is global — for the hearts and minds of those who could support Israel in this time of need. Because the battle is international, it’s not only about the Palestinians versus the Israelis. It goes far beyond that. “Hamas is just a forefront of Iran. It’s one large, organic monster. So we weren’t attacked by the local militia, we were attacked by the Persian Empire," according to Dr. Micah Goodman. The author of influential works such as "Catch-67" has appeared on What Matters Now in the past, speaking on politics and on the judicial overhaul. But on a morning in which we both received terrible news of fallen loved ones, we had a raw and very real conversation in which Goodman makes a unique plea for help. In this week of terrible tragedy, we ask Dr. Micah Goodman, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Dr. Micah Goodman (Yonit Schiller)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. A small agile nation takes advantage of an unprecedented window of opportunity. As that start-up nation’s influence quickly spreads throughout the Holy Land, it gains the begrudging admiration of its neighboring frenemy states. Sound familiar? But of course, we're not talking about the modern state of Israel’s hi-tech scene, rather the period in which ancient Israelites founded the biblical United Monarchy some 3,000 years ago. “It’s exactly the time when things changed dramatically. The Egyptian empire that was the ruler of the region collapsed, so the stabilizing force that was here to make sure that these nomads do not interfere and do not disrupt trade and the livelihood of the city-states, this force was not here anymore,” Tel Aviv University Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef, the head of the ongoing Timna Valley Archaeological Expedition, told The Times of Israel this week. While excavating at Timna, Ben-Yosef realized that it was not the commonly thought ancient Egyptian empire that ruled the copper mines at their prime, but rather the Edomites, a nomadic biblical kingdom. This led Ben-Yosef to propose a theory that the beginnings of the United Monarchy under King David — as described in the Bible — was also nomadic, but equally complex. If true, his theory of a nomadic, largely tent-dwelling kingdom would explain why there is a general paucity of architectural evidence of grand palaces during this Iron Age era. So this week, as the Jewish people return to temporary dwellings during the festival of Sukkot, we ask Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to the United States for a series of meetings, including a long-awaited face-to-face with US President Joe Biden. He was met by anti-judicial overhaul protesters at every possible stop. But are these protests the right move for Diaspora Jews? Do they actually serve their purpose or are they, as the prime minister himself insinuated, fodder for the BDS movement? This week I bring you a second webinar with a panel of experts who discuss the role of global Jewry during this time of intense internal conflict in the Jewish State. So this week, we ask former US ambassador David Friedman, Israel’s Special Envoy for Combatting Antisemitism Michal Cotler-Wunsh and leading Zionism expert Prof. Gil Troy, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Protesters wave flags and chant slogans near the site of a planned meeting between United States President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York, Sept. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. It’s July, just after the end of Shabbat and about 100 people have gathered in the Likud-majority West Bank city of Ma'ale Adumim. Hebrew University law Prof. Benjamin (Benny) Porat, a resident of the city, is addressing the crowd. During his 10-minute speech, Porat — standing next to the police headquarters in Maaleh Adumim — said statements such as, “The Israeli majority has risen up and will no longer be silent” — even as a few of the West Bank city’s residents attempted to drown him out. Porat is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the director of the Matz Institute for Jewish Law. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. He is also a settler who is vocally in opposition to the coalition’s judicial overhaul. The Times of Israel sat with Porat in his home this week to discuss Tuesday’s long-awaited and explosive High Court hearing over the first piece of the judicial overhaul legislation. We also talk about how Jewish legal tradition may help solve parts of this clash of the titans crisis. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Hebrew University Prof. Benny Porat (Israel Democracy Institute)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. “To Israel’s friends in North America, we are taking the unusual step of directly addressing you at a moment of acute crisis in Israel. We write with a sense of anguish and anxiety for the future of our country.” With these words, authors Yossi Klein Halevi, Daniel Gordis and Matti Friedman began a February oped on The Times of Israel that they titled, “An open letter to Israel’s friends in North America.” The Times of Israel hosted the trio this week in a webinar and this week’s What Matters Now episode is a very lightly edited recording of the event. It’s rather long, so we’ll get right to it. So this week, we ask Yossi Klein Halevi, Daniel Gordis and Matti Friedman, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. Image: Anti-overhaul activists protest against the government's judicial overhaul outside the president's residence in Jerusalem, on July 29, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week, we're taking a brief break from the headlines and turning to a topic we covered last summer, hearing the experiences of a young Israeli staff member at a Jewish summer camp. This week's What Matters Now guest, Yishai Mogilner, is royalty of a sort at Camp Ramah in the Poconos, where his late grandfather, Rabbi David Mogilner, was a revered director who helped shape the camp and tragically died of a heart attack, at the age of 42, while at camp one summer. Yishai Mogilner's father, the late Eitan Mogilner, also worked at Ramah Poconos, and Yishai Mogilner, 19, now spent a summer at the same Ramah, ahead of being drafted into the army and following a year spent in a mechina preparatory program. He speaks about being in the place that was shaped by his grandfather, that then shaped his own father's life and in turn, has been formative for Yishai and his siblings back home in Israel, where they were raised. Mogilner talks about being an Israeli in such an American Jewish space, and what that's been like this summer. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Yishai Mogilner (Courtesy Ella Goldberg)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Next month will mark the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords in which Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to establish the Palestinian Authority, what was supposed to be a temporary body responsible for limited Palestinian self-governance over parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- a body that would serve as the foundation of a future Palestinian state. Three decades later, we’re about as far away from that vision as ever. While the PA still exists, and one of the leaders who signed the Oslo Accords, Mahmoud Abbas, remains at the helm, the mechanism he operates largely fails to deliver for its people. But should the Palestinians’ problems be Israel’s as well? This week's What Matters Now guest, journalist Adam Rasgon, appeared to argue as much: “It ultimately is in Israel's interest to have a transparent and effective Palestinian Authority because when you have that, it will bring greater stability to the West Bank and to the region more broadly," he told the podcast. Rasgon has almost a decade of experience covering Palestinian Affairs for The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Now a member of the New Yorker’s editorial staff, he recently co-wrote a tour de force profile of one of Mahmoud Abbas’s closest aides, Hussein al-Sheikh. The story is about Sheikh, but it’s also a larger one about a PA that was born out of support from the masses but that, like Sheikh, has gradually distanced itself from the people and their struggles. We discussed what can be learned from Sheikh’s career, what his and the PA’s futures look like as well as Israel’s role in it all. So this week, we ask journalist Adam Rasgon, what matters now? What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Journalist Adam Rasgon. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Jewish-American journalist Norman Cousins once said, “History is a vast early warning system.” This week we speak with Oren Kessler, the author of “Palestine 1936,” who would likely agree. But as we see in Kessler's new book, history can also be a collection of missed opportunities. “David Ben-Gurion, starting in about 1933-34, had a series of meetings with a man by the name Musa Alami and he and Ben-Gurion met again and again throughout the early mid-1930s and they come tantalizingly close to some sort of an agreement before everything goes wrong, as tends to happen,” Kessler said this week in Jerusalem's Nomi Studios. Kessler’s new book is about the Arab Revolt that took place from 1936-1939. He argues, quite convincingly, that these years in British Mandate Palestine form the roots of the Middle East conflict. The book attempts to illuminate all three sides of the complex relationship between the British, Jews and Arabs attempting to occupy the Holy Land during these formative years. Kessler is a journalist and political analyst based in  Tel Aviv. He spent five years researching and writing “Palestine 1936” and it’s clearly a labor he loved. There are many lessons that have yet to be learned as we see this bloody history repeating itself in Israel, even today. So this week, we ask author Oren Kessler, what mattered then and why does that matter now? What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Journalist Oren Kessler, author of 'Palestine 1936' (Hadas Parush)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week, a Tel Aviv bus driver shouted at 20-year-old passenger, Romi Inbar, for wearing a tank top, which he considered to be immodest, telling at her repeatedly to put a shirt on. “You can’t walk around like that,” the driver said. She told Israeli television that the whole bus remained silent except for a mother who told the driver that Inbar can wear whatever she wants. She said she felt totally humiliated and she posted what happened to Instagram so it doesn’t happen to others. The bus company apologized, but this is hardly the first time this public shaming of women is happening in today’s Israel. The fact that Inbar is speaking up and publicizing her story is the glass half full here. But, according to this week’s What Matters Now guest, attorney Susan Weiss, men are increasingly emboldened to marginalize and sexualize women -- even as avenues for the protection of their rights, such as the Supreme Court, are being shut. "We do have this dichotomy in this country, we have this situation where women can be fighter pilots but they can’t get divorced,” said Weiss. The founder of the Center for Women’s Justice joined The Times of Israel this week in Jerusalem to analyze how the status of women has changed since the current, right-wing, and highly religious, government has taken office. Spoiler: it’s not good. We also talk about the new “Barbie” movie and what message Weiss took away that makes her feel bold. So this week, we ask attorney Dr. Susan Weiss, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Center for Women's Justice founder attorney Dr. Susan Weiss. (Rachel Markowitz Bader)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Over 30 years ago, American political consultant, James Carville quipped during former US president Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Today, a growing chorus of Israeli economists are echoing this phrase while attempting to pause the government’s judicial overhaul legislation in the hopes of maintaining Israel’s up-till-now flourishing growth. “We are now at a crossroads and I’m extremely concerned. But when I look back I think we’ve done tremendously well and that’s why I think we have so much to lose," Prof. Karnit Flug, a former governor of the Bank of Israel, told The Times of Israel this week. Today, Flug is a Vice President of Research and the William Davidson Senior Fellow for Economic Policy at the Israel Democracy Institute and a professor in the Department of Economics at the Hebrew University. Flug is hardly alone in her concerns: This week, the Bank of Israel issued its Financial Stability Report for the first half of 2023. It warned that growing and prolonged uncertainty around the implications of the controversial legislation poses a threat to the country’s financial system and economy. In our talk, Flug gives concrete examples of what she and other analysts are seeing, right now. So this week, we ask Prof. Karnit Flug, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts. IMAGE: Karnit Flug is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, vice-president at the Israel Democracy Institute and former governor of the Bank of Israel (courtesy Israel Democracy Institute)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.