Welcome to the Times of Israel's What Matters Now, a weekly podcast diving into one issue that affects Israel and the Jewish world right now. I'm your host, Amanda Borschal Dan, here with scholar, author, and senior fellow at the Hartman Institute, Yossi Kleina Levy. Yossi, thank you so much for allowing me into your home again.

It's great to have you back.

It is such a pleasure to be here and to look out upon the Jerusalem forest.

Can never, never be a disappointment.

It's just so beautiful.

And you're such a lucky guy to have this as your view as you were.

I really am.

And, well, you know, the other side of this is that this is also the view, this is also the back

of the National Military Cemetery.

And sometimes I'm sitting here at work, and I'll hear the eulogies from the next hill.

And the first time I heard that, I didn't know what it was.

And so it just permeates daily life and in the most tangible way.

It's so true.

And Yose, I don't know if you know this,

but that is actually this spot where I decided to make Aliyah.

I was a very young, very ignorant, naive American,

just sightseeing on a Friday.

It was my first year here in Israel.

And I reached, I had this list of spots I was meant to go see and Mount Herzl was on that list, not knowing it was a military cemetery.

I showed up one Friday morning and I was, of course, taken aback. And that was the moment that

I realized what it meant to be Israeli.

And we're living in a time right now, Yossi, and you just...

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