The first Jews to become subjects of the Ottoman Empire lived in Greek-speaking western Anatolia during the Ottoman conquests of the region in the early 1300s. The next seven centuries of Turkish-Jewish interaction were mostly a story of Turkish tolerance rooted in the Jews’ usefulness to the empire.

For example, when Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492, Sultan Bayezid II sent his navy to offer them safe transport into his empire. The Jews were considered a talented and industrious population, so much so that Bayezid is reputed to have quipped about the Spanish expulsion of them, “You call Ferdinand a wise king, he who impoverishes his country and enriches mine!”

But this tolerance was always conditioned on the Jews’ subservient status as dhimmi, or protected class, under the Ottoman “millet” system.

In the 19th century, a series of reforms meant to strengthen the flagging empire in the face of growing European power instituted legal equality for minorities, broke down the old social hierarchies — and as with the removal of ghetto restrictions on the Jews of Europe, made the Jews’ situation more precarious.

In our first focused treatment of Sephardi Jewry, we dive into this history with Tel Aviv University historian Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, born in Istanbul and a scion of that centuries-old community.

This episode is sponsored by Jeff and Masha Gershman who asked that we share a story of Jewish bravery on or since 10/7 so that we all might be reminded not just of our pain and anxiety but also of our individual and collective strengh. In consultation with the Gershmans we chose to share the story of Nitai Meisels, one of the friends Rachel and I lost in Gaza. Master Sergeant (Res.) Nitai Meisels, 30, was killed on December 24, 2023 by an anti-tank missile fired at his tank in the Gaza Strip during a mission to locate hostages. He volunteered to be in the formation’s front tank.

Nitai is survived by his parents Ayala and Eitan, his sisters Adi and Oriya and brother Aviad and their spouses and children. This episode is publishing close to Nitai’s birthday on vav Tishrei on the Hebrew calendar, which falls this year on September 28. If Nitai had survived the fighting he would be turning 32 this year.

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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen joins the podcast to talk about the war with Iran (spoiler: It isn’t over), the ayatollahs' regime (which won’t be easily felled), and his assurance that there are still strategic surprises in Mossad’s quiver.

We discuss the stubborn Israeli insistence to continue investing heavily in HUMINT, or human intelligence - spies - in an age when other major agencies have turned away from classic spycraft to cyber, signals intelligence and AI.

And we discuss how Gaza could be rebuilt and rehabilitated, who’s responsible for the failures of October 7, why Yossi has called for new elections and Yossi’s own political aspirations.

This episode was sponsored by Jason and Lauriel Klinghoffer in honor of the memory of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, two Israeli embassy staffers who were murdered in Washington, DC on May 21, 2025. They were fatally shot outside the Capital Jewish Museum after attending an event for young diplomats. Yaron and Sarah were planning to get engaged. May their memory be a blessing.

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If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

During an August speaking tour in Norway, Haviv was interviewed at an event hosted by the remarkable Jewish organization Kos & Kaos - The Nordic Jewish Network. It's a unique group founded in 2016 that brings together Jewish voices and friends and allies of the Jewish community across Scandinavia for dialogue, cultural events and critical conversations.

Norwegian writer and journalist Bjørn Gabrielsen interviewed Haviv in front of a packed house in Oslo on August 21 about the war in Gaza, the condition of diaspora Jews in the wake of October 7, the state of modern journalism, how the Middle East is seen in the West, and more.

This episode was sponsored by the children of Naomi Pinchuk of Chicago in honor of her 78th birthday on August 30th. Happy birthday, Naomi! Till 120.

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If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Twenty-three months after the October 7 attack, Hamas is massively degraded in Gaza. At a terrible cost to Gaza itself, and after losing hundreds of IDF soldiers on the battlefield, Israel has managed to shatter its battalions and kill nearly all its pre-war command hierarchy.

Yet, as with all guerrilla groups, the bar for Hamas to remain a strategic actor is very low. It can still disrupt aid distribution at a large scale, still launch guerrilla attacks out of tunnels, still even launch the occasional rocket at Israeli towns. Hamas also continues to refuse any demand, including from the Arab League, to disarm and surrender its claim to power in the post-war Gaza Strip.

On the cusp of what is shaping up as Israel's most significant military offensive to date against the terror group, the incursion into Gaza City - the largest pre-war city in the Strip - we turn to Prof. John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, to ask if this long-delayed denial of Hamas's last major bastion and sanctuary in Gaza might finally bring this painful war to an end.

This episode was sponsored by Gideon and Lance Drucker and their firm Drucker Wealth, a financial planning and wealth management firm. They asked to use this dedication to introduce our audience to an organisation called The Legion, a non-profit to help Jewish Americans learn how to defend their families and their communities. You can learn more at their website: https://www.legionalpha.com/

The Druckers would also like to dedicate this episode to Gideon's former officer in the IDF, Maj. Ariel Ben Moshe, 27, a commander in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, who was killed in the battle against Hamas infiltrators at Kibbutz Re’im on October 7, 2023. Ariel’s brother Shavit, an IDF paratrooper, also fought in the south that day and heard of his brother’s death while engaged in intense fighting in Kibbutz Holit, where he was wounded. Ariel is survived by his mother Galit, younger brothers Shavit and Adar, and his wife Yuval.

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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Many of our Patreon subscribers have asked us to address the campaign against Israel that accuses it of genocide, colonialism and so on. This episode is the beginning of our deep dive into examining these questions.

What do anti-Zionists argue? What do they want? When is it antisemitic and when legitimate? And how do we know?

We posed these questions and more to anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein, a compelling commentator on academic and elite anti-Israel narratives and ideas. The resulting conversation is a fascinating and helpful dive into these ideas and the problems they pose for Jews in the modern age.

This episode is sponsored by the Frozen Chosen, Haviv’s supportive community in Minnesota, to honor Noi Maudi, 29, a US-Israeli dual citizen from the southern Israeli town of Yated who taught in the community for 5 years and was a beloved teacher and friend. Noi was murdered on October 7 along with other members of his family, including his nephew and brother-in-law, at a music festival near Kibbutz Nirim.

He was an impactful and beloved Hebrew teacher at the Talmud Torah of St Paul Minnesota from 2015 to 2021.

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

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Long before the operational successes of the Mossad would become the stuff of legend in the espionage world, before the Twelve Day War, before Eli Cohen, before the Mossad itself had even come into being, a small ragtag band of courageous young Jews, without training or equipment, built the country’s first espionage arm to help the nascent Jewish state defend itself against its enemies.

Journalist and author Matti Friedman returns to the podcast to talk about his book, Spies of No Country, about the Mizrahi Jewish young men who became the Jewish state’s first spies in the Arab world. Their heroic, tragic, sometimes funny stories help us fill in the longstanding lacunae in the larger story of Israel’s founding and of present-day Israeli society by paying closer attention to the enormous role and influence played by Arab-world Jews in forging today’s Israel.

This episode was sponsored by the Lichterman Family of Jupiter, Florida, and dedicated to the memory and bravery of Aner Shapira, 22 from Jerusalem, who was slain in the Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival on October 7. Aner attended the rave next to the Gaza border with a group of friends from Jerusalem, including his close childhood friend, Hersh Goldberg-Polin. When the rocket fire began, they left by car and stopped on the side of the road to seek safety in a roadside bomb shelter next to Kibbutz Re’im. Aner and his friends were among the last people to squeeze inside the shelter, where they soon realized that terrorists were gathering outside to attack. Aner positioned himself at the entrance to the shelter, where he caught and threw back seven grenades before the eighth exploded and killed him. Of the 27 people inside the shelter, only seven emerged alive. Those who survived did so because of Aner’s bravery.

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

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Professor Yannay Spitzer is an economic historian who has studied food and hunger. His efforts over the past month to get real reliable data on hunger out of Gaza and publicize it to Israelis, data that is neither delayed nor politicized like the many claims of rampant hunger made over the past 22 months that turned out to be either inaccurate or untrue, helped change the conversation in Israel and surge aid into the strip.

Professor Spitzer joins us to explain what went wrong, why Israeli officials thought there was much more food available to Gazans than there really was, why the UN's own numbers seem to agree with them even now, why it's so hard to get food to ordinary Gazans - and what all this tells us about the state of Hamas and the future of Gaza.

This episode was dedicated by an anonymous sponsor to the memory of the remarkable Herbert Pagani, artist, composer and author, and in particular to commemorate the essay he shared on French TV in the mid-1970s titled “Plea for my Land,” a powerful and timeless defense of Jews and Israel that should be heard by all. Pagani was a self-described leftist and humanist, and a passionate defender of Zionism.

You can find “Plea for my land” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPpYQGv_jDI

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If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Aimen Dean was once a fervent young jihadi fighter, a passionate believer in radical Sunni Islam who had memorized the Quran by 12 and was fighting in the Bosnian jihad by 16.

Haviv talked to Aimen about the religious and psychological journey of a young jihadi, his experiences in the wars in Bosnia and Chechnya, his recruitment by Bin Laden himself in the mountains of Afghanistan, and his sudden and powerful disillusionment, both political and religious, that led him to become an MI6 spy in Al Qaeda's ranks.

They talked about present-day Islam, the "deradicalization" that Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa underwent in recent years, possible better futures for Gaza and whether Israeli-Palestinian peace was still possible. We also talked about why he thinks it's time to end Western experiments in reforming Middle Eastern governance and fall back on what he sees as the most natural and inclusive form of government for the region: The paternalistic monarchy.

This episode was sponsored by David and Karen Divine, who asked to dedicate it to someone we lost on October 7. This episode, we remember Abed Rahman Ziyadne, 26 of Rahat, part of Israel's Bedouin Arab community, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists on the Zikim beach, north of Gaza, on October 7, 2023, along with his girlfriend, Yulia Chaban.

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

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Our Patreon subscribers asked for a dvar Torah, a short homily, on the Jewish fast day of Tisha B'Av, which commemorates many of the great tragedies of Jewish history, including and especially the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem millennia ago.

Tisha B'Av, Haviv argues, is a window into the Sages' conception of history, their view of the brokenness of the world reflected in the tragedies of history, and the power of the study of history to mend that brokenness.

This episode is sponsored by Alex and Betty Verjovsky in honor of Sayeret Tzanchanim, the reconnaissance company of the Paratroopers Brigade, in memory if their fallen and wounded, and the soldiers who have been fighting since October 7 and have paid a heavy price for Israel's defense. The sponsors' close friend, the unit's top NCO, is finally retiring after 35 years of service.

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

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

There is now hunger in Gaza, widespread and dangerous. It's less dire than Western media claims, but could reach those proportions if it isn't reversed through an aid surge.

How did we get to this point? What were Israeli officials thinking?

And what does the current crisis tell us about the state of the war?

This episode was sponsored by an anonymous sponsor who dedicated it to the bravery of our friend Shaked Haran, whose story is told in episode 5 of this podcast. On October 7, Shaked's father, uncle and aunt were killed in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be'eri, and seven members of her family, including her mother and two cousins aged 3 and 7 were taken hostage, launching a long and grueling fight for their liberation that Shaked helped lead for the family.

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

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [email protected]⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.