The Promised Podcast

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Leading the Witness— Police investigators strong-arm Benjamin Netanyahu's one-time spokesman and media consultant to testify against his former boss, sa...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Noah Efron and journalist-extraordinaire Dina Kraft discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Hanukkah with Zealots, Oh My!— President Yitzhak Herzog lights candles with settlers in Hebron, causing protestors on the left to...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Miriam Herschlag and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. —No Prize— Israel's Education Minister decides not to give the country's biggest prize to a genius computer theorist because he petitioned the EU to boycott an Israeli university in the territories. —If I Forget Th...

Sally Abed and Noah Efron discuss  three  two topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Limited— Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel's new proposed term-limit law is the sort of law you'd see in Iran, Syria and North Korea. Does he have a point? —Tradition, Traditi...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Hear the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —What Now?— Now that Israel has a budget (after several years of not having a budget), is it smooth sailing from now on? —Some of the Best Standards are Doubl...

Allison Kaplan Sommer and Noah Efron discuss  three  two topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —You Say "Corruption" Like It Was a Bad Thing!— Should coalition members get to earmark millions for their favorite causes? —Death, Taxes & Traffic— The Knesset's...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Burdens of Proof— Defense Minister Benny Gantz says we can trust him that he wouldn't outlaw Palestinian human rights organizations without a really goo...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Miriam Herschlag and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Nullifying Netanyahu?— Former Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein challenges Benjamin Netanyahu for leadership of the Likud. Are Netanyahu's days n...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Miriam Herschlag and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Vax & Figures— What's the link between who Israelis vote for and whether, when, and how we get vaxxed and boostered? —The Cost of Freedom— Gilad Shal...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Coffee or Conflict: How Do Israelis Start Our Days?— Was PM Bennett right when he said at the UN that "Israelis don't wake up in the morning thinking ab...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Sally Abed and Noah Efron discuss  three  two topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. —Iran, One Month from the Bomb— Experts say Iran can have an atomic bomb by Hanukkah. What, if anything, can Israel do about it? —Who is Sex For?— Is it unseemly for 60 year olds to let the rest of us know they sti...

There is an ancient tradition on Sukkot, which is to say now, called Ushpizin, an aramaic word that means "Guests", and at its simplest, it means that one invites guests of all sorts, including anyone around who needs a meal, to eat with you in your Sukkah. But already in the 16th century, and maybe long before that, Kabbalists and mystics had symbolicized the thing, saying that when you sit in yo...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Sally Abed and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —A Year of Abraham Accords— A year ago this week, ambassadors from the UAE and Bahrain celebrated with then-President Donald Trump and then-Prime Minister B...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Body Politics— A 21-year-old sergeant in the Border Police dies after being shot in the head through a hole in the wall that separates Israel from Gaza,...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —The Year That Was— The Talmud says that on Rosh Hashanah God judges the deeds of all creatures over the prior year. We figured, we'd get a jump on the j...

Sally Abed, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —What We Learned While Skipping School— Kids are finally returning to desks-and-whiteboards after missing almost all of last year. What did we learn from the pandem...

Forty years passed before the first song was written in Israel about the Holocaust. For a long generation, Holocaust survivors, and their kids, were mostly quiet about the events that, more than any other, shaped their lives. Then that all changed.

Sally Abed, Noah Efron and  Tel Aviv Review  host Gilad Halpern discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Noodge— Should the government tax us into acting right? —Pedagogies of Prejudice & Prejudices of Pedagogy— Can you teach co-existence? Decen...

Times of Israel Ops & Blogs editor Miriam Herschlag, Ohad Zeltzer-Zubida and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Hear the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —If It Please the Court— Is it time for Israeli courts to stop allowing improperly gotten evidence? A newly proposed law w...

Times of Israel Ops & Blogs editor Miriam Herschlag, Ohad Zeltzer-Zubida and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Growing Pains— Israel's new government says, let "the market" decide who grows what where. Is it time to let the "In...

Times of Israel Ops & Blogs editor Miriam Herschlag, Ohad Zeltzer-Zubida and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Keeping Tabs— An Israeli company leases super spy software to allies who use it to surveil journalists and activists...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Hear the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon   —Face the Nation-State— Israel's Supreme Court votes 10 to 1 to let the controversial "Nation-State Law" stay on the books. Could both the 10 and the 1 be rig...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Ohad Zeltzer-Zubida and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. —Unsettling— Settlers peaceably evacuate a wildcat West-Bank outpost in a compromise that may lead, someday, to their return. What does the compromise say about Israel's new government? —All President and Accoun...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Noah Efron, and Times of Israel Ops & Blogs editor Miriam Herschlag discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/53164847   —Mistakes Were Made, Uncle Sam— Can Israel's new government "reset" relatio...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, Don Futterman and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week. Listen to the Extra-Special, Special Extra Segment on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/52877485   —My Way or Norway?— The "Norwegian Law" lets ministers resign from the Knesset and get replaced by party cronies....