In this week's Times Will Tell, we speak to Eytan Peled, an emerging Israeli singer-songwriter whose first song, "Where Are The Days?" went viral, placing him at the top of the Israeli charts.

That attention put the US-born Peled in the perfect situation to write songs -- primarily in English -- for breakout Israeli artists Mergui, Noa Kirel and others.

He also writes and sings in Arabic, a language he first learned in high school, then perfected during his army service and while living in a northern Druze village.

We listen to Peled's most recent release, "Sakatna," sung by Peled in English and Arabic, with an accompanying video made with star producer Stav Beger and set in a southern Bedouin village, complete with a hip-hop Bedouin dancer.

Peled wants to bridge together Jews and Arabs with his music, bringing that message of  Israeli mainstream music.

IMAGE: Singer/songwriter Eytan Peled (Courtesy)

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This week's Times Will Tell introduces Lena Glikson, the Russian-born, Jewish music editor who was part of the 2022 Emmy-winning editing team for Netflix's hit series, "Stranger Things."

Lena speaks about her work in Season 4's scene featuring Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill," editing the music to picture and helping slingshot the 80s song into a viral hit.

She talks about her journey from Russia to the US a decade ago, the distance from her family and friends, and experiencing the onset of Putin's war against Ukraine from afar.

She also examines the development of her own Jewish identity as a teenager, discovering and exploring her Jewish roots and facing a turning tide of anti-Semitism in her native land as she left for the US.

Glikson talks about Israel, her hopes to work on Israeli films and productions, and her efforts to study Hebrew as part of her own personal journey.

The following transcript has been very lightly edited.

The Times of Israel: Lena, welcome. We're so happy to have you here with us.

Lena Glikson: Thank you, Jessica, for having me. It's such a pleasure to be a part of your podcast.

I think we're going to have to start with Stranger Things. Tell us when and how you joined the Stranger Things music crew and a little about development of music for this show.

So, season four of Stranger Things is my first season on the show. I've been working as a music editor in Hollywood for the past six years at this point. Receiving this email from David Claude, the music editor for all the seasons of the show, was kind of surprising. And I couldn't even believe it because I actually was a big fan of the show and I watched all these seasons and I was one of the people googling the release date for season four. I literally saw that and thought it was a junk email.

That's funny.

And, yeah, it was real. And apparently the Duffer brothers were looking for the second music editor because the episodes in season four are so long, many different processes were happening in parallel. So while one episode was dubbed, meaning the sound for the episode was mixed, the Duffer brothers were already cutting and working on the following episode. So poor David, the music editor, would have to be in two places simultaneously. And the Duffer Brothers needed someone who would be actually working with them in the cutting room every single day. And that person was me. And it was just an amazing experience. I was spending a lot of time with the Duffer Brothers and we were working very closely on the music, both the score and the source pieces. And of course, “Running Up That Hill” was one of the songs that we worked closely on and it was just amazing. And they gave me so much creative freedom and just things to experiment with. And they trust me to a point where they can just bring up a few pieces from the previous seasons and tell me, can you cut this one over here or is that one over there?

I kind of had to take pre-existing piece of music and then place it in a new scene and actually make it work in that context, which is always a very, very fun thing to do. And the entire crew is just so lovely and amazing. And the vibes you're getting from the show, it's so interesting because these positive, friendly vibes, they actually live in the cutting room, which is a very unique thing, I think, even from my experience.

Talk to us a little bit about how the music gets chosen. What is it like to work as part of the music editing team and to make the decisions about various songs?

Many of the songs are already scripted. At some point it becomes about licensing. How much money do we have to spend on the music and where can we save a bit if we can pick certain alternatives for some of the songs? But when it comes to big songs, I think most of them are kind of predetermined and it's a combination of director's work and showrunner's work. And we also have our amazing music supervisor, Nora Felder, who helps us providing alternatives for certain songs. And also she does all the licensing for the show. And in terms of picking and choosing songs, basically if we need some options, then Nora would come up with a number of different songs and I would be the person cutting them into the scene. Basically, and showing them to the Duffer Brothers because obviously all the songs are different tempo, different length. And my job, just as a music editor in general, is to make a particular piece of music work syncwise and dramatically within a certain scene and make it all very musical so that it develops beautifully and works with a picture. And then sometimes we're just narrowing down the choice to two or three different pieces and then go from there.

I’d like to dig in a little bit to Running Up That Hill from Kate Bush. We're going to listen for a moment to a snapshot of the scene in season four in which Max, played by Sadie Sink, is able to overcome the powerful curse, spoiler alert for those who have not gotten to season four yet. And she's able to overcome the curse by hearing her favorite song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV0RAcuG2Ao

It becomes such an indelible moment in the season.

I know that that was supposed to be a very, very big moment. And when I saw the song for the very first time, it was instructed and told that, okay, so this is the scene, this is our feature song. Please be super careful about cutting it. Make sure that it all works.

And the way it works, really, in the movie world, is that the songs and the music is being cut to picture, and very rarely it works vice versa. So the song always has to be adjusted in one way or the other. And to be honest, there are so many different stories about how the song was picked for the series.

One of them is that it was scripted. The other one is that the director of that particular episode, Sean Levy, brought it in.

But the way it was originally cut, it was cut by Dean Zimmerman, our picture editor. And it was just a very kind of rough shape of the song. And my job was basically just making it work within the scene and making it develop in a certain way. And we actually even had to adjust the picture a little bit to kind of make the song shine, which happens very, very rarely. It just tells you about how important this song was for the episode and for the season.

And for me personally, the other interesting experience was cutting the same song in episode nine during this big epic montage where it's not just the main version of the song, but it's the remix by the artist Totem. And that one was fun because originally in that scene, we were supposed to have the score and then the Duffer brothers just brought it in and said, oh, we have this cool version of the Kate Bush song and it's a remix and let's try cutting it in. And basically I had all the separate instruments and elements for the remix. So just assembling such an epic version of that song for that scene was amazing. And when the Duffer brothers saw it, they really loved it and it was just such a happy moment for me when they actually fell in love with something that I did and I was the first person who kind of tried doing it. So it was very, very cool. And that sequence actually also lives on YouTube, I believe, as a separate video, because, again, it's a very rare thing, I think, when a song and the sequence, the video sequence, they live together and you can actually watch them separately from the episode, which kind of shows that people also like that one and were interested and it was cool reading the comments on YouTube.

Let’s turn to you now. You trained in piano and voice and did a lot of classical music training, and then made your way to sound editing. Was that always your goal?

Well, as a child, my dream was actually to become a professional singer. And I think I started playing piano mostly because I wanted to be a singer and there was no official way of studying voice back in Russia. And I was always doing the two things in parallel and also because there was nowhere to study jazz vocals or pop vocals when it came to choosing like a career path when I was still living back in Russia. It's surprising and it's a bit weird, but out of all the options that I had, I picked classical music theory. And I think partially it's because my parents are programmers. And there was something about that, just like the specific way my brain works and kind of the logical component to the artistic component. And just that particular major appealed to me simply because it was a combination of both. But my goal was still to become a singer. So that's how I discovered Berklee College of Music in Boston.

How many years ago did you come from Russia to the US?

Ten years ago.

Ten years ago? So not that long.

Yeah, but that's still the third of my life.

Okay, so most of your education was in Russia, and where in Russia did you live?

Voronezh. It's a city really, really close to Ukraine. It's pretty much on the border with Ukraine. I was also considering a Rimon School of Music in Israel and kind of choosing between the two in a way, but also kind of thinking that maybe after a couple of years at Rimon, I would probably be able to go to Berklee. But the thing was that I didn't speak Hebrew, and I thought that that was kind of a bigger issue. I spoke English, so that was one of the main reasons why I actually went to Berklee, just to be able to absorb as much knowledge as I could.

Well, what I realized at Berklee was that my dream of becoming a singer was a lovely dream, but I just had way too much classical background to kind of forget about that and only concentrate on performance. And because Berklee has to offer a number of very unique majors, and one of those was film scoring, I felt like that would be an amazing way of combining my more technical and logical side with a very, very creative, orchestral writing and just kind of using all my knowledge, basically. And that's why I came to Los Angeles, because with such a degree, this is kind of the number one place.

And because music editing was one of the classes that we had to take as film scoring students, I considered it as one of the options for myself. And the first internship that I found was with the music editor, Nick South. And I already had kind of all the knowledge about creating a score for movies and how it all works and who is involved and had the basic technical skills. But I needed those specific skills for music editing. And my mentor, Nick, taught me pretty much everything he knew and he was just amazing in terms of explaining not only the technicalities, but also the political side of the job because that's another very, very important side of it.

What is the political side?

A music editor is a person who lives between all the parties involved in creating the music. And we act as some sort of a bridge between the director and the composer and the studio. Our job is to save the composer from being fired or save the movie from all the music being thrown away. And it has a lot to do with just understanding people, feeling the room, making sure you are protecting everyone that needs to be protected, making sure that we stay on schedule, communicating with a movie studio, communicating with the director. And sometimes the composer, let's say, sends me a piece of score. And I know that the director is in a really, really bad mood and I know that I can show that piece of score to the director at the moment. So I need to figure out a way to find the best time to do that. And it's a lot of figuring out what you can say, what you cannot say, how to save this person, how to protect that person, and problem-solving, troubleshooting and just resolving conflicts.

I imagine there is a sense of satisfaction from what you do now, even though it is a long road from where you began. Is there?

For sure. Of course. I kind of miss the performance element a bit because I just don't have the time to do that anymore. But I feel like there are no skills that are completely abandoned and unused because in one way or the other, even my singing skills, because I often work in musicals and, for instance, now I work on a remake of The Color Purple and there are many, many songs in that movie. So just having that background, knowing about vocal position, knowing about just how to use your voice helps me a lot as a music editor when I'm working on musicals, and of course, all my classical background helps me with the editing bit of it. And yes, it's been a very interesting journey, and I probably could never imagine working in Hollywood and doing what I do when I was little and when I was dreaming of being on stage and performing, but it's still very exciting.

There's been a lot of upheaval in the last months, with the war in Ukraine. Where has that put you in terms of your own personal life and what you're thinking about both in terms of career and home?

For me, what happened on February 24 when Russia attacked Ukraine was a personal tragedy in a way. I do not have family in Ukraine, but just the fact that the city where I was born is so close to the border with Ukraine and you know, especially in my town, it's actually very hard to say, oh, this person is 100% Russian and that person is 27% Ukrainian. It's all very, very mixed. And I have many friends from Ukraine, and I thought, okay, so now the Russians are going to actually see what happened and what our government is like. But that did not happen. And that made me feel devastated, to be honest. Like the whole world started crashing and burning. And when I was living in Russia. I was kind of suffering a bit with my identity because I was born with my Dad's Jewish last name, which is Glikson. But when I turned three years old, my mom changed her last name and my last name to her maiden name, which sounds way more Slavic. And that's actually still the last name that I have in my passport. Mostly because swastikas were all over the city and antisemitism was kind of flourishing.

So I was growing up with this idea that I was Jewish, but I kind of had to hide that from everyone, living in a pretty conservative society where the Russian Orthodox Church is still kind of a big thing, and all the kids in my class were wearing crosses, and kids would ask me, so have you ever been baptized? And I've never been baptized. And it just felt very uncomfortable. And I had this feeling that, okay, I need to hide my identity. And when I became a teenager, that was already in the late 2000s, the climate in the society started changing a bit, and the Jewish community in my hometown started having different activities and celebrating high holidays. So it started to feel like it's not as dangerous as it used to be to be Jewish and to be kind of open about it, but it was still very difficult because we had so many decades of that part of who we are kind of being hidden. And the generation of my grandparents was the first generation who started experiencing that and started hiding their Jewish identity because they couldn't really celebrate any high holidays.

That's why the generation of my parents grew up completely Soviet as opposed to having their ethnicities kind of cherished and respected. And when I started feeling more Jewish, that's when I started discovering more things about my Jewish heritage and learning more about the Holocaust, because that's an important part of my family history. My grandfather, he left Poland in 1939, and his family was exterminated in one of the first extermination camps in Poland. So for me, that was this generational trauma that was living very, very deep inside. And for many years, I was reading a lot about it, was reading a lot about the Holocaust, trying to understand that.

Circling back to February 24, just from my personal experience, knowing so much about the war, knowing so much about what happened with the Jews and even living in Russia. It's not just me. I have my personal story with the Jewish heritage in the background. But going through the Second World War for all the Russian families was also devastating. And everyone has ancestors who died in the Second World War and served in the army.

And it's this huge tragedy, and people all of a sudden were manipulating into saying that, okay, we have such a great past, and we won over the Nazis in 1945, and now we're going to do the same thing again. And for me, the two dots, they don't connect. The Nazis they were fighting against in 1941 to 1945 are not the same Nazis they're fighting against today. And the fact that it was so easy for the society to believe this huge, huge, huge lie just made me feel like I don't feel connected to the place where I was born anymore.

Your parents are there?

Yes. My dad passed away a couple of years ago, but my mom still lives there. And for me, it's very difficult because, you know, even during the pandemic, it was very, very hard for me to travel just because I'm not a US citizen. I'm here on a work visa. And Russia has a horrible relationship with the United States, so getting a visa in Russia is impossible. All the other countries in the world would only issue visas to their own citizens. And when my dad passed away, I wasn't even able to go back home for his funeral. And just I always feel stuck between all these different factors. And again, like this war in Ukraine, there are so many things that I don't support that have something to do with the politics, of course, and with the government and I can't be associating myself with that place anymore. And because I have so many ties to my Jewish heritage and I've always been thinking about becoming a part of Israel because again, it's a very important part of who I am and my identity. And only when I came to the United States, I felt like, okay, I can finally be more open about being Jewish.

When I was at Berklee, most of my recitals were actually me singing Jewish music and Ashkenazi music. Wow. And I would never be able to do that in Russia. And for me, this was an incredible opportunity, just exploring who I am, exploring the music, and I feel very, very connected with that music.

You've had a lot of different journeys, this professional journey and a very personal, familial and individual journey. Where does that put you personally and professionally?

Right now, I'm kind of at this place with my career where everything keeps changing and I keep seeing different opportunities and everything keeps developing so, so fast. Of course, long term, I would love to work on an Israeli movie as well. I think language is a very big thing, and I am learning Hebrew right now, even though I'm not in Israel. But I do feel like it's a very important thing and it's something that, again, brings me back to my roots and connects me to my ancestors, even though my grandparents, they spoke Yiddish. But still I feel like it's just an important part of who I am. And as soon as my Hebrew basically turns into something that I can use professionally, then it would be much, much easier and more convenient for me and the filmmakers to work on, let's say, Israeli movie. And I know that there are many Israelis working in Hollywood, and I would love to get to know them and potentially collaborate on a project that would actually be amazing. Right now, the world is just changing so fast, and every day something new happens and I'm trying to kind of protect myself, protect my family where I can, and just basically watching the world change every single second.

So I hope that very, very soon we'll come to a point where things will stabilize and hopefully the war in Ukraine will stop as soon as possible. And I will be able to kind of take a breather and just absorb everything that's going on and plan accordingly. Right now, everything feels like chaos.

Yes. It's hard to avoid that feeling these days. Let's turn back to the beginning of the conversation a little bit and tell us a little bit about your musical dreams.

Finding that balance between work that's very, very crazy and very intense and art. Before the war in Ukraine, I also used to write music for a local theater in my hometown, which was an amazing way of just self-expression and artistry. And I do miss that. I don't think it's possible to do the same thing, keep doing it. And especially, again, considering everything else that's going on in the world at the moment, it's just unsafe for both parties, me and the theater I used to work with, to collaborate. But doing something like that and finding the time for it is definitely an amazing thing. And I was also recording songs for those theater productions. And this is kind of the dream job in a way, where you don't have to do it for the money. You can just do it for the sake of artistic pleasure, basically. And, you know, in terms of the movies, of course I can work even on bigger shows. And yes, I definitely have certain topics.

Like, for instance, Schindler's List is one of my favorite movies and working with, let's say, Steven Spielberg or working on a movie about Holocaust. Because as I already mentioned, it's a very, very, very important part of my identity. And it's a very unique type of music and type of score that a movie like that requires. And maybe not necessarily even editing the music for a movie like that, maybe writing music for a movie like that, that would definitely be a big dream for me.

Lena Glikson, we hope that you get to fulfill these dreams. And final question, next season of Stranger Things, are you working on it yet?

Have my fingers crossed!

Times Will Tell podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you ghttps://vimeo.com/751681395et your podcasts.

IMAGE: Lena Glikson, music editor for "Stranger Things" (Courtesy)

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This week's Times Will Tell brings us Nigerian-American filmmaker Ose Oyamendan (pronounced OH-SE), who spent the better part of a decade filming his feature documentary, "Other Voices," in Israel's Sderot and in Gaza, to capture a story that is not often told.

The film brings viewers to the unexpected and unusual peace efforts and unwavering friendship between residents of Sderot, Israel and Gaza as the two bordering nations endure ongoing war, animosity and conflict.

"People on different sides of a story find a way not to talk to each other," said Oyamendan, who refused to talk politics or edited it out of the film. "When you take the politics out of it, it's a very strong human story."

Oyamendan talks about what initially brought him to the region and what it has been like to spend ten years visiting and spending time in the area, getting to know his protagonists, and how they cope with living in the region.

Oyamendan is in Israel this week to premiere the film at the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Cinematheques. "Other Voices" is also being shown on Amazon Prime.

The following transcript has been very lightly edited.

The Times Will Tell: I wanted to understand what brought you to this region from Nigeria, and what introduced you to the story and the protagonist in it? Tell us a little bit about that, please.

Ose Oyamendan: Where I grew up, there were Jewish kids. There were Lebanese kids, Lebanese Arab kids, and we played together, played soccer together, and when we went to high school, they stopped talking to each other, and I was struck by it. I started life as a journalist and I think I subconsciously carried that story with me. And I wrote a short story about two kids who became friends playing football in Jerusalem.

Now, I'd never been to Israel at that time and I don't even think I thought I would come to Israel, wasn't on my radar at all. And so in 2010 I went to Haiti during the earthquake and I ran into this Israeli NGO there. Now, I didn't know there was really NGOs there and they told me the politics of it, why they don't announce.

Why they don't make it clear that they're Israeli. I'm just explaining that for listeners.

As they told me, sometimes if they announced themselves as Israeli NGOs, maybe some people will pull out. So I was staying in this hotel that was the best hotel in Haiti at that time, because we had power for 6 hours a night and I think we had power from six to eleven, So that was where ABC network guys were, CNN network was, so everybody tried to get their work done then. They came to me and asked if they could use my computer because they've not been able to send messages home. And I didn't think I was very approachable, so I thought it was very interesting it's me that they had the chutzpah.

So I said, of course. And while they were looking at it, it was like supposed to be a quick thing, but they were there for like maybe an hour or so. So we started talking and I said I wrote this story, this short story. I've never been to Jerusalem. Can you help me with the geographical accuracy? So they read it, they said oh, it's a great story, what do you want to do with it? I said, well, I want to publish it, I want to try to make a film or a TV series one day about something like this, something I'm passionate about. They said there is another story that is true. Have I heard of Gaza? And I said yes. Have you ever heard of Sderot? And I said no. So they are next to each other and that's where the war is fought for the most part. And there are people on both sides that want a return to the old times when they had peace there.

And they were very friendly with each other, and they had a group called Other Voices. And this man, Eitan, who was one of the three people there, was one of them.

So I said, okay. I said, I love this story. I would like to follow it. I would like to see. I said, can I come? So we communicated by email and then I came, and I was blown away how close they were to each other. And they were talking on the phone to some people there. And I said they genuinely cared about people on the other side. And then I met Natan, who had lost his daughter in this conflict, and he said, I don’t want the other person's daughter to suffer what I've gone through. And so I met a whole swath of people from both sides, and I decided I would love to tell this story. And that's how it started.

So that was ten years ago?

Yeah, it's very tough to get financing for something like this. I did what a poor filmmaker would do. I have these other jobs that I do, so when I have enough money, I put enough money together to get the crew to come and film, because I wanted to have my very independent, my own observation. And I also decided that I want to know how true these people are.

The activists, the protagonists.

Because it's very easy to want peace until you lose something. So I wanted to see how committed they were, and I also wanted to go to Gaza. So those days make it longer.

I was also struck by how neutral the film was. It felt to me and this is not surprising, really, that it's a relatively small group of activists on both sides.

When you compare to the population or even the region where they are, it's small. But I also think one of the reasons why it was fascinating to me is I also felt that a lot of people get lost in the politics of it. And there's this thing that I found, not just here all over the world, like people on different sides of the story find a way not to talk to each other, like they just stand there. And my whole thing for me was when you take the politics out of it, it's a very strong human story, like a very strong, tragic human story. And that's why I said we will not talk politics. Even the people in Gaza, when they will talk about Hamas, I was saying we're going to edit those things out. Because I just felt that the moment you bring politics into it, it just becomes like this fire you can't contain. And of course, there's politics there, but my own passion was to show to people how the kind of life people live there and how people cope with that life. And for me, why it shouldn't be like when you have a child, for instance, and you're not sure if you say goodbye to your child in the morning, you see them in the afternoon.

And when I come into Israel at the airport and they said, Where are you going? I said, I'm going to Sderot. They say, Are you crazy? I just feel like we had to get the story of these people trying in their own little to way, live a normal life in a place like this right now.

Was Sderot your base for filming?

Yeah, because this group are mostly in Sderot. I mean, they spread out around the region, around the kibbutz there, but Sderot was their base and I didn't want to be one of those people with just helicopter in and I want to feel it. I felt I wanted to feel the heat of the other thing and be able to talk about it not with authority, but with some form of knowledge.
You must have been caught in rocket attacks as well. Can you talk about that? About staying on both sides of the fence, so to speak?

Yeah, I think it was very interesting because we tried for, like, a couple of years to get in [to Gaza] and I could not. I always felt like I don't have a film without going into Gaza. There's many ways to go into Gaza. You have to get Israeli permits, and then you have to get the Palestinian permit. Now, I had an option. I could come in through Egypt, which I thought was easier, but that is not the world of the story for me. I wanted to go because you could actually walk into Gaza. The gate was open, so I wanted to go. So when I went, I had no idea that I needed a permit to go into Gaza. I thought, I just need Israeli pass to go into Gaza. So when I got there, they refused me entry.

And they were justifiably angry that I didn't think this was like an anchor, like a country on its own. And I just tried to explain. I didn't know. But I sat there because I was convinced this was my chance to do this. So I tried to find a connection. They were talking about football, and I realized that a lot of them were Real Madrid fans. I followed Barcelona.

So we're talking about soccer. So I think we became human. We just became normal people. We could be in Tel Aviv, we could be in Glasgow, anywhere. And then after a while, this man came. I still remember. I can see his face. He came. And the strange thing is, they don't speak good English. I don't speak any Arabic, but we're able to talk soccer. And then this man came. And I said, Are you Real Madrid, too? He said yeah. And then he called me to go and see. So I found that he's the head of the whole place, the whole thing. And I think he just thought I was either crazy or something.

I was there for five or six days the first time, so I had to see all my subjects and it’s the kind of things I've never seen. And I tell people it's tough to describe Gaza and I don't want to get into the politics of it, but the human aspect of it. They were free to talk politics or talk about their relationship with Israelis, even people that were subjects of the film. They were very bold people.

They were bold to say, there has to be another way. And there are people that will say to me, you put my name in, like, this is what I'm saying. But I think because I come into this as a journalist, my life started as a journalist. And you have to protect your subjects sometimes. And there's so much stuff we have on the edit room floor that are just amazing, amazing revelations and stories, but also it may not be good for them or their families. So we have to trade that a little bit gently to protect them, in a sense.

Did you come up against anyone on either side who said, I don't agree with what you're doing?

I came against a lot of opposition, but I try not to look at opposition as opposition. I look at it as people expressing their opinion. And one of the things that we do take for granted in the free parts of the world is the fact that we are able to have an opinion. And it's a great thing. A lot of people die so we can have opinion, that we can speak, that we can vote and do all sorts of things. So if you come to me and say, I don't agree with this, and I say, yes, it's fine not to agree with it, but do listen, watch the film, listen to the other side. And I've met people that are so I hate to use the term left or right that are very right. And they watch the film, and you'll see the scales just for life, because they've never understood it like this. They've never seen that world like this, because that world is a very political world that people find themselves in. Like I told you, a lot of people know Sderot, a lot of people know Gaza, but all they know about our world is the few inches of print they read in the newspaper or like, they want to make, and that's it.

I want them to be able to show the human side of it, to be able to show people mentally. I wanted to be able to take people into that geographical place, just put yourself there and see the way it is and then decide what to decide.

How did the protagonists did they feel about it at first?

I would say a lot of the people we talked to, they wanted to tell their story. And because we did it for a long time, so we're able to just take the time, get all these people, and then decide what is the story? I think there were a few people that were a little bit shy about it in Gaza. There were people that I would have loved to talk to, I did talk to, and I felt it may not be too safe, some of the things they said. So we just lose those storylines, right?

What happens next with this now? Is this the end of the story for you, or did working on it bring up other storylines here in this region that you think about?

I'm actually going back to what I came to do originally, like developing a TV series about two kids that brought it to Jerusalem. I just like this. There's something about Jerusalem that I find. It's such a rich place. It's so rich, it's so historical, and everything is there. So I'm working on this TV series I'm developing this TV series about two kids who brought Jerusalem together for one day with soccer. I like the inner sense of kids. I like the global nature of soccer. And I think it's another avenue to say, just take a look at what can happen.

IMAGE: Nigerian-American filmmaker Ose Oyamendan (Courtesy)

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Israel Philharmonic conductor Lahav Shani speaks with Jessica Steinberg for this week's Times Will Tell episode, ahead of the orchestra's nine-city tour in the US, beginning in November.

The tour is the IPO's first since the start of the pandemic, and Shani's first as its artistic director.

Shani, 33, is a world renowned pianist, double bass player and conductor, known for his skills as a musician and conductor as well as for the young age at which he's accomplished so much.

The rising star also became the chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2018 and the principal guest conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Shani made his first appearance as a soloist with the Israel Philharmonic in 2007. Six years later, he conducted the debut concert of the Philharmonic’s 2013 season. (That same year, he won the coveted top prize at Germany’s Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition.)

He follows in the giant footsteps of the legendary Zubin Mehta, who led the IPO for nearly 50 years.

Shani speaks about the challenges of following Mehta, about conducting his friends and colleagues, and the wonders of seeking new sounds and music.

The following transcript has been very lightly edited.

The Times of Israel: Tell us a little bit about this nine-city tour in the US, which is your first with the IPO since you just took over as musical director very recently. 

Lahav Shani: Well, this is going to be the orchestra's very first tour since the pandemic, and that's a very serious thing for the Israel Philharmonic, because it's an orchestra that used to tour almost all the time relative to other orchestras. I toured with the orchestra before, but not as a conductor, as a pianist, or as a double bass player. On our tour to the Far East in 2010 is when I really got to know the orchestra in Japan, in South Korea, etc. That was also the very first time that I got the opportunity to conduct the orchestra.

Wait, how old were you in 2010?

I must have been 21. I went there as a double bass player and as a pianist soloist, and Zubin Mehta was still the music director, he just offered me to conduct the orchestra I had never heard. I had just started to study in Berlin the year before, and the musicians really wanted to see if I could really conduct. And so that was really the real beginning of my relationship with the orchestra as a conductor. So now, finally, to go on a real tour and be the music director, and in the US, in fantastic halls, that's a really special moment.

You are the official conductor of the Israel Philharmonic. You're also the chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. How does that actually work in real-time? 

Well, conductors usually hardly see their own home, unfortunately, that's one of the biggest sacrifices one has to make in this profession. There are 52 weeks in a year, about nine of them I do in Israel, about eight or nine in Rotterdam, and a couple of weeks more with each orchestra on tour.

And then the rest of the time, there's a little bit of piano playing.

You still have your solo career, you still perform as a pianist, right?

I play and conduct. I play chamber music with musicians from my orchestras and with soloists, at festivals, And I also like to enjoy my free time every once in a while. But then I go to Israel, now, for example, to rehearse with the orchestra for concerts in Israel. And then after we've done all the concerts, then we would have a few days to just refresh the repertoire that we're going to take on tour. Because we have played this repertoire before, so it's not like starting from scratch for us.

So there's a lot of discussion, of course, about your youth, your age, you're in your early thirties if I'm not mistaken.

Yes.

You’re the first IPO musical director to be born in Israel, and dealing with this challenge of aging audiences. What does it mean in terms of the Philharmonic repertoire?

Everything has to be looked at in the right context. First of all, we're just stepping out of these two years of pandemic everywhere in the world, during which classical music suffered. Taking that into account, the Israel Philharmonic is really blessed with one of the best audiences in the world, and we're already selling out concerts again in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa. This is really a blessing because it's not the same situation everywhere in the world. And our public is really loyal, there are great music lovers in Israel. The orchestra sometimes repeats the same program five, six, even seven times so that our entire Israeli public can hear the concert.

So you're repeating it so that everyone can make it to the same repertoire.

Exactly. So about three times in Tel Aviv, two times in Haifa, one time in Jerusalem. That's just to play for all of our subscribers. The problem of the age of the audience has been an ongoing thing for decades. Classical music was always something that the younger people didn’t find interesting. The important thing for me is that anyone who has any curiosity for music shouldn't be afraid to come and try it out and not to think that if they don't know enough, then they cannot enjoy it. The idea is that you first need the curiosity, and the music will just take you over if you're really interested, if you allow it, and if you become an active listener.

You took over for Zubin Mehta, and I can't imagine what that's like, to follow in those footsteps. 

First of all, it's a big honor, no question. Zubin Mehta is, I would say, one of my mentors, one of the musicians that really inspired me to become a conductor in the first place. I've played with him many times in the orchestra, as a double bass player. I played with him as a soloist pianist. I went on tours with him, with the orchestra. So there's a real feeling of being almost colleagues, even when I was much younger. My relationship with the orchestra has been shaped for many years. So it's not like I just came out of nowhere. They kept inviting me back every year as a [guest] conductor, and as a pianist.

They liked you?

Yeah, they liked me. I liked them. Many of the young musicians in the orchestra are people my age, these are people that I know since childhood. When they named me musical director, it was not the beginning of a relationship, but rather a continuation. It actually feels very natural and very much the right thing to do, and very comfortable. We're very direct with each other, as Israelis are in general.

I often get the question, how do you deal with people older than you? Or how do you deal with people who are your friends, and you are supposed to lead them and tell them what to do. This relationship is so clear and direct and natural that I feel very comfortable with all of the musicians, and I feel that they're happy to go together with me and explore everything.

What about your multifaceted career? You’re a conductor, a solo pianist, a double bass player. What is that like to be both a performer, a musician, and the one who is guiding the whole show?

Well, at the end, it's the same thing. Making music is making music. However, the big difference between conducting and playing an instrument yourself is that when you conduct, you're always dependent on other people. You have your musical ideas, but you can move your hands as fast as you want or as loud as you can. It doesn't make any sound. It's other people that have to like what you do. They have to agree with you. You have to convince them, and then they might play as you think they should. And when you play the piano, it's just you and the keyboard, and that's it. And if you're in good shape and if you practice, there's a good chance that you might be able to make the sound that you imagine. So also, it's very healthy, in a way, as a conductor, to keep this physical contact with the sound, not to forget what it means for the musicians to make those sounds. It's not just that they do what you want and they do what you tell them. They are the ones who express themselves, and they're the ones who make the sound and try their best.

So this is really a collaboration in the end. But if you really play an instrument often, then you don't lose this feeling and you don't lose the feeling of what it means to make sound for other people.

I like that explanation. And then, given the fact that you have two different orchestras that you work so closely, what is that like in terms of what you produce? Is there ever any overlap?

Well, any piece that I take for any orchestra, not just for my orchestra, but also when I'm a guest conductor, it is going to be different than other orchestras. And the rehearsal process, a lot of it is improvisation. You have an ideal way, let's say, in your mind, and the orchestra does something that may be slightly different than your idea, even though they see your body language and you're clear [about your intent], they have their tendencies or their habits, or they want to do something else. And then as a leader, you need to ask yourself the question often, should I just take what I have right now? Is it good enough? Is it better than what I thought? Or is it very far away?

You try to stay as objective as you can, also as a conductor, because if you tell the musician in the orchestra, can you play it like that and not another way, there is a very good chance they will ask, why is your way better than mine? And it's a very fair question. So you must be able to convince the musicians why they should play one way or another. Or if you like what they do, also just say, actually I like that better than my idea.

Think about film directors, for example. Most likely, they have a very clear vision, a very clear image of the entire film in their mind. But then they're facing these world-class actors. And the actors, sometimes they have their way to say the lines. So there must be very good communication between the director and the actor so that the actor is able to say things as he understands or as she understands, with their subtext.

And if the director feels this could work well, then they should let it happen. And if not, they need to be able to guide them in another way. It's exactly the same kind of communication.

I like that metaphor. Okay, last question. You obviously have many new beginnings happening in the next month and year, but what are one or two things that you're looking to bring to your plate this year?

Well, repertoire is something that we determine one, two, sometimes three years before we actually play it. Sometimes it's a bit annoying because if there is something you really, really want to perform but maybe in three years, you won't like it anymore. Who knows?

I want to continue and deepen the relationship with my orchestras. It's true that this relationship goes years back, but as music director, this is just going to be my second official season because my first season had to be delayed during the pandemic. So it's really about deepening these relationships and keep exploring different territories of the repertoire together and keep discovering our sound.

The combination of a conductor and an orchestra needs to bring something unique, something that is different, and this is something that is to be discovered. It's not that I can imagine to the last note in my mind and the orchestra has to do exactly what I imagine. This is a process that we need to really understand each other better so that we're completely free to express the music and focus on the music itself and stay in the flow and in communicating it with the public.

Times Will Tell podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts.

IMAGE: Lahav Shani, artistic director and chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic, which will head to the US in November 2022 for its first US tour post-pandemic (Courtesy IPO)

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We have a musical Times Will Tell this week with Lenka Lichtenberg, who talks about and shares songs from her new album “Thieves of Dreams: Songs of Theresienstadt's Secret Poetess.”

Lichtenberg is a classically trained musician who grew up in the Czech Republic. Before eventually settling in Canada, she moved around Europe and dipped her toes in a variety of musical genres.

Her eclectic musical background can be heard in her new project, which is based on poems that her grandmother Anna Hana Friesova wrote during the Holocaust -- before, during and after her years spent in Theresienstadt.

A few years ago, Lichtenberg came across her grandmother’s two notebooks of poems in Prague while cleaning out her recently deceased mother’s apartment. Sixteen of the poems were turned into songs, eight of which Lichtenberg composed and eight others that were commissioned from Czech and Canadian composers. The arrangements feature 19 recording artists from Canada, the Czech Republic and Germany. The album was recorded and produced by Lichtenberg at her Melody Meadows barn studio in eastern Ontario.

In this slightly longer episode this week, we learn about Lichtenberg and her family and hear excerpts from her remarkable album “Thieves of Dreams.”

Times Will Tell podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts.

IMAGE: Musician Lenka Lichtenberg (Bo Huang)

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Adam Duritz has waited decades to play in Israel, a place that he loves, said the Counting Crows frontman in this Times Will Tell podcast ahead of his band's Wednesday night show in Ra'anana, outside Tel Aviv.

Duritz visited Israel several times in his teens, hiking through Sinai, working on a kibbutz and later learning Torah in Jerusalem, a "powerful place" for him, he says.

Yet Duritz hadn't returned to Israel since then, as he built his career and band, waiting for the right opportunity to make it back to Israel and perform here.

The lead singer of the California-founded band, known for hits such as "Mr. Jones," "Round Here," and "Accidentally In Love," credited the physical work he learned on the kibbutz as the foundation for the landscaping and construction jobs that he later did to support himself while building his musical career.

He also spoke about his own struggles with religion and faith, and how those issues showed up in his music.

The following transcript has been very lightly edited.

The Times of Israel: Welcome Adam Duritz to the Times Will Tell, we are very honored to have you with us, and we appreciate you squeezing us into what I know is a busy schedule ahead of your Wednesday night performance in Ra'anana.

Adam Duritz: I know I am. I'm very excited to play some place we've never played before.

The Times of Israel: It's hard to believe. There's been a lot of preview interviews with you mentioning that you came here and you worked on the kibbutz when you were 18 and you came back to Jerusalem and did a little studying in the holy city. But it has been quite a few decades since you've been in Israel, correct?

Adam Duritz: Four, I would think about. Four, yeah. It's been a really long time.

The Times of Israel: Are you planning on traveling around for the next couple of days? Are you going to lay low and hang out at the beach?

Adam Duritz: Well, I'd like to get a chance to travel around. I really want to go back to Jerusalem because that was someplace I really loved when I was a kid. But I don't really know. It depends on what kind of press and stuff they have us doing. That's the only thing that's going to take up the time. Except for our A gear, has all been in a locker in Liverpool for a year now. So we kind of have to go through that and make sure we have to do some pre-rehearsal with the band and the crew to make sure all the equipment gears.

The Times of Israel: It got sent over for a concert that got canceled. And now you're basically doing the tour that you meant to do a while back.

Adam Duritz: Because of Covid, I decided to leave it over there rather than bring it back on the risk that we would be able to reschedule the tour. I left it over there because especially nowadays, all the expenses for bands' prices haven't gone up at all, but the expenses are all doubled or tripled freight, airlines, flights, hotels, freight for your gear. All that is double or triple what it was. So I didn't want to waste the money by bringing it all back. There's a lot of things I'd like to do and hopefully I'll get to do some of them. But part of touring is realizing that the gig is everything.

The Times of Israel: How is this tour going? I know that you were touring the US and now you're in Europe and you hopped over to Israel, and you have a lot of tour dates all over Europe. What does it feel like to be touring again?

Adam Duritz: It's cool. I mean, this is the first gig of the European tour, so we haven't done that part yet. But the shows in America, we did a whole tour last summer and we've been playing gigs off and on this year. It's all been really cool. It's nice to be back playing.

The Times of Israel: You've mentioned in a few interviews that it's been 30 years since your first album and that you feel, I guess, a sense of privilege that you guys are still together and that you perform these huge shows, [with] fans that are really excited to see you.

Adam Duritz: Not so much that we're still together, but that people are still coming out to see us. You always worry about that because the shelf life of a band is very short, but especially after two years lay off, you really wonder whether things are going to pass you by. But we're still here.

The Times of Israel: What was it like getting back onto those stages, getting back together, working together, performing together?

Adam Duritz: Well, the same as it's always been. I mean, it's just performing. It's nice to play, you know, I think when you're in a band that was the longest I've ever gone without playing that period during Covid. In my entire adult life, I've never gone that long between gigs, so it was very strange.

The Times of Israel: That must be incredibly strange. There are certain songs that are so familiar, so popular, that make people happy. "Mr Jones," "Big Yellow Taxi," "Roundhere." What is it like when you play these songs that you know are beloved by your fans, but that you have to keep on churning out all the time? What is it like to play those songs over again, knowing that your crowd wants to hear them, but knowing that maybe there's other things that you want to focus on more, or maybe not. Maybe those are the songs you always want to bring to your audience.

Adam Duritz: If I want to play something else, I would just play it. There's nothing that has to get played every night. The only song that we play every night is "A Long December." And that's because for some reason, that's the only song I never ever get sick of. I don't think there's ever been a night where I didn't want to play that song. I don't know why that is, but I'm never tired of it. Everything else, if there's a night where I don't want to play it, I'm not going to play it. Because I think it would suck to play songs that you don't want to play.

The Times of Israel: Really? You would do that to the audience? You would do that to the fans? Not play "Mr. Jones," for instance.

Adam Duritz: Yeah, there's been lots of nights where we didn't play "Mr. Jones." I love that song. I love "Mr. Jones," but I want to keep loving "Mr. Jones." I don't want to hate the song. And I would think the quickest way to hating your own music is to play it on nights when you don't want to play it.

The Times of Israel: Interesting, given that you've had this long-standing connection to Israel that it took so long to get back here.

Adam Duritz: Bands want to go everywhere, but you can't go anywhere unless you have a promoter making you an offer that makes sense. The fact is, there's probably nowhere in the world we don't really want to go. But you just can't go until promoter gives you the right kind of offer. And I don't know that we've had those in the past. This offer was really good. The moment I heard it, I said, absolutely, let's do it. It's taking care of a lot of our European tour because some of the other gigs in Europe are smaller, not as well paying some of them. This is a great gig. I'd like to be able to come back here every few years because to go to a new country and find out that you have an audience where you can go right and play a 6,000-seat arena right off the bat, that's fantastic. I mean, not an arena, an amphitheater. So I don't know about the past, but I don't really remember offers from Israel. The only thing I say is, as soon as I heard this offer, I said, absolutely, let's do it. Okay. I love it here.

The Times of Israel: I know it's always a little bit of a pain to come to Israel because of the fact that you have to ship everything over here and then ship it back to Europe. You're not playing in the countries that surround Israel, you're not going to Egypt, you're not going to Jordan, not going to Syria or Lebanon. You didn't get hit with any boycotts or sanctions, you didn't get hit with any criticism of coming to play in Israel.

Adam Duritz: No. The only place I really heard about it were in the interviews. But, I mean, I will say that I've been pretty isolated this year because I haven't been out and about very much. Also, we're not exactly the center of the culture right now, so maybe it would be different in that situation, I don't know. But also, like, I'm a Jew. I understand the long tradition of, like, everything is the Jew's fault. I don't really buy it.

The Times of Israel: So, talk about that a little bit. Now that you brought it up, what is it like to come back here and to bring the Counting Crows, to bring your people, to bring your band, to bring your bandmates to this place that you connected with a long time ago? What does that feel like?

Adam Duritz: It feels pretty cool. It's a really long time ago for me, but there's some pretty powerful memories. I just think for the band, in a lot of ways, you expect your career to be shrinking. You expect to play less and less places every year, so a year where you can come and play, more places to go, someplace new for the first time. I don't think any of the guys in our band, except for me, have been here before, which is pretty rare. This tour,  we actually have three cities we've never played, Helsinki and Warsaw and Tel Aviv. And that's kind of great. It's the opposite direction you expect things to go in the later years of your career. So that always makes me really happy, especially if, considering how big the crowd could be here for us, it's someplace we could come back to.

The Times of Israel: Can you share a memory?

Adam Duritz: I mean, I was a kid, I went through the Sinai. It was still part of Israel back then. I spent a lot of time in Jerusalem. It was very powerful for me, that city, especially the Old City. I worked on a kibbutz for a little while, working in the apple orchard. I dug crap out of a grain silo. I really enjoyed the work. And it's funny because it kind of prepared me in some ways, because that kind of physical work is what I ended up doing to support myself all the years when I was in the band, at first and in different bands, I was a landscaper and I did construction work. And I think one of the reasons I knew that I was okay doing that kind of work is that I had done it. I had done it over here. I'd gotten up really early in the morning and done hard work all day, and that's kind of how I ended up supporting myself in the early days before the band was successful. But the first place I really did a lot of that was on the kibbutz here.

Adam Duritz: I went back again a couple of years later when I was 18 and pretty much just spent time in Jerusalem in that time. A lot of it was also that I was a kid and I liked getting wasted and there was no drinking age over here, and I thoroughly appreciated that at the time.

The Times of Israel: I don't know if this is too much of a stretch, but are there any of those early moments and early memories that made their way into your music at any point? Or is there any connection there between what you experienced and what you later started creating?

Adam Duritz: Well, I think there's a lot of places where my struggle with religion and faith shows up in my music, and that certainly was a part of my time here.

The Times of Israel: It's a pretty common theme coming to Israel, coming to Jerusalem, struggling with where you are in terms of faith. And of course, now you're here for work and you're here to perform and to give interviews and to maybe see a little bit of this country that you haven't seen in a while. But do you find that it tugs at you in a certain way or is that sort of in your past?

Adam Duritz: Well, there are things about the country that tug at me a lot, like just the history and what part it plays in my own history. Being a Jew, that's a pretty powerful thing for any Jew. Being here is a very, what's the word? Intoxicating in that way. Israel is a heavy liquor for Jews, I would say. But no, the religion doesn't tug at me. I'm past believing things like that.

The Times of Israel: Yeah, but the place, the scenery, what you're seeing outside your window, what you see when you drive from the airport, those kinds of things, the people on the street.

Adam Duritz: The street, well, not as much from the airport to Tel Aviv, but just the knowledge of what it is and my memories, especially of Jerusalem, maybe if I went over to Jaffa, to the older parts of town. It's incredibly beautiful out the window, looking at the beach, but between me and the beach is a construction zone. I guess they're putting in a rapid transit system. I remember when they did that in LA. That always tears up for a bit. Yeah, I guess it's just like also, it's a country full of Jews, as opposed to being one in a crowd as you are in the rest of the world. In the rest of the world, you're one in a crowd and here you are, the crowd. That's a unique thing.

The Times of Israel: Are you brushing up on any Hebrew for the show? Are we going to hear any?

Adam Duritz: Yeah, if people are talking, I'll say, sheket. I remember sheket. I remember ken and lo. I remember shalom, which means aloha. I don't remember most of my Hebrew. I could sort of speak it back then, but yeah, I don't remember very much of it now.

The Times of Israel: The crowd loves it when some beloved singer comes their way and throws a little shalom and a little sheket b'vakasha (please be quiet). I think they'll be happy on Wednesday night to hear that as well. Where are you in terms of new songs? In terms of new work? I know Covid, as we keep on saying, has been such a struggle for bands. Sometimes it's great for being inspired, and sometimes it has made it really difficult. Where is Counting Crows in terms of new music? Are we going to hear any?

Adam Duritz: Well, I had written a second suite, but I threw it out. I sang on my friend's record and he sent me their record before it came out. They're this band called Gang of Youth. They have a new record called "Angel in Real Time." And when I listened to it, it was so good that for the first time, literally the first time in my entire career, I thought, oh, these songs aren't good enough, and I threw them out. So I have to rework.
I mean, I'm reworking some of it, but his record was so much better, and that's not good enough.

The Times of Israel: Okay, but the point is that you're working, we're going to hear more new music. You guys are going to keep on going for hopefully a very long time.

Adam Duritz: The chances of us finding other jobs are pretty slim, so yeah.

The Times of Israel: Well, you said landscape and construction. There's always something to fall back on. Right.

Adam Duritz: I'm not falling back to that on that. I'll stick with my job. I loved it at the time, but I'm glad I like my new job better.

The Times of Israel: The new job that you've been carrying out for a while, happily, for quite a few decades. Excellent. Well, we really thank you for being with us, Adam Duritz, it's great to have you here in Israel and looking forward to hearing you on stage on Wednesday night and hoping you have a great trip and that you get to do a few things and see a few places that you want to see while you're here.

Adam Duritz: Absolutely. I hope so. But the main thing I really wanted to do was play here, so one way or another, I'll get it all. I really wanted to play here.

Times Will Tell podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts.

IMAGE: Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz at the band's September 14 show in Ra'anana, Israel (Courtesy Shlomi Pinto)

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There are basically two categories for novelist Elyssa Friedland's work: Jewy and super-Jewy.

Friedland has a new book out this week, “The Most Likely Club,” but many listeners will know her from two, very Jewy, earlier works, “Last Summer at the Golden Hotel” and "The Floating Feldmans.” Friedland has written two other novels and is looking forward to the publication of her first children’s book soon.

Today, in addition to working on her own books, Friedland teaches novel writing at her alma mater, Yale University. She’s also a Columbia Law School grad and once upon a time worked as an associate at a major law firm before turning to writing full-time.

Her new novel, “The Most Likely Club,” has some of her trademark Jewish flavor in the characters, but weaves together the stories of four women, high school best friends, who are reunited for their 25th high school reunion.

Friedland spoke with The Times of Israel for our weekly Times Will Tell podcast, a week before the publication of "The Most Likely Club."

The following transcript has been very lightly edited.

The Times of Israel: Elyssa, thank you so much for joining me today. Where am I finding you?

Elyssa Friedland: You are finding me on Long Island in New York.

So we came together, of course, to speak about your newest book, "The Most Likely Club," but also about some of your other great books that, coincidentally actually, I read four out of five of your novels without even knowing that they were written by you, aside from the last one, of course, which I asked for.

Wow, that's very flattering. I'm very happy to hear that. You might be the only person other than my mother to do that.

You can say that I'm your number one fan, but not in a "Misery" kind of way. I just really enjoyed your work, and I just would read the synopsis of a novel, buy it, read it, and say, this sounds somewhat familiar in tone to another book that I really enjoyed and read. And then I looked up and thought, yeah, same author -- again and again. It was just really kind of coincidental and strange, but fantastic.

Well, I'm very happy to hear that. I do think I have a voice that carries through from book to book. So I do try, of course, to vary the plots, create new characters, always keep it interesting for myself, not only for the reader to have something new, but for me. I'm the one who has to be with it a lot longer than the reader does while I'm writing it. And so I do try to always come up with very new ideas, but I think my voice is my voice, so I'm not surprised that there are echoes of it in all the books.

So for me personally, I kind of divide your works into extremely, very Jewy and medium Jewy. In the very Jewy category, we have, of course, "Last summer at the Golden Hotel" and "The Floating Feldmans." In the medium Jewy category I would put your newest novel, "The Most Likely Club," which comes out September 6, and then "Love and Miscommunication." Now, the one novel I didn't read, where would that fit in the Jewy or very Jewy spectrum?

I would say, "The Intermission," the one you did not read is definitely medium- to low-Jewy. So you haven't missed out on any super Jewy.

So let's just very briefly speak about the plot behind "The Most Likely Club." Give us a couple of sentences. What is this book about?

"The Most Likely Club" is about four women that were very close friends in high school, and they are reunited. Three of the four of them reunite at their 25th high school reunion and one of them is unable to make it, she says, because of work obligations, and being back together on campus where they went to school. Seeing their former classmates just filled them with all the usual angsty feelings. And they really take a moment to take stock of their lives where they are 25 years out of high school and think about, is this where they wanted to be? Is this where they thought they would end up?

After a sort of boozy night of reminiscing and remembering who they once were, they decide to try to make their high school superlative come true. Their "most likely" in the yearbook. And they embark on this plan to actualize some of their dreams from when they were teenagers. And as you can imagine, when you're in your mid-40s, it's difficult to make that kind of life change. And so we follow these women as they try to right the ship of their lives, but of course are met with all sorts of obstacles.

And then the fourth friend who is not able to make it to the reunion, of course she folds into the story, and we learn some big surprises about her. And it's really just the story of what it's like to reach middle age, look back and take stock of where you are and really take time to think about if this is where you want to be and when is it too late to make a change.

Not only do I know what you're talking about, I live what you're talking about. I realized suddenly when I was reading this book that my high school union will be 30 years in the spring. So, yes, I fully grasped all the different dramas and concerns of each of these women, and it really felt like they were all in me or I was all in them. And when you were writing these characters, did you feel that yourself? That you were splintering off different concerns and challenges of your life as a working mother, wife and professional and putting it into these four different women.

Definitely. I mean, when I think about it -- I won't bore your listeners with going into each character -- exactly how I'm similar to them, but for sure there are some that I'm more similar to than others. I would say I'm not a doctor, obviously, I'm a writer. But the doctor character in the book is probably the one that I relate to the most in my day-to-day life, because she and her husband are both working professionals and they have three children, just like me and my husband. We have three children and I definitely still do the lion's share of the child -- I wouldn't necessarily say, like, child raising, I think we share that. But I certainly do the lion's share of the camp forms, the health forms, the dentist visits, the selection of camp and after-schools. I could go on and on. And I know many women who are listening to this can relate to that.

And so in her life, Priya the character is named in the book, is really similar to mine. She's really overwhelmed. She doesn't quite understand why it has to be this way, like why her husband, who works basically in the same job, they work at the same hospital, is sort of let off scotch free and he can go out for a run while she's buried and, like, uploading the COVID vaccine cards, essentially.

And she just doesn't have a free second to herself. Sometimes when she thinks about what she'd want to do with her free time, she can't even figure it out because she hasn't had free time in so long. And so she's a character that I really relate to in my day-to-day life. Although it was fun making her a doctor because it did still let me escape a little bit because I don't even know that much about the medical profession and I had to research that and it kind of let me have a little bit of distance from her.

So I didn't pour every single detail of my life. If she had been a writer, that probably would have been a bit too much. So I have a lot in common with her. But the other women, too, there one character really fixated on her weight. And I'm definitely someone who if I had a reunion coming up, I would try some crash diet and I could see myself getting really obsessed with how I look when I'm going back to school, which is, of course, not the ideal way to be spending your time and your energy.

And then the other women as well. There's a very powerful CEO. I'm not her, but she's just someone I don't know if I relate to her as much as I just think about women like that. And the double standard that is applied to women in positions of power and how unfair it is. Like the Hillary Clintons of the world who are just the more ambitious they are, the more maligned they are. So, yeah, I have bits and pieces of myself and all the women and things I see from my friends and just from the headlines that interests me.

I just found myself nodding, laughing and wanting to cry with some of the situations. And we won't spoil it because it's definitely worth reading. I just want to mention that while it may sit in the chick-lit category, it is so deep in its message and it so hit home to me as a working mother of seven. It is no question that all of these concerns that especially the Priya character has, every woman I know in our situation of working and having children is facing this mental load challenge. 

Now, that's turned to the "Last Summer at the Golden Hotel," which is actually, can I say this, referred to in "The Most Likely Club." I loved that. So tell us briefly, what is this book about?

That book is about a hotel in the Catskills, very much like the hotel in "Dirty Dancing," if you can picture Kellermans. I know that's a movie that basically everyone with a pulse has seen. So it's about a hotel that was once the place to see and be seen, a thriving enterprise. But it's set in modern times and it's really on its last leg and needs a lot of refurbishment. Isn't attracting guests the way it used to. It's co-owned by two Jewish families, of which there are now three generations of each family, the Goldmans and the Winegolds. And one member of the Winegold family runs the hotel on a day-to-day basis. And he receives an offer from a casino operator who wants to buy the hotel, tear it down and put a casino up in his place, which is what happens at the Concord Resort, which is one of the greats in the area. And he calls a family meeting at the hotel and reluctantly, the three generations make their way back to campus. I guess I like a lot of back to campus because that's also the case in "The Most Likely Club."

And so these three generations come back to the hotel and we learn what's going on in all of their lives. They all have full lives outside of the hotel and so we get slivers of their lives and the complications and the issues they're facing and then how those issues affect what they want to do with the hotel, if they want to sell it or if they want to try to revive it. And in some ways it's really an intergenerational story because the grandchildren who are in their 20s have a lot of ideas about how to make the hotel hip and cool and attract millennials and attract people who are living their lives on social media. And of course, the grandparents, the founder generation, can't really make heads or tails of some of these bizarre suggestions like let's make our own honey and have beehives, let's have all vegan food options, let's have goat yoga, et cetera, et cetera. So as I'm sure you can understand, they have very different ideas of what to do with the hotel.

But for everyone, it's an important part of their legacy. And so it's really an emotional decision that has to be made. So I won't give away the ending.

Don't give away the ending because I was actually surprised by the ending! But both in this book and in "The Floating Feldmans," it's really a tale of several generations getting together and what ensues right in these little microcosms. "The Floating Feldmans" on a cruise. And you are so good at writing the different voices of the different generations. Talk to me about how you capture the voice of an 80-year-old versus how you capture the voice of a 20-something-year-old.

First of all, thank you for saying that. I definitely work hard at it. If I had to say why I am good at that, it's probably that I just have a really good ear when I'm out in the world. First of all, I live in New York City. So living in New York City, just going down the block, you are just constantly surrounded by people of all different ages, genders, and backgrounds. I could imagine if I had a more rural existence and I worked from home in a quiet town and went for a walk and maybe saw one person in an hour, it might be a very different experience. Whereas if I go to buy milk in Manhattan, I'm just surrounded by voices. And so I felt really lucky because I have exposure to a wide range of voices just when I walk down my block. And I think that because I am just a curious person and I'm always listening, I am able to absorb the intonation the verbiage, the mannerism. I look around and I listen. And that I think it helps me channel people that are in a different stage of life than I'm in.

And so I just feel really grateful. I credit New York City with my ability to channel these voices that are very different than my own because otherwise, I don't know where else I could say that I get it from because yes, do I know older people? Sure. I have parents, I have in-laws. Do I know people in their twenties? I do teach at the college level, but the truth is, I'm in the classroom with them. I'm doing most of the talking for two hours, and I leave. So I don't think it comes from that. I think it really comes from just living in a bustling place and having a good ear.

As you mentioned, you do teach. So is this something that you would give as a tip to your students? 

I mean, not everyone can have the luxury of getting to live in New York City, and not everybody wants to. And for some people, from a writing perspective, that would be a terrible place to live because it's so full of distraction. And there's the Ralph Waldo Emerson version of writing, which is you got to go and tuck yourself in a cabin and have quiet. And so there are certainly many people who wouldn't get a stitch of work done if they lived in such a bustling place and would like to be off the grid. So I don't know that I would necessarily give that advice, but I would say maybe just see what you're good at. And if you feel like it's a really big stretch for you and it's not coming across as convincing to write like an 82-year-old man, don't write an 82-year-old man. Write the person that you feel comfortable writing, that you feel comfortable channeling. And maybe that's someone that's very similar to you. Maybe that's someone that you knew once upon a time. Very closely in life or you have some experience with.

But you can tell. I think. If it's a massive struggle to channel someone else's voice. If it's very integral to the story. I would just make it my business to at least find someone. One or two people who can an authenticity read. If you're writing an 82-year-old man, find an 82-year-old man and have them read it and correct it. I mean, when I was first starting out, even just writing a male voice, my husband would read my work and he would say, "No man would say that." He can't speak for all men, but he can maybe speak for a majority of men or at least tell me that something didn't ring true to him personally. And then it was up to me to decide what to do with that. But I don't think there's any reason why someone shouldn't reach out and have someone read the work.

For this book, "The Most Likely Club," my publisher hired people to read the book, to read the characters for an authenticity read, because there's an Asian character, there is a bisexual character, there's an Indian character. I am none of those things. And so they have these authenticity reads done, and I'm so grateful for that someone who says, "That's really not the way it works in an Indian family," or, "That's not the way I would phrase it."

And I really get my publisher a lot of credit because they said to me, "You don't have to take any of this. This is for you to absorb and decide what you want to do." If there was something very offensive, they would want me to do something about it. But it was up to me, and I took basically almost everything because I just want to sound as authentic as humanly possible.

It's interesting that you talk about wanting to sound authentic in these niche identities of the Indian or the bisexual, et cetera, et cetera, because at the same time, while they do to me at least sound authentic, definitely your Jewish voice sounds authentic. But it's always very universal stories that you're writing, too.

Well, I think that's really true because we're all still people and we all still feel the same things. Of course you want to be factually correct: The only Indian food you know is the kind served in a restaurant, and that's never something that is served in an Indian home? That's not great.

But does an Indian 16-year-old girl feel self-conscious in high school? Yeah. So do the Asian girl and the black girl and the white girl and the Jewish girl. Feeling self-conscious when you're 16 in high school is about as universal as it gets. Being middle-aged and thinking, "Oh, my God, how did I end up here? And is this what I want out of life again?" It's a privilege to be able to take the time to even think about that. And I do want to acknowledge that not everyone has the luxury of making the changes they want to make.

But I would say if given the time and the space to think about it -- these women are 43. If you ask any 43-year-old, "Take an hour of quiet and think about where you are in your life, is there anything you want to change? I'm pretty sure they'd be able to come up with a couple of things. No matter what they look like or what their background is.

Who has an hour, though, right? Let's talk about how Judaism plays a role in your writing. None of the characters are especially observant or religious Jews, but they are so steeped in the culture. Even in the least Jewy books that we identified, there's such striking cultural Judaism. So how is Judaism playing a role in your writing?

I think that it's because it just plays such a big role in my own life that it filters over onto the page. I am not observant, but I'm just very culturally Jewish, as comes across in my books. I went to a Jewish day school. I go to synagogue on the major holidays. We celebrate Shabbat in our home, even if we're not observing it in a religious way. But we like candles, we eat challa, we have a Shabbat dinner. And this is the world I know. It's also, like, the humor I know.

My grandparents were immigrants. Even my parents were immigrants from Europe. They were born after the war, and they came here from Eastern Europe. And so that's literally the humor that I grew up with, this sort of very Borsh belt, eastern European Jewish humor, and it's just who I am. I feel like I've just been steeped in Jewish culture from a very early age. And I grew up in a Jewish town. I went to Jewish camp. I could go on and on and on. So I feel like my Judaism is just a really big part of who I am. And so then it ends up becoming a natural part of my writing.

Even when I don't set out to write the Jewish book, I end up incorporating some of it because I think I just like it and I feel comfortable. It's the opposite of needing the authenticity reads. Here is where I'm in my milieu, I know what I'm talking about. And that feels good because writing is really hard. And then when I can write about something that I feel like I know, first of all, I feel like I can push boundaries more because I feel more comfortable and I could just be more creative and find even more humor because I'm not first trying to learn about it and then write about it. I already know it. So it's a comfortable space for me to be in as a writer, so I find myself returning to it.

Have you ever had any kind of antisemitic blowback because of this?

Zero. Absolutely zero. And I love saying that. It's honest to God truth. And I've talked about this in previous interviews, but when "Last Summer at the Golden Hotel" came out, in May 2021, it happened to be the same month that there was a lot of media coverage about the rise in antisemitism, and the statistics were staggering about the antisemitic attacks that were happening across the globe. Up some crazy percentage, like up 100%, something really, really horrifying.

And my book came out and it was received with the warmest embrace by so many non-Jewish readers. Most of my readers aren't Jewish. And I could just tell you, go on my Instagram, look at the comments, and it was like 1000 comments of, "I didn't know anything about Jewish culture. This is the first book I've read where I've learned a lot about Jewish identity and Jewish culture. And I'm fascinated."

It was one positive thing after another after another after another, and it was a great reminder of,, yes, there are bad people doing crazy things, but most people don't hate Jews, and most people are very excited to read and learn about Jewish culture in the way that I love.

And the book sold well enough and was distributed widely enough that I can honestly say that it means something that I never came across a single antisemitic reaction. That's really heartening.

I wonder about this next novel's reception because it is basically about the inner lives of women of a certain age, my age essentially, and there's not a lot of empathy for that in American society. There's, of course, the Karen Meme. There's all sorts of things of that nature where we women can't have it all, women want to have it all, but suck it up and move on. Are you worried at all about this kind of reception?

Yeah, I would say I am a bit worried about that. That people just are sick of what they would call whining. Enough. But I wasn't so worried that I wasn't going to write it because I feel like I'm living it and I lead a very privileged life, and yet I still feel like I can't take it. Like I'm losing it as a working mom, and I'm trying and I'm just coming apart at the seams.

And if I feel it, I can only imagine people who don't have as much privilege and the luxuries that I have in my life. And so I know that I write from a place of privilege, I'm aware how much worse it is for people who don't have the resources to have a babysitter and not have to worry about every doctor bill that comes in.

I have mostly female readers. And so it will be interesting. I think that people's responses are going to be very personal. It's going to strike a chord either very positively or negatively. People are going to have very strong reactions to the book, and I have to be prepared for that.

All right, I'm reminding our listeners that we're about a week and a bit ahead of the publication of this newest book. So by the time they hear it, everything will be fine. It will be published. The world will embrace it, I feel sure, having read it just recently. And really such a pleasure reading your work -- as coincidentally as it has been. And I will, of course, follow you more intentionally from here on out. So really such a pleasure speaking with you.

Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. It was very fun to discuss my books with you.

Times Will Tell podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts.

IMAGE: Novelist Elyssa Friedland with her new book, 'The Most Likely Club.' (Courtesy)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, The Times of Israel’s weekly feature podcast.

This week, we speak with Tova Dagan and Yoni Nuriel, two high school and middle school teachers in Jerusalem as they prepare for Israel’s new school year that aims to begin September 1.

Despite the annual threat of a countrywide teachers' strike, the two discuss their outlook on the Israeli educational system and what they want for their own classrooms this year.

Dagan has been a homeroom teacher and is currently an English teacher at Keshet, a dual religious and secular school in Jerusalem; Nuriel is a homeroom teacher for rising eighth graders at Hartman High School, a religious Orthodox school for boys in Jerusalem, with a dedication to tradition and tolerance.

They both talk about how to teach kids during the ongoing pandemic, the challenges of finding better emotional boundaries between teachers and students and creating a stimulating educational environment despite the obstacles of the overall system.

IMAGE: Keshet high school students take their mathematics matriculation examination Jerusalem on May 20, 2019 (Courtesy Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, The Times of Israel’s weekly feature podcast.

This week, we speak with two camp counselors, Israeli shlichim, the Hebrew term for emissaries, who were sent through the Jewish Agency this summer to work at Camp Ramah in the Poconos of Pennsylvania, where they spent two months caring for campers and working and meeting fellow staff members.

The two staffers are Halleli Busheri and Tair Offir, who had their own family connections to Camp Ramah, the Conservative Movement's camping movement. Both were seeking the challenges and new experiences of a Jewish American summer camp.

They speak about camp life, and what it's been like to be the Israelis, known as mishlachat, on staff at camp. Busheri and Offir share moments from the summer, describing what it's been like to get to know people their age as well as their campers.

They speak about what surprised them during the last two months, and some of the unexpected joys and tender moments in this very American Jewish summer experience.

IMAGE: Halleli Busheri (left) and Tair Offir, two shlichim, emissaries on staff at Camp Ramah in the Poconos (Courtesy)

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Welcome to Times Will Tell, The Times of Israel’s weekly feature podcast.

This week, we speak with Jeff Abella, chief executive of Moka Origins, a kosher boutique coffee roaster and chocolate retailer based in Honesdale, PA, on the grounds of the Himalayan Institute, a yoga and meditation retreat in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Abella and his staff of 15 roast and grind coffee and cocoa beans, creating their artisanal chocolates and coffee for a greater purpose.

The products are part of the institute’s humanitarian efforts to help subsistence farmers in Cameroon find better ways to earn money and support themselves and their farms under better conditions. Moka Origins is looking ahead to helping farms as well as in Uganda, Costa Rica and Mexico.

For Abella, it's all about excellent coffee and fine chocolate, but it’s just as much about social entrepreneurship. He wants more people consuming fine craft chocolate and coffee in order to broaden the net of people engaging in their social impact project. As Abella says, "the more chocolate and coffee we can sell, the more good we can do."

IMAGE: Jeff Abella with a cacao pod (right hand) and sack of coffee beans (Courtesy)

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