Unholy: Two Jews on the News

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With sixty days to go until the Israeli elections, the political jockeying enters into overdrive. Yonit and Jonathan break down the high-stakes coalition arithmetic facing both Benjamin Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot, from the crowded field of small right-wing parties—including the entrance of retired general Ofer Winter—to the battle on the center ground. Meanwhile, alarming footage of settler violence in the West Bank and provocative stunts by far-right lawmakers raise hard questions and trigger fierce international blowback from London to Washington.

Plus: an election ad pulled on grounds of chutzpah so extreme, even its own party couldn't defend it, and a Mensch of the Week whose Jewish connection nobody saw coming.

0:00 End-of-Summer Chaos 1:50 Sixty Days to Israel's Election: Eisenkot vs Netanyahu 11:56 Lieberman Scenarios and Ben Gvir's TikTok Rise 16:06 Mansour Abbas and the Two-State Question 20:58 E1 Construction and the Wave of Settler Violence 31:10 The Case for Releasing Marwan Barghouti 35:12 Chutzpah of the Week: Aryeh Deri's Shas Ad 36:36 Mensch of the Week: Dolly Parton

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It's the end of summer, and Yonit and Jonathan are taking a break from the news with a nugget of pure Jewish joy. Andy Nyman — the West End actor, writer, director and magician currently starring as Max Bialystock in The Producers, and previously as an acclaimed Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof — joins the show for an Unholy Conversation. Why does Mel Brooks' nearly-60-year-old joke about Hitler still land? What makes Max Bialystock - who could have been Tevye’s grandson - so beloved, even in his desperation? And is the Broadway musical, as a form, secretly a Jewish one? Andy answers the question by giving a rare performance of a musical classic — rendered in Yiddish. You won’t want to miss it.

In this episode:

The Genius of Mel Brooks: How The Producers transforms satire into an act of healing and an uncompromising "fuck you" to history.

From Tevye to Bialystock: Exploring the thread connecting the working-class milkman of Anatevka to the scheming, desperate, yet deeply human Broadway hustler.

Art in Times of Darkness: A rare behind-the-scenes look at performing comedic Jewish art—and deciding to keep a daring scene in the show—in the wake of global tragedy.

Exclusive Live Performances: Andy delivers three bespoke, stripped-back performances directly in the studio:

"We Can Do It" (The Producers)

"If I Were a Rich Man" (Fiddler on the Roof)

A haunting, tender Yiddish translation of "Hushabye Mountain" (originally by the Sherman Brothers).

00:06 Introduction to Unholy Conversations

00:09 Introduction to Andy Nyman

01:57 The Enduring Appeal of The Producers

05:50 Mel Brooks and Jewish Healing through Humor

08:29 Defiance in Comedy: Pulling Down Pants

09:59 Exploring Max Bialystok's Character

17:30 Max Bialystok and Tevye: A Generational Connection

18:23 The Complexity of Tevye

22:58 The Essence of Fiddler on the Roof

30:44 The Current Jewish Climate

35:40 The Jewish Influence in Musical Theatre

42:32 A Yiddish Lullaby: Bridging Cultures

44:24 The Importance of Representation

44:25 Personal Connections and Impact

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Sixty-eight days from the election, the hardest problems on Benjamin Netanyahu's desk are arriving from Washington. Jared Kushner is meeting Hamas directly, and the Gaza withdrawal deadlines he is carrying — thirty, sixty and ninety days — all land inside the Israeli campaign. Yonit and Jonathan read the timing as an unfriendly act rather than an accident, and ask what Donald Trump wants in return for the endorsement he keeps withholding. Also this week: the anti-Netanyahu bloc still cannot say who leads it, the IDF publishes its decisions in five Gaza cases, and the prime minister calls Britain an Islamic Republic on a podcast. Plus a Chutzpah award for an American broadcaster who has found proof of Israeli hostility to Christians in a mathematical symbol, and a Mensch of the Week who proves that sometimes even the most heartbreaking stories can have a happy ending.

00:00 Intro 04:04 68 days out: blocs, mergers and the electoral threshold 10:03 Eisenkot, Bennett and who leads the anti-Netanyahu bloc 14:32 Kushner meets Hamas and Washington's Gaza deadlines 19:59 The IDF's decisions in five Gaza cases 22:24 Huckabee on settler violence, Iran, and Trump on Oman 27:47 Coming up: Simon Sebag Montefiore on the Middle East 28:33 Netanyahu calls Britain an Islamic Republic 33:33 Central Synagogue and the cost to the diaspora 35:35 Chutzpah of the Week 38:56 Mensch of the Week

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Acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore returns to Unholy to discuss his sweeping new book, The Cauldron: A History of the Middle East between 1900 and 2026. He tells Yonit and Jonathan that understanding the region today requires starting at the dawn of the 20th century — thanks to the long shadow still cast by the Ottoman Empire and its collapse. They talk of the often underestimated significance of Saudi Arabia, the convulsions that followed the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the extent to which Israel is - unexpectedly - a Middle Eastern state like any other.

⏱ CHAPTERS

00:00 Intro

00:52 Why the book starts in 1900

02:49 Ibn Saud and the House of Saud

07:31 1979 and the Iranian revolution

09:55 The empire states, none of them Arab

13:13 Israel as a post-Ottoman state

18:22 Ben Gurion, Ataturk, Reza Shah

21:46 Middleness, pipelines and Haifa

26:35 The 1840 Damascus blood libel

30:02 Purity tests and historians' nerve

33:58 The King and Britain's minorities

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Benjamin Netanyahu has said no to Donald Trump's 15-point Gaza plan, and the refusal is flat rather than fudged. In the West Bank, extremist settlers have besieged two Palestinian families in the village of Qusra, apparently hoping to take their homes. The IDF went in but came away with mission very much unaccomplished. With Yonit away, Jonathan is joined by Hadley Freeman, columnist for London’s Sunday Times and author of the acclaimed memoir, House of Glass, for what is an Unholy first: two voices from the Jewish diaspora and no Israeli in the room. They talk through the week's news and reflect on what three years since October 7 has done to Jewish life outside Israel, why Israel-Palestine has become the litmus test of the American left and whether anybody speaks for the diaspora.

Plus: a Chutzpah nominee that reached a Belfast stage via Sweden, and a Mensch that arrives from Australia by way of Yiddish.

The Bashevis Singers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G531cgjplcM

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Three of the oldest myths about Jews — relating to money, blood and the way they look — were forged in medieval Christian Europe, mostly in places where there were almost no Jews to observe. Miri Rubin, professor of medieval and early modern history at Queen Mary University of London, tells Jonathan how each one of those myths was built — and explains how that medieval way of seeing Jews often remains the lens through which Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is seen. They also discuss the reckoning with Christendom’s past that followed the Holocaust - and how it has seemingly come to a halt in our own time.

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With Yonit away, Jonathan is joined by Anshel Pfeffer, Israel correspondent of the Economist, as they discuss the muted reaction to the announcement made by Donald Trump of what he hoped would be hailed as a breakthrough in Gaza. It turns out that most people in the region are waiting to see if Washington’s hopes turn into anything more concrete.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu is setting about ensuring his political opponents are deemed too toxic to serve as partners in any coalition that would hope to replace him following the elections on October 27.

Plus: a new wine from very old grapes and an Irish plane that may have trouble in stormy weather.

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Just over 400,000 Jews call the country home, a community that lived through what many call a golden age of acceptance before watching it fracture. Jewish Canadians, under 1% of the population, are now the target of the large majority of religiously motivated hate crimes in the country. This week, Heather Reisman — founder and CEO of Indigo, Canada's largest book, toy and lifestyle retailer, and co-founder of the HESEG Foundation — joins Yonit and Jonathan to explain how her stores became a target, why she's turned critical of the current Israeli government, and whether the antisemitic "genie" can ever go back in the bottle.

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Ninety days before Israel votes, the campaign is revealing much about both the candidates and the country. The defense minister boasts about applying different detention rules to Jewish and Arab citizens — at a primary event, into a microphone. Two sets of pollsters are predicting completely opposite outcomes, and someone smashed Channel 12's doors and left death threats for the second time in a month.

Yonit and Jonathan take stock at the three-month mark — what the divergent polling could be setting up, what three and a half years of judicial overhaul attempts actually achieved, why Bennett and Lapid might not survive to election day as a unit, and what the oddly quiet Netanyahu-Trump summit tells us about the Iran impasse. Plus: a Chutzpah award for a New York mayor with a peculiar blind spot, and a Mensch moment involving Israel's Chief Justice and an unexpected nod to Hollywood.

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Fresh off his tour of Israel and Europe, this week on Unholy Conversations, Yonit and Jonathan speak to Rahm Emanuel—former Chief of Staff, Congressman, Chicago Mayor, Ambassador to Japan and perhaps future presidential nominee.

They dive into his recent charged conversation with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, his take on Israel’s current choices, whether he considers himself a Zionist, and if he’s any closer to making a decision on a presidential run.

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