Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This year, in what is reportedly a record-high number, some 66,000 young men from the ultra-Orthodox community received a deferral from military service. Of those tens of thousands of military-age men, following Hamas's murderous October 7 onslaught on Israel and the war it launched, 540 men voluntarily signed up for military service. On Monday, the High Court of Justice ...
Feb 29, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, the conflict is giving all appearances of turning into a "forever war." But in other parts of the world, Russia's influence has arguably grown. This week on What Matters Now, former MK Ksenia Svetlova, an expert in the Middle East and Russia, speaks about how Russia's forces remain throughout the Middle East and how its reach has de...
Feb 22, 2024•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. The Israel Defense Forces revealed this week that beneath the Gaza Strip headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the controversial aid organization known commonly as UNRWA, the Hamas terror group hid one of its most significant assets, a subterranean data center. As witnessed by ToI military reporter Emanuel Fabi...
Feb 15, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he told visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel is “within touching distance of absolute victory,” and that Hamas’s defeat will be the “victory of the entire free world.” In a rebuttal to the prime minister, five women released from captivity in Gaza during a weeklong truce in late November stated...
Feb 08, 2024•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Israel often prides itself on being the most moral army in the world. Whether you subscribe to that or not, there is a long history of ethical thinking that influences its operations on the ground. This week on What Matters Now, we speak with Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Brody, the author of the new and extremely timely book, “Ethics of Our Fighters: A Jewish View on War and Morality...
Feb 01, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week we're bringing excerpts from a Behind the Headlines video interview with author and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, conducted exclusively for our Times of Israel Community. A senior fellow and the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Klein Halevi is the author of books including, “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor” and “Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist.” Drawing on them...
Jan 26, 2024•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, over 24,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel declared war on Hamas in retaliation to the bloody invasion by 3,000 terrorists from Gaza who massacred 1,200 -- mostly civilians -- and took over 240 hostages to Gaza. And while it is clear that Hamas began the war, it's also clear that Palestinians living in the Ga...
Jan 18, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week on What Matters Now, we're again handing the mic to Mishy Harman, the co-founder of The Times of Israel’s podcast partner, Israel Story, the premiere narrative English-language podcast from Israel. Since the October 7 massacre across southern Israel by Hamas of some 1,200 individuals, mostly civilians, Harman and his team at Israel Story have pivoted from their ...
Jan 11, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week the Supreme Court delivered a long-awaited decision on whether or not it would repeal the one piece of judicial overhaul legislation passed by the so-called pure right coalition under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Held on September 12, the hearing in front of a full bench of all 15 Supreme Court justices made for a day-long media event. Citizens across the ...
Jan 04, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Within days of the murderous October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel, William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, headed a mission of 50 heads of Jewish legacy organizations back to Israel, where he was when the massacre occurred. In conversation with The Times of Israel this week, he describes how following the brutal slaying of...
Dec 28, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. The past several weeks have seen the publication of a slew of high-profile opinion surveys on the war with Hamas. They include deep looks into the psyche of the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza and a probe into how Israeli Jews and Arabs differ in perspectives. Out of the United States, there are a few surveys that take the temperature of the American ele...
Dec 21, 2023•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Is the IDF acting legally and ethically in Gaza? We at The Times of Israel recently held an hour-long webinar on this topic for our Times of Israel Community with Prof. Amichai Cohen of the Israel Democracy Institute. Cohen is a recognized expert in the International Law of Armed Conflict, National Security Law, and Civil-Military Relations. International pressure is buil...
Dec 14, 2023•57 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week on What Matters Now, we're again handing the mic to Mishy Harman, the co-founder of The Times of Israel’s podcast partner, Israel Story, the premiere English-language podcast from Israel. Since the October 7 massacre by Hamas of some 1,200 individuals, mostly civilians, Harman and his team at Israel Story have pivoted from their long-form, carefully nurtured epi...
Dec 07, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. For Israelis, there is before October 7 and after. So the idea of a book called “ The Genius of Israel : The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World” written during those “before” times may not feel like the most relevant reading material. But it is. “Start-Up Nation” authors Saul Singer and Dan Senor have again joined forces to dissect what makes I...
Nov 30, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Several entire families were slaughtered during the Hamas onslaught on southern Israel on October 7 which left 1,200 dead. They were killed by terrorists together, so why shouldn’t a father, mother and their children be buried together? When the father is not Jewish, the question becomes more complicated, at least in the Jewish state. "In today’s modern state of Israel, w...
Nov 23, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. The destruction wrought by Hamas on October 7 at the small Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza border was so complete that in many cases, only microscopic remnants of those 1,200 who were killed there can be found today. The Israel Antiquities Authority is accustomed to searching for such human remains — albeit for people who lived hundreds, if not thousands of years...
Nov 16, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. No one knew what to expect on October 7 when the initial rocket barrages from the Gaza Strip began pounding Israel. But veteran, war-hardened residents of the Gaza envelope sensed immediately that something was different this time. They had no idea what was to come. Adele Raemer has lived on Kibbutz Nirim since 1975. Just 2 kilometers from the Gaza border, on the morning ...
Nov 09, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week on What Matters Now, we're handing the mic to Mishy Harman, the founder of The Times of Israel’s podcast partner, Israel Story. Since the October 7 massacre by Hamas of some 1,400 individuals, mostly civilians, Harman and his team at Israel Story have pivoted from their long-form, carefully nurtured episodes to producing almost daily Wartime Diaries. We at The T...
Nov 02, 2023•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. The ripple effects of Hamas’s massacre of 1,400 people in Israel on October 7 are still being felt. The dead were mostly civilians — many entire families — whom Israel continues to identify and bury. Israelis were the primary target of the barbaric attack, but their pain is shared by Jewish brothers and sisters in the Diaspora, just as, five years ago this week, Israelis ...
Oct 26, 2023•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. It is nearly two weeks since parents Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg have heard from their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, missing since October 7, when Hamas terrorists descended upon the Supernova desert rave and proceeded to massacre at least 260 people, taking others captive. Goldberg-Polin was last seen in a field shelter where he and other partygoers had fled, trying t...
Oct 19, 2023•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Israel is at war. And, while we are fighting on our southern, and increasingly, our northern borders, one of the biggest battles is global — for the hearts and minds of those who could support Israel in this time of need. Because the battle is international, it’s not only about the Palestinians versus the Israelis. It goes far beyond that. “Hamas is just a forefront of Ir...
Oct 11, 2023•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. A small agile nation takes advantage of an unprecedented window of opportunity. As that start-up nation’s influence quickly spreads throughout the Holy Land, it gains the begrudging admiration of its neighboring frenemy states. Sound familiar? But of course, we're not talking about the modern state of Israel’s hi-tech scene, rather the period in which ancient Israelites f...
Sep 28, 2023•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to the United States for a series of meetings, including a long-awaited face-to-face with US President Joe Biden. He was met by anti-judicial overhaul protesters at every possible stop. But are these protests the right move for Diaspora Jews? Do they actually serve their purpose or are they, as the prime minister himself i...
Sep 21, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. It’s July, just after the end of Shabbat and about 100 people have gathered in the Likud-majority West Bank city of Ma'ale Adumim. Hebrew University law Prof. Benjamin (Benny) Porat, a resident of the city, is addressing the crowd. During his 10-minute speech, Porat — standing next to the police headquarters in Maaleh Adumim — said statements such as, “The Israeli majorit...
Sep 14, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. “To Israel’s friends in North America, we are taking the unusual step of directly addressing you at a moment of acute crisis in Israel. We write with a sense of anguish and anxiety for the future of our country.” With these words, authors Yossi Klein Halevi, Daniel Gordis and Matti Friedman began a February oped on The Times of Israel that they titled, “ An open letter to...
Sep 07, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week, we're taking a brief break from the headlines and turning to a topic we covered last summer, hearing the experiences of a young Israeli staff member at a Jewish summer camp. This week's What Matters Now guest, Yishai Mogilner, is royalty of a sort at Camp Ramah in the Poconos, where his late grandfather, Rabbi David Mogilner, was a revered director who helped s...
Aug 31, 2023•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Next month will mark the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords in which Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to establish the Palestinian Authority, what was supposed to be a temporary body responsible for limited Palestinian self-governance over parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip -- a body that would serve as the foundation of a future Palestinian ...
Aug 24, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Jewish-American journalist Norman Cousins once said, “History is a vast early warning system.” This week we speak with Oren Kessler, the author of “Palestine 1936,” who would likely agree. But as we see in Kessler's new book, history can also be a collection of missed opportunities. “David Ben-Gurion, starting in about 1933-34, had a series of meetings with a man by the n...
Aug 17, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week, a Tel Aviv bus driver shouted at 20-year-old passenger, Romi Inbar, for wearing a tank top, which he considered to be immodest, telling at her repeatedly to put a shirt on. “You can’t walk around like that,” the driver said. She told Israeli television that the whole bus remained silent except for a mother who told the driver that Inbar can wear whatever she wa...
Aug 10, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Over 30 years ago, American political consultant, James Carville quipped during former US president Bill Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Today, a growing chorus of Israeli economists are echoing this phrase while attempting to pause the government’s judicial overhaul legislation in the hopes of maintaining Israel’s up-till-now ...
Aug 03, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
