Hey listeners, I'm Mishi Harmon and this is Israel's story.

So you haven't heard from us in a while.

The reasons for that are many, most of them good, some of them, less so.

The bad and hence the slight wincing is a recurrent case of kidney stones, which has had me in and out of the hospital in recent months.

The good, as much as we can talk about good these days, is that with schools closed, people prohibited from gathering, and all cultural events canceled.

On the very first day of the war with Iran, we launched

a dizzying array of storytelling events in Hebrew. For children, we had daily storytime hours,

with the country's most celebrated storytellers, like Edgar Kerint and Shiragiffin and Eshol Nevo.

For adults, we moved our live storytelling moth-like events to Zoom and featured from our

bomb shelters in every single week, lineups of the most talented storytellers who have performed

on our stages over the years. We also hosted authors and filmmakers, and thousands and thousands of people

became part of a vibrant online storytelling community.

In fact, it created such a buzz that Galaisal, Israel's leading national radio station,

asked us to take over the late-night slot, and we did, airing

dozens and dozens of stories to the entire country. While most of our activity in recent months

has been local, and primarily in Hebrew, and hence the relatively long hiatus in releasing new

English-language Israel Story episodes,

we want to share the tremendously exciting news that for the first time ever,

we're developing a slew of new shows that will start unveiling in the upcoming months.

While the Israel story we all know and hopefully love will continue, of course, new episodes

will come out less frequently, more like a periodical. All the new shows, which will span a variety

of genres and styles and come out more frequently, will essentially do the same as the

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