Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit danielgordis.substack.com I was first in touch with Dalia Emanuelof, the mother of Dvir Emanuelof ז”ל, back in 2009. I actually heard about her from a man who was then my regular taxi driver to and from the airport. On one such trip, he said to me, “Danny, I have a story you’re not going to be believe,” and he shared with me the story—a...

Whenever people ask me whether the elections we’re scheduled to have in 2026 will be the ones that “finally turn the tide” and create change, I tell them I doubt it. That’s not because Israel doesn’t need change or because change will not come, but because it’s still too early. It’s useful here to recall 1973 and 1974 — the era after the disastrous Yom Kippur War. Though Golda Meir was at the helm...

What does an Israeli journalist in the United States, who’s responsible for covering the White House, actually do? Cover the White House and beyond, obviously, and share with Israeli audiences, in this case Channel 13, what is transpiring at the center of American power. But as we hear to from Neria Kraus, the role is actually much more complex and nuanced than that. Israeli journalists, we learn...

A few months ago, in mid-August, I read a Facebook post (see below) by Amanda Borschel-Dan, who is the Deputy Editor of the Times of Israel , and host of its many podcasts, including the Daily Briefing , What Matters Now , Friday Focus and The Reel Schmooze . I was deeply moved by Amanda’s post, her sentiments expressed to her brother, and the story of her journey towards embracing this country. I...

It’s a strange world when an airport hallway can take your breath away. When we’d left Israel a few weeks earlier, it was still lined with hostage posters on both sides of the walkway, in both directions, the one for people arriving and the one for passengers departing. When our son-in-law flew home from a work trip a few days before we returned, he took this shot of a few posters remaining. When...

About six months ago, I was speaking with a writer-friend who lives in DC, and she mentioned to me that she needed to finish a revision of her book before she flew out to Los Angeles, because then she wouldn’t be able to work on it. Why not, I asked. “It’s a week-long silent retreat,” she said. “You don’t speak, you don’t read, you don’t write.” That sounded as about as far from my comfort zone as...

This past Shabbat, I was honored to be asked to speak at the Jewish Center, on the West Side of New York. When I posted the publicity for the Shabbat morning event in this past week, a number or people wrote to ask if there would be a version available for those not in New York. It hadn’t occurred to me to do so, but it felt like a good idea. Attached here (above, at the very top of this post) is...

A brief focus on memory today. Three vignettes: ELEVEN YEARS Hadar Goldin z’l has been returned to Israel. More than eleven years after he was killed in the 2014 conflict with Hamas and his body was kidnapped into Gaza, his parents and his family have some sort of closure. Not the closure we wish they had, not the sort of closure we were blessed to celebrate with other families just a few weeks ag...

“Eliminate the Diaspora,” said Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of the great minds of early Zionism, “before it eliminates you.” Jabotinsky used that line, apparently, in a speech to Polish Jewry on Tisha B’av, 1938, when he also said: It is already three years that I am calling upon you, Polish Jewry... I continue to warn you incessantly that a catastrophe is coming closer... I see that you are not seein...

On October 6, 2023, if someone had mentioned to you the “Gaza Envelope”, would you have known what that even was? If the answer is “no,” you shouldn’t feel bad. A huge proportion of Israelis had never heard the term, either. Most had never visited, and almost no one had ever stayed there—because there was nowhere to stay. As Israel begins to look beyond the war and to undertake the enormous task o...

You do not want to be driving to or from Jerusalem today, or anywhere near the entrance to the city. With the government apparently pushing forward a bill that would continue the Haredi exemption from the draft (a bill the coalition needs to pass in order not to lose its Haredi factions, which would bring down the government and trigger elections), public furor surrounding the issue is brewing aga...

I begin today’s column with three photos of a falafel stand. Kind of innocuous, the sign that says “Falafel Oved” in the middle, the guy making the falafel on the right, and on the left, in the green box, a certification that the place is kosher, and below, in the red box, a note that they have a set of tefillin there for anyone who wants to use them. That’s the Jerusalem of old, stuck in the midd...

As more details come out about the ordeal that the just-freed hostages had to endure, it’s hard at times to fathom how anyone survived. A few were held captive entirely by themselves the entire time, some in chains. The psychological terror we’re learning about is mind boggling. The starvation. The beatings. And …. having no idea what was happening in the “real” world (though their world was all t...

As we’ll explore in greater detail tomorrow (October 7 is Yom Tov Sukkot, so we can’t post then), the confluence of October 7 this week and Simchat Torah next week, along with what may be happening on the hostage front, has many people very hopeful, but terrified of being disappointed, once again. Perhaps because we do not yet know what is going to happen, and whether, as Netanyahu has promised, t...

Every now and then, those reminders of how special this place is. I went to get my hair cut on Monday morning, a few hours before Rosh Hashanah. I love the woman who cuts my hair. She does a great job, but no less important and perhaps even more, she’s truly hilarious and — because she knows I appreciate it — readily shares her spicy insights on the (mostly) religious crowd she serves (she’s compl...

The point of today’s post is the video, below, of Israel’s national basketball team, “forced” to attend a “classical music concert” before departing for an international competition. Some people I know watch the players and thought that they were kind of into the music. I read it as their being polite. In any event, to understand the event in the video, we first need to know about this song, Al Ti...

The phrase “from Zion shall go forth Torah” ( Isaiah 2:3 ) is well known but for many Jews, both in Israel and around the world, rings hollow in an era in which many of the religious voices coming from Israel do not inspire us, but rather, leave us saddened by what Judaism in the wrong hands can become. That is what makes Rabbi David Stav so exceptional—in all the meanings of that word. His vision...

Barring anything dramatic and unforeseen, here’s our plan for this week: MONDAY (today): We look at what’s brewing in the chock-full headlines, plus some glimpses of popular “culture” that give a sense of where Israelis are. TUESDAY: A recent lengthy Facebook post got a lot of attention, so much so that many responses to the post suggested to the author that he publish it as an article. Whether he...

Monday was a terrible day. The terror attack in Jerusalem that killed six and wounded many more, some very seriously, felt like a return to the “old days” of terror attacks on busses and at busy intersections. Not a good return, obviously. Horrible. Interestingly, and to their great credit, as the crowd was (understandably) fleeing the shooting, a Haredi soldier and another Haredi young man (armed...

Just walk through the front door of the Niv Nirel Center not far from the gorgeous beach in Michmoret (a bit north of Netanya), and you know you’re in a place that’s very special. It’s hard to explain how you know. Is it the limitless love and embrace that’s in the air? The care with which the new facility has been built and designed? The people’s faces? Of course, it’s a sad kind of special. The...

Barring anything radically unforeseen (Iran war, Part II, which many experts say is likely coming…), here’s what we have planned for this week: SUNDAY (today) : two videos of recovery that have gone viral in Israel, one receiving more than 2,000,000 views in a tiny country. MONDAY : While we were sitting in our safe rooms as Israel attacked Iran, for some, it was a moment in which new dreams were...

Across the West, battles rage over whether liberalism and liberal values (liberal in the sense of John Locke, not liberal in the sense of “left wing”) will continue to shape society and government. In the United States, Canada, the UK, France and Germany, to say nothing of Scandinavia, the tectonic plates are crashing and grinding, and in each, the shockwaves are being felt in numerous ways. In Is...

Due to the Labor Day Weekend in the United States, we didn’t post on Sunday or Monday. This week we’ll post The Week’s Essay on Wednesday, and the weekly podcast on Thursday. You want to escape, even if only for a few hours. It’s been that kind of summer, and it’s likely to be that kind of year. A break, even a short one, is so very tempting. You know you shouldn’t try to escape—because the famili...

The headline on Times of Israel above, which appears as of this writing, is pretty typical of what’s in the online Hebrew press as well. What is actually transpiring is hard to know, but the rumors are that Hamas may have proposed a partial deal that would involve some cease fire (end of war?) and a return of some hostages. Rumors are that (a) the government will not agree to end the war (a positi...

Ask people around these parts if they’re hopeful about Israel’s future, and most say, “absolutely.” Ask them why they harbor that optimism given the tsunami of depressing news, and almost invariably, they’ll respond, “the people.” Israel has more nonprofits per capita than any country in the world. That’s a reflection of the abundance of extraordinary people who live here, which, many of us deeply...