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• Bonus episode: This Passover, we find our freedom

  Passover is upon us, the seder is Saturday night.Freedom, the Sages teach, is not an end, it is a path; no mere escape from Pharaoh's tyranny but a becoming, filled with substance and responsibility and devotion; no one-off achievement but a ceaseless struggle to secure and deepen who and what we are.This bonus episode offers a few short thoughts that I teach my children at our seder each year about the meaning of this holiday, and thus the meaning of our peoplehood and freedom.This episode is sponsored by the Sapir Journal, a wonderful quarterly journal devoted to ideas for a thriving Jewish future, edited by the Pulitzer-prize-winning Bret Stephens.If you live in the United States, you can now receive SAPIR in the mail absolutely free. You can sign up for your free subscription by going to sapirjournal.org/AskHaviv.Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠ If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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• Episode 9: Did Biden derail Saudi normalization? Breaking down the Abraham Accords with ex-NSC expert Shiri Fein

  The Abraham Accords have the potential to transform the Middle East. The very fact that they survived the Gaza war proves their resilience. Indeed, trade between Israel and its Abraham Accords partners has risen dramatically and stayed high through the war.And now the “kit” of dozens of agreements drafted between Israel and the UAE, from the overarching peace agreement to treaties on cellphone network interoperability and double taxation, stands ready to be copied over to a Israeli-Saudi peace.But will the Saudi normalization go forward? What would it take? Does it depend on what happens in Gaza, and can this Israeli government deliver the conditions in Gaza that would facilitate such a peace?I posed these questions to Shiri Fein Grossman, the former head of regional affairs at the Israeli National Security Council who was one of the key coordinators and planners of the Abraham Accords. Shiri now serves as CEO of the Israel-Africa Relations Institute.This episode was sponsored by a donor who chose to remain anonymous. At her request we will continue the tradition of remembering someone we lost on Oct 7. Today we remember Roi Moshe, 36, a firefighter from Ashkelon, who was killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7 while trying to return home from a night shift at the Be’er Sheva station.Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠ If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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• Episode 8: Prof. Alexander Yakobson on what it means to "decolonize Palestine"

  Is Zionism colonialism? Are Jews an authentic people, or merely a religion? What about Palestinians? What are Zionism’s moral costs, and what are those of opposing Zionism?I asked one of my teachers, Hebrew University historian Prof. Alexander Yakobson, some of the great questions now being advanced in Western academic and progressive discourses about Israel.Alex has that special fearlessness of an intellectual who takes the other side's position seriously. It makes his answers all the more valuable.This episode was sponsored by an anonymous donor in honor of Battalion 363 of the Harel Brigade, which is an infantry brigade in the IDF where the sponsor’s loved one serves. May all our sons and daughters come home safely.Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠ If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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• Episode 7 - Judicial Reform: Is tribalism eating Israeli democracy alive?

  What if everybody is right on judicial reform? Israel's highest court is immensely and unreasonably powerful. But if it is weakened, what other checks stand in the way of the tyranny of the majority, that great Achilles' heel of democracy since the dawn of Western civilization?This question is especially urgent for Israel, whose politics are more Middle Eastern than Western, more tribal than ideological.It's not unreasonable to weaken the court, but it would be disastrous to do so without broad trust and buy-in, and without addressing the desperate lack of other checks and balances in the country's constitutional order.It's time for a more serious left-wing critique and a more responsible right-wing reform. Anything less will only cause harm.Thank you to Jason and Lauriel Klinghoffer for sponsoring this episode.Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠ If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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• Episode 6: Why won't Israel fight for the Democrats? With Rep. Ritchie Torres

  Abandoning the Democrats is a losing strategy for Israel, says Rep. Ritchie Torres, perhaps the most outspoken supporter of Israel in the US House of Representatives. The fight over Israel inside American politics is a proxy for a much larger battle over the future of the Democratic Party and the character of America, he argues. Those who don't like Israel, he says, tend to take a dim view of the promise of America.And who is Clarence Jones, and why does Torres consider him "the greatest living American?"Thank you to Jason and Lauriel Klinghoffer for sponsoring this episode in honor of Jason’s grandmother, Nusia Klinghoffer, a holocaust survivor who passed away last year.Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠ If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

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