Israeli Jews are the last surviving remnant of dozens of devastated Jewish communities across three continents. How did this history shape them? What do they understand about the world that few others see?

Join Haviv Rettig Gur for a deep dive into the historical experience that shaped this largest community of Jews ever.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.
Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnythingIf you would like to sponsor an episode please email [email protected]

In our first interview episode, Haviv Rettig Gur sits down (virtually) with Prof. John Spencer of West Point, one of the foremost experts in urban warfare who has made a special study of Israeli warfighting tactics and strategy.

Many subscribers to this podcast have asked us why Israel doesn’t seem to have won this war, why Hamas is still standing after 17 months of fighting and why Israel must still negotiate for its hostages.

For answers we turned to Prof. Spencer. We learned about the IDF’s astonishing successes, such as its groundbreaking tactical innovations in tunnel warfare. And we learned about the gaping lacuna at the heart of Israel’s strategy in Gaza — the reason it still hasn’t won the war.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

If you would like to sponsor an episode please email [email protected]

Recorded Thursday, February 20th

Israelis watched horrified on Thursday, as Hamas gunmen conducted a ceremony handing over four coffins, two of them with the bodies of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, aged 1 and 4, when they were murdered in Gaza, along with their mother Shiri. Oded Lifshitz, 83, was the fourth body handed over to Israel. Around the ceremony, Gazan civilians cheered and threw rice, people brought their kids to watch.

What should we make of this gruesome spectacle, of a festival conducted over the coffins of little children?

Some thoughts on what Israelis, and with them, the whole Jewish world, just witnessed.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

American Jews constitute the biggest, wealthiest, most influential and safest Jewish diaspora community in Jewish history, and also among the most Jewishly illiterate and profoundly anxious about their future.

There's a good reason this immense and powerful community is also culturally weak and unsure of itself. There is deep history behind its illiteracy, a story of tragedy and trauma, rebellion and rebuilding.

We unpack it all in this episode.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

It’s hard for a modern Jew to grasp the depth of marginalization and ostracism that even the most assimilated of Austrian Jews experienced in the 1890s. Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, began his journey as a passionate assimilationist, a deep believer in European modernity and Germanic culture. It was only when these hopes were dashed that he turned, as a drowning man to a life raft, to political Zionism.

Here is the untold story of how Herzl found Zionism. (Spoiler: It wasn’t the Dreyfus Affair.)

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

*Recorded Saturday night, February 8, 2025*First reflections in response to Hamas's hostage release ceremony in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza on Saturday, when Israelis discovered the extent to which the hostages had been tormented and starved.

Episode first aired Sunday on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything).

"Ask Haviv Anything" is a podcast about history, a podcast you, dear listener, will help to shape and direct, focusing not just on what I want to talk about but on what you want to learn and discuss. Nothing is off limits. We're going to talk about big and painful things, and also beautiful and fascinating things, wars and identities and painful history. And also more light-hearted things. Humor matters, especially when facing tough subjects.

Join me on this journey.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything