A Mandatory Listen

Welcome to "A Mandatory Listen," a new weekly podcast in which The Times of Israel deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan asks the big questions facing Israel and the Jewish people.
In this episode of the new series, we speak with Emory University Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, the former US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.
Lipstadt is in Israel to accept Bar-Ilan University's Jonathan Sacks Institute Prize for Outstanding Achievement as a Public Intellectual, in Memory of Samuel Gewurz z”l.
In an era of rising global antisemitism, Borschel-Dan has received dozens of emails pointing fingers at Israel and the war in Gaza as the sources of the hatred.
In a no-holds-barred conversation, Lipstadt assesses the nature of contemporary Jew-hatred and weighs in on whether Israel's actions indeed may be contributing to its rise.
We hear her thoughts on whether "anti-Zionism" is a new form of antisemitism or its own distinct hatred and what the proverbial Venn diagram looks like.
But to start with, we return to 1967, when university student Lipstadt was here in Jerusalem during the Six Day War and hear her firsthand account of life in the newly unified capital.
A Mandatory Listen podcast episodes are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to "A Mandatory Listen," a new weekly podcast in which The Times of Israel deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan asks the big questions facing Israel and the Jewish people.
For this seventh episode in the new series, we speak with Palestinian activist and writer Samah Salaime to hear why this past election was so significant for the Arab Israeli voter.
Salaime is a longtime contributor to the +972 Magazine, where she focuses on feminism and Arab-Jewish relations.
She was born in the northern town of Tur’an located between Haifa and Tiberius and moved to the mixed Jewish-Arab oasis of Neve Shalom/ Wahat al-Salam in 2000, where she raised her three boys.
Salaime, a social worker by education and training, was a fellow at the prestigious Mandel School for Educational Leadership and, among other accolades, was awarded the Rappaport Prize for Longstanding Achievement in 2020.
In this post-election period, in which the Arab vote translated into an unprecedented combined 19 mandates for The Joint List and Ra'am, Salaime provides nuanced insight into what drew Arab Israeli citizens to the ballot box this time and the parties for whom they voted.
In this tolerant, free-flowing conversation, the pair voice frustration with Israeli society's longtime status quo of mutual distrust and wonder aloud about another way forward.
A Mandatory Listen podcast episodes are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to "A Mandatory Listen," a new weekly podcast in which The Times of Israel deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan asks the big questions facing Israel and the Jewish people.
For this sixth episode in the new series, we speak with historian Sir Simon Schama, who recently published a lengthy essay titled "Jew-Hatred: The Latest Edition."
In this cry from the heart, the professor of art history and history at Columbia University gives a broad-strokes history of antisemitism and delves into reasons why it is rising globally.
The award-winning author and cultural essayist for The New Yorker, who has written and presented more than 30 documentaries on topics including the Holocaust, brings forth recent examples from his own life in which Jews have experienced a new form of hatred, which he wryly labels "its latest edition."
In this free-flowing conversation, we learn about the haters' misperceptions and how bias is being transmitted virally today.
'Jew-Hatred: The Latest Edition' by Sir Simon Schama is out now and available here.
A Mandatory Listen podcast episodes are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to "A Mandatory Listen," a new weekly podcast in which The Times of Israel deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan asks the big questions facing Israel and the Jewish people.
For this fifth episode in the new series, we speak with author Yossi Klein Halevi.
A deep pre-election political conversation had been planned for this episode. However, in a conversation that could have been called "Mann tracht un Gott lacht" (Man plans and God laughs), Borschel-Dan and Klein Halevi firmly pivot away from the profane -- politics -- and veer toward the sacred.
Spurred by questions on how he maintains equilibrium in the face of the fateful upcoming election, Klein Halevi, a longtime practitioner of meditation and Jewish spirituality, guides Borschel-Dan through his philosophical pillars.
What is faith -- and in what God? What is the purpose of prayer, and who is it for?
We hear some wisdom from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook's teachings, as well as a mix of Eastern philosophies.
How does the activist aspect of Klein Halevi -- which sounds the shofar and warns the people of Israel of potential evils -- reconcile with the man of faith in the eternal nature of that same people?
A Mandatory Listen podcast episodes are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to "A Mandatory Listen," a new weekly podcast in which The Times of Israel deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan asks the big questions facing Israel and the Jewish people.
For this fourth episode in the new series, we speak with Prof. Nechumi Yaffe, an ultra-Orthodox woman running for Knesset for the Charedi Public Party (HaTzibur HaCharedi).
A faculty member at Tel Aviv University since 2019, Yaffe is currently a tenured senior lecturer at the School of Public Policy and co-director of the Haredi Research Group at UCLA.
Among other fields of interest, Yaffe delves into the issues of poverty and identity in Haredi society.
We hear how the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught on southern Israel made Yaffe rethink the ideas of civil obligations and rights. While she believes that youths who are not fit for yeshiva can -- and should -- be conscripted into the IDF, she is deeply concerned with allowing the ultra-Orthodox community to remain strictly observant.
How can a delicate balance between religious observance and national burden be forged? Only through education, says Yaffe.
Over time, she relates, her friends and neighbors in the ultra-Orthodox world stopped accusing her of airing their dirty laundry in the secular public and began understanding the dire situation their community is in.
But will this increased awareness lead to a gain in the polls? Perhaps through the Haredi world's overlooked weapon -- women.
A Mandatory Listen podcast episodes are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.