This bonus is an example of the kind of extra content we release on our Israel

story subscription feed. So if you like it, if you want to hear more stories,

ad-free listening, and behind-the-scenes extras, sign up through Apple

podcasts. Lastly, before we begin, a quick warning. This piece references sexual

abuse and attempted suicide.

Okay, go. Hey, Israel Story listeners, it's Mishie. I am here in the studio with

our producer Yoshi Field, hei-yo-shi. Hey Mishie, how you doing? Good. And as an

extra bonus, we are going to give you a little behind-the-scenes peek into the

production of the episode that we just released about pigs in Israel. And Yosh, you

worked on the story that we ended up calling a Zionist pig for how long? I

started before COVID, so more than a year. Okay, you're a real pig expert. It was

actually slated to be an episode in our last season. Correct. And one of the

reasons that that didn't happen was what we are here to talk about. Yeah, so for

the pig story, we interviewed a lot of different people, activists, farmers,

intellectuals, reporters. Basically, one of the main interviewees for the story,

we ended up having to cut. That interviewee was Yuhudimashizav, who is Yuhudimashizav?

Well, to begin with, he's an ultra-orthodox Jew. In fact, he's, I would say, the most

well-known ultra-orthodox Jew in Israel. He's sort of a national figure. Right. At

the time, he was very famous because he was the head of Zaka, which is an

emergency relief international organization. He was also in the news a lot

around that time, early COVID days, as sort of this bridge between ultra-religious

and secular. And specifically, he had lost his parents to COVID. And it was at a

...