What Matters Now

What Matters Now episodes:

• 05.02.2024

  What Matters Now to two Jewish student leaders at Columbia: 'Intifada' on campus

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. Police cleared 30 to 40 people from inside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday night after...

  
• 04.25.2024

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: Is it wise for US to blacklist IDF unit?

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. This week, we speak with The Times of Israel's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur about the...

  
• 04.18.2024

  What Matters Now to Mideast analyst Avi Issacharoff: Iran can have nukes in 6 months

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. In a post-October 7 Israeli reality, is any new security threat outside the realm of imagination? This...

  
• 04.11.2024

  What Matters Now to David Horovitz: The conflicts of war coverage

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. Speaking in our Jerusalem office, The Times of Israel editor David Horovitz offers a rare in-depth...

  
• 04.04.2024

  What Matters Now to Micah Goodman: This is a war of independence for Israelis and Gazans

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. In six months of war, Israel has systematically broken down Hamas’s battalions in the Gaza Strip....

  
• 03.28.2024

  What Matters Now to mourning mother Hannah Wacholder Katsman: Personal & national grief

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Days after his 32nd birthday, on Saturday, October 7, Hayim Katsman was killed by terrorists from Gaza in his...

  
• 03.21.2024

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: Is Netanyahu an obstacle to victory?

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. In his US Senate floor speech last week, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer called for new Israeli elections as...

  
• 03.14.2024

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: Hamas starves Gazans as a war tactic

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. On Tuesday, aid for 25,000 people reached Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip for the first time in...

  
• 03.07.2024

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: Campus antisemitism makes new Zionists

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. ToI's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur recently gave a series of lectures at North American college campuses. At some,...

  
• 02.29.2024

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: Haredim have to defend Israel, too

  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...

  
• 02.22.2024

  What Matters Now to Ksenia Svetlova: Russia's new position on the global 'Risk' board

  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...

  
• 02.15.2024

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: UNRWA's problem isn't the terrorists in its ranks

  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...

  
• 02.08.2024

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: Clashing visions of victory

  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...

  
• 02.01.2024

  What Matters Now to author Shlomo Brody: Jewish ethics and the Israel-Hamas War

  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...

  
• 01.26.2024

  What Matters Now to Yossi Klein Halevi: 5 big questions about the war

  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,...

  
• 01.18.2024

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: What Israelis think about the suffering in Gaza

  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...

  
• 01.11.2024

  What Matters Now to Mishy Harman: 3 'postcards' from wartime Israel

  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...

  
• 01.04.2024

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: How the court just redefined its own powers

  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...

  
• 12.28.2023

  What Matters Now to US Jewish leader William Daroff: Where are our allies?

  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...

  
• 12.21.2023

  What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: Wartime polls & unexpected conclusions

  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...

  
• 12.14.2023

  What Matters Now to Prof. Amichai Cohen: Is the IDF acting legally in Gaza?

  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...

  
• 12.07.2023

  What Matters Now to Israel Story’s Mishy Harman: ‘A person is a person is a person’

  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...

  
• 11.30.2023

  What Matters Now to Saul Singer: Refounding Israel the day after the war

  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...

  
• 11.23.2023

  What Matters Now to Rabbi Seth Farber: Hostages and mixed burials in Jewish law

  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....

  
• 11.16.2023

  What Matters Now to Dr. Joe Uziel: ID'ing Oct. 7 victims via forensic archaeology

  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...

  
• 11.09.2023

  What Matters Now to Oct. 7 survivor Adele Raemer: Telling the world

  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...

  
• 11.02.2023

  What Matters Now to Israel Story's Mishy Harman: 'Wartime Diaries'

  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...

  
• 10.26.2023

  What Matters Now to Rabbi Rick Jacobs: Coalitions of faith and conscience

  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...

  
• 10.19.2023

  What Matters Now to Rachel Goldberg: Her son Hersh, held hostage by Hamas

  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,...

  
• 10.11.2023

  What Matters Now to Micah Goodman: Vow to stand with Israel when it fires back

  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...

  
• 09.28.2023

  What Matters Now to archaeologist Erez Ben-Yosef: King David's tent-dwelling monarchy

  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...

  
• 09.21.2023

  What Matters Now to David Friedman, Michal Cotler-Wunsh & Gil Troy: Nuance

  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...

  
• 09.14.2023

  What Matters Now to Jewish Law Prof. Benny Porat: Common ground as titans clash

  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...

  
• 09.07.2023

  What Matters Now to authors Yossi Klein Halevi, Daniel Gordis and Matti Friedman

  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...

  
• 08.31.2023

  What Matters Now to counselor Yishai Mogilner: Being Israeli at a US summer camp

  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,...

  
• 08.24.2023

  What Matters Now to journalist Adam Rasgon: The future of the Palestinian Authority

  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...

  
• 08.17.2023

  What Matters Now to author Oren Kessler: 1936 Palestine's missed peace deal

  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...

  
• 08.10.2023

  What Matters Now to women's justice lawyer Susan Weiss: The rise of theocracy

  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...

  
• 08.03.2023

  What Matters Now to former BoI governor Karnit Flug: The economy, stupid

  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...

  
• 07.27.2023

  What Matters Now to thinker Micah Goodman: An incipient internal 'intifada'

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week, the Knesset passed the first contentious judicial overhaul bill into law. So, six months after getting perspective...

  
• 07.20.2023

  What Matters Now to Dr. Yonatan Freeman: The dictatorship tipping point

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish world — right now. What is the tipping point between democracy and dictatorship? Why do some nations fall under one supreme leader’s sway?...

  
• 07.06.2023

  What Matters Now to archaeologist Aren Maeir: Indiana Jones's new adventure

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish world — right now. Since 1981, the archetypical image of an archaeologist has included a wide-brimmed brown hat, a brown leather jacket —...

  
• 06.29.2023

  What Matters Now to Prof. Yedidia Stern: A 'thin constitution'

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish world — right now. This week, the Knesset’s Constitution Committee restarted deliberations over pieces of judicial overhaul legislation after compromise talks in the...

  
• 06.22.2023

  What Matters Now to Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser: Breaking the terror wave

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish world — right now. On March 22, 2022, four Israelis were murdered in a stabbing attack in Beersheba. In the same week, a...

  
• 06.15.2023

  What Matters Now to Prof. Mona Khoury: The cycle of violence in Arab communities

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish world — right now. This past weekend, Israel marked a tragic milestone: In the first half of 2023, over 100 Arab citizens have...

  
• 06.08.2023

  What Matters Now to Jonathan Spyer: Iran's confrontations with enemies

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish world — right now. Eleven years ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his much-quoted "Iranian nuclear duck" speech at AIPAC warning against United...

  
• 06.01.2023

  What Matters Now to lobbyist Rachel Gur: Why Israel is so #₪@$! expensive

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish world — right now. On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his cabinet meeting with an announcement that his government will draft a...

  
• 05.24.2023

  What Matters Now to Yair Zakovitch: Using 'Ruth' as a blueprint for creative halacha

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This week, Jews all over the world will mark the holiday of Shavuot by reading from the Book of...

  
• 05.18.2023

  What Matters Now to historian Sara Hirschhorn: Extremism is now mainstream

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. On Thursday this week, tens of thousands of marchers -- including several government ministers and MKs -- marked the...

  
• 05.11.2023

  What Matters Now to ToI analyst Haviv Rettig Gur: The political perils of conflict

  Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Israel stands unified this week as hundreds of Gaza rockets rain on the country. Unusually of late, even Israel’s political...