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The Ayatollahs have been in control for so long, and Iran’s leadership has been determined to destroy Israel for so many decades, that it can be hard to remember that matters were once very different. El Al had regular non-stop flights to Teheran.

What even fewer people know is that Iran’s present water crisis, which has contributed to the civil unrest of recent months, is in large measure a result of their destroying the water system that Israel built for them. We hear more about Israel and Iran and their water relationship from Seth Siegel, the author of the best-selling Let There Be Water.

That’s coming on Wednesday.

When I was a kid living in Israel for a couple of years, my parents (ahem) “strongly encouraged” me to join Tzofim, the scouts movement, to facilitate my becoming more Israeli, sooner. I’m not sure that it worked, but I was definitely the exception. For a huge swathe of Israeli kids, youth movements—scouts or one of the other numerous options—is even today a defining dimension of Israeli identity formation.

But what about outside Israel? If you’ve moved to the States, either for a while or permanently, and you want your kids to have a place to speak Hebrew outside the home and you want them to have an Israeli “chevre” to grow up with, what are your options? Turns out, Tzofim has thought of that, too.

Until relatively recently, I had no idea that Israelis scouts were active in the US and in other countries across the globe. To learn more, we invited two high school seniors in Newton MA, both of whom are in Tzofim, to tell us more about it.

As you’ll hear, Tzofim has had a different impact on each of them. But for both, it has been a home and a safe Israeli space, all the more important after October 7 and the reactions the war evoked in their schools.

Today, an informal conversation with Shira Argov and Tomer Melamoud to learn more about the Israeli “zone” for Israeli kids not living in Israel.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

Shira Argov is a senior in high school at Milton Academy and Tomer Melamoud is a senior in high school at Newton North High School.

For our paid subscribers

The link at the top of this posting will take free subscribers to an excerpted portion of today’s conversation.

For paid subscribers, the link at the top will take you to the full conversation; below, paid subscribers will also find a transcript for those who prefer to read, as always.

During the weeks of January 25th and February 1st, I will be out of the country, and for most of that time, in an area with literally zero connectivity. We will, of course, continue to provide our podcasts for paid subscribers and previews of those podcasts for free subscribers, but there will be fewer other posts.

In the event that there is a dramatic development in Israel (Iran, Gaza or anything else) and we do not post about it, it’s because we may well not even know about it, and even if news does each us, we will definitely not have the connectivity needed to post.

We’ll return to a normal pace and schedule the week of February 8th.

With prayers for quiet and good news ….