the promised podcast

Gaza’s “Great March of Return”

Is Gaza’s “Great March of Return” a non-violent protest, or a dangerous attempt to breach Israel’s border? Are IDF sharpshooters defending Israel’s sovereignty or wounding and killing unarmed protesters, or both?

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Still Leaving Egypt, After All These Years

Does the story of the Exodus we tell on Passover, about how we were oppressed by everyone until we had our own home in the Holy Land, make us better, more empathetic, people or worse, more ethonocentric, people?

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Low Marx

Should private universities be able to compete for the best students and teachers and researchers against the government-funded public universities that have, until now, had a monopoly? The experiment started this week.

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The Curious Case of the Constancy of Bibi Boosters and Believers

Why is it that each new shocking revelation about alleged Prime Ministerial corruption is accompanied by an increase in support for Benjamin Netanyahu? What makes Bibi boosters tick?

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Surveilling Prices

Has the time come to repeal the law mandating little sticky price-tags on every item in the supermarket, in favor of smart screens, q-codes, and surge pricing in the freezer aisle?

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Surveilling Rabbis

An activist spends long hours going over videos of rabbinic lectures, getting the sexist and homophobic bits on the nightly news. Is this smart progressive politics, or kind of creepy stalking?

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Surveilling Belligerents

Israel’s got a machine-learning AI system for identifying lone terrorists before they act. Should this bit of real-scifi-Minority Report-ism make it easier for us to sleep at night, or cause us to toss-and-turn in Orwellian angst?

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Judaism: The Theme Park

$400 million to build a theme park in the desert about Judaism, with a ride that log-flumes you through a hectic week and floats you past the serene and bucolic pleasures of Shabbat? Is Israel finally making Judaism fun?

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Show Me a Hero (and I’ll Write You a Tragedy)

Should Israel’s street names be scrubbed on honorific mentions of Ashkenazi founding fathers and mothers who treated Sefaradim/Mizrahim with condescension and worse?

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Gaza: A Moment Before

Gaza is a bubbling cauldron of hopelessness and human misery. What can be done about it?

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