← The Promised Podcast
The Promised Podcast
The “Things We See & Things We Don’t” Edition
01:37:00
In this wartime-fever-dream-inflected special episode Miriam Herschlag and Noah Efron talk about (1) the only thing any of us have talked about for the past weeks, what US President Donald Trump called “The Twelve-Day War,” and (2) several things...
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- [00:01]
A
Today is day 629, which are 88 weeks and five days of the captivity of now 50 hostages, living and dead in Gaza.
- [00:15]
This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language.
- [00:33]
Welcome to the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1, the voice of the city that saw this past week a flow of two opposite though complimentary currents, the one taking many of us who live in the city down, down, down into shelters and spectacularly into vast underground parking lots, most notably I think, one under the Diesengoff Center, Tripoli Labyrinthine Mall and Habima Square where one finds the National Theater and the Israel Philharmonic. These two spaces scrubbed and shined into shape by hundreds of volunteers, mostly from the anti judicial reform protest group turned Commando do good group after October 7, Achim Laneshek brothers in Arms, hundreds of which brothers showed up en masse with buckets and mops and brooms and tents and mattresses and sheets and pillows and tables and chairs and camping stoves and pots and pans and plates, industrial shelving and tape of every imaginable kind, and they built great minus 3, minus 4 and minus 5 level tent cities in the parking lots with a cafeteria area and a play area for the kids and improvised zulot or spots with lots of throw pillows for adults to smoke weed and strum guitars and sing, creating ad hoc improvised communities where people shared meals and gear and drink and drugs and they talked and joked and threw kids up in the air and asked countless times who was a good dog, who's a good dog, who's a good dog and did all the other things that people do in communities, all this being the downward current, while at the same time there was the opposite and complementary upward current of people in tiny numbers at first, but then ever bigger numbers showing up at clubs whose owners asked themselves but can we? And answered why not I guess, and phoned musicians who asked but can we? And got the answer why not I guess. And the spots where I mostly go to herr music, which are mostly in basements like Levantine Sheva, My Fav, they were mostly shut. But other spots like Ladin, the music spot of the Uganda bar on Simtata Bad in the Veitzedek, they went back to putting on shows by having perform, for instance, last Saturday night, the Japanese psychedelic rocker Ray Honda and his band the Late Bloomers, who played and sang in Japanese of course.
- [03:09]
And there were lots of other bands I saw on Instagram, a house that was having a rooftop midnight party, bands playing on the roof just four stories above what the post said was a fine shelter should the need arise. And a few dozen people made the trip and climbed the stairs to hear music under the stars. And it says in Tractate Ta' nit of the Babylonian Talmud, page five, a quote, Rabbi Yohanan said that the Holy One, blessed be he, said, I will not enter the Jerusalem of above, the heavenly Jerusale, until I have come to the Jerusalem of below, the earthly Jerusalem. And this week we saw at least those of us of a bent to see things this way. The Tel Aviv of below, the below earthly Tel Aviv take form by virtue of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers, people being their most divine selves. And we also saw coming back to life the Tel Aviv above, the heavenly Tel Aviv, where people can be pretty damn divine too. And in both the Tel Aviv of below and the Tel Aviv of above, there were drugs and music and laughter, and in both, a good measure of love. With us today in TLV1's newest satellite studio in this city is a woman in whom, as much as anyone I have ever known, the Shell Mala and Shell Mata, the divine and the mundane, the sacred and the secular, the holy and the profane, the profound and the everyday, meet in most everything that she does. As you surely must know, that woman could only be Miriam Herchlag. Miriam Herslag is the OPS and blogs editor of the Times of Israel, debating and residing over the biggest and most profound forum of Jewish discourse and debate since the Talmud was codified. Miriam was in the past the anchor of the Israel Broadcast Authority English Language Television and News, and an editor and anchor for the Israel Broadcast Authority English Language Radio News. Miriam, how you doing?
- [05:02]
B
I'm great. I feel like you need to add to my list of achievements, accomplishments and identifiers, mother in law, now that I am.
- [05:12]
A
Oh yes, congratulations.
- [05:14]
B
Thank you, thank you. I'm going to talk about that later on in my vada vetting segment, so stay tuned and I'm exploring some stuff.
- [05:24]
A
I am mother in law. Shell Mala, I would say Gamshel Mata.
- [05:28]
B
I'm so happy to be here with you, Noah.
- [05:32]
A
I am so happy that you are here. As for me, my name is Noah Efron and I do not mean to boast, but even after most of a couple of weeks without much more than just a few straight hours of sleep on any given night, my cognitive ability has not suffered a bit. I mean, please do not take me to be bragging. I like to think my parents raised me better than that. But despite the lack of regular sleep, my vocabulary has words and These words are good words, the best words. And my talking with the words. It is good. It is good too. It is real good. Today we are going to do something a little different than what we usually do, though I think it is something equally earth shaking, leaving nothing in its wake unchanged, just as normal. But first we have this short matter that we are following with alert, interest and great concern as part of an occasional series we like to call the Promise Podcast ponders perceiving the poignancy and passion of prized pop Khan, the Israel Broadcast Corporation posted a video earlier this week writing above it. Quote we asked the artists we love for a little help with comforting songs for us as we make our way to our safe rooms. Yudit Ravitz makes us optimistic. End quote. And the video in the post was made on a phone, portrait style, and you see Judith Ravitz wearing black pajamas with white flowers and in black slippers with two white stripes up the middle, standing on the rooftop of her old four story Tel Aviv apartment building. And behind her you see the water tanks and solar collectors on the roofs across the way and farther back you see the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv. And she's got a guitar strapped over her shoulder. And the song that she sings that makes the social media people at Cannes optimistic is basically in the coming year, if you know any Israeli songs, especially if where you know the Israeli songs you know is from summer camp or the youth movement or Hebrew school, then you probably know Bashanaha Ba. Maybe like me, you studied the words off a mimeographed sheet in some Hebrew class or another, figuring out that what they mean is in the coming year we will sit on the porch and count the migrating birds. Children on their break from school will play tag between home and the fields. You will see, you will see just how good it will be in the year, in the year that is to come. Red grapes will ripen in the evening and will be served cold at the table. Lazy winds will blow old newspapers and dust into the crossroads. And it goes on like that. You will see, you will see just how good it will be in the coming year. Which words maybe explain what the Kahn people wrote in the post about the optimism? And ever since the song was first a big hit here, huge in 1971, back when it was first sung by a duet called Ilan and Ilanit, it became a kind of anthem, maybe the anthem of hope here. And Bashanaha Ba' a has been performed and recorded thousands and thousands of times here and around the world, and it has pretty much always been Happy and hopeful and upbeat. A song that at Camp Judea we used to thump and bang the table to keep rhythm with while we sang it. And that's what's always been coded into the song, the joy and the hope of the thing pretty much every time anyone has performed or recorded it, starting with Ilan and Ilanit themselves.
- [09:11]
And you got the same happy feeling when Ari San did the song back then with his bazooki.
- [09:28]
And you could feel the same joy and the same optimism in Orly Solomon's salsa rendition of the song.
- [09:48]
And you could hear it in the very 70s disco version of the song with Yardena Arazi.
- [10:01]
And you can feel the hopefulness when the Israeli opera does the song.
- [10:14]
And it is the same feeling you get when the Barry sisters sing the song in English.
- [10:18]
B
Any time of the year I can look in your eyes and the rain in the sky doesn't fall.
- [10:29]
A
And it's no different when Dahlia Lavi sings it in German.
- [10:42]
And the hope and the optimism still come across when people sing Bashanaha Ba' a these days, like when Yonina Yoni and Nina Takoyer, whom I love, banged out the song on YouTube not long ago.
- [11:16]
And that's what the song has been for us for more than 50 years now. And it is lovely. And it's also strange because the song was first written to be something altogether different. Ehud Manor, the great songwriter who wrote the words in 1970, looked back on it years later and said, quote Bashanaha Ba' a is one of the most personal songs I have ever written, with every detail taken from the tangible particular world I grew up in. The porch is the porch of my parents home in Giva Tapoel in the town of Binyamina. And the people sitting on the balcony are my parents and brothers. My father, Yisra' El of blessed memory, who built the porch with his own two hands and passed away many years ago. My mother Rachel, my brother Ze' Ev and my younger brother Yuda of blessed memory, who was killed during the War of Attrition on the banks of the Suez Canal. The song was written maybe two years after my brother fell and 12 years after my father. D. In the song it is possible to do what we could not do in reality. Those who are living and those who are dead, they sit together on the porch like before, like always, looking out at the familiar everyday sights. The field of thistles across the way, the patch of watermelons and the cemetery on the sandy hill of eucalyptus trees. The red grapes in the song are the grapes that grew on the vines climbing up the side of the porch and the dust. It's the dust that used to roll down the narrow road of Giva Tapoel on its way from the limestone quarry on the edge of the Carmel Mountains into the heart of town. End quote. When he was done writing these words, Ehud Manor gave them to the great songwriter Nurith Hirsch. They collaborated a lot and Nurith Hirsch wrote a slow, elegiac song in 6, 8 time out of identification with Ehud, who was really memorializing his brother Yuda. I wrote it as something lyrical, not at all a happy tune. And I played it for my husband who told me to throw it away, end quote. But when Shlomo Tsach, whose stage name was Ilan, the Ilan in Ilan and Ilanit, when he heard it, he said, no, do not throw it out, just speed it up, that's all it needs. Rhythm, tempo. And you will see, it will become a song of optimism and hope. And Nurith Hirsch did what Shlomo Tzach said and the song became a song of optimism and hope, just like he said, even though the words, there is still a melancholy to them that the bouncy music only mostly covers up. And I do not know how much of this story Yudi Drawitz knows, but I think she knows something about longing and yearning and melancholy and about wishing to be able to do something that is at the moment, in reality, not possible. And the song she sang in her pajamas and slippers on a rooftop in Tel Aviv on a day after one night when rockets destroyed homes and lives in the city, and before another night when rockets would again destroy homes and lives in the city. This is the song that Yudit Ravitz sang.
- [16:05]
B
Today.
- [16:06]
A
Four topics being two discussions and two of something else, the overall theme of which is the things we see and the things we don't. The things we see this week being the first discussion which we call with US President Donald Trump, the 12 day war, as we watched from bomb shelters, as Israel destroyed bases and missiles and launchers and nuclear research sites and much more in Iran, and as Iran sent missiles into Israel's cities with the part of Brunhilde, the fat lady who sings in Wagner's Ring Cycle, played by American B2 bombers, bunker busting bombs and President Donald Trump. And now as we empty our go bags, we'll ask what the hell just happened? And among the things we haven't much seen for most of 12 days, there is the topic of our second discussion, Gaza Vanishing as that other war seemed for most of most of two weeks to entirely disappear from our headlines and maybe from our minds, even though people are dying there every day. And we'll try to make sense of what this seeming amnesia is about. Aside from that, Miriam and I have each brought another story about a thing that's happened lately that we haven't much seen, even though, as Alanis Morissette might put it, we ought to know. The idea for this came when we were hunkered down all night in bomb shelters and there was just the one story and scrolling scrolling scrolling I saw a letter from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemning Hamas and its attack on October 7th, and I thought, the world is still turning. There is more we need to know. Yesterday I saw Abbas write to Donald Trump saying that a just and lasting peace with a recognized and secure Israel is possible, bringing prosperity and integration. And I thought, damn, isn't that news we need to know too. This is all a little wartime fever dreamish, I know, and we hope that you'll forgive us. And by the way, for our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters, in our extra special special extra discussion, the link to which you can find in our show Notes on your podcast app or@patreon.com Mount podcast on the world Wide Web, we will try to take stock of how personally we weathered these past weeks and to make sense of the dazed and confused state we find ourselves in now. But before we get to any of that, listen to this.
- [19:54]
That song is Yam. It is by Alon Nachmias with Rona Keinan off a remarkable new record called Belev Yam, about Alon Nachmias sweetheart and partner Sergeant Yam Glass, the commander of the observation post of the Tatspitaniyot at Nahaloz who was killed on October 7. It is a beautiful, sad record and we will listen to songs from it over the course of the show. And now it is time for our first discussion. So Miriam, what the hell?
- [20:23]
B
Well, on Monday, U.S. president Donald Trump posted on Truth Social I would like to congratulate both countries, Israel and Iran, on having the stamina, courage and intelligence those are capitalized to end what should be called the 12 Day War. All caps. This is a war that could have gone on for years and destroyed the entire Middle east. But it didn't and Never will. The 12 Day War is an evocative name, bringing to mind the greatest military victory in Israel's history if one that left the west bank and Gaza in Israel's hands starting Israel's occupation of them. The name invites us to think that the war that ended earlier this week was somehow twice as much something as the Six Day War in 1967, given the recent exchanges of rockets and bombs between Iran and Israel and Iran and the United States. The name the 12 Day War also led Donald Trump to make the point that the thing was not on its way to being over in a day or two days or a week, but that it was over now on day 12, and there would be no day 13. And with that, the thing was more or less done. But what was it? Haaretz writer Benjamin Netanyahu, biographer and friend of the Promised podcast, Anshul Pfeffer, tweeted on the day the ceasefire was announced that Netanyahu's media mouthpieces have been working hard from the early hours of the morning to establish the narrative of a triumphant 12 day war against Iran. But will Israelis buy it? The implication of Anshul's tweet seems to be that the exchange of bombs and missiles with Iran was not a triumphant 12 day war against Iran, but something else. Noah it was maybe the legendary publisher of the Washington Post, Philip Graham, who first said that news is a first rough draft of history. And of course, you're not a newsman and a podcast is not the news anyway. This one isn't. But you do seem to know a thing or two about first rough drafts. What do you think this thing was that sent us to shelters, robbed us of sleep, left 28 Israeli civilians dead, hundreds wounded, many thousands homeless? This thing that left 800 Iranians dead, maybe 250 of them civilians, according to Iranian sources, and vastly damaged military and governmental infrastructure, including the buildings and equipment devoted to the country's nuclear program?
- [22:59]
A
Well, it was a lot of things, I guess, but one of them, I think, was definitely a triumphant 12 day war against Iran. Just like the people that Angel Pfeffer called Netanyahu's media mouthpieces have been trying to tell us. It was an astonishing thing after.
- [23:23]
Pretty much my entire adult lifetime living in fear of Iran's nuclear program to see and living with talk of maybe one day we will have to attack it, but also terror of the idea that one day we might have to attack it, because who knows what that would lead to. Iran and Iraq were in a war for 10 years. Were we going to have 10 years of being shelled and of shelling also? How do you destroy a nuclear program in a country that is so far away, where you basically can't send soldiers who will actually be there on the ground, though we've learned over the last 24 hours that Israel did in fact send some soldiers who were there on.
- [24:13]
B
The ground, which is pretty amazing.
- [24:14]
A
Which is pretty amazing. And so for it to happen, and for it to happen in a way that seemed so.
- [24:23]
Decided, it seemed so much as though Israel was causing damage to this program, though how much damage, we don't really know. And people are fighting about it now, and I'm sure we won't know for a long time. It was something that was spectacular, both in that it was a spectacle and also that it could well be something that changed our lives for the better, for as long as.
- [24:54]
It seems like it was those things. Miriam, what was your first impression of it?
- [25:00]
B
I'm with you on that. And sort of my first gambit is to say I'll stick a flag in the sand and say that I do believe it was a momentous turning point, historical turning point, regional and global, for, for how power is going to be seen, what the nuclear threat looks like. It has ripples throughout.
- [25:29]
All of the region, obviously, and we'll have to see if we can cash in on the political benefits of this or the diplomatic benefits of this. But I agree with you that it was an astonishing thing to destroy, as whatever amount was destroyed, at least according to extremely reliable sources, is extensive. At the same time, for me, it is just so shocking and jarring how quickly this event, with all of its realness, the death and the fear and the buildings destroyed, how quickly that realness becomes virtual narrative and politics. It was instant where there was.
- [26:16]
A smackdown over what had happened. I think there was almost no space between us taking in this new reality and then immediately getting activated into that whole other sphere of.
- [26:32]
Politics. And it's especially difficult and challenging for people who are far from fans of Donald Trump, who find him to be an odious human and a scary leader to have to associate this incredible triumph that we accept as a triumph with this person. I found that just like mind exploding, just sort of like a nuclear thing went off in my brain as I watched everybody position. I have a dear cousin who is just who rages on social media about Donald Trump, and I don't disagree with him. But this event wasn't anything other than some sort of manipulative thing, which it also is. But there was no actual there there to this event. It was purely a political and therefore odious and therefore utterly wrong event.
- [27:28]
A
Something like that is true in a different way for Netanyahu, who has, like Trump has this meme running around Taco Trump always chickens out lately. And one felt as though maybe that meme was part of his motivation for joining this war. Prime Minister Netanyahu, though he is generally seen as someone who is comfortable with brutality, is also seen here within Israel by many, many people as being someone who will never follow through. After 20 years of saying that the nuclear program in Iran was a threat that could lead to the destruction of Israel in a month, from any particular moment that he was talking about and doing nothing about it, that seemed to be effective or seemed to be anything more than words, as far as we could tell, suddenly he made this decision.
- [28:36]
To do this bombing and to launch this war. And so many people, myself included, didn't think that he had it in him. I, by the way, am ambivalent about him having this in him and learning that he has this in him because I think that he can be so heedless about human life. I, I rather would have him have the self image of being someone who is very conservative and even fearful of wars to becoming somebody who is confident that he can lead a war.
- [29:17]
B
But also, I would not write off his potential to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here because he has also proven to be unable to make bold diplomatic moves that would involve concessions. And right now he's in a particularly poor place to be able to do that, which is why we may be going to elections very soon. But he's not the person who came up with the idea of the Iranian existential threat begin before him, Rabin before him. As Yossi Kleine Levi points out in a piece that we published the day of the end of this war. And what Rabin said, what Yitzhak Rabin said was the reason we need to make peace with our, with our immediate neighbors is because we need to be able to focus on this existential threat. And he saw it as a two pronged or a multi pronged approach to envision a different kind of region. And we're not yet hearing that from, from Netanyahu. And I don't think whatever we do here is going to match what we might want because he's working with Donald Trump on whatever this vision of an empty Gaza or some kind of odd and scary thing like that. So don't worry.
- [30:38]
You'Ll have plenty of opportunity to see him do the wrong thing.
- [30:43]
A
So then, in sum, both of us see this as in fact a triumph that could in any instance, still turn bad.
- [30:53]
B
There you go.
- [30:54]
A
Now listen to this.
- [31:13]
Yourself.
- [32:29]
That song is Holy by Alon Nachmias with Jermy Kaplan of Beleviam. And now we are going from the war, which is all we talked about, thought about, dreamed about, worried about. For most of the past two weeks, all we have seen to things we have not seen, but maybe ought to have. Miriam, you followed up on one of those things.
- [32:56]
B
The suffering that ordinary Gazans are experiencing now is a blast. Yawning maw. Few people can stare into that pain. David Lehrer seems to be one of them. He's been working on an initiative called Jump Starting Hope in Gaza, which represents a coalition of NGOs, international, Israeli as well as Palestinian.
- [33:18]
C
I always say that the scarcest resource in the Middle east is not water, it's trust. We don't trust each other other. And it is really probably the most important element that we can develop which will enable us to reach across the lines.
- [33:38]
B
David has spent decades working on building trust and reaching across lines. Kibbutz Keturah in southern Israel is his home. It's also the home of the Aravah Institute for Environmental Studies, which David headed for many years. These days he leads the Institute's center for Applied Environmental Diplomacy, which advances cross border environmental agreements. That's how he met the heads of damor, a Palestinian environmental nonprofit.
- [34:08]
C
When our future partners from DAMOR for Community Development, Ashraf and Tahani and Shaddad and others came to our conference, it was just a sense that we were all talking the same language. We all believed in the same sort of outlook around our region, that this is one environment. We share the same water, we share the same air, we share the same ecosystems. There's no way that we can address environmental issues without working together.
- [34:39]
B
The connection between the Aravah Institute and DAMOR began seven years ago with the focus on water issues in the West Bank. Gaza wasn't on the agenda.
- [34:51]
C
Two main leaders of the organization, Tahani Abudaka and the CEO Ashraf Ashrami, are both originally from Gaza. So when we began to work on cross border environmental issues, around water issues, around wastewater treatment in the west bank, they came and said, look, there are are lots of problems on the west bank, but Gaza is a humanitarian disaster even before the war. So we had originally really only focused on our work in the west bank with Jordan, in the central Negev, with the Bedouin community. Hadn't even thought that there was anything we could do in Gaza. But because of our partnership with our Palestinian friends from Damori, they brought us the opportunity to implement projects inside of Gaza.
- [35:45]
B
Working on projects in Gaza was never easy. After the horrors of October 7, 2023, it would have made sense for things to come to a stop.
- [35:56]
C
October 7th happened. We were all obviously, like everyone, devastated. We had a preplanned zoom call with Damore, with our partners on October 9, and we had to make a decision. Could we even have the call? It was not an easy decision, but together with our partners, we all agreed that this was not a time to take a step back. This was a time to take a step forward. And we had the call. It was not easy, it was painful, but we all agreed that, that even under these incredibly difficult circumstances, this cross border relationship is too valuable to allow to fall apart. The first thing we did as an organization, together with our partners, Deborah, was to work on helping get Tahani and other colleagues who were stuck in Gaza, who were in this war zone out. And eventually Tahani was able to leave with her parents and her son, but is now in Cairo where she's among 100,000 Palestinians in Cairo who are refugees, who are stateless.
- [37:08]
B
Damor has people on the ground in Gaza. The organization established shelters for displaced Gazans. The focus is on providing humanitarian aid to those who have fled or lost their homes. I asked David about the logistics of the thing, especially about reports that aid going into Gaza often just ends up in Hamas hands.
- [37:31]
C
Yeah, that's a big myth. I mean, I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, but the idea that everything that goes in is commandeered by Hamas is just not true. The fact is that of all the deliveries that we've brought in, they've all reached their end goal. They've reached the shelters without disturbance within Gaza. We hired security, we, meaning Damor and ourselves, hired security people.
- [37:58]
Families who could be trusted to deliver. And that proved well worthwhile. They got all the equipment and the materials in. More recently, since March 2, when Israel completely cut off anything going into Gaza, including food, we've worked with our team in Gaza and, and managed to purchase food that was stored inside of Gaza and food from farmers. There are still farmers that are still growing and were able to supply some vegetables. So around the Eid, we were able to supply food. And more recently, we contracted with a Jordanian company that had a team in Gaza to provide hot meals for 3,000 families in the shelters and, and around the shelters. So we have to be flexible. We have to react to the needs. Now the need is for water. There's not enough water. So we've purchased water for the shelters from water companies that are still functioning in Gaza that are delivering drinking water and at the same time, our engineers that are on the ground are digging a well, which we've supplied them with the funds to buy equipment to build a well that will provide water. We also built about 50 toilets for the shelter. But we still have a lot of equipment that's sitting at the border at Kerem Shalom, waiting for approval to go in.
- [39:31]
B
Even now, 629 days into this war, the daily experience, the suffering of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza is largely outside the Israeli lens.
- [39:44]
C
I understand, you know, especially immediately following October 7th, the pain in our hearts was so big that it really did not allow for us to hold the pain of anybody else. For a lot of Israelis, it was just too much, too much to expect, I think, you know, and that pain continues because we are still living in October 7th. We still have 50 hostages in Gaza. And it's really hard for a lot of people, a lot of Israelis, I think, to humanize Palestinians in Gaza. But for me, I try and see everybody as a human being. And of course for me, having Palestinian colleagues and friends in Gaza made it somewhat easier, because for me, it wasn't some picture of somebody jumping for Joy on October 7th in Gaza City. It was Tahani, it was Ashraf, it was Engineer Hussein. It was people that I know. And when your friends and colleagues call out for help, you answer. Whatever their nationality, whatever the situation, you answer that call. What I think is starting to happen now, I believe, is that while that pain, our own personal pain, still exists and still fills our heart, there's now, I think, a bit more room, room for people to start recognizing the humanity on the other side.
- [42:42]
A
That song is Livid, a Hebrew version of Out Here on My Own that you'll hear from the movie Fame Here by Alon Nachmias of Belev Yam. By the way, for those of you who might want to give to help the efforts that you just heard about, you can Google don't stand by humanitarian aid, and you'll find there a place to donate. And now it is time for another discussion which we are calling Gaza Vanishing. And here is why. So, like I said, Miriam, one of the many strange things about the past couple of the weeks is how during the operation against Iran's nuclear sites and Iran's bombing of our cities, almost everything else disappeared. And one of the strangest of all these strange disappearances was Gaza, about which for those two weeks, there was almost no news at all, and for me, almost no mention at all anywhere by anyone. Four soldiers died fighting in Gaza while we were exchanging bombs in Iran and the day of the cease fire, seven more were killed and their names were read on the news and the times of their funeral. But it may be that none of the 871 IDF soldiers who have fallen in battle since October 7th, but before the battle with Iran, the 12 day war started, have ever gotten less attention than the four who died during the battle with Iran. Also, the bodies of three hostages in Gaza were returned during the war. 80 year old Ofra Kedar from Be', Eri, 21 year old Yonatan Samarano from Tel Aviv, and 19 year old Shai Levinson from Givat Avneh. They too were talked about and they were grieved over, but in a more minor way than the dead hostages who came back before from Gaza. So Miriam, when you and I were talking about this, when we were preparing for the show, you said something that made me stop and think. You said, well, it makes sense that at a time when we're all rushing in fear for our lives to safe spaces many times a day, it makes sense for us to lose sight of other things. But this thing about Gaza, it goes deeper than that. There is a way in which all that is going on there seems to just be slipping from our view to whatever degree it was ever really in our view. You said, for instance, that it has happened several times that Gazans have died, been shot, maybe some of them, maybe all of them shot by IDF soldiers as they tried to get food from those sites set up by that American Israeli aid operation called the Gaza Humanitarian foundation that seems to be foundering. And that's all the news we got, that six died here or a dozen there, but we don't know how or why or what's been done to keep this from happening again. And you said we really don't know now what the army is and is not doing in Gaza and is or is not planning for Gaza in the future. And I don't know if I see all these things just exactly the way you do or not, but I wanted to hear more. Is Gaza somehow vanishing from our consciousness? Are the hostages too somehow vanishing? And if so, how? And do you have any idea of why and what it means?
- [46:13]
B
Well, I will say that I think the way things change from minute to minute is very relevant to this question. And it's very possible, maybe even likely, that listeners who are hearing this a day or two or three from when we're recording this will have Gaza front and center. It does seem to already be moving back into focus.
- [46:37]
Because people are assuming there's an assumption widespread that the US Attack on the nuclear facilities didn't come free of charge and that Trump is on the record as wanting the Gaza war to end. But definitely at the beginning of the war, which back way back then was called Operation Rising lion because it was an Israeli operation. In those first 12 days of the war, of this 12 day war.
- [47:03]
My thoughts went very much to the hostage families, like, what could it feel like for them.
- [47:10]
To be watching this and wondering the impact on their loved ones. And I actually went to the homepage of the Times of Israel and did a word search for Gaza and it would be like three or four times way down at the bottom, as opposed to just a minute before when you'd find 18 to 30 references to Gaza. It was all Gaza. And part of it is, by the way, that the reporters were needed to. So it was sort of an all hands on deck situation and everybody was doing what they could on this very overwhelming, huge experience.
- [47:43]
So that was part of it is just like just too much. And the other part of it is that even before this, there has been a curtain across so much of what we know that's come with this war from the very beginning. And so it wasn't the war with Iran that makes us not know what really happened on the ground to Gazan civilians or maybe they weren't civilians. And we just don't know. And somehow we just don't know. We don't know what those shootings were and how, how can that be. And by the way, stuff going on in the west bank right now also very much outside, and maybe this is just the nature of it, but it is so important to keep pushing ourselves to pay attention to this, not only because we have hostages that must be, you know, that must remain in the center of our attention, but because these things are interactive events. As I said, you know, possibly there's a comprehensive kind of approach in which Gaza is one of the playing cards in how this thing resolves itself or how it plays out. So we really do need to see what's happening. I think it's just that combination of we've gotten used to not having eyes on the ground in Gaza and allowing somehow living with this lack of, of visibility there and not believing what we see when there are reports from the ground because so many of them are distorted and coming through Al Jazeera type sources. So it's a terrible thing that we don't know this. I don't know what more to say about.
- [49:37]
A
Felt to me as though the attention from the world as well seemed to switch entirely to Iran and the war between Israel and Iran, which is understandable for all the reasons you said, I guess. But I've always been skeptical of the claim that Israelis don't know what's going on in Gaza. They don't pay attention because I, no one I've ever asked has not known. And the way that we mostly know the various things that go on, I mean, we all know it to some level of the tale, not maybe the tale that we should, but we know things because they do turn up in the world and they turn up in our social media and everyone knows about the kids who are hungry. And some people think that, that that's fake news and some people think that it's real tragedy. But everyone has seen those things but for the last couple of weeks.
- [50:46]
B
But isn't that exactly the, isn't that the essence of not knowing something where if you don't know what the provenance of the information is and you don't know whether it's accurate, isn't that exactly the problem?
- [51:01]
A
No, it's, it is a problem. It's not exactly the problem, which is multiple.
- [51:09]
Everyone knew what they knew. Everyone was thinking about Gaza and paying attention. So that when there was a report of X number of children, of a family of eight children all being healed together, everyone knew about that, as opposed to the last couple of weeks when I've really heard nothing at all. And then what you said really, really stunned me, you know, into, into consciousness in a way about how like I vaguely know that there are people who are getting killed when they go to get food from these humanitarian aid centers, either in quotes or not quotes. Humanitarian aid centers. I think they're, they're a real thing, but people are, you just see reports and then I, but I have no idea what the story behind it is. And it all of a sudden it stopped being reported. So there are at least, there are at least two issues. I'm sure there, there are many, many issues. One is that what you were just saying is that it has become really, really hard when we do hear anything to know whether it's true or not. So one of the big reports that did somehow seep through over the last week and my social media was this new, this new calculation attributed to what was called in all the social media posts, a Harvard report that instead of there being 60,000 Gazans killed over the course of the past almost two years of war, that the real number was 371,000, you might have seen this.
- [52:51]
So it was a Harvard report says that 371,000 people were killed in Gaza, which is, which was strange to think that Hamas itself was underreporting by a factor of six the number of people dead in Gaza. It was hard to make sense of. So I read it and it was what. And the Harvard report.
- [53:13]
Was in fact a set of data sets submitted by my friend Yaakov Garb to a website that's run by Harvard. But you can just, anyone can, can post their data sets. And it was about Palestinian populations located in particular areas right now. And somebody just took all of Yaakov's numbers and added them together and subtracted them from the original population figures in Gaza and the delta. The difference was 371,000. So they figured, oh, all of those 371,000 people are dead, which is crazy. And then they attribute it to Harvard, even though Yaakov is in fact a professor at Ben Gurion University. But it had nothing to do with Harvard and it wasn't what he was saying. And it's clearly not true. And we know that more than 100,000 Palestinians have left Gaza. So that number, those people aren't dead. They're living in Egypt and they're living in other places. So anyway, that story broke through. And then I was reminded about how even when I ostensibly know something, I don't know anything know it, you know, and, and so, but then, now I wasn't even getting the, I wasn't even getting the news that I was supposed to try to figure out is this fake news or is this real news?
- [54:32]
B
But no, you know, that's, that's about the attention side of things, which, fair enough, you know, where we're just in the potential for an absolute, you know, inferno of nuclear war. Right. So fair enough. And then the other very long term problem is just what you described. We can't distinguish between what's real and what's not. People can't. And these are not just simple innocent mistakes. These are intentional and they're being driven by powerful forces that are using armies of bots to do this. So we're really. The whole information ecosystem has been severely polluted and news organizations are, they're small and have their own.
- [55:21]
Biases and fall into traps. So here we are. That's an old problem. But it was so remarkable to see Gaza disappear so quickly, just even with the news.
- [55:33]
A
Let me ask you this. So there have been two letters sent over the past several days by Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority. One was in Arabic and internal and the other was sent to US President Donald Trump. And in each of them, he has sounded more interested in moving forward towards something like peace that involved, as he wrote quite explicitly to Donald Trump, recognition of Israel and creating peace with Israel and a rejection of Hamas and a denunciation of October 7th. And I almost couldn't believe that when I came across one mention of these things in one little place, I almost couldn't believe that it was true. Because if it was true, I was sure I would see it everywhere. And then I went and I did a little bit of a Google search and found them.
- [56:36]
Why is this not big news about, if not Gaza, about everything?
- [56:42]
B
Well, it will be big news if there is any response from Washington. There is what we're talking about, the context and the just overwhelm. The Times of Israel ran a reasonably piece about it early, not early, but yesterday morning. So it's in there. But.
- [57:01]
We have the actual algorithms that are pushing out the flow and we have our own brains, have algorithms that are also dealing with the flow of information. And maybe we wanted yesterday to be paying attention to whether it in fact.
- [57:15]
The nuclear sites and the enriched uranium had been neutralized or not, which was a huge smackdown between the Pentagon and the CIA and the Israeli Atomic Organization. So those are really, really big happening at exactly that same time. We know this problem in news, and I do. Look, it could have.
- [57:40]
Legs and it's a whole conversation to have. Why was Abbas feeling pressured enough at this moment to step out and take the risk of putting out a conciliatory message? A fascinating question, but it's, you know, and any other week on this podcast it would be item number one. Right. And that's just the nature of what we're living through, by the way. I would suggest that it is because, you know, the US has sent its own Palestinian American negotiator to Cairo to negotiate.
- [58:15]
Indirectly with Hamas right now. And the PA is being sidelined, sidelined and sidelined. So interesting conversation for another day.
- [58:26]
A
But Miriam, I do not like what we are going through now. Oh, honey, now listen to this.
- [60:08]
That song is Ole Mise by Alon Nachmias from his new memorial record for Yam Glass Beleviam. And now another thing we maybe did not see among the missiles and the bombs.
- [60:24]
A little while ago there was a story on the Channel 12 news. Natalie Cave sent me the link from Melbourne. The story was about the graduation of a group, a cohort from something called Mechina Kdam Tsveit Gavna. The Gavna Pre military preparatory academy There are lots of mekhi, not pre military preparatory programs, where kids spend six months or a year with other kids getting ready for the army, not mostly by exercising and getting buff, but mostly rather by reading and learning and contemplating. There are religious mechinot where they study Talmud and other such sacred books meant to fortify them before they start to serve in the army. And there are secular mechinot where they learn philosophy and history and such. And there are mechinot that bring together secular kids and religious kids. The idea their being for kids from the one background to find common cause with kids from the other background. And mechinach dam tzfait Gavna is the only one of its kind. It is meant for kids, girls and boys who grew up Haridi ultra Orthodox and somehow got it in their heads that they want to go into the army instead of studying in the Yeshiva or in an open yeshiva school for young women. And oftentimes taking that decision means a break with parents who oftentimes don't approve and who sometimes say, are the kids who decide to do this, that they are no longer part of the family, and sometimes even that they are dead to them. And the story from the TV news, it is moving twice over once, because it follows some of the kids whose stories are moving, like. Like Benny Za' evi, who says even as a little kid he knew that he wanted to live a different life than the life he was living, including being a soldier with everything that went with that. And the time came when he had to tell his parents, who could not, did not accept it, not at first anyway. And the story on the TV news follows another kid named Benny Livni, the oldest of nine in his family. And until the war he was the star student of his Litvak Yeshiva. And even today he says there is nothing more fun really than cracking a sugiya, a Talmudic debate. It is the thing that I miss most. End quote. And he says that he loved that life of Talmud, Talmud, Talmud. But, quote, since October 7th, I have been shaken. It was on Simchat Torah. We were in the most spiritual time, the best time, the height of heights. And for what happened to happen then, it makes no sense.
- [63:11]
The thing ate at Benny Livni. It was a crisis of faith. It changed him. And then one day he just knew he needed to go into the army. He couldn't not. And when it came to his parents, he says, quote, I thought I would rather die than to tell them. End quote. But then, for the graduation from Gavna, the Parents, they come to celebrate their kids finishing this thing that they begged their kids not to do. Not all the parents come, but a lot of them do. Ilana Zaevi Beni, Zevi's mother, she says that at first she just could not accept her boy's decision. But then she went to ravelandanino's group and she talked there and she listened to other parents and she thought and she thought. And she came to think that what she'd thought before, it was all wrong. She came to think she was wrong about her boy and about how he chose to live his life. Now she says the way forward is to build a connection. The most important thing is Binyamin, my son. It is not all the noise around us. It is not his relationship with God. That is not my issue. That is God's issue. What is important is what happens between us. Respect and friendship. What is important is my connection with him. Parents who cannot see this, they are losing a child. They are missing out on an entire world. End quote. And then in the story on the tv, the cameras follow Benny Livni, the Talmud genius, to the induction center. And there, right with him, is his father, Yoav Livni, big black velvet yarmulke on his head, on the steps of the induction center, hugging his kids, saying, success to you, my boy. I love you the most in the world. Rabbi Elhanan Danino, whose group for the parents of the kids in Gavna, Ilana Zaevi, went to where she changed her mind about her boy. Rabbi Elhanan Danino is the soul of the Channel 12 story, because he sponsored the kids at Gavna, he paid their way with money that he raised, and he created the group for the parents who saw their kids leaving Yeshiva and Ulpana as a tragedy, as something they simply could not accept. The purpose of the group being to help them see all that differently. And he is the kid's benefactor who is also always telling them not to give up on their parents too, because if you give them time, they will come around. I first learned about Rav Elkanandanino nine months ago, just after he got up from the Shiva of his boy Ori.
- [65:51]
I talked about it on the podcast back then. I said how Ori Danino was one of the six hostages shot in the head executed by Hamas men last September in a tunnel that was at its highest point, a meter and a half high, that's less than 5ft and about a meter wide. At its widest point, that's less than 40 inches. I had got these Numbers stuck in my head when I was reading about Oredanino because of the six hostages who were held then killed in that tunnel. Almog Sarussi, Alexander Lobunov, Carmel Gatt, Hirsch Goldberg, Pollen Eden, Yerushalmi and Ori Donino. Of the six, Oredono was the tallest. And I kept wondering, how did he fold himself into that tiny space for all that time? Like I said back then, what happened to ori Donino on October 7? What Ori Donino did on October 7 was this. Ori Denino Oro loved raves and he was at the Nova Festival. He danced all night. And when the rocket started with sunrise, he hid for a time in the trees. And then he made his way to his car and drove up north. A friend of his who was also at the rave and survived, Tomer is his name. He said, quote, I saw Ori driving behind me. And then at some point he made a U turn. Oredanino texted Tomer asking for the number of Maya Itay or Omer. Maya and Itay being Maya and Itay Regev, they are sister and brother. Omer being Omer Shem Tov, Ori Danino had just met the three of them the night before and he did not want to leave them behind. Tomer phoned Ori Danino and said, what are you doing? This is not the place to try to be a hero. And Ori Donino said, I will be fine. I just need to bring them home. Itay Regev later remembered that quote, after an hour and a half too of running from the bullets, Omer gets a call from Ori who says, send me your location, I am coming to get you. After about 10 minutes, Ori calls Omer and says he's here. And he starts beeping the horn and we all get into the car. There's a video someone took on their phone of the four of them driving away in Ori Danino's blue sedan. After a time they're stuck in that long line of cars stopped behind cars strafed with bullets. And then they get strafed too. Itay is shot in the leg and so is Maya. And they sink to the floor of the back seat. And when next they look to the front, Ori's not in the driver's seat anymore. And then they are also dragged from the car. And all four of them are taken into Gaza. Maya and Itay Regev get out in the first Hostage Release Ceasefire Agreement after 54 days. Omer Shem Tov came home in February after 5, 505 days. Ori Danino survived for 331 days before he was executed. One of the things that hit me about the Daninos is that Rav Elhanan and Einav Danino, they are Haridim from Jerusalem. Ori Danino, their boy, he was taken from a drugs, music and dance rave on Shabbat, on Simchat Torah. Ori Danino had stopped being ultra Orthodox. And then he stopped being religiously observant at all. He enlisted in the paratroopers and rose to the rank of Master Sergeant. He took up with Liel Avraham, as beautiful, as charming, as secular, as Tel Avivish. A girlfriend, life partner, as you can imagine. Like I said back when I talked about this for the first time, Liel Avraham, the love of Ori Danino's life, she was at the School for the Arts in Tel Aviv when my own girl and boy were there, which pricks my heart a little. So there was this gap between Rav Elkannon and Einav Danino and their boy Ori Danino. You might guess that maybe they looked at each other across that gap with disappointment and maybe also anger. But that is not how things were. Just after getting up from the Shiva for his boy, Ravel Chanan Danino said.
- [69:56]
Lehim.
- [70:29]
Ori made his way from a Haridi Talmud Torah or Yeshiva to becoming a combat soldier. Ori always chose his own special path with a smile and love and connection and a wish to connect to everyone around him. And he succeeded, which means that this thing is possible. So this means that I must, as a father who always revered the path, Ori chose his commitment to what he believed and his aim. I must see if he could do it. We all can do it then. Ravdanino said.
- [71:25]
Anyone who knew Ori knows that he gathered around himself, in addition to his brothers and sisters, a great many male and female friends, a great deal of company, all the grandchildren of my parents, even though we are a Haridi family, everyone just reveres. Or that was Ori always gathering everyone around him. Then Rav Elkanandino said.
- [72:05]
Thousands of people came to the funeral in the Shiva, from ultra Orthodox Hasidim to discharged pierced and tattooed male and female soldiers. And they were all at home here. Ravel Chanandanino said, the people with the piercings and the schreimels and the tattoos and the tzitzit, sitting side by side at Ori Danino's Shiva. Together they said something about his boy.
- [72:53]
All his life he unified and connected all the different sorts in the population of the people of the state of Israel and the people of Israel. That's what is important and that's what we are going to try to do with what is left of our lives, to connect and to unify. This was Ori. That is the mission that he left me with. His last deed that everyone knows about, of getting out of the maelstrom of the Hamas attack and then going back to the maelstrom to save three people, each world unto themselves. That is what he left to us if he did so great an act. We as his family, me as his father, I have to continue, at the very least, at least to learn from him.
- [73:38]
Just what Rav Elchanan and Einav Danino were going to do to continue. He did not really know when he got up from Orish Shiva. All he knew, really was that it would have to do with helping people to connect and to unify.
- [73:56]
A few days after I talked about the Daninos on the podcast back then, I got a message from Natalie Cave in Melbourne saying that her boy Noah was having a bar mitzvah not long after. And he thought maybe he would ask instead of for gifts for his people to give money to the Daninos to help them do what they wanted to do, Whatever it ended up being, could I help them get in touch with Rav Danino. And I called the lovely guy from Shas on the city council who said, sure, he knew a guy who knew Rav Donino. That guy ended up being the Minister of the Interior. And I sent Natalie Cave the number. And the thing was done, which is to say the Caves called Rav Danino and said they wanted to be part of whatever it was that he was going to do, which is how the money that the people celebrating Noah Caves bar mitzvah gave, it ended up being a good bit of the money that paid for dozens of kids to go through Gavna start to finish. And it also helped make it possible for Ilana Zaevi to see that if her boy and God had issues to work out, that was their thing. But to her, her boy was a whole world and not one that she would lose. And it was Noah Cave's people's money that helped bring Yoav Livni to the steps of the induction center, where he hugged his kid and tearfully said he loved him the most in the world. Yesterday I talked with Noah Cave, who is by now closer to 14 than 13, and I talked with his father, Ben, and I asked Noah Cave how and why he asked people to give Their gifts not to him, but instead to Ravel Kanandanino's thing. And he said, my Parasha was haye Sara.
- [75:32]
B
In my speech, I talked about Ori's story and the fact that he managed.
- [75:39]
A
To escape from the Nova Festival, but.
- [75:43]
B
Heroically returned three times afterwards to try and bring back people and was tragically killed.
- [75:50]
A
And it's such an inspiring story, and this story sort of helped me, and I wanted to bring his legacy to other people.
- [75:58]
B
It's really important to share his story.
- [76:02]
A
I asked why it was really important to share Ori Danino's story, and Noah.
- [76:06]
B
Cave said, when religious and secular relationships.
- [76:11]
A
And how religious people go to the army causes much uproar in Israel, I found it very important to give to a cause that would support unity and support togetherness. The way that Rav Danino is bringing.
- [76:26]
B
Together the secular and the religious is really quite important.
- [76:31]
A
And I asked Noah Cave what it felt like seeing the kids now going into the army with the blessing of their now no longer estranged parents. And he said, said, I'm very happy.
- [76:44]
B
That we've managed to help them choose.
- [76:46]
A
The path of life they want. Ben Cave, Noah's father, said that the whole thing had been, well, a whole thing for the whole family. He said Noah's bar mitzvah was in November of 2024. And sadly, when we were deciding on a charity for his bar mitzvah, it was just after the murder of the beautiful Sikh, I think they were called by Rachel Goldberg, Poland. And many people hadn't heard about Ori Dunino's story. And we're happy that we could just bring some awareness of his memory and the incredible person that he was. Even since that time, more stories have come out about how much he helped some of the other hostages and how close him and Hirsch were. Rav Danino and the Goldberg Poland family have become close friends. And it's a really special thing for us to be connected to these people. It does give us a feeling of being part of Am Israel.
- [77:55]
I asked Ben Cave, father to father, if the thing about the parents not giving up on the kids and the kids not giving up on the parents, if that did for him what it does for me. And he said, well, yes, but the point is really bigger than that. What I liked so much about Rav Dunenore's cause was that Ori's life was about bridging that divide. He existed in both worlds, and we wanted to contribute to something that spoke to the efforts to bridge the gaps between different sectors of Israeli and Jewish society.
- [78:34]
On Facebook Messenger Natalie Cave wrote, quote, it was incredibly emotional to see this project come to fruition. I believe it is symbolic of the strength of the Jewish people that three unconnected families, yours, ours and Rabbi Donino's, were able to come together without ever having met to make this a reality. End quote. And that is another important thing that happened lately while our minds were on missiles from Iran. Now listen to this.
- [80:42]
That song is Shuv Vashuv by Alon Nachmeias from his sad and beautiful new record Belev Yam that you can find in all the usual places. And now it is time for a country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of us describes something that maybe brought us solace as we wended our way through our worlds over the last little while. Or possibly surprised and amused, delighted and enchanted in source older maybe fluged us as we did that self Same wending Miriam what is your what a country.
- [81:12]
B
The first time you marry off a kid, one of the pro tips you get is to double check that the photographer knows who your people are. The immediate family, grandma, aunts, uncles, best friends, the ones who flew in from the other side of the globe. It's mainly a job for the couple, but maybe they overlooked someone. So it might be one of those tasks you do before the reception begins and the guests start streaming in. That's also when you look to see that the seating chart was updated and that the chuppah is balanced properly on its poles, those last minute finishing touches in that quiet before that storm. Things are different when the storm comes before the quiet, when a barrage of missiles falls on the country hours before the meticulously planned Friday morning wedding. The only pro tip you get is don't. Do not bring a crowd of guests to congregate. Do not expect a celebration. Do not have a wedding. The country's at war. More missiles are expected. All ears to the phone, all eyes to the sky. Get near shelter. At 9am we would have been dressed in our finery and leaving our Jerusalem hotel for the nearby site, a glorious shady forest location on the outskirts of the city. Instead it was chaos and exhaustion. The emergency announcement had dragged us from our beds at 3am we soon understood that this wasn't the usual Houthi attack from Yemen. It was a war with Iran. I have a WhatsApp message from Susan from that night at 3:37 in the morning asking if we're okay. My answer is physically yeah. Susan then asked and the other and I wrote back. We had no Plan B. I went into my son's room. He was on the phone with his future mother in law. His bride's parents and a couple of her many siblings had come in from Melbourne for the big event. The bride herself, who was staying with her parents at their rental apartment, was still asleep. Should they wake her? My son said, no, not yet. The photo I snapped of him at that moment shows a man in chaotic circumstances taking charge of the greatest moment of his life, deciding that even though both hell and high water had come, he they were getting married that day. The yard of the place where they live on bucolic Moshav Beitzayit would be the location. With son up, he was dressed in his wedding clothes. My rabbi brother in law, AKA Uncle Adam, told my son that if they wanted to be married on one of the scariest days in Israel's history, he'd be there to conduct the ceremony no matter where or when. The couple's landlords literally rose to the occasion and opened their ample backyard for use. Not only did the band not cancel, they realized that without a sound system they'd need their drummer. So he came along. The florist friend who was doing their flowers at cost as a wedding gift, brought the flowers. The photographers showed up. At first attendance was to be limited to 30, which is the number of people their bomb shelter could hold. But as the hours passed, the state of alert was relaxed somewhat. And that, together with a series of miscommunications, led to a rather large group of people hopping in their cars and showing up. Although plenty of beloved friends and family stayed home where rationally they belonged. But so many of our loved ones somehow made it. Aunts, uncles, cousins, my mother in law who's nearly 90, and the bride's large family, and you guys and your girl who'd flown in for this, and all those friends who thankfully got the wrong message. And came the bride, gorgeous in her wedding dress, pinned up her own hair and put on a bit of makeup on the car ride over. The beautiful ketubah their dear friend Ayelet made for them needed an edit it. The location Jerusalem was carefully scratched out with a kitchen knife and replaced with Beitzeit. None of the plans and lists and spreadsheets were relevant anymore. Instead it was all volunteers and all improvised friends and siblings took over. There were so many stories of little big things that people thought to do to make this work. Shade was rigged up. Someone brought a little treasure chest for gifts. Side areas were set up for the grooms and bride's tishes. My daughter stepped into action in ways big and small, including DJing. After the band left, we were stuck with no arrangements for refreshments. The bride's sister got bagels and platters from a bagel shop where they insisted they couldn't help until she burst into tears and explained why she needed the food, at which point they sat her down, gave her iced coffee, and scraped together everything they could manage from their war depleted inventory. And on a boiling hot Friday the 13th, on the first day of the 12 day war, Yishai and Naomi got married. In the calm between missile barrages, which resumed that evening at 3:30 in the afternoon, we stood under the chuppah that Laura Griff and I made for your wedding, Noah giving it to you and Susan way back then, on condition I could use it if I ever got married, which I did. The chuppah was held up by poles that had been made by the couple's carpenter friend as an afterthought just the day before. Some people saw this wedding as an act of defiance or courage. I don't quite think so. It was kind of harebrained. It could have gone terribly wrong. What it was, though, was the potent life force of love. This wedding had its own momentous momentum. It was coming no matter what. I'm not prone to religious expression, but that morning when I realized my son was determined to go ahead with it, I was feeling some very big feelings. I grabbed his shoulders and said, zeh hayom asa adonai. It's a line from Psalms that means this is the day the Lord has made, and it continues nagila venism' chabot. We will rejoice and be glad in it. My son answered Zehayom, this is the day is not a reference to a specific day. It can be any day. He was citing the Midrash Tehillim Commentary on the Psalms, which ponders whether the words the day refer to a specific festival or event. And the Midrash Tehillim answers, essentially no, it's not a specific day. Every day in which God's presence or kindness is revealed becomes the day. The actual quote from Midrash Tehillim says that when God gives us light, we know it is the day that the Lord has made. And to have such light that day of all days, a light made up of thousands of sparks, and of the brightly burning love my son and daughter in law have for each other. To have that light on such a dark day was an epic astonishment. We got the photos a few days ago and oh my goodness, are they Beautiful. Painful too, for the people who aren't there. Knowing what I know now, if I had that quiet time to talk to the photographer, I would have had to tell him that every person there was our people. And more than that, the bagel store people and the generous landlords and the people who managed to watch on Zoom and our well wishers, including the strangers who, when they heard about the wedding, sang and clapped in the hotel lobby and in the elevator and in the park. It turns out that all of them are our people.
- [89:11]
A
Wow. The potent life force of love. Now there was so much of it.
- [89:20]
Well, that was beautiful.
- [89:23]
This is something very different. So right in the middle of the war, I got a call from Near Greenberg saying that the cat is on the roof. Well, he was saying that a cat was on a roof. Specifically, Near Greenberg said that his friend Charon, who every day goes out to feed the cat in Nevaeh Chanan, called him to say that he heard a cat crying on the roof at number 30 Levanda street near the Ayalone highway. So much so that he climbed up the four flights of stairs, but the roof was locked. And he asked someone in one of the businesses in the building who has the key. And he learned that the only one with the key was the guy who owns the building, but he lives in Petah Tikva and Tehran. Banged on doors until he got the guy's phone number and he called the them and the owner of the building. He said there's a war going on, he'd be happy to give the roof key to anyone who could use it to save the cat, but he's not going to come to Tel Aviv himself, not during the war. And Nir Greenberg said this story started three days ago and the crying of the cat, it's just gotten worse and it is hot out, and if nobody does anything, that cat is going to die. And I wrote down all the names and addresses and phone numbers and I wrote out the story in a WhatsApp and I sent it to, to Nouriel Shuv, who is the city's veterinarian and who always says, if there's an animal in Trouble, call me 24 7. And Nouriel Shuv wrote back after just a couple of minutes, and he says that he had spoken to another Sharon, Sharon Amram, who runs Sharon Amram's animal rescue service. And he, Sharon Amram, agreed to do whatever had to be done to save the cat on the locked roof. Which I told Nir Greenberg, who said, okay, good. But then a few Minutes later, Near Greenberg called me back to say that he talked to Sharon Amram, who said, still, someone needs to get the key from Petah Tikva because there's a war. And he Sharon Amram has got a million calls about animals who need rescuing all over the city, and he can't be running to Petah Tikva. So I say, okay, I'll see if there's someone who can solve the problem, figuring that maybe I'll take one of those electric scooters to Petah Tikva. But there's the problem of being able to get to a bomb shelter in 90 seconds if you need to. So I'm a little nervous about driving over on the scooter. And while I'm going back and forth about that, Nir Greenberg calls up and says that he's got three people who feed cats. He's got them all together and they've just decided to split the cost of a cab. And the driver is getting the key right now and he's bringing it to Sharon Amram. And then the thing was done and the cat was saved. And Nir once told me that he spends like a fifth of all the money that he makes makes on the food that he gets up at 5 every morning to give to the cats in his neighborhood. And it is the same with Sharon and Usnot. They're the three people who put up the money for the taxi, but someone had to get the key to get the cat off the roof. And what meant something to me in all of this was that a day before all this happened was the day when the whole city block in Ramada Viv, was bombed through rubble just a kilometer or two from my house. And a couple of days before that was the day when most of a block was destroyed downtown near Allenby, and dozens of people were hurt and a few were killed and hundreds of people were homeless. These were all such very, very big things. And while all of this is going on, there's a cat crying on the roof of a four story building. And people heard her and they answered her call. And a little soul in Israel was saved.
- [93:02]
And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to Itay Shalem, our station manager, without whom we would have none of this. Thanks to Ashibolim, my favorite band from Kiwa. They give us some music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you so much, Miriam. Thank you, Natalie. We'd like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. It keeps the show going and the station going. And it keeps us moved and grateful and in your debt. And we'd like to thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen and we'd like to ask you to like us on Facebook and to drop us a line. We are eventually going to answer. And after you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this the Promise podcast where the trauma is pretty clearly not yet even close to being post. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that today as we record on June 26th we mark international Barcode Day, celebrating the spectacular invention fabulously described in US patent number 2,612,994 applied for by Norman J. Woodland of Ventnor, New Jersey and Bernard Silver of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania entitled Somewhat Vaguely Classifying Apparatus and Method which begins it is an object of this invention to provide automatic apparatus for classifying things according to photo response to lines and or colors which constitute classification instructions and which have been attached to, imprinted upon were caused to represent the things being classified. A further object of the invention is to provide photosensitive apparatus which shall classify things without recourse to characteristics of the things themselves for classification instruction. One application of the invention is in the so called supermarket field. It was 1952, remember when super and market were two separate words and the patent has the most wonderful drawings of squares and circles. It was really the concept that Woodland and Silver were patenting and the concept was to turn morse code into a visual system that can be attached to, well, everything and would allow, well, everything to be read by a scanner and classified. It would take some years before a workable prototype was created and more years before it was standardized. But by gosh, today barcodes are everywhere and without them you could not self checkout from the supermarket which these days are just called supermarkets. Ah, progress. And I imagine I don't need to tell you that I adore International Barcode Day. If I were classifying days with the beep bop boop of a scanner, I would have to classify International Barcode Day as probably my favorite day of the year because, well, just for instance, did you know that the mapping between barcodes and the information they encode is called a quote unquote symbology and that there are linear symbologies and interleaving symbologies and stacked symbologies and some symbologies employ steganography which is the hiding of modules within an image. My God, how could you not love that? Still, even though international barcode day is not yet even halfway over. Already I know that it will be gone soon, like those self scan checkouts in the Victory supermarket. That if they ever worked at all, they certainly don't work now and probably won't be back working for a long, long time. Not so the Promise Podcast. We will be back working for you next week and every week, reminding you that while sometimes even just a small number of graceful lines of varied thicknesses can convey worlds of information, at other times a seemingly endless torrent of words.
- [96:37]
C
Words.
- [96:37]
A
Words convey little more than sound and fury, signifying nothing. On this the Promise Podcast.