Hey friends, before we begin this episode of unpacking Israeli history, I wanted to let you know that coming up in just a few weeks, we will be making a question and answer episode, which I'm really psyched for.

If you have a good name for these episodes please let me know.

What's happened is that over the years since we've launched the show

people have been sending in some really fantastic questions, some of which we've actually used as the basis for new episodes.

With these new question and answer episodes, we're going to do something slightly different.

I'm going to tackle questions that are just a little smaller, a little smaller.

They can be about Israeli history, about the way we tell stories, about anything at all,

Jewish history and these sorts of broader questions.

So I'm asking you, send me questions.

And shoot me a note, as you know, at Noam

at Jewish unpacked.com.

I want to hear your questions. Can't wait to hear from you.

I'm recording this podcast in August of 2024, less than a year out from the worst day in

modern Jewish history post holocaust the murder of

1200 Israelis the abduction of 250 more the awful awful months that have

followed with the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths Palestinian deaths, the vitriol, the polarization,

the ugliness on the streets of New York City, and Berlin, and Paris and Sydney, the

stress of opening the proverbial paper and wondering what bad news we're about to read, the fear that many people like me feel when wearing or not wearing a Yamaka publicly, and the uncertainty we've all been living with since the 7th of October,

the feeling that anything could happen, that there's no one at the wheel.

But this is a podcast about complexity and nuance and shades of gray, and I'm about to say something

that will sound on its face kind of insane, and then I will contradict myself, well kind of.

Despite the horrors of the past 10 months, I still think

...