Allison Kaplan Sommer, Ohad Zeltzer-Zubida and Noah Efron discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week.
New Labor, Again?
Did we eulogize the Labor Party too soon?
Acting Big?
PM Netanyahu unveils a plan to give most Israelis a pile of free cash, just weeks before elections. Is that necessarily a bad thing?
How Will We Come Out of This?
With one in three Israelis vaccinated, maybe it’s time to figure out what life will be like when this is all over.
Is One Day Commemorating the Holocaust Just Not Enough?
For our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters, in our extra-special, special extra discussion, after marking this week’s “International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust,” we wonder what it means to have two Holocaust days, one for the world (and not for us), and one for us (and not for the world). Would we be better off if the two were combined?
All that and the music of Yakir Hillel!
Songs
- תש”פ
- Bakhiti Mul ha-Madreigot le-Gan Eden
- Eder Shel Shvarim (the version that starts immediately with vocals), with Sivan Talmor
- Etz ha-Rimon
An hour and 27 minutes….. No wonder my wife has started listening at 1.5 speed. With my commute gone due to COVID it’s hard to find time to listen.
I know, it’s ridiculous, right. All my fault. I’m trying to slim it down, which you’d think would be simple (Just stop talking so much, Einstein!), but like going on a diet, it’s simple in principle, and complicated in practice. Would it be too much to ask you to take on a once-a-week volunteer gig four towns over?
Itzchak Belfer was my art teacher at the People’s University in Tel Aviv some 20 years ago. I was by far the youngest person in the class, and he would call me meydele and meydush in a grandfatherly fashion. I remember him showing us artwork he did about Janusz Korczak and the children and understood that the story was close to his heart. Somehow, though, I didn’t think to ask if he had a personal connection to Korczak. A missed opportunity. I recently found some watercolors I did in Mr Belfer’s class and wondered if he was still alive. You’ve answered that question — and many others that I might have asked. Thank you, Noah. Yehi zichro baruch.
What a lovely thing for you to write, Susanne. Thank you. I loved it. He seems to have been a remarkable a person. (Also, another listener wrote to tell me that the word “Belfer” in Polish means “teacher”. How about that?)
Can you point to the right Kav Hachesed online?
https://www.kavhachesed.org.il