Israel Story

Families, lovers, fighters, and more: one year of Wartime Diaries. The end song is B'Shana Haba'ah ("In the Next Year") by Shiri Maimon . 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 parent being called to war impacts the entire family. So she stepped up. The end song is Imma ("Mom") by Shiri Maimon . 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.

Two bus stops in two neighboring towns capture how war can unify, and how it can divide. The end song is Autobus Mispar Echad ("Bus Number One") by Shlomo Artzi . 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.

Seeking love. Called to war. For our Tu B'Av special, we wanted to get a bird's eye view of the local, post-October 7th dating scene. So we went to visit Rebetzin Toby Einhorn, who runs a one-stop-shop for all matters of the heart. Image courtesy of Jenny Peperman. The end song is Shir HaShadchanit ("Matchmaker, Matchmaker") from the Hebrew adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof . Stay connected with u...

Despite all the experts and pundits out there, few know Hezbollah as well as the members of a small, and often forgotten, community living in Israel. This community has found itself in an impossible position: Their adoptive country (Israel) is at war with their sworn enemy (Hezbollah), but is also - as a by-product - bombing their hometowns and villages in Southern Lebanon, where many of their fri...

On Monday evening Jerusalem lost one of its cornerstones, and we lost a very close friend. While you haven't heard Shai Doron - the President of the Jerusalem Foundation - on our show, he was a major force behind all that we do: He encouraged us, gave us a home, helped us build our studio, envisioned our series of live-storytelling events in Jerusalem, and enthusiastically supported our activity....

For the last nine-and-a-half months, we’ve been experiencing different kinds of battlefields: There are actual battlefields, where people fight and are wounded and killed. And then, of course, there are secondary battlefields - on college campuses, in the court of public opinion, on social media, on TV, in newspapers, via text messages. And while no one has, thankfully, been killed on those battle...

Arab-Israelis, or Palestinian Citizens of Israel, or Palestinian-Israelis - all these definitions are obviously complicated and personal and have hefty connotations - found themselves in a very difficult place following the attacks of October 7th. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of suspicion and mainly - a lot of fear. Any statement, any post, any tweet came under extreme scrutiny. Most p...

On Saturday, four hostages - Noa Argamani, Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan and Andrey Kozlov - were heroically rescued by the Israeli security forces, and safely brought home alive. Still, 120 hostages remain in Gaza - 43 of whom have already been declared dead - and the pressure to sign a deal that will bring them home is mounting from day to day.  Such a deal, of course, has two sides: We tend t...

Lihi Lapid is a celebrated photojournalist, columnist and best-selling author - of children's books, cookbooks and award-winning novels. She’s also married to Yair Lapid, the former Israeli Prime Minister and current Leader of the Opposition. In 2021 Lihi published Zarot , a sweeping tale that explores a complicated mother-daughter relationship, the tolls of immigration and the reality of marginal...

It’s Yom HaZikaron again, Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror. Since the start of the war, 1511 Israeli civilians and members of the armed forces have been killed. That's 1511 families who have joined the dreaded circle of grief and bereavement. 1511 families whose lives will never again be the same.  Today, we share the story of one such family. A small family. One th...

Forty-seven-year-old Tzvika Mor is from the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. His son, Eitan, was kidnapped from the Nova Festival, where he had been working as a security guard. In fact, Eitan was only kidnapped in the afternoon of October 7th, after spending nearly nine hours evacuating injured party-goers to safe locations nearby. During that whole time Eitan heroically returned...

Next week, millions of Jews around the world will sit down at their Passover tables, for what will invariably be a very different kind of seder. The timeless question of how this night, or this Pesach, is different from all other nights, and all other Pesachs, has gained an entirely new - and tragic - dimension since October 7th. And few, if any, have thought about this matter more than forty-thre...

The horrific events of October 7th reminded many people of the darkest chapter in Jewish history - the Holocaust. And indeed, for the past six months, there have been as many comparisons to the Shoah as there have been critiques of those comparisons.  Of the roughly 130,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel today, just under 10,000 reside in Jerusalem. Many of them participate in the Jerus...

In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, Shai Davidai - an Assistant Professor at Columbia University - became an unlikely public defender of Israel. And truthfully, even he was surprised by this turn of events: As a committed left-wing Israeli, he had spent years criticizing the government, and often took to the streets to demonstrate against its policies. But the atmosphere he witnessed on col...

Alon Ohel - a talented young jazz pianist - was kidnapped from the Nova party on October 7th, and has been held hostage in Gaza ever since. His family has spent the last five plus months sending him good vibes and good music. In today's episode, his mother - Idit Ohel - talks about the importance of energy, friendship and hope during these dire times. The end song is Shuvi Elay ("Return to Me") by...

One of very few positive outcomes of this war is that the ongoing debate surrounding the participation of female soldiers in combat has been decisively answered. Women are, as the IDF’s Chief of Staff - Herzi Halevi - has said on multiple occasions, an integral part of the military effort. They serve in tanks and in field intelligence posts, as pilots and naval officers, infantry soldiers, enginee...

There has been endless talk of the “Home Front” during this war. The "Home Front," as in what goes on here in Israel, as opposed to what happens on the battlefield - in the streets and alleyways of Gaza. But, there is - of course - also a home front, or rather many different kinds of home fronts: some are stoic, others less so; some are somehow managing, others not at all. Much to her dismay, Aliz...

We have some truly exciting news: For the first time in almost a decade, we're launching a new podcast. Look for Sipur Yerushalmi wherever you get your podcasts.  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.

Some 350,000 Israelis have been called up to reserve duty since the start of the war, in what has been the largest mobilization in the country’s history. These are people who were plucked out of their homes, families and daily lives, and inserted into a totally different world, one which is in most cases - just to add to the confusion - a mere car ride away. And those transitions back and forth, b...

Today's "Wartime Diary" takes us to a place that is, under normal circumstances, one of the most visited sites in the entire country - Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo, or as it's officially known, 'The Tisch Family Zoological Gardens.' Since the start of the war, the city of Jerusalem has welcomed more than 30,000 evacuees from both the North and the South. With such an influx of people, and especia...

The war has been going on for over three months, and many of us have settled into some sort of altered routine, a "new normal." But there are hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, for whom nothing is normal. Hugo (Uri) Wolaj of Kibbutz Be’eri is one of them: everything about his life - his job, his friends, his family, his parenting style, everything - changed on October 7th. Uri spe...

Today is the hundredth day of the war. And, though our Wartime Diaries series continues, we want to stop, mark this day and share 100 seconds of the many voices we’ve been hearing among - and around - us, since October 7th. 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...

Upwards of $1 billion in donations have been sent to Israel since the start of the war. For years Charlene Seidle, the Executive Vice President of the San Diego-based Leichtag Foundation, has been at the forefront of the Jewish philanthropic world. While the Leichtag Foundation supports various causes in the States and in Israel, their main local focus is bridging social and economic gaps in Jerus...

The war has brought many new people into the limelight: For nearly three months we've been hearing countless stories of casualties, hostages, survivors and family members, many of whom have entered our hearts and never left. In some cases we feel like we’ve gotten to know these unsung heroes personally . One of the first big stories of the war, in that initial crazy week after October 7th, was tha...