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's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. At a Cairo summit of Arab leaders on Tuesday, a consensus of states adopted an Egyptian reconstruction plan for Gaza that would cost $53 billion and avoid displacing Palestinians from the enclave -- in contrast to US President Donald Trump’s “Middle East Riviera” vision....
Mar 06, 2025•33 min
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 film critic Jordan Hoffman. Ahead of the 2025 Academy Awards on Sunday night, The Times of Israel's film critic gives his predictions on which of the five films related to Israel or the Jews will have any chance of taking home a statue. We hear about how the ongoing war in Gaza is creating off-screen drama for a film, "Septemb...
Feb 27, 2025•43 min
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 senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. Ahead of a fateful day for Israelis in which Hamas for the first time will release the bodies of hostages who died on October 7, 2023, or in captivity, including potentially the Bibas family, Rettig Gur discusses how the iconic little red-haired boys have entered all Israelis' heart to become e...
Feb 19, 2025•38 min
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 senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur. On February 4, 2025, US President Donald Trump made a bombshell proposal to resettle the population of Gaza . The announcement caught the world by surprise and over a week later, no one is entirely sure what Trump intends beyond restarting and resetting the discussion of Gaza after the war. We ...
Feb 13, 2025•30 min
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 release of Palestinian security prisoners as part of the hostage release-ceasefire deal. We received do...
Jan 30, 2025•29 min
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 liberation on January 27, 2025, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Ahead of his trip, Borschel...
Jan 27, 2025•36 min
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 Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birken...
Jan 23, 2025•37 min
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 sealed. Despite jubilant announcements by mediators on Wednesday night, by Thursday morning, claims of la...
Jan 16, 2025•28 min
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 of Donald Trump as US president offers an unprecedented opportunity to remove the threat Israel faces...
Jan 09, 2025•41 min
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 through Thursday. Starting from October 7, 2023, the podcast has moved to seven days a week in an effort ...
Jan 02, 2025•32 min
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 the October 7, 2023, murderous Hamas onslaught, where thousands of terrorists infiltrated southern Isr...
Dec 26, 2024•35 min
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 think tank, he specializes in Defense, the Middle East, and disinformation. He holds degrees in Law and...
Dec 19, 2024•30 min
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 look at the factions' treatment of women: On Tuesday, for example, the Biden administration said it wi...
Dec 12, 2024•28 min
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 Affairs since August 2024. In that role, he wrote an op-ed in the bi-monthly Foreign Affairs journal. The...
Dec 05, 2024•35 min
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 October 7, 2023, when Book, learning of the Hamas murderous onslaught on southern Israel, pulled out...
Nov 28, 2024•40 min
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 did the Democratic party. Rettig Gur discusses a newer face on the political landscape -- October 7-h...
Nov 21, 2024•44 min
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 had shown up — nearly 300,000 reservists in total, marking the largest-ever call-up of reservists in ...
Nov 14, 2024•35 min
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 Greenberg, whom he called one of this generation's most important Jewish theologians. Greenberg has been a...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr
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 week's results, we take a closer look at exactly how Israelis are polling, which candidate they favor -...
Oct 31, 2024•35 min
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 with symbols of the Sukkot holiday and phrases in English and Yiddish. Rettig Gur weighs in on why thi...
Oct 23, 2024•32 min
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. The anthology was compiled and edited by Shira Lankin Sheps, Anne Gordon, and Rachel Sharansky Danziger,...
Oct 16, 2024•37 min
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 Bank and of course Iran. But there is an eighth front that has emerged and is no less pernicious: the...
Oct 10, 2024•29 min
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 employee cancelled a rollout event because the emcee slated to interview Leifer identified as a Zion...
Oct 03, 2024•34 min
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 infiltrated Israel's south and slaughtered 1,200 and abducted 251 hostages back to Gaza. We hear about Goo...
Sep 26, 2024•40 min
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 People Go" slogan used to support the refuseniks in the Soviet Union before being allowed to emigrate to...
Sep 19, 2024•31 min
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 Jewish Today " (Harper Collins), which was written after the October 7 Hamas massacre of 1,200 and abd...
Sep 12, 2024•31 min
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 Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi — were killed jus...
Sep 05, 2024•35 min
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 Say About Campus Protests, ” in which he channels a university president presenting his foundationa...
Aug 29, 2024•37 min
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 Health. His most recent research is dealing with whether or not there is a state of famine in the Ga...
Aug 23, 2024•1 hr 5 min
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 Israeli thinker Yossi Klein Halevi for a deeply intense probe into what it means to be part of the existential Israeli struggle. We discuss how, as the war in Gaza continues, the different forces in Israeli society are caught up in a destructive push-pull dance even as Israel is losing its moral capital during t...
Aug 15, 2024•44 min
