Episode 44: Fateful choices to make in the new year, a comment for Rosh Hashanah
Ask Haviv Anything
Haviv Rettig Gur
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
Rosh Hashanah is the only Jewish holiday that falls on the first day of the lunar month - that begins in darkness. It is also the holiday most associated in Jewish tradition with great turning-points and new beginnings.
The coming year will be a time of great change and momentous decisions. Israel will have some fundamental choices to make.
This is a reflection on the holiday, on the state of the war, and on the responsibility that Judaism places upon us to shape our destiny.
Today’s episode is sponsored by Unpacking Israeli History, a podcast from Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand — and one I’ve had the pleasure of joining several times as a guest. Unpacking Israeli History, hosted by my friend Noam Weissman, takes listeners on a journey through Israel’s most fascinating and sometimes controversial moments, offering a fact-based understanding of Israel’s past and present that is both informative and really entertaining.
If you’ve been here a while, you know how much I value talking about and learning about Israel without oversimplification. Unpacking Israeli History does just that. It’s smart, nuanced, and it never shies away from complexity. Noam does a remarkable job of taking the headlines we all know, and peeling them back to uncover the deeper story of how we got here.
I’m also proud to be a partner of OpenDor Media, the team behind Unpacking Israeli History. Their mission is to meet young Jews and their peers where they are with media that deepens understanding of Israel, Judaism, and the Jewish experience — embracing complexity and fostering informed perspectives. So if you want more of the kind of thoughtful conversation we have here, go follow Unpacking Israeli History at https://unpacked.bio/havivUIH. I think you’ll find it as engaging and meaningful as I do.
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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everybody. Welcome to Ask Haviv Anything. |
| 0:08.3 | It's September 22nd, just a few hours before Rosh Hashanah. |
| 0:12.1 | I was on a two-week speaking tour overseas. I came back home and immediately got my whole family sick. |
| 0:17.9 | So we missed an episode last week, or this past week, and |
| 0:22.0 | I wasn't planning on recording anything right now. But I've had a lot of thoughts leading into |
| 0:27.1 | this OSHA Shana, into the holiday that begins now, the Jewish New Year. It's a very special day, |
| 0:33.0 | and it's a very special, it's framed with some very important ideas that I think are really going to |
| 0:37.5 | open a window into how we judge or understand our role in the coming year. A year that is going to |
| 0:44.6 | be a year of war, a year of disruption, a year of anti-Semitism, a year of suffering of civilians, |
| 0:51.3 | a year of a lot of unanswered questions within Israeli society |
| 0:56.2 | in the Jewish communities of the world. It's going to be a significant year of decisions |
| 1:02.2 | that will, I think, shape our history for the coming generation. And I want to talk about it, |
| 1:08.4 | and specifically to talk about what Rosh Hashanah teaches us |
| 1:11.3 | about these pivots that we face in history. |
| 1:15.1 | Rosh Hashanah is the only Jewish holiday that falls on a moonless night, |
| 1:19.5 | right at the beginning of a month on a lunar calendar, meaning when there is no moon in the sky. |
| 1:25.6 | In a world before electricity, that's the moment of blackest darkness. |
| 1:29.7 | So what is it about? What does Rosh Hashanah tell us about ourselves, about our understanding of the |
| 1:36.1 | world, and therefore about the coming year, the war in Gaza, the recognition of Palestinian statehood, |
| 1:41.8 | the state of Israeli politics, our personal lives, |
| 1:45.2 | ourselves, our enemies, the civilians caught in the middle, the grand questions of this moment, |
| 1:49.3 | all of them from beginning to end. But first I want to tell you that today's episode is |
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