“Never Again” evokes the promise of no more genocide, as the world has learned the lessons of history and the Holocaust. But “Never Again” has a different connotation for the Jewish People — and helps us understand the decisions Israel is making in fighting this war against Hamas.

Hamas’ massacre unleashed a worldwide wave of hatred and vilification against Israel and the Jewish People, summed up in the noxious idea of “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea” — a call for the destruction of Israel. Leftist ideology, classic antisemitism, and Israel demonization all play a role in this stunning display of moral blindness.

Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza is underway. It is difficult, dangerous, and deadly fighting that has already claimed dozens of Israeli soldiers. The goal is to eliminate Hamas. But what about afterwards? Today we’ll look at five options for post-war Gaza.

In the constant struggle to keep up with what’s happening, how can we understand what we’re seeing on the news? The media ecosystem often accepts Hamas’ claims uncritically, while Israel’s are subjected to days of scrutiny and doubt. Skepticism and patience are our best tools to navigate the complexities here.

What does Iran have to do with Israel’s war against Hamas? A lot! We’re zooming out to look at Iran and it’s proxy army, Hezbollah, the terrorist group threatening to start a war along Israel’s northern border.

Day Eleven of the war between Hamas and Israel. For years Israel has brought sick Palestinian children into Israel for lifesaving medical care. Hamas responded by sadistically massacring Israeli children. Today we’re talking about Hamas and its intersection with Gaza’s history, crucial context for understanding how we got to this moment.

Unimaginable savagery in the worst attack on the Jewish People since the Holocaust. It's a declaration of war by Hamas, the genocidal group dedicated to the complete destruction of Israel. What's going on? How did we get here? What's next?

Black September cruelly murders 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The local police are helpless to resist, the rescue operation goes wrong, the world watches on live TV, and Golda Meir sees that, once again, Jews are being killed on European soil.

A civil war in Jordan between King Hussein and the PLO threatens to bring in Israel and its neighbors. Though a victory for Jordan, it created one of the most deadly terrorist groups that Israel would face: Black September. A daring commando operation thwarts an airplane hijacking, but that would prove to be just the beginning of the group’s ambitions.

The early 1970s saw the rise of the Israeli Black Panthers — a movement of young Mizrahi Jews fed up with systematic inequality and social discrimination that left Jews from the Middle East and North Africa lagging behind the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe. The met their match in Prime Minister Golda Meir, whose disapproval only fueled their efforts to wake Israeli society up to their plight.

Israel was founded to provide a safe place for Jewish life to flourish. But by the late 1960s, millions of Jews remained trapped in the Soviet Union, refused the emigration visas necessary to leave. The plight of these “refuseniks” kicked off an international campaign to free them, and in 1969, eighteen Jews wrote to Prime Minister Golda Meir explaining why they looked to Israel for rescue.

Rabbi Moshe Levinger was all in favor of building settlements in the West Bank, but with a twist: he thought confrontation with the Israeli government, rather than cooperation, was the way to achieve a Jewish foothold in their historic land. He set his sights on establishing the first urban settlement in the heart of Hebron: one of Judaism’s oldest cities, now populated exclusively by Arabs.

Palestinians hit on a winning formula for attacking Israel and publicizing their own cause: airplane hijackings. And Prime Minister Levi Eshkol dies, replaced by Israel’s first (and so far only) female prime minister, Golda Meir. By turns empathetic and aloof, ideological and pragmatic, pioneering and traditional, Golda came into office struggling to reconcile the Israel of her dreams with the changing country before her.

The Six Day War did not mean the end of fighting, just a new phase. At a summit in Khartoum the Arabs rejected peace, negotiation, and recognition of Israel, leaving violence as the only acceptable option. Egypt and Israel began fighting the War of Attrition, while Yasser Arafat’s PLO terrorist group challenged Israel’s patience and strength. These events and the Occupation engendered a developing new Palestinian identity.

Israel's second settlement in the Occupied Territories was Kfar Etzion, established in the West Bank on the ruins of a destroyed Jewish kibbutz. It was the first settlement of the Religious Zionism movement, merging the ideas of Zionist settlement with messianic redemption, and spawned both public support and criticism.

Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territory began just five weeks after the Six Day War, in a small community called Merom Golan on the Syrian border. This was not a right-wing nationalist endeavor but a left-wing socialist one, intended to reinvigorate the Zionist Movement with the spirit of the early pioneering generations. But wait — isn’t this illegal under international law?

Today we’re laying the conceptual foundations of the Occupation and Israel’s decisions immediately after the Six Day War. Having found itself in charge of an empire — territory three times its own size, with 1.2 million Palestinians — Israel flailed about for a coherent strategy to meet the challenges posed by the land, the people in it, and competing political agendas of Israel’s leaders.

In the days and weeks following the Six Day War, Israel made three big decisions regarding Jerusalem: to raze the Mughrabi Quarter to create a central plaza in front of the Western Wall, to bestow exclusive religious rights on the Tempe Mount to the Muslims, and to annex East Jerusalem to create a unified Israeli capital. Each of these decisions had lasting consequences.

For six days Israel fought. On the seventh day it rested. What was the impact on Israelis, and Jews around the world? How did they come to understand the greatest Jewish military victory in two thousand years? It turns out the reaction was very mixed.

On June 5, 1967, Israel destroyed the air forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in a matter of hours, kicking off what would become one of the greatest victories of modern military history. Israel thought it was fighting a defensive war for survival but instead captured five Arab territories that tripled its size. It was so surprising that, 56 years later, Israel is in many ways still dealing with the consequences. This episode takes a broad look at the six days of war that kicked off a whole...

Season 7 begins! This is an action-packed season exploring ten crucial years in Israel, 1967-1977. We'll hear about wars and The Occupation, triumphant rescues and the tragedy of the Munich Olympics, the settlements and the rise of the right-wing. We're kicking off with the run-up to the Six Day War and an introduction to some of the ideological ideas crucial for understanding this era.

Why the sudden burst of horrific violence in the West Bank this week? Hamas is making a play to take over the West Bank, ratcheting up attacks on Israel. And Israeli settler extremists are emboldened by support from their government to ramp up their own attacks on Palestinians, including the destruction of the village of Huwara. A weak Palestinian Authority that can’t provide security…plus increased Israeli raids targeted terrorists…all makes for a highly combustible situation that many fear...

Why are hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting in the streets? Why are global headlines screaming about the end of Israeli democracy? The country is griped by a profound crisis over the independence of its judicial system, as its ultra right-wing government tries to pass legislation reforming the Supreme Court. Come find out how we got here and what Israeli's are so angry about.

Israel just held its 5th election in 4 years, returning former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power on a hard right-wing ticket. What's going on? It's a tug of war for Israel's soul between two opposing camps: Democratic Israel and Jewish Israel. In this quick post-election analysis, we'll delve into what happened, why, and where we go from here.

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan redefined Judaism as an “evolving religious civilization” in need of reconstruction for the 20th century. He emphasized Jewish peoplehood, in all its complexity and diversity, as the central pillar of Jewish life and culture, and as the means of survival for Judaism in modern society. From the Bat Mitzvah to the Jewish community center, Kaplan’s ideas have since permeated into nearly all aspects of American Jewish life.