Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com When I reached out to Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin, asking him if he might share with us some of the provocative ideas that he writes about in his fascinating Substack, “Rationalist Judaism,” he kindly agreed, but he also suggested that I come see The Biblical Museum of Natural History which he founded and directs....

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Just before Yom Ha-Atzma’ut, Israel Independence Day, Hagai Segal, a leading Israeli journalist, author and former Editor-in-Chief of the Makor Rishon newspaper, wrote a column in which he expressly said that by virtue of their not having moved here, American Jews are traitors. It was an incendiary word to choo...

There were days, days that almost of all of us remember, when photos like these were ubiquitous. On hostage posters on the news, on the internet. Everywhere. Then the living hostages returned home. The signs disappeared, but a few of the returning hostages offered a window into the horrors that they had endured. Some, Eli Sharabi hardly the only one among them, became very public figures. They tra...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Almost as soon as Alex Sinclair posted on LinkedIn the story of how the police detained him because they didn’t like his kippah, and then destroyed the kippah before giving it back to him, the incident went viral. Alex has appeared twice on our podcast before, once about his book Perfect Enemy (the posted inter...

Imagine that someone asked you right now, “What would you guess are the main stories on the front pages of Israel’s papers?” What would you list? The elections and the merger of the Bennett and Lapid parties? The Strait of Hormuz? What else? As we’ll see below, while all the stories that appear on today’s front pages have made the international press, their place in the Israeli public’s mindset is...

The war will end, sooner or later, likely sooner. Israelis will limp out of the war — a war with many accomplishments, but also a war that is likely to fizzle out with Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime still intact. It’s not what most people here hoped for. When the war recedes into the rear-view mirror, election season will start to take over. A critical issue in these elections is going to...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com The protests against Israel’s present war have not been nearly as enormous as the protests against Judicial Reform, because — among other reasons — the war is still widely supported. But there are, of course, people opposed to the war, as they have every right to be, and some of them are protesting against the...

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As we were cooking for Shabbat today, we were blaring one of those American music streaming services on all the speakers, playing the music we grew up with. Crosby, Still and Nash (and Young), Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens (yes, I know…), the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac … if you know the genre, you know. Why in the world begin this post with that? Because the question of whether to stream an American...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 2023, it brought to a sudden and calamitous end a national crisis that had threatened to split the country. Ever since Yariv Levin, the Minister of Justice, had introduced his plan for Judicial Reform in January 2023 (after Benjamin Netanyahu had explicitly said—in his ca...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Today is Yom Ha-Shoah, the first of the three “National Days,” which continue next week with Yom Ha-Zikaron (“Memorial Day for Fallen Israeli Soldiers and Victims of Terror”) and Yom Ha-Atzma’ut (Independence Day). This is always a powerful, painful and inspiring time in Israel, but of late, Yom Ha-Shoah has be...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com It’s the strangest thing, this mood in Israel now. On the one hand, immense relief that 40 hellish days are behind us. Kids are back in school. Small businesses can try to save what’s left. People can walk outside without worrying how far they’ve wandered from a shelter. We can turn off our phones at night, wit...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com With the Seder just hours away, some thoughts about the mood in this country, the toll on the kids, what all this might mean for the future of the relationship between Diaspora Jews and Israelis, and what — when we assume that there will be missile fire during the Seder — Israelis are wishing each other. Wishes...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com As I’ve mentioned several times over the past week or two, I’ve been fascinated by Alana Newhouse’s essay, “ Zionism for Everyone ” and the responses to it (I’ve mostly mentioned Irwin Kula’s piece ). I’m hardly the only Israeli interested in and perplexed by the discourse on Zionism and anti-Zionism in America...

This coming week, we will share an extended conversation with Rabbi Mishael Zion, whom I asked to reflect on the “discussion” between Alana Newhouse and Rabbi Irwin Kula in his response to her now viral piece, “ Zionism for Everyone .” As part of our discussion, Mishael spoke about Pesach and the Seder a few times, and one five-minute insight about what this year’s Seder should be about struck me...

When my family and I came to Israel in 1998, our daughter (who’s now closing in on forty) was just about to have her Bat Mitzvah. It was important to us that she read Torah in a “traditional” synagogue. In other words, what we wanted for her was an “egalitarian Orthodox” setting (for lack of a better term), where the service would be completely traditional, but where she could read Torah. Yet ther...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Remember those opening days? Two hundred Israeli jets, in the largest Israeli air force operation in history, wiping out the Iranian leadership and dealing a death blow to their military? Remember the days when we were sure that the next day would bring about a popular uprising that would topple the regime? Rem...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com In the Atlantic , the Free Press and in numerous other publications, Matti Friedman has become one of the most important voices reflecting the soul of Israel and Israelis to the outside world. In his numerous bestselling books, he has brought his poetic prose to bear on some of the great mysteries and stories o...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com For today, I’ve gathered some thoughts that have been brewing for the past few days about the surreal way of life that’s slowly becoming routine. How many times can you go to sleep on the same night? Turns out, quite a few. Thursday night, when this screenshot was taken, was relentless. That was the worst we’d...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com A funny thing happened in the bomb shelter today. Seriously. We were hanging out in one of the safe rooms at Shalem College right after a siren had gone off, when a colleague of mine walked over and asked if I’d read Alana Newhouse’s now viral (and on the Free Press , too) “Zionism for Everyone” in Tablet Magaz...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com We’ve had Ariel Beery on our podcast in the past . Ariel Beery is the founding Editor and Publisher of Prophecy: A Journal for Tomorrow , and an active investor and advisor to initiatives dedicated to building a better future for Israel, the Jewish People, and humanity. His geopolitical writings can also be fou...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Let’s talk about Zionism …. In the past few days, Israel’s political and military leadership have informed us that the war in Iran will continue for at least another three weeks, meaning that we’ll be at war throughout Pesach. We were also informed this morning that the fighting in Lebanon will continue at leas...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Let’s talk about Zionism …. It might sound strange that Israel from the Inside would take on Zionism as a specific topic. After all, don’t Zionism and the questions surrounding it infuse everything we do? Yes, they do, but there are moments when it is still worth tackling the subject head-on. So this week (barr...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com Let me begin with a personal suggestion—at this year’s Seder, don’t talk about Israel. No one around the table knows anymore than you do, and we likely don’t know more than they do. If you spend the evening focusing on Israel, war or politics, the Seder will end with no one having learned anything or having had...