Israel Story

What does it mean to be 'in it for the long haul'? In our fiftieth episode, which is also our season finale, we explore this question in the context of both creating a podcast and forging a relationship.Some people operate within the confines of reality. Others don't. Instead, they will things into existence. Today we'll meet one such determined woman who - faced with countless obstacles - decided to keep calm, put one foot in front of the other, and carry on in pursuit of love.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in 2014, we met Elik Fromchenko. During the day he works at an auto magazine, but - just like Clark Kent - he has a secret superpower: Elik is a world-class whistler. And, in an adventure that could only happen to an Israeli backpacker, he found himself in an ambassadorial role in Hebei Province, China.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you happen to associate Christmas Eve with egg rolls, hot-and-sour soup and sesame chicken, tune in to tomorrow's re-release of one of our Season One classics - our sole China-related story.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rachael Cerrotti was a college freshman when she first came to Israel on a Birthright trip. Shortly thereafter, back in Philadelphia, she and her grandmother - Hana Dubova - started sitting down for what they called "storytelling sessions." The result was a ten-year-long journey in which Rachael retraced her grandmother's steps during, and in the wake of, WWII.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our last episode, "Achi" (my brother), we told the tale of two siblings and their unusual life together. And today, we're sharing a little companion bonus track, in which senior producer Yochai Maital talks to his older sister Temira Finesilver about their very different lifestyles. Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When God first spoke to Benjamin, he was reading the newspaper. That was just the start of a wild journey that led two Orthodox brothers from the Bronx to a new life, a new homeland, a new lord and - above all - to each other.Growing up, Benjamin and Reuven Berger never imagined they'd be roommates well into their seventies. Nor did they imagine their lives would unfold as brothers in faith. But from their majestic home in the serene village of Ein Kerem, they reflect on an unusual, almost biblical, path that led them far apart and then back together. In the prologue, Mishy Harman tries to understand why - if an alien landed in Israel today - it would probably think that the word "achi" is a form of Hebrew punctuation. Act I, "The Berger Bros," is a tale of two brothers who are brothers in more than just one way. Joel Shupack brings us the story of Benjamin and Reuven Berger, the Bronx-born sons of European Jews who escaped the Nazis. Tumultuous years of doubts, revelations and risks led them from a muddy copy of "Peyton Place" all the way to Jerusalem's small community of Messianic Jews.  Ari Jacob composed and performed the original music in "The Berger Bros." Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. Thanks to Dina Kraft for editorial help. Adam Milliner mixed the episode. The end song, *November, *is by Shaanan Streett, and features Selva de Mar. It was written in memory of Shaanan's sister, Tova.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jews have been in Iraq for more than two-and-a-half millennia. Today, the entire Jewish community of Baghdad can fit in a single car. In this special Thanksgiving bonus, we bring you a conversation between Mishy Harman and Emad Levy, the last "rabbi" of Baghdad.It's a busy week. Many of you will be traveling, and those of you staying put will probably be cooking turkeys and preparing cranberry sauce. And while you are doing all that, we wanted to keep you company.With the kind of storytelling we do, most of our interviews end up on the proverbial "editing room floor." And we're often sorry about that, since we'd like you to hear them too. So today, in a new experiment for us, we bring you an edited version of an interview we recently recorded. Want to know what the last "rabbi" of Baghdad is thankful for? Listen and find out.Zev Levi edited this special. The end song, "Tahdini" is by Dudu Tassa & The Kuwaitis.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A century ago, close to one-third of Baghdad's population was Jewish. Today, just five Jews remain in the city. In today's episode, we explore the story of the Jews of Iraq, all the way from Nahum the prophet to a Jerusalemite grandma who became the unlikely champion of kidnapped Yazidi girls.Jews first arrived in what is today Iraq in the 6th century BC, after the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar sacked Solomon's Temple. It was from there that Ezra and Nehemiah led returning exiles back to Jerusalem. It was there that the Babylonian Talmud was debated, compiled and codified. And it was there, in 1941, that the Farhud - a violent pogrom - left hundreds of Baghdad's Jews dead and thousands injured.While there were many different phases in this 2600-year-long history, Jews knew numerous prosperous periods in the 'land between the two rivers.' There were Jewish politicians, jurists, doctors, businessmen. There was even a Jewish Miss Baghdad.Today that community is all but gone.Ari Jacob wrote the original music in “You Cannot Clap With One Hand.” Joel Shupack arranged the music for the rest of the episode, and for parts of Act I, with music from Blue Dot Sessions. Shai Satran and Mishy Harman edited the episode, and Sela Waisblum mixed it all up. It was recorded in Jonathan Friedlander's 'Quality Sound Studio' in Jerusalem. The end song is a new cover version we commissioned of Boney M.'s "Rivers of Babylon.” It was recorded, arranged and performed by Shay Perry.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To most, Adolf Eichmann - the mastermind behind the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ - is the ultimate symbol of evil. But to a small group of Israelis, he was no more than a gaunt and balding middle-aged prisoner. This is the story of those who looked evil in the eye, and lived to tell the tale.Last week we aired a story about Dr. Yonah Elian, the anesthesiologist who sedated Eichmann during his capture back in 1960. And today we bring you a rerun of another Eichmann story we aired back in a 2016 episode called “Of Numbers and Names.” It is the story of the select few who interacted with Eichmann as he stood trial in Jerusalem - his guards, his interrogators and even his executors. Israelis for whom the encounter with the Nazi officer wasn’t just a moment of national catharsis. It was an intimate experience. Perhaps even too intimate.This piece was produced by Katie Pulverman with help from Shai Inbal. Special thanks to Yuval Orr, Roy Barzilay, Shlomo Maital and Chanoch Lipperman. The end song, “Efer Ve’Avak” (“Ash and Dust”) is by Yehuda Poliker.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In May 1960, the Mossad captured Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, and brought him to stand trial in Jerusalem. It's one of Israel's most glorified chapters, right up there with Entebbe, the bombing of the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor and Operation Solomon. So why did the doctor who sedated the Nazi mastermind minimize his role in the saga? And what can that tell us about the legacy of World War II, eighty years after its start?Last month, the world marked the eightieth anniversary of Hitler's invasion of Poland and the start of WWII. In Israel, too, this was a big milestone: Kids discussed it at school, academics held conferences at the various universities, newspapers ran articles and editorials. But this wasn't, of course, always the case in Israel. For years, the war - and the Holocaust - were taboo topics. European Jews, many Israelis felt, had gone to the camps like sheep to the slaughter, without resisting, without putting up much of a fight. That perception began to change, almost overnight, as a result of one major event - the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann.This episode is a collaboration with "Rough Translation," an NPR podcast that tells stories from around the world that offer new perspectives on familiar conversations. Gregory Warner and Daniel Estrin bring us the complicated story of Dr. Yonah Elian, the anesthesiologist who sedated one of the world's most notorious Nazis.Marianne McCune edited the piece, and scored it together with Mike Cruz. Joel Shupack arranged the rest of the episode with music from Blue Dot Sessions. It was produced by Jess Jiang, Neal Carruth, Will Dobson, Anya Grundman, Sarah Knight, Andy Huether, John Ellis, Matt Orton, Autumn Barnes, Zev Levi, Yoshi Fields, Niva Ashkenazi, James Feder and Yochai Maital. Sela Waisblum mixed the episode. The end song, "Perurim Shel Or" ("Sparks of Light") is the first single from the new album of Israel Story's band leader, Dotan Moshonov.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or Tablet Magazine.Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and by signing up for our newsletter at israelstory.org/newsletter/. For more, head to our site or The Times of Israel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.