Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World.

This week, we hear from former prime minister Naftali Bennett in conversation with founding editor David Horovitz and political correspondent Tal Schneider.

Speaking with ToI on June 11 at the campaign headquarters of Together, the new, merged party he now leads with former prime minister Yair Lapid, Bennett said Israel is facing “an existential moment,” and warned that another term under the current government would leave the country without a functioning economy, society or international position.

“Another four years with this government, we won’t have an economy, we won’t have a society,” he charged. “The Haredi issue will just crash us all. We won’t have an international standing anywhere. We have to act now.”

And so, this week, we ask Naftali Bennett, what matters now.

For further reading:

Bennett to ToI: ‘We’re at an existential moment. Another four years with this government, we won’t have a society’

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was edited by Yitzchak Ledee.

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett (ToI) / Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men scuffle with police during a protest against military recruitment and call for the release of detained draft resisters outside a military prison near Kfar Yona, Israel, June 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Israel Democracy Institute senior fellow Dr. Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler.

Shwartz Altshuler, the head of the IDI's Democracy in the Digital Age Program, weighs in on the nefarious ways in which AI is being used to manipulate hearts and minds -- from elections to smear campaigns.

She breaks down in practical terms how AI is now able to flood the public sphere with noise and confusion. We discuss the ripple effects of increased reliance on chatbots versus Google-type searches and how information can easily be poisoned by bad actors.

The technology law and policy expert gives an overview of the potential possibilities for regulation -- and the chaotic Wild West reality we're living in.

Turning to Israel's upcoming elections, we learn how the delegitimization of the results has already begun.

And so, this week, we ask Dr. Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was edited by Ari Schlacht.

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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with author and journalist Matti Friedman.

On May 31, 2026, President Isaac Herzog attended the memorial ceremony for the fallen soldiers of the First Lebanon War (Operation 'Peace for the Galilee'), held at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. On the same day, the IDF announced that Israel had captured the historic Beaufort Castle and the surrounding strategic ridge as it pushed deeper into Lebanon.

This week, we call upon Friedman to delve into the cultural resonance of this Crusader fort for Israelis. He shares his perspective on the site based upon his personal experiences as a soldier before the IDF pullout from the security zone in 2000, which he recounted in his book, "Pumpkin Flowers."

After Friedman gives us the historical background to understand the conflict, we discuss the catch-22 Israel is again sucked into in southern Lebanon.

And so, this week, we ask Matti Friedman, what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was edited by Ari Schlacht.

IMAGE: Author Matti Friedman (Jonathan Bloom) / A view of he Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon as seen from northern Israel, Sunday, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

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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 author and scholar Dara Horn.

Horn visited ToI's Jerusalem studio while on a break from this year’s International Writers Festival in Jerusalem, taking place May 25-28 at the city’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim cultural center

An author of novels and non-fiction, including “People Love Dead Jews,” “Eternal Life,” “A Guide for the Perplexed,” Horn's latest book -- her first for young readers -- is “One Little Goat.”

Her newest nonfiction work will be published by Simon & Schuster in September under the title, "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living."

We hear about how, after Horn published her bestselling work, "People Love Dead Jews," readers asked her for the solution to this problem. This week, she speaks about her new education initiative, Tell, which is bent on teaching American schoolchildren about real, living Jews, and Jewish culture.

To launch the wide-ranging conversation, Horn defines terms, explaining that Jews are not a religion, but a people with a religion. This difference, she states, is massive and must be internalized to understand the millennia of hate experienced by the Jewish people. 

Since the Hamas onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the resultant retaliatory war in Gaza, there has been an outsized focus on the trend of "non-Zionist" or "anti-Zionist" Jews. Who are these Jews -- and are they significant in the chronicles of Jewish history?

And so, this week, we ask author Dara Horn, what matters now?

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.

IMAGE: AP

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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Jessica Steinberg speaking with author Yishay Ishi Ron.

Ishi Ron's award-winning 2023 book, "Dog," is about an Israeli combat officer returning from Gaza, grappling with PTSD and heroin addiction until a stray dog enters his life and helps save him.

The novel became a bestseller in Israel, was long-listed for the Sapir Prize, and is currently being adapted into a film by director Eran Ricklis.

After "Dog" was translated into English, it won two 2026 National Jewish Book Awards, in the Book Club and Hebrew Fiction in Translation categories.

A former commando in the elite Duvdevan unit fictionalized in the Netflix series "Fauda," Ishi Ron wrote "Dog" before he was diagnosed with PTSD, while he was self-medicating with alcohol and drugs.

Ishi Ron talks about writing books as part of his healing process and what has become his mission to help others in his situation.

He also discusses his latest book, a Holocaust drama called "The Girl Who Rode the White Lion," inspired by his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht.

IMAGE: Yishai Ishi Ron, author of the award-winning novel 'Dog,' appears on the May 19 What Matters Now podcast (Courtesy)

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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World. This week, founding editor David Horovitz speaks with CEO of the British Board of Deputies Michael Wegier.

Wegier has been the CEO of the Board, the umbrella organization representing Anglo-Jewry, for the past five years -- an increasingly fraught period, especially since October 7, 2023. Anti-Israel demonstrators routinely march through central London, Palestine Action activists have attacked Israeli targets, a cultural boycott of Israel has picked up steam...

We discuss how things have changed for Britain's Jews, especially amid a stream of antisemitic attacks, including deadly terrorism at a Manchester synagogue last Yom Kippur and the stabbing of two Jewish men in northwest London's Golders Green neighborhood last month.

Wegier talks about who is behind the violence, how the police are facing up to it, and the role of Keir Starmer's Labour government. We also look more widely at British politics from a Jewish context, with this month's local elections marked by the dramatic rise of the hard-right UK Reform party, and unprecedented gains by a Green Party engulfed in antisemitism scandals, under a Jewish leader who made vicious criticism of Israel a centerpiece of the campaign.

Finally, we look at the relationship between Anglo-Jewry and Israel, and the degree to which what Wegier describes as the "anxiety" in the community about day-to-day life is prompting thoughts of potential emigration to Israel.

So this week, we ask Michael Wegier, what matters now?

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee. 

IMAGE: Michael Wegier (courtesy) / Protesters gather near Downing Street during a 'national emergency' rally organized by the Campaign Against Antisemitism following a knife attack in Golders Green, in London, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World. This week, host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaks with legal expert Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy.

Almost immediately following Hamas’s murderous onslaught on southern Israel, humanitarian law expert Elkayam-Levy established and now heads The Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children.

On May 12, the commission released a massive report that documents and chronicles Hamas’s systemic use of rape and sexual violence against women -- and men -- on October 7, while taking hostages and during their captivities.

Elkayam-Levy visited The Times of Israel's Jerusalem studio for this wide-ranging conversation. Listener discretion is advised.

Since the Hamas onslaught on southern Israel, Elkayam-Levy and her team of forensics and legal experts, alongside professional archivists and others, have carefully gathered witness testimony and over 10,000 pieces of visual evidence that prove the terrorists' use of sex abuse as a tactical war crime.

We hear about 13 categories of abuse perpetrated on people from over 50 nationalities. We learn that the tactic of broadcasting the crimes via livestreams has made Hamas heroes in the eyes of some fundamentalists who are already importing the terror group's sadistic methods, as seen in Syrian attacks on Druze in July.

Elkayam-Levy discusses the impossible mission of providing a voice for the voiceless and creating a historical database that accurately portrays the scope of the horror. She has faced unfathomable blowback and is clear-eyed about how the commission's report will be received.

So this week, we ask Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, what matters now?

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee. 

IMAGE: Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy (Muki Schwartz) / On October 13, 2023, Israeli soldiers inspect the site of the Nova music festival where at least 340 Israeli festival-goers were killed during the attack by Hamas militants on Oct 7, near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)

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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 Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, the head of Realign for Palestine, an Atlantic Council project that challenges entrenched narratives in the Israel and Palestine discourse.

This week, the Board of Peace’s top Gaza envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, is in Israel in an attempt to kick-start the Trump peace plan. He has previously urged the international community to pressure the Hamas Palestinian terror group to disarm and prevent another cycle of violence in the Gaza Strip.

This week, we hear why Alkhatib believes the current stalemate in Gaza is being embraced by both Hamas and official Israel.

But first, Alkhatib paints a dismal picture of life in the Strip -- rat infestations, sewage in the streets and a strong Hamas presence on the ground.

We learn about the recent elections for Hamas leadership and hear background about the leading candidates.

Finally, among all the darkness, Alkhatib shares pinpoints of light from among the people who are still not cowed by the terrorist regime.

And so this week, we ask Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, what matters now?

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht.

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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with The Times of Israel's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur.

On Sunday, former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid announced a joint run for this year's Israeli elections. 

Immediately, polling showed that the combined electoral slate, dubbed “Together,” would win a total of 26 seats if elections were held Monday, placing them ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud as the Knesset’s largest party, according to Channel 12.

Later in the week, Opposition Leader Lapid told Bennett that he was willing to take third place, rather than second, on their joint electoral slate if it would help secure a broader merger with Yashar party chairman Gadi Eisenkot.

On this week's episode, in the spirit of the newly completed NFL draft, we play fantasy football and weigh the merits of the current parties and politicians vyying for the Knesset in this year's election.

And so this week, we ask Haviv Rettig Gur what matters now.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht.

IMAGE: Haviv Rettig Gur (courtesy) / Green Bay Packers quarterback Taylor Elgersma (19) throws during the first half of a preseason NFL football game against the Indianapolis Colts, August 16, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

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Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Jessica Steinberg speaking with author Rachel Goldberg-Polin.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin began writing her new book, "When We See You Again," as a way of finding some relief from her pain after she buried her son, 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was executed by his Hamas captors in August 2024, after being held captive for 330 days in a Gaza tunnel.

Goldberg-Polin speaks about the process of writing the book, urged by her husband, Jon Polin, and how the book became a kind of answer to people asking her how she was.

The bulk of the book takes place after the Goldberg-Polins buried Hersh on August 31, 2024, and is an accounting of their lives in what Goldberg-Polin terms the Before and After.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht.

IMAGE: Author Rachel Goldberg-Polin joins host Jessica Steinberg for an episode of What Matters Now

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