What Matters Now

Welcome to a bonus episode of What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. This week, we answer a slew of listeners' responses to our conversation last week, " Excruciating dilemmas as murderers set to be released, " about the painful issue of the rel...

Welcome to a bonus episode of What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Dayan is leading Yad Vashem's delegation to Auschwitz to observe the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the death camp's libera...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with comedian/filmmaker Adir Miller and his mother Marianne Miller, a child Holocaust survivor. On January 27, Marianne -- a well-known Israeli speaker and educator -- will address the United Nations General Assembly on International...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with The Times of Israel's senior analyst, Haviv Rettig Gur . When this podcast conversation was recorded, the deal between Israel and Hamas for a hostage release and temporary ceasefire in Gaza had not actually been signed and seale...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with The Times of Israel's senior analyst, Haviv Rettig Gur. This week, a committee appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to examine defense spending and IDF military force design for the future announced that the election o...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with The Times of Israel's founding editor David Horovitz. Five years ago this week, The Times of Israel launched its Daily Briefing podcast to keep listeners updated on the latest news out of Israel and the region, from Sunday throu...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with stand-up comedian Yochay Sponder . After the 2012 Gaza War, the comedian began using his talent to make people laugh as a tool for pro-Israel advocacy in his heavily Hebrew-flavored English. This work has only ramped up since th...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Andrew Fox. Fox, a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, served in the British Army from 2005 to 2021, completing three tours in Afghanistan, including one attached to the US Army Special Forces. At the transatlantic thi...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Middle East expert Ksenia Svetlova . As the rebel factions in Syria continue to fight to wrest control -- from the fallen Assad regime as well as from each other -- one of the ways to measure how the country will emerge is to lo...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with ToI senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. Former Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, an Iranian career diplomat who participated in the previous round of nuclear talks, is currently Iran's Vice President for Strategic Affai...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. Tuvia Book was honorably discharged as a combat medic in the Israel Defense Forces following the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Like most Israeli reservists, however, he stashed a uniform in his basement, "just in case." That emergency occurred on...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan and senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. Inspired by an op-ed by David Brooks in the New York Times called “ Why We Got It So Wrong ,” the pair discuss how a similar misconception of the political landscape may afflict Israel's center-left as it d...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan and senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. At the start of the war in retaliation for Hamas's murderous onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces reported that more than 100 percent of reservists called up for duty h...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World. This week, we hand the mic over to Yossi Klein Halevi , a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and an author, thinker and writer for The Times of Israel and many other outlets. Recently, Klein Halevi shared with us his longtime interest in interviewing Rabbi Irving Yitz Greenb...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan and senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. The United States is electing its next president on November 5 and according to a poll published this week, Israelis massively favor Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris. So ahead of next wee...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan and senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. This week, a sukka that was reportedly put up by the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace caused a social media storm because of the cynical use of Palestinian iconography on a hut that was plastered wi...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. This week we speak with the editors of a new prayerbook -- " Az Nashir -  We Will Sing Again: Women’s Prayers for Our Time of Need" --  written by women, for women, in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught on southern Israel. Th...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. Shortly after October 7, when the murderous Hamas onslaught on southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza, Israel was pulled into defending itself and fighting Iran or its proxies on seven fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, the West B...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World. This week, US bureau chief Jacob Magid is joined by journalist Joshua Leifer to discuss his new book Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life."  Tablets Shattered made some extra headlines upon its release when a rogue Brooklyn Bookstore...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host Amanda Borschel-Dan. This week, ahead of the one-year mark of the October 7 massacre, we check in with philosopher and public intellectual Dr. Micah Goodman. Best-selling author Goodman revisits a theory he discussed with Borschel-Dan on October 9, mere days after Hamas infilt...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host Amanda Borschel-Dan and senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. Last week, three women were arrested after distributing flyers with six hostages' faces in MK Yuli Edelstein’s synagogue in Herzliya, including a picture of him as a Prisoner of Zion alongside and the famous "Let My Peop...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host Amanda Borschel-Dan. This week, we're joined by Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove , a leading voice in Conservative Judaism, who has served as head rabbi of New York’s Park Avenue Synagogue since 2008. We speak about his soon-to-be-published book, " For Such a Time as This: On Being Je...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. This week, Israel was shattered by the news that six hostages, all previously thought alive, were discovered dead in a Gaza tunnel. The six hostages whose bodies were recovered over the weekend — Hersh Goldb...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host Amanda Borschel-Dan. This week, as campuses across North America open their doors for their fall semester, we speak with New York Times Opinion columnist Bret Stephens. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer recently wrote a column called, “ What I Want a University President to...

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. This week, we speak with Hebrew University in Jerusalem Prof. Aron Troen for a deep dive into two powerful issues facing him since October 7. One draws upon his professional expertise: Troen is a professor of Nutrition Science and Public...