Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis

What did the guy in the middle of this photograph do to merit being silenced by the others in the photograph? He’s an Orthodox rabbi, who is speaking out about what he considers to be “Israel’s greatest moral stain.” What is that stain, as far as this rabbi is concerned? It’s not Qibya or the way Israel conducts the conflict. In this week’s podcast, we hear Rabbi Avidan Freedman discuss why he is...

The podcasts on Israel from the Inside are typically available to paid subscribers only. (You can see a list of previous episodes here .) With thanks to David Bernstein for his fascinating conversation, we are making this episode available to supporters of the Pardes Institute, as well. Last month, Israel and Poland came close to the precipice in their diplomatic relations when Israel's Yair Lapid...

Israel faces numerous problems; that much, we all know. What we sometimes aren’t as aware of is all the extraordinary people, in both the Jewish and Arab communities, who are working to make things not just better, but much better. In this week’s podcast, I speak with Dani Elazar and Reem Younis, who work together in an organization called  Hand in Hand  — a network of Jewish-Arab schools that’s a...

It's rather fortuitous that we interviewed Rabbi Aaron Leibowitz, who heads the organization Chuppot , even before Artem Dolgopyat won Israel's first gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, sparking a renewed debate about Israel's rabbinate, immigrants from the FSU and rabbinate's refusal to allow many of them to get married.  “Chuppot” is part of “Hashgacha Pratit”, an organization that challenges the...

In previous episodes, we conducted two separate interviews with Jewish women who lived in the city of Lod, and who experienced there, in the days of rioting between Jews and Arabs inside Israel in May 2021, the violence from their Arab neighbors directed at Jews. In this interview, we speak with an Arab woman who lives in East Jerusalem, who experienced the other side of this terrible picture … Je...

We’re all exposed to the image of the Israeli soldier that many like to celebrate: tough, brave, victorious. But as Israeli society was forced to recognize earlier this year when a veteran set himself afire outside the Ministry of Defense in protest of his post-combat trauma not being sufficiently recognized, there’s an underbelly to military service and its trauma here, too. Dr. Danny Brom, found...

There are few organizations in Israeli life more controversial than "Breaking the Silence," which serves as a platform for Israeli soldiers to discuss incidences in their military service that they felt were morally problematic, or worse. From the right, BtS has been accused of undermining Israel, of publicizing stories that are not true, of taking money from anti-Israel organizations ... the list...

Though the international community has been focused primarily on the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, those who know Israel well know that potentially much more significant — and painful and worrisome — were the outbreaks of violence between Jews and Arabs in cities such as Lod, Jaffa, Acre and Jerusalem. In some locations, it was Arabs who attacked Jews. In others, Jews were vi...