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Playlists
The wars that made Israel
Wars and turning points
SeriesThe Six-Day War
Who can say when a war like the Six-Day War actually began? Rav Mike takes that question seriously and tells the war in…7 episodes →
SeriesThe Yom Kippur War
If 1967 was a war of the spirit, what happened six years later was a struggle of psychology. Rav Mike tells the Yom…8 episodes →
SeriesMaking 1948: The Birth of the State
From the revolt against British rule to independence: the underground, Zionism after the Holocaust, the battle for the…5 episodes →
SeriesThe Road to Suez, 1954–56
Israel among the nations in its first decade: the Lavon Affair, the slide toward war, and Operation Kadesh, the 1956…3 episodes →
SeriesThe War of Attrition
The war that followed the Six-Day War along the Suez Canal, told in three parts: the fighting, the diplomatic front,…3 episodes →
SeriesThe Lebanon War
The 1982 war in four parts: the road north, the invasion itself, and Sabra and Shatila, the episode that turned the war…4 episodes →
SeriesThe Intifadas and the Wall
From the first intifada to what Rav Mike calls the Oslo War, and the security barrier that came out of it. A five-part…5 episodes →
PlaylistTerror and Response
How Israel has answered those who came to kill its people: Eli Cohen in Damascus, the limits of retaliation, Black…6 episodes →Binge it from the start
2,500 years, in order
SeriesThe Second Temple Era
Where the Jewish Story begins: the return from Babylon, the Men of the Great Assembly, the Greek encounter, the…10 episodes →
SeriesAfter the Destruction: Rome, Babylon and the Geonim
How a people without a land stayed a people: the refusal to be absorbed by Rome, the portable homeland of Torah, the…7 episodes →
SeriesGolden Age to Expulsion: The Jews of Spain
The full arc of Sefarad: its legendary origins, Yehuda HaLevi and the Rambam, the Zohar, the riots of 1391, the…10 episodes →SeriesFrom Safed to Shabbetai Tzvi
The early modern Jewish world after the expulsion: the printing press, Dona Gracia, the mystics of Safed and the…10 episodes →SeriesHasidim, Enlighteners and Reformers
Eastern and Western Jewry meet modernity: the rise of Hasidism and its opponents, Mendelssohn and the Berlin…8 episodes →SeriesThe Birth of Zionism
From the age of nationalism to the first pioneers: the heralds of Zion, Herzl at Basel, the New Jew, and the religion…7 episodes →
SeriesBuilding the Yishuv: Balfour to the Arab Revolt
The Zionist movement grows into a state-in-the-making: the alliance with Britain, the challenge of Jewish power, the…8 episodes →
PlaylistThe Holocaust and Its Memory
The Holocaust, the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, and the long struggle over how to remember: the reparations…6 episodes →SeriesMaking 1948: The Birth of the State
From the revolt against British rule to independence: the underground, Zionism after the Holocaust, the battle for the…5 episodes →
SeriesThe Great Aliyah: Absorbing the Exiles After 1948
The new state doubles its population in a few short years. Two episodes on what a Jewish state is for, and what it took…2 episodes →
PlaylistSettling the Land After 1967
What Israel did with the territories it won in 1967: a greater Israel, the return to Hebron, Gush Emunim, the Jewish…9 episodes →
PlaylistRabin, Begin and Peace with Egypt
Israel after the Yom Kippur War: Rabin's first term, the 1977 upheaval that brought Menachem Begin to power, Camp…7 episodes →
SeriesThe Temple Mount
Every tale has a point around which it revolves, and for the Jewish Story that point is the Temple Mount. In four…4 episodes →The people who shaped it
The leaders
PersonHillel and Rabbi Akiva
The two great sages on either side of the destruction: Hillel, prince of the Torah in the last generations of the…3 episodes →PersonThe Rambam
The Rambam, Maimonides: physician, philosopher and codifier, the storm over his books after his death, and the long…7 episodes →PersonThe Baal Shem Tov and Hasidism
The Baal Shem Tov, the Hasidic movement he inspired, the opposition it provoked, and the courts it built across Eastern…3 episodes →PersonTheodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl, the Viennese journalist who turned an ancient longing into a political movement, from the heralds who…5 episodes →PersonRav Kook and Religious Zionism
Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook runs through the whole Jewish Story. These are the episodes where his ideas carry the weight,…15 episodes →PersonZe'ev Jabotinsky
Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism and author of “The Iron Wall,” and the movement he left behind.6 episodes →
PersonDavid Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion, the labor leader who declared the state and dominated its first decades.12 episodes →
PersonGolda Meir
Golda Meir, from the early struggle for Soviet Jewry to the prime minister’s office, through the War of Attrition and…4 episodes →
PersonLevi Eshkol
Levi Eshkol, the prime minister who led Israel into the Six-Day War, and a very different face of leadership after…8 episodes →
PersonMoshe Dayan
Moshe Dayan, the soldier and politician at the center of Israel's wars from the 1950s to the 1970s, and of the status…12 episodes →PersonYitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin, chief of staff in 1967, ambassador in Washington, and twice prime minister, from Entebbe to Oslo.9 episodes →PersonMenachem Begin
Menachem Begin, from the underground to the 1977 upheaval, Camp David and the Lebanon War.9 episodes →PersonAriel Sharon
Ariel Sharon, from the reprisal raids of the 1950s to the crossing of the Suez Canal, the Lebanon War, the Temple Mount…10 episodes →Friends, foes and brokers
Across the table
Across the tableGamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian leader at the center of the wars of 1956 and 1967 and the War of Attrition.8 episodes →Across the tableAnwar Sadat
Anwar Sadat, who launched the Yom Kippur War and then came to Jerusalem, and the peace that followed.7 episodes →Across the tableYasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat, from Karameh and Black September to Beirut, Oslo and the denial of the Jewish connection to the Temple…6 episodes →
Across the tableHenry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger's diplomacy, from the War of Attrition to the end of the Yom Kippur War, the interim agreements, and…6 episodes →Where it happened
Places that shaped us
PlaceJerusalem
The city at the center of the story: the Maccabees and Herod, the destruction, the poets who longed for it, the battles…12 episodes →SeriesThe Temple Mount
Every tale has a point around which it revolves, and for the Jewish Story that point is the Temple Mount. In four…4 episodes →PlaceBabylon
Babylon: home of the exile, the Talmud and the Geonim, and for a thousand years a second center of Jewish life.7 episodes →SeriesGolden Age to Expulsion: The Jews of Spain
The full arc of Sefarad: its legendary origins, Yehuda HaLevi and the Rambam, the Zohar, the riots of 1391, the…10 episodes →PlaceTiberias, Safed and the Galilee
The Galilee: the war against Rome, the holy cities of Tiberias and Safed, and Israel's northern border under fire.6 episodes →PlacePoland
Poland, heartland of Jewish life for centuries: the new homeland, the massacres of 1648, the Hasidic courts, the…10 episodes →PlaceFrom the Pale to the Soviet Union
Russia and the Pale of Settlement, where most of world Jewry lived: the movements it produced, the pioneers it sent,…7 episodes →PlaceGermany
Germany: the Berlin Enlightenment and the science of Judaism, the Holocaust, the reckoning that followed, and Munich.7 episodes →
PlaceBritain and the Mandate
Britain and the Jewish story: the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate, the revolt that ended it, and Suez.10 episodes →
PlaceSinai and the Suez Canal
The Sinai and the Suez Canal, fought over in 1956, 1967 and 1973 and returned to Egypt for peace.8 episodes →
PlaceThe Golan Heights
The Golan Heights, taken in 1967, held at great cost in 1973, and brought under Israeli law in 1981.4 episodes →PlaceGaza
Gaza, from Nathan of Gaza, prophet of Shabbetai Tzvi, to the raids of the 1950s and the intifadas.6 episodes →Beneath the events
Big ideas
IdeaExile and Return
Galut: what exile has meant to the Jewish people, how they carried a homeland with them, and what it means to come home.9 episodes →IdeaRedemption and the Messiah
Redemption and messianism, from the exiles of Spain and Shabbetai Tzvi to the secular redemption of the pioneers, 1948,…12 episodes →IdeaProphecy
Prophecy and its end: Daniel, the return, the Men of the Great Assembly, and the prophetic voice in modern times.6 episodes →IdeaKabbalah and Hasidism
The mystical stream of the story: the pietists of Ashkenaz, the Zohar, the mystics of Safed, and the movement of the…6 episodes →PersonRav Kook and Religious Zionism
Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook runs through the whole Jewish Story. These are the episodes where his ideas carry the weight,…15 episodes →IdeaJewish Leadership
What makes someone a Jewish leader: kings and sages, great men and movements, and the leaders the modern story has had.6 episodes →
IdeaNarrative and Memory
The stories a people tells about itself: narrative therapy, the war of narratives over the land and the Temple Mount,…9 episodes →
IdeaMaking Peace
Making peace and its price: the armistice lines, Resolution 242, the honorable peace after attrition, Camp David, Oslo,…10 episodes →
CollectionWhy Tell the Jewish Story
The ideas behind the podcast: who Rav Mike is, why the Jewish people is a continuing conversation, narrative therapy…8 episodes →Still being argued
Israel's hard questions
PlaylistIsrael's Constitutional Crisis
Why Israel never wrote a constitution, and what that has cost it: the decisions of 1949, the revolution of 1992, a…7 episodes →Hard questionReligion and State
Religion and state, from emancipation and Reform to who is a Jew, the constitutional revolution, and what divides…7 episodes →Hard questionJewish Sovereignty
What it means for a people to rule itself, from the Hasmonean kingdom to the crisis of Israeli sovereignty.7 episodes →
Hard questionJews and Arabs
Jews and Arabs in the land, from the riots and revolt of the Mandate era to 1948, the intifadas, and the war over…8 episodes →
Hard questionThe Question of Force
When Jews use force: Jewish power after two thousand years, retaliation and vengeance, the Jewish Underground, and the…9 episodes →PlaylistSettling the Land After 1967
What Israel did with the territories it won in 1967: a greater Israel, the return to Hebron, Gush Emunim, the Jewish…9 episodes →SeriesThe Intifadas and the Wall
From the first intifada to what Rav Mike calls the Oslo War, and the security barrier that came out of it. A five-part…5 episodes →Across the ocean
The American Jewish story
PlaylistThe American Jewish Story
How American Jewry became what it is: the evolution of American Zionism, the golden decade after the war, the shock of…13 episodes →
SeriesJews, Civil Rights and the 1960s Revolution
American Jews in the decade that changed everything: the civil rights movement, Heschel and Prinz, Goodman and…4 episodes →
SeriesAmerican Antisemitism
A seven-part investigation into antisemitism in America, from its roots to the present moment, with a conversation with…8 episodes →PlaylistLet My People Go: Soviet Jewry
The struggle to free the Jews of the Soviet Union, from its first stirrings to the end game, with a firsthand…4 episodes →In season
Through the Jewish year
HolidayRosh Hashanah and the Days of Awe
Crowning the King, a new horizon, and the ten days of teshuva.4 episodes →
HolidaySukkot
The festival of joy and faith, four times over.4 episodes →
HolidayHanukkah
The Maccabees, the light within, and what came after the miracle.4 episodes →
HolidayThe Fast Days: Tevet and Av
The Tenth of Tevet and the Ninth of Av: mourning, memory, and the Nine Days.3 episodes →
HolidayPurim
Adar, joy, and the oldest hatred: the Purim episodes.5 episodes →
HolidayPassover
The Exodus, the Haggadah as narrative therapy, and what it means to be free to be redeemed.4 episodes →HolidayYom Ha'atzmaut
Israel's Independence Day episodes: independence, self-actualization, and historical obligations.5 episodes →HolidayJerusalem Day
Celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem, from the fiftieth Jerusalem Day onward.4 episodes →Collection