This is Unorthodox. I'm one of your hosts, Stephanie Batnik.

Last week was our conversion episode, which is something we spend months working on.

And we usually take the next week off to give our team a break and to eat some cheesecake for shovel oat.

But given everything that's happening in Israel and Gaza,

the frightening escalation of rocket attacks and bombings and death and destruction,

and how confused and scared and angry we know so many of you are,

we decided to get back in the studio and do our best to help ourselves and our listeners process what's going on.

For me, watching from America, I'm saddened and outraged by what can seem like indiscriminate horror,

videos of civilians running into bomb shelters in Tel Aviv or children being killed in Gaza.

We on this show don't have the answers. I don't know that anyone does.

But what we do have are conversations, which can hopefully shed some light,

offer some context, help us understand things just a bit more.

Later on today's show, we bring you an audio diary from the bomb shelters of Tel Aviv,

recorded by Carrie Keller-Lim and Alisa Landis, host of the podcast, Us Among the Israelis.

And stick around till the end of the show, when L. shares a message from all of us at Unorthodox.

But first, a conversation with Israeli journalist Mati Friedman.

He's a regular tablet contributor and his latest article, Jerusalem of Glue,

highlights the gap between the outward narrative of conflict

and the more cohesive day-to-day reality on the ground in the Holy City.

He's been on the show before, most recently talking about his book Spies of No Country,

Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel.

Mati, welcome back to the show.

...