Israel Story

Today is the hundredth day of the war. And, though our Wartime Diaries series continues, we want to stop, mark this day and share 100 seconds of the many voices we’ve been hearing among - and around …

Upwards of $1 billion in donations have been sent to Israel since the start of the war. For years Charlene Seidle, the Executive Vice President of the San Diego-based Leichtag Foundation, has been at…

The war has brought many new people into the limelight: For nearly three months we've been hearing countless stories of casualties, hostages, survivors and family members, many of whom have entered o…

It’s a sad Christmas Eve in Jesus’ homeland. The alleyways of Jerusalem’s Old City, the streets of Nazareth, the churches of Bethlehem - all usually bustling with countless pilgrims and tourists from…

More than 200,000 Israelis - from both the South and the North - have been forced to leave their homes since the start of the war. Some have relocated to hotels or kibbutzim, others have opted to mov…

Stories are the strongest way to connect. To understand. To care.

Under normal circumstances we’d create some sort of polished appeal, but obviously these are not normal circumstances.

If what we do ha…

Since the start of the military operation in Gaza, countless reports by journalists embedded with the IDF troops have appeared in the Israeli media. But there was one eight-and-a-half minute-long TV …

As has been said many times in the past, identity is like an onion: There are layers of family and country, religion and political persuasions, favorite sports teams, musical preferences and on and o…

As of today, more than 400 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the war. Each one of those deaths, of course, not only marks the end of a life, but also shatters a family, a community, a tribe. And t…

Many of you have probably heard, or read about, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, the parents of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was kidnapped from the Nova Party. In many ways they’ve emerged as …

Last week, our host Mishy Harman was interviewed by Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove for the Park Avenue Synagogue Podcast. And as this is, in a way, Mishy's wartime diary, we decided to share it with our liste…

This war is a humbling experience for us all. People — no matter who they are or what they normally do — are simply trying to pitch in wherever they can. We’ve thus seen ex-generals jump into their p…

Almost immediately after the start of the attack of October 7th, as rockets were being launched at Jerusalem, and sirens sent the city’s one million residents into shelters, the heads of the Israel M…

In the summer of 2005, the government of Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. The roughly 8,000 residents of the 21 Jewish settlements within the Gaza Strip were forced to leave their homes and th…

53-year-old Hai Ashkenazi from Tel Aviv is an archeologist, but never imagined he would find himself excavating a 21st-century Kibbutz. Yet in the insane reality that has become our life since Octobe…

Normally Chavat Ronit – or Ronit Farm – is a high-end event venue north of Herzliya. Ra’anan Arizon’s seventy dunams are full of quaffed lawns, picturesque trees, instagramable gazebos, a gorgeous po…

Chaya Gilboa is a Talmud teacher, an activist, a flaming redhead, and was – for the last three years – the CEO of the Jerusalem Philanthropic Initiatives, which works with local civil society. On Oct…

Over the last five weeks we’ve spoken to many families of hostages. That’s how we met Faiz Abu Sabehan, whose 53-year-old brother-in-law, Farhan al-Qadi – a father of eleven – has been kidnapped into…

Mishka Ben-David might seem – at first – like a harmless and cuddly grandpa, but the truth is that he’s lived many secret lives. He has somehow managed to seamlessly transition from community organiz…

77-year-old Agi Mishol is one of Israel’s most prominent, beloved and widely-read poets. Over the years she’s won practically every literary prize here, and Amos Oz once said that her poems “know how…