Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com For reasons I explain in today’s video post, above, there’s been quite a bit of discussion among some Israelis of whether or not the claim that these elections are “Israel’s last chance” is really true. I’ll explain why so much is at stake and yet why, at the very same time, I hesitate to say that. And then we’...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com At a time when despair and despondency seem almost natural, it is good for the mind and for the soul to meet young Israelis who are not only not giving up, but who believe that it’s up to them to change the direction of Zionism and the Jewish State. Here is what their website has to say: Outdated Divisions. The...

Now that Israel is less than three months away from elections, things are beginning to heat up. Are Israelis thinking about and voting on the same issues that people abroad believe they are, or think they should be? If people here are “one issue” voters, what’s the issue? And given that it’s the blocs that matter and not the parties, how is one to choose? Glimpses into Israel’s campaigns from the...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com There was an item in the news yesterday about Bezalel Smotrich, in which it was reported that when asked if he’d ever considered resigning after October 7, he said that he couldn’t think of anything that he had done wrong. Today’s presentation is not at all about Smotrich, but about the larger issue that his no...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com When S. Y. Agnon received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, he became the first Israeli to receive a Nobel, and to this day, he is the only Israeli to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. The opening paragraph of the speech that he gave upon receiving the prize has become iconic, and in ways tha...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com It was a ping on my phone yesterday that led me to hunt down the video we’re sharing today. A few hours before Tisha B’Av began last night, I got a text (sent to many thousands) from one of the people who had led the anti-judicial reform protest movement three years ago, and who was calling on Israelis to mobil...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com On a summer Sabbath in 1913, in the Polish town of Brisk (otherwise known as Brest-Litovsk, in Yiddish, as Brisk) a son was born to Ze’ev Dov and Chasia Begin. It was four days after Tisha B’Av, the annual fast day mourning the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and the exiles that followed them, on the Sa...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com It’s well known by now that Peter Beinart, no friend of the Jewish State (or to my mind, of the Jewish people) wrote a book not long ago called Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning . Beinart wrote that book (which I confess I have not read), as has been widely noted in the reviews, without ev...

It was only a five-minute drive, at the very most, from the Oslo train station to our hotel, and we could have walked it. But we’d been traveling all day and our suitcases weren’t small, so we decided to hop in a cab. “Where are you from?” the driver asked. “New York,” I answered. This, after all, is Europe, and I wasn’t in the mood. In Bergen and in Flåm, I had said “Israel” when people asked. My...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com I was walking to a restaurant in our neighborhood a few weeks ago, and on the way, just outside the restaurant, I came across a woman — who appeared to be homeless — lying on the sidewalk. I asked her if she was OK and she said she was. I asked her if she’d like me to buy her some food, and she declined. I aske...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com This past Thursday marked the Seventeenth of Tammuz, the Fast Day on which we recall and mourn the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem by the Romans. The three weeks between the Seventeenth of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av (which mourns the destruction of the Temples) are called the period of bein ha-matzarim — “B...

There’s an interesting phenomenon unfolding on the American Jewish progressive left, or at least in parts of it. Here and there you read and hear people like Peter Beinart, Jill Jacobs of Tru’ah and other trying to deftly walk back some of the language that they’ve been using about Israel, or at least trying to distance themselves from how others are using the language that they themselves formula...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com It is by now common knowledge that in the days following October 7, many Ameican progressive rabbis felt abandoned or betrayed by the larger communities and alliances they had cultivated for so long. But very few have had the courage to call out those communities and their duplicitous leadership the way that Ra...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com The history books will, without question, see our era as one of great periods of transformation for the Jewish state and the Jewish people. In Israel, years of bitter war without the accomplishments that the government promised and that the country needed, will have long lasting impact on younger generations of...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Professor Avi Shilon, a widely respected Israeli academic, author and journalist, made headlines in New York during the campus uprisings at Columbia, when his class was interrupted by Columbia students protesting “Israel’s genocide.” But I’d met Avi Shilon long before that, back in the days when I was working o...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com There is a principle in the Talmud (applicable only in certain instances, but still very well-known) which states, in Aramaic, שתיקה כהודאה דמיא. Shtikah ke-hoda’ah damyah. Usually, it’s translated as something like “silence is considered tantamount to admission.” In its more popular usage, the phrase has come...

Several years ago, in March 2022, we ran an interview with Amotz Asa-El, a very gifted Israeli author, whose book, The Jewish March of Folly , instantly hit the Israeli bestseller list and stayed there for a long time. At the time of our interview, the book was not yet out in English, though Amotz and I both expressed hope that that would happen. Well, it finally has, and for the English-speaking...

Many Israelis are holding their breath today, waiting to see whether a deal gets signed with Iran. No one knows with certainty whether it will happen, and no one who’s talking knows what’s in it. But Israelis have a bad feeling. Screenshots from earlier today: This isn’t good for Bibi’s re-election prospects, and very serious journalists like Hagai Segal raised the possibility this weekend that Ne...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com On October 7th, as the worst attacks on the country were still underway, 300,000 reservists answered the call and reported for duty. They asked no questions. They fought for their country. They lost friends. They made impossible choices. And then they came home — to work, to family, to school pickup. And then a...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Today we continue in our series of explorations of the intellectual, religious and historical roots of American Jewish anti-Zionism, which is significant, I believe, for what it tells us about American Jewish life’s DNA writ large. As promised in the first, here a few links to the sources we mention: * EPISODE...

I was sitting down this morning to prepare this post, when I came across a post on X from Nadav Eyal , one of Israel’s most highly regarded and thoughtful journalists. “Break it,” he called the post. He’s right. His post is below. With elections a few months away, people are now beginning to speak about whom they’ll vote for. More and more, I hear people say there’s just one issue. Not foreign pol...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Here are some basic numbers. The picture is not pretty. In fact, it’s horrifying. * As of early May 2026, Israel’s annual homicide toll stood at 111, with 96 of those victims being Arab citizens — roughly 86% of all murder victims, in a community that constitutes about 21% of the population. Haaretz * The NGO A...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com As we’ve noted for quite some time now, we’re going to look at American Jewish anti-Zionism over the course of several episodes, not necessarily because it is going to be a long-term feature of American Jewish life — I explain towards the end of today’s video why I believe that will not be the case — but becaus...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com As we noted yesterday, the issue of Hezbollah’s drones has become the newest headline in a war that has had more than its share of horrors. I asked Yaakov Katz, our “go to expert” on armaments, among many other things, to explain to us the following: * What are these drones, what can they do, and where do they...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com In our previous conversation with Dr. Sarah Feuer last week, Yemen 101: Who are the Houthis, where did they come from, and what should we expect? , we looked at the history of Yemen, the religious and cultural background — as well as the conflicts — from which the Houthis emerged, and sought to understand their...