Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Adam Livinarity, I'm the digital producer at the Dispatch.

And today I'm joined by Tomor Pericico, Tomor is an Israeli public intellectual and social

commentator, as well as a religion scholar. Tomor serves as a research fellow at the Shalom

Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and was a visiting professor at the UC Berkeley Institute for Jewish

Law and Israel Studies. He joins me today to break down the elections that took place in Israel

this week, Benjamin Netanyahu's comeback and the rise of religious nationalism.

Let's dive right in, as Sarah says. So the reason I was rolled out of the dungeon at the

pits of Jonas Fortress, where most of the podcast production happens is because I grew up in

Jerusalem and it's where I had my start in journalism. And Tomor is one of the most interesting

political and social commentators in Israel that I love listening to and often disagreeing with.

So Tomor, thank you for joining us. Thanks Adam for inviting me. So before we go into the elections,

let's just make sure that we understand what we're talking about when we say the left and the

right in Israel because they're not exactly the same as the American left and right.

For instance, you are deeply religious. You are an observant Jew and you consider religion to be

a core part of your identity and your politics, but also you are on the liberal side of the

spectrum, maybe classically liberal. So maybe for table setting, tell me where you see the political

divide in Israel right now. So okay, I don't think there's a lot of difference, I mean relating to

what you said. There's a huge correlation also in Israel between the political right and the religious

public. In fact, many surveys have shown that I'm a very useful parameter to understand

political right or left cleanings is how religious is the person. So I'm a bit of a sort of

rarity also in Israel. But for me, I'm religious, I'm not orthodox, I consider myself a traditional

Jew. I also observe many of the commandments of the Jewish law, but I'm also a liberal and very

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