What Matters Now

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. This week, we speak with The Times of Israel's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur about the controversial Netzah Yehudah battalion that is on the docket for blacklisting by the United States under the 1997 Leahy Law. In Augus

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. In a post-October 7 Israeli reality, is any new security threat outside the realm of imagination? This week, when over 300 projectiles were sent from Iran to Israel, we pose this question to journalist and hit Israeli dram

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. Speaking in our Jerusalem office, The Times of Israel editor David Horovitz offers a rare in-depth look at the professional challenges and personal conflicts he’s faced in covering the war against Hamas for the past half

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, hosted by deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan. In six months of war, Israel has systematically broken down Hamas’s battalions in the Gaza Strip. But in achieving terrible success in its aim to defang the terrorist army, the Jewish state is no longer seen on the world

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Days after his 32nd birthday, on Saturday, October 7, Hayim Katsman was killed by terrorists from Gaza in his neighbor’s home in Kibbutz Holit while shielding her with his body. His body was identified and the family was notified the next day. He was burie

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. In his US Senate floor speech last week, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer called for new Israeli elections as the war winds down and branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as one of four obstacles to peace along with Hamas, the Israeli far-rig

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration of one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. On Tuesday, aid for 25,000 people reached Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip for the first time in weeks, according to the UN World Food Program. “With people in northern Gaza on the brink of famine, we need deliveries every day and we need entry points

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. ToI's senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur recently gave a series of lectures at North American college campuses. At some, including Harvard, his lecture was met with a performative walk-out from a contingent of pro-Palestinian protesters. Since Hamas's October

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. This year, in what is reportedly a record-high number, some 66,000 young men from the ultra-Orthodox community received a deferral from military service. Of those tens of thousands of military-age men, following Hamas's murderous October 7 onslaught on Isr

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now. Two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, the conflict is giving all appearances of turning into a "forever war." But in other parts of the world, Russia's influence has arguably grown. This week on What Matters Now, former MK Ksenia Svetlova, an expert in t