This week, Jerusalem marks two years since the murder of our beloved Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

In March 2025, freed hostage Or Levy shared a photo of his arm showing a new tattoo: “He who has a why can bear with any how.” It is a statement Hersh shared with him on their 52nd day of captivity, inspired by Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

“This sentence accompanied me ever since and to this day, and perhaps thanks to it, I was able to survive this terrible inferno,” Or wrote. “My ‘why’ is [my son] Almog and I knew that I would survive anything—no matter how difficult it was—for him.”

Levy was released home in February 2025, only finding out then that his wife, Eynav, was killed on October 7. He writes that he knew in captivity that when he returned home, he wanted to get a tattoo with that quote so that he would never forget it.

On the two-year anniversary of October 7, I heard Rachel Goldberg-Polin speak at the Boyer High School in Jerusalem, where my daughter is a student. After sharing stories about the love, light, and joy that filled her son’s life, she handed out stickers to the students, inviting each of them to discover their own “why.”

The sticker has remained on my fridge ever since.

So today, in honour of Hersh and all those seeking purpose through pain, I am pleased to share Finding Our Why, a new TJI podcast exploring the many ways we can find a sense of mission and hope during these challenging times.

My co-host for this journey is Courtney Winter-Peters, an accomplished community leader with a huge heart and a commitment to justice for all.

Our formative life experiences both began in Melbourne, after which Courtney built her family’s next chapter on the Gold Coast, while I moved to Jerusalem. This move away from home to find a new story is a significant part of this podcast. As is our grappling with questions about the heartbreak in this world, especially why bad things happen to so many good people.

Now, both in our 40s, we are engaging in honest, curious dialogue about what is beautiful and worth preserving in our tradition, while confronting the parts that make us uncomfortable.

If you are searching for meaning during these turbulent times, I invite you to join us on this interactive podcast journey.

Listener feedback is warmly welcomed via email, WhatsApp, or voice notes. We truly want you to be a part of the conversation.

findingourwhy@thejewishindependent.com.au

This podcast is an initiative of The Jewish Independent.

—
Friends in Jerusalem are invited to this special memorial for Hersh on Friday.

May his memory be a blessing
May his memory be peace

This week, two reports about sexual violence landed within hours of each other, and the world split along the lines it always does when Israel and Palestine are involved.

The first was Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” based on interviews with 14 Palestinians who described sexual abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers, prison guards, settlers and interrogators. The second was “Silenced No More,” a 300-page report from the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, two years in the making, documenting systematic, widespread sexual violence, rape, gang rape, sexual torture, mutilation, and postmortem abuse perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 and against hostages in captivity.

Both reports deal with real human beings who suffered real violations of their bodies and their dignity. Both deserve to be read, grieved over, and acted upon. Instead, each was weaponised.

Kristof’s piece has genuine weaknesses worth acknowledging. Despite Kristoff admitting that there is “no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes,” his article links to a tweet from Shaiel Ben Ephraim that claims there is a “good deal of evidence” that “Israel uses dogs to sexually abuse prisoners.” Some Palestinian voices who believe abuse occurred, including anti-Hamas activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, said some of Kristof’s cited sources have “troubling records on accuracy and associations.” Middle East analyst Eli Kowaz also noted the poor choice of sources by Kristfoff, arguing that the documented cases against Ben Gvir’s prison system don’t need Euro-Med as a source. Using it has given many people who care about Israel a way out to avoid grappling with the issue of what has happened here under the watch of the Oztma Yehudit Minister for National Security.

Yet the core of what Kristof reported, strip searches used as humiliation, beatings of genitals during interrogation, sexual abuse in detention, is corroborated by the UN Special Rapporteur, by B’Tselem, and by the West Bank Protection Consortium. In January, the Public Defender’s Office of the Israeli Justice Ministry showed that Palestinian security detainees held in Israeli prisons have suffered from severe and systematic violence from prison guards, deprivation of food, and medical neglect, while also having been subjected to unsanitary conditions that caused and exacerbated outbreaks of disease in the prisons.

Inspectors from the Public Defence Office who visited four prisons in 2024 documented seeing skeletal prisoners and witnessing physical evidence of beatings and medical neglect on the bodies of prisoners they interviewed.

The reports were made public after a year-long legal battle by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which filed a freedom of information request to gain access to the documents, after the Justice Ministry refused to release them.

Israeli news outlets such as The Times of Israel and Kan have also reported on the sexual abuse perpetrated by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian village of Khirbet Humsa in March 2026, including a response from Rav Yehuda Gilad from the Ma’ale Gilboa yeshiva asking, “What has become of us?”

On the other hand, the Israeli government’s response was to call the entire Kristoff piece “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press”, a formulation that forecloses any serious engagement with the documented cases that do have corroboration.

The Civil Commission’s report is on much stronger evidentiary ground: two years of work, 430 interviews, and 10,000 photographs and videos—many filmed by the perpetrators themselves. The material is cross-referenced, geolocated, and built to withstand denial. It has been endorsed by Hillary Clinton, Irwin Cotler, former UN genocide adviser Alice Wairimu Nderitu, and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Hamas has denied everything, as it consistently does.

Grayzone journalist Aaron Maté, who has close to half a million followers on X, responded by questioning the credibility of the author Dr. Cochav Elkayam Levy, winner of the 2024 Israel Prize, calling her a “documented fraudster,” and adding that “those who launder Oct 7 propaganda to manufacture support for the Gaza genocide only continue to reveal their full depravity.”

Earlier this year, Grace Tame, Australian of the Year in 2021 for her campaigning against child sexual abuse, was asked on ABC Radio why she had not spoken out on behalf of Israeli women raped and killed on October 7. She replied: “I am not going to sink to the level of entertaining any kind of propaganda.” When pressed, she added: “Those things have been debunked.”

Elkayam-Levy responded with an open invitation: “I invite her to come here to bear witness. We have documented it in a way that is irrefutable. She can look at image after image, video after video we cannot publicly broadcast because families still don’t know what happened to their loved ones. I invite her to look into the eyes of the hostages, the survivors. To speak to the mothers of Shani Louk and Naama Levy.” The report, she said, was built precisely to make such denial impossible going forward.

Yet even this report is not without a limitation: it cannot provide a total number of victims, because so many were murdered, scenes were destroyed, and forensic documentation in the immediate chaos was incomplete. Its author, Elkayam-Levy has in the past disseminated a story to international media about Palestinians on October 7 “slicing the belly of a pregnant woman”, a story proven to be untrue. Yet that doesn’t mean it should be dismissed outright.

As someone who has spent several years writing about the possibility of Israeli-Palestinian peace, I believe it remains achievable, but reading these two reports in the same 24 hours was shattering.

What made me so sad was not the violence itself, as horrific as that is. It was the responses.

Israeli officials called Kristof’s piece a “blood libel” without pausing to acknowledge the cases with genuine corroboration. Some Pro-Palestinian voices dismissed the Civil Commission report as Israeli propaganda, having previously said, “fake rape claims provide cover for genocide, demonise all Palestinians, convince Israeli society that the brutal war is justified.”

And across social media, on both sides, the same dreary logic played out: my side’s victims are real, yours are political.

This is what dehumanization looks like in its advanced stages. It is not only the willingness to commit sexual violence against the enemy. It is the inability to grieve it. The inability to say: a human being was violated, and that is a catastrophe, regardless of which side committed it.

I think about the families of the Nova festival survivors. I think about the Palestinian men who described to Kristof being penetrated with batons and being told their families would be killed if they spoke. I think about Romi Gonen, who endured repeated sexual assault over 471 horrific days of Hamas captivity.

I think about Sami al-Sai, a freelance journalist from Tulakrem, who was molested and raped by prison guards, and later asked to become an informant for Israeli intelligence.

I think about the Palestinian women who said guards came to strip them at the start of every shift. And finally, think about the testimony of Nova survivor Darin Komarov who said, “You hear it. It’s right next to you. You hear the screams . . . and then you hear silence.”

These are not abstractions. These are human beings made in the image of God, b’tzelem Elohim, and what was done to their bodies is an abomination. All of it.

The ability to feel the suffering of the other side does not make a ‘moral equivalence’ between Hamas and Israeli prison guards. It is the absolute minimum requirement for any future in which Israelis and Palestinians share this land in something other than permanent, mutually inflicted hell.

When the sexual abuse of your enemy produces no grief in you, you have lost something that cannot be recovered through military victory or legal prosecution. You have lost the capacity to make peace.

I am not naive about what peace requires. It requires security. It requires accountability. It requires dismantling the structures that produce both Hamas’s violence and the abuse of Palestinian detainees. It requires the kind of painstaking, two-year work of documentation that the Civil Commission did and the kind of on-the-ground reporting, however imperfect, that Kristof attempted.

But before any of that, it requires grief. Unilateral, non-strategic, honest grief for what human beings do to other human beings when dehumanisation goes all the way down. This week, I looked for that grief in the responses to both reports. I found almost none. And that, more than the violence itself, is what tells me how far we still have to go before this land will be shared with freedom and equality for all.

I was initially reluctant to read or listen to the book. While Rachel is a gifted speaker whose humility, wisdom and deep learning are a source of awe, I know how Hersh’s story ended, and I wasn’t sure that I was ready to revisit a time that still feels so raw. On the other hand, I was deeply curious to understand what was in this book that had made it a New York Times #1 best seller, and why more than any other post-October 7 book, this was resonating with so many people across the world.

So we began hearing Rachel’s words as a nightly ritual. Hearing the narration in her own voice, with a tone that ranged from dark, sarcastic humour to tears and shouts of indignation, was a remarkable experience. At certain moments where she was recounting conversations held in her living room over the past two years, it felt like Carm, Rachel, Jon and I were all seated around a table for shabbat meal, where all questions were on the table, except for the dreaded “how are you?”

The book is deeply graphic and very disturbing, with intimate details of the suffering, torture, starvation and brutality Hersh endured from the moment he was stolen from the Nova party to his murder in a tunnel in Gaza 328 days later. At times, I felt like I was reading The Diary of Anne Frank, yet instead of Anne’s sweet, innocent voice, the narrator was her father, Otto Frank. It made me realise that the famous diary of a teenage girl hiding in an attic would have been much more depressing had it been written by one of her family members, for the pain of seeing our loved ones suffer is almost always worse than the pain we feel ourselves.

The book has many villains. The men who stole Hersh, the men who pretended to care about him, and the men who could have saved him but didn’t. None of these men are ever named, but one can feel the intense anger Rachel feels towards all of them. Yet to avoid speaking Lashon Hara (speech that is negative or harmful to someone, which is forbidden in Jewish law) Rachel chooses instead to let them remain anonymous, yet should they ever choose to read this book, they will know exactly who they are. This is the first part of the book, which I describe as Righteous Anger.

צילום: Amir Levy, Getty Images - Jon and Rachel at the Gaza Fence

It’s hard not to feel all the rage and pain that Rachel does, as she describes each failed opportunity in great detail, especially the secret meeting in Geneva where a plan was formulated to save Hersh, which never went into action because someone they trusted in the government had a big mouth and blabbed about the plan before it could become a reality.

In between these stories of those who disappointed Rachel, there are many stories of heroes, who are not only named but also honoured, loved, praised, and exalted. Chief among the book’s heroes is Or Levy, whose name literally means ‘light’. Or was held hostage for 491 days, part of it in captivity with Hersh. In his first meeting with Jon and Rachel, he shared how Hersh taught him the mantra that gave him life, “He who has a why, can bear with any how.” The words remain etched on his arm to this day.

Between the stories of greatness, Rachel shares some profound teachings about Jewish philosophy. One that especially resonated with me was about how we can’t choose the time of our passing, as this has already been ordained on the day of our birth. It’s called “Death in Tehran,” and it appears in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

For Rachel, the parable’s message is simple and devastating: destiny cannot be outrun. The harder you try to escape it, the faster you run straight into it.

She then extends this into a theological framework for Hersh’s death, describing this world not as a destination but as a passageway, a hallway we move through to prepare for what comes next. And if that’s true, she reasons, then what Hersh and the other five hostages who were murdered alongside him endured was a hallway within a hallway within a hallway. They arrived in the world to come carrying the purest of hearts, and pieces of their parents’ hearts along with them.

The story offers her a way to accept that Hersh’s death was fixed, that no amount of racing around the world to presidents and popes, no loudspeaker calls to Gaza, could have altered it. And it connects her to Hersh’s own inner life during captivity. The fact that the parable comes from the very book Hersh was sharing with fellow hostages underground makes it spiritually charged for her, almost as if he left it there for her to find.

The title of the book, When We See You Again, is the answer she draws from all of this: she is certain the reunion will come, just in a different hallway. Rachel’s narration of the final chapter, which shares the book’s title, is probably the only moment I could describe her tone as electrified, maybe even joyful.

Rachel describes the moment she will meet Hersh again in the afterlife as one where they will come running toward each other with great excitement, where Hersh will again have two hands to embrace his mother, Jon, Orli, and Libby. Rachel says her “ear will be suctioned to his chest” to hear his heart beating a rhythm that will beat forever.

It’s a beautiful scene, and despite my secular outlook on life after death, it almost made me believe in the existence of an afterlife myself. Because what could be more beautiful and nourishing for humans than to believe that we will one day gather again with those we loved the most.

During the 328 days of Hersh’s captivity, it was impossible to walk more than a hundred meters in South Jerusalem, especially around Baka, Katamon, the German Colony, the Greek Colony, Park HaMesila, Arnona, and Talbiyeh, without seeing a poster, sticker, graffiti, flag, or banner calling to Bring Hersh Home. Unlike the banners for the other hostages that have largely been removed, many for Hersh still remain. Some are the same signs as when he was in captivity, now accompanied by many more honoring his legacy and memory, sometimes just with the words “Forever Hersh.”

Something I noticed as my wife and I walked the streets of these neighborhoods listening to the audiobook was that at different moments, signs of Hersh kept making appearances before us.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but the moment we heard Rachel describe her interpretation of the Akeida, we passed a statue of Abraham and a ram in the Jerusalem Nature Museum.

At the moment she was talking about Hakel, the beautiful minyan that held the Goldberg-Polin family like angels throughout their ordeal, we walked past the Baka community centre, where this holy community gathers to pray each Shabbat. When Rachel spoke about the pain of the 45 hostage families that received their loved ones home in body bags, we passed graffiti that read “ad hachatuf ha’acharon,” a slogan used at many protest rallies I attended meaning “until the last hostage.”

While all the hostages are now home, no one ever meant for 45 to return as bullet-ridden corpses. So the graffiti remains on the wall, as a testament to the gap between what we fought for and what we got. This is a part of the book I describe as Forever Pain.

Rachel has no intention of letting the pain go, and she doesn’t believe it’s even possible. Instead, she has reframed it as a badge of love, something to be worn rather than shed, because the love keeps growing even when the person is gone. Looking at that graffiti, I understood what she meant. Some things aren’t meant to be erased.

Yet the most powerful sign for me was what happened at the end of the book, where Jon Polin reads a letter written to Hersh, that concludes with the message “May his memory be a revolution.” At that moment, we were standing outside the Hartman School for Boys, where a banner with Hersh’s beautiful face smiled down on us with those exact words.

Jon shared a story of a man who told him that he has a picture of Hersh as the wallpaper on his phone, so that every morning when he wakes up, the first thing he thinks about is how to find his ‘why’, and how to do good in the world.

Living in South Jerusalem, I don’t need Hersh on my home screen because his face, voice, and legacy live on everywhere I walk, in all the people in this neighbourhood who continue to believe in something greater than themselves, whether fighting for the rights of asylum seekers, Palestinians suffering from settler violence, or economic and gender inequality. My neighbourhood is home to more NGOs working to fix these problems than almost any other in Jerusalem.

Rachel concludes her book by saying that when Hersh was alive, she knew exactly what her ‘why’ was: to bring him home. After he was murdered, her ‘why’ was to use her enormous public profile to bring the rest of the hostages home. Now, she is searching for meaning, like all of us.

I hope she finds it soon. But until she does, all I can do is express my gratitude for the wonderful gift she has given me, hearing her words in my ears over the past month, challenging me, Carm, and all our friends to do better, to fight for life, honesty, beauty, and a Judaism worthy of Hersh’s memory.

Cartoon by Shoshke Engelmayer

—

Ittay Flescher is the author of The Holy and the Broken: A Cry for Peace from a Land that Must be Shared.

40 days. That’s how long Moses was up on Sinai. It’s also how long my family and friends have been in and out of bomb shelters day and night, and the time my two children haven’t seen the friendly faces of their teachers and friends at school. 40 days of stale air, the booming thud of interceptions, and the hollow exhaustion that comes from realising your government’s only plan is “more.”

In the Torah, when the 40 days felt too long, the people panicked. They lost their way and built a Golden Calf. They wanted a God they could see, something hard and shiny that promised immediate power.

Today, we are worshipping a different Golden Calf: The belief that war can solve our problems. After the immense upheaval to every aspect of our lives that so many Israelis endured over the past 40 days, a KAN poll today found that 56% still oppose the two-week ceasefire. On the day the ceasefire was announced, Zionist opposition parties blasted Netanyahu for failing to secure the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program, restriction of its ballistic missiles and a halt to its support for terrorist proxies. But none of these goals was ever possible by war alone.

We’ve convinced ourselves that if we strike harder, wait longer, or “re-establish deterrence,” we’ll find peace. But war isn’t a solution; it’s an idol. It demands the sacrifice of our sons and daughters, and it offers nothing in return but more rubble and more mourning.

In times like this, I find myself thinking about the end of Pesach in late Ottoman Palestine. Back then, there was a beautiful tradition:

Muslim neighbours would bring their Jewish friends a copper bowl filled with fresh bread, goat’s butter, and honey to celebrate the end of the fast. Jewish neighbours would return that same bowl filled with matzot and homemade jam.

It wasn’t just an exchange of food; it was a recognition of shared humanity.

Now, as this “two-week ceasefire” begins, brokered by Pakistan and fueled by the exhaustion of Iran, the US, and Israel, everyone is scrambling to claim “victory.” Yet they are also holding onto their weapons, promising to resume the fighting if the negotiations don’t go their way.

While the Israeli generals talk about “strategic gains,” against Hezbollah and Iran, I am sitting here in the dark, deeply afraid.

I am afraid for my kids, who think the sound of a siren is a normal part of childhood.

I am afraid for my neighbours in Lebanon, in the West Bank, Gaza, and especially in Iran.

I know the algorithms on social media want me to see them as “the enemy,” but I can’t stop thinking about the parents on the other side of those borders who have also spent the last 40 days in the dark, clutching their children, praying for the same sunrise I am.

We are all being sacrificed to the same Golden Calf. We are breaking the tablets of our shared history for a “victory” that doesn’t exist.

To change this course of history, ordinary citizens across the Middle East need to resist the narratives of dehumanisation that tell us our neighbours’ lives are less worthy than our own. We need to learn the languages of the other, Farsi, Hebrew, Arabic, listen to each other’s music and understand the beauty of each other’s festivals. Finally, we need to choose political leaders, women and men, who have the courage and skill to make brave compromises for peace. Many roadmaps can guide us on this journey, both for Israel and Palestine, and the Middle East as a whole.

From here in Jerusalem, I look forward to celebrating a true victory on the day when the Iranian people stand tall, unburdened by a regime of domination, where women can again sing songs of life and freedom.

I long for a Middle East where our most potent weapons are the words and ideas that insist my neighbour’s dignity is the only true mirror of my own.

I long for an Israel where our resilience and innovation are celebrated for the heroism of those who forge long-lasting peace agreements.

May we work for a day in Jerusalem when the fresh bread, goats’ butter and home-made jam are once again passed across the threshold, not as a memory of what was, but as a promise of what we have finally chosen to become.

Shabbat Shalom

Eating maror has always been the worst part of my Seder, and the food that made least sense to me. Why eat bitter herbs when we are free? In previous years when it was time to eat maror, a reminder that ancient Egyptians embittered the lives of the Israelites with crushing labour, I would always smother it in as much sweet charoset as possible to avoid the horrible taste in my mouth - and prevent my eyes from tearing up on what should be a joyful night.

This year, I have no desire to make the bitter food sweet. There are three reasons for this.

First, for the past month, my family and friends have been living under constant missile attack from Iran. From 3am in the morning to 11pm at night, in the middle of a meal, bus ride, or deep sleep, sirens, booms, bomb shelters. Several times a day. Dozens of Israelis have lost their lives, hundreds have been seriously injured, and thousands are displaced from their homes.

While Iranians very much deserve to be free of their horrific leadership, this war isn’t even close to achieving that goal. It has caused so much suffering and displacement across the Middle East and sadly has no end in sight. This is a cause of great bitterness to me.

Second, last week a dear Palestinian friend and colleague of mine in Jerusalem informed me that a loved one in her family was killed in a brutal act of settler violence in the West Bank. While comforting her as best as I could, I had no answer when she asked if the settler would ever be held accountable for his crimes against her family. This, too, is a cause of great bitterness to me.

Third, from Bondi to Toronto, Detroit to Golders Green, the level of hatred my people are experiencing across the world, based on conspiracy theories that only grow stronger by the day, is staggering. No matter how much money is invested in security, public advocacy and tougher penalties for those who peddle hate, I can’t see the scourge of antisemitism disappearing any time soon. This is a cause of immense bitterness to me.

As someone that has written many articles and even a book on how to best deal with all these problems facing Israelis, Palestinians and the Jewish people - and I still hold hope for a different reality - it is clear to me that for the foreseeable future, what lies ahead is more bitterness than sweetness.

No matter how the Iran war ends, it’s unlikely Israel will be closing bomb shelters any time soon. Regardless of how many Israeli and Diaspora leaders sign important statements against settler violence that harms my Palestinian friends and their loved ones, it’s unlikely this horrific phenomenon will end any time soon.

And no matter how thoughtful and considered the findings of the Royal Commission may be, it’s unlikely that my dear Australian friends and family will live in a country free of antisemitism any time soon.

How does one hold all these understandings at the same time? By eating maror. By chewing on the bitter herbs until tears well up in the eyes, and the mouth burns.

Maror is one of the three core biblically mandated foods of the Seder night (alongside the Paschal lamb and matzah). It’s meant to connect us to one of Pesach’s central themes: that each person is obligated to see themselves as if they personally suffered in and left Egypt. You don’t just hear the story — you taste it.

We are even commanded to say a blessing over this miserable experience. Saying a bracha over a hurtful and distasteful moment can sometimes be a difficult thing to do. It’s based on the biblical command that “a person is obligated to bless God for the evil as much as the good”.

No joy without overcoming struggle

The Kotzker Rebbe develops this idea of blessing God for tragedy as well as success by explaining, “there is nothing as whole as a broken heart”. If you feel whole, you have no room for growth. A broken heart, however, is open. It acknowledges its own deficiencies and yearns for something greater. In this state of honesty and vulnerability, the person is actually “wholest” because they are most authentic.

This idea was beautifully illustrated in a film clip produced by Projecting Freedom, cinematic Interpretations of the Haggadah, depicting a real recorded conversation between a father and his secular son. The conversation, presented as an animation by the son, Hanan Harchol, reframes a ritual I’ve performed my whole life into a profound lesson on human agency.

The dialogue makes a powerful distinction between experiencing bitterness and becoming a bitter person. We often think of the maror merely as a historical re-enactment of Egyptian slavery, but as the father in the video suggests, it’s actually a tool for psychological and spiritual resilience.

Just like we can’t have a Garden of Eden without a snake, and childbirth without pain, and joy without depression, so too, we can’t have freedom without tasting slavery. If we only ever tasted the apple dipped in honey, our choices wouldn’t carry any weight. By commanding us to eat bitter herbs, the tradition isn’t punishing us. It reminds us that no celebration of joy has ever come without struggle and sadness.

That’s the place many of us find ourselves in at this moment of history. Before us is a radical choice to believe between despair and hope, between fatalism and action. At the Seder, we take that bite of maror intentionally to remind ourselves that while we cannot always control what life serves us, we can control whether we swallow it or let it swallow us.

Ultimately, we consume maror so the maror doesn’t consume us.

—

This piece was first published on The Jewish Independent
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/maror-bitterness-hope-resilience

As I embark upon my East Coast book tour for The Holy and the Broken in March, I’m inspired to speak about what I’m for rather than what I’m against, just like the Super Bowl show.

If hope, and a clear vision for a just and equal future for all Israelis and Palestinians is something you’d like to hear about, I look forward to seeing you at one of these events. Register at Ittay.au

The Holy and the Broken challenges Palestinian and Israeli leaders, citizens, and their supporters worldwide to imagine a different reality in a book that will comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable. In 2025, it was longlisted for the Walkley Book Award, and in 2026, it was shortlisted for the 75th National Jewish Book Award.

For inquiries about any of these events, reach out to me through my website.

Drawing on my work as the Education Director at Kids4Peace Jerusalem, a programme of Seeds of Peace, the book encourages readers to imagine a different reality, one grounded in empathy, understanding, and a future rooted in freedom and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Jerusalem

England

Johannesburg, South Africa

Registration required for events in the UK and South Africa

Hope to see you there

Shabbat Shalom

Ittay

On all other nights, young men and women stolen from their families should be at home, yet 18 months on, 59 of our beloved are still languishing in captivity.

On all other nights, millions of men, women and children in Gaza should be able to swim freely in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, yet on this night, the salt water they drink and cry fills their world as they continue to endure a war that has no end.

As we gather for this meal of freedom, which celebrates our liberation from slavery, we invite four children to the table:

The simple child says: War hurts my heart, and I wish it would end
The wicked child says: I will not look beyond my echo chamber from the place where I am right
The wise child says: This is a sacred land for two people, a land that must and will be shared
And the child who does not know how to ask: They sit in silence in shiva homes and mourning tents across this land

This season of spring and rebirth is the time to end the cycle of death and destruction.
To reject political leadership that incites hatred and revenge with coalitions that build security, freedom and justice for all.
To replace the men who can’t negotiate a deal with Palestinian and Israeli mothers who can lead with compassion and a vision for a better future.

To recall the story of Pharaoh’s daughter--one woman who demonstrated profound courage and humanity in the face of mass cruelty. A woman who had everything, yet chose to follow her values against the national current, against power, and against her very own family, risking herself to save the life of an enemy’s child, and ultimately the life and future of an entire people.

Next year in Jerusalem, let the mountain air we breathe infuse our lungs with hope and affirm our common desire to exist in freedom in the land of our ancestors.
Next year in Jerusalem, let this holy city be a home for all its residents

לשנה הבאה בירושלים של שלום
العام القادم في قدس السلام

—

Ittay Flescher is the author of The Holy and the Broken: A Cry for Israeli-Palestinian Peace from a Land that Must be Shared. For resources on peacebuilding in your community, visit https://www.ittay.au/what-can-i-do

As a result of dehumanisation, the vast majority of us believe that the “other side” not only doesn’t want peace, but largely wants “our” side dead. We tend to think that the “other side” are all liars unless they are proposing views that reflect our deepest fears and stereotypes of them.

Consuming immense amounts of polarising information on social media causes many to suffer from a fundamental attribution error: we assume that our radicals are exceptional, while the other side’s radicals are definitive. On the flip side, in the cases where Palestinian and Israeli civilians or leaders express calls for peace or empathy, they are branded as liars or traitors who are not speaking the truth about their future dreams. Therefore, a key element for change is adopting a new way of thinking.

For us to share this land, we both must believe that when the day comes that we choose to stop inflicting violence, the other will respond by ending their campaigns of violence against us. Nurturing and spreading this belief was the key to ending the troubles in Northern Ireland, and it is a belief we will also need to adopt here.

Words of wisdom on the wall of the Garrick Bar in Northern Ireland

For Jewish Israelis, this could mean returning to the approach of Rabbi Hillel from the Talmud, who taught: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.” For Palestinian Muslims and Christians, this could involve re-embracing the Hadith of the prophet Muhammad: “None of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself”, or the words of Jesus: “In everything, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

It will mean having more women in leadership positions who can bring a wider array of perspectives and creative solutions for conflict to the negotiating table, leading to structural changes that provide security for all.

To stop the violence, we need to believe that there are partners for peace on the other side, by embracing shared learning opportunities and building more social, religious and political institutions based on the principles of justice and equality. Without increasing lived experiences of coexistence, we will always go back to the memories of fear and hatred that have plagued this land for so many years.

One of the best ways to dispel the belief that compromise is a weakness is to take responsibility for the injustices caused in the name of our national struggles. To hold those who commit war crimes accountable in our own courts of Palestine and Israel before the International Criminal Court needs to intervene. To believe that our conflict has solutions, and that compromise is an act of strength and courage for the wellbeing of future generations. It must also involve acknowledging the massive power imbalance between Israel and Palestine.

It means Palestinians believing that Jews in Israel are not colonisers and that they have a deep historical connection to this land, and that their security fears are real and not just made up in response to the Holocaust. It means Jews believing that Palestinians comprise a real nation with deep roots in this land with the undeniable right to self-determination and freedom in their only homeland.

While I may not have the means to convince the majority of people of these truths today, I firmly believe that if we set our sights on making these beliefs mainstream within the next 10 years, it will be the most effective way to prevent the next war and eventually share this land with peace and dignity for all.
—
Register for Australian Book Launch events at ittay.au

This book has been my labour of love since October 7. Beyond being a diary and a friend, it’s the story of my life, the story of this city, Jerusalem, of Israelis and Palestinians, this holy land, and how it can be shared. I’m so grateful to HarperCollins for believing in this project and being such an amazing publisher to work with over the past year. 

I hope this book achieves the same goal I set for all the classes I ever taught from Melbourne to Jerusalem and beyond, which is to comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable. 

In bookstores from January 2025. Pre-order now at ittay.au

Almost immediately after the Hamas attack on October 7, Ittay Flescher, who lives with his family in Jerusalem, began receiving messages from friends and acquaintances in Australia, where he grew up. At first they were to check if he was OK, but then people started reaching out for information: Why did Hamas attack? What’s Israel going to do in Gaza? By the end of October, Flescher, a journalist and teacher, says he was spending an hour a day on phone calls, emails, WhatsApp chats and voice notes explaining what was happening in Israel and the region’s history to an ever-growing circle. Flescher suspects there are two reasons people reached out to him: Before moving to Israel, Flescher had been a high school history teacher at a Jewish day school in Melbourne for 15 years and, since arriving, he has been working with organizations promoting dialogue with Palestinians. “They could read the news,” says Flescher of those contacting him after October 7. “But they wanted me to explain it to them, because they knew me.” 

One of those asking was Hannah Baker. Baker is a family lawyer in Melbourne who knew Flescher through his wife. As October 7 and its aftermath unfolded, Baker began questioning the Israel narrative she had grown up with, but also the narratives that were being bandied about in the media. (Both Flescher and Baker note that the Australian Jewish community as a whole is extremely Zionist. 

“American Jews think of themselves as American first and Jewish second, but Australian Jews are Jewish first, and Australian second,” says Flescher.) After talking to Flescher for hours, Baker, who had created a podcast before and knew the production side, suggested a podcast of their conversations directed toward “people like me who grew up in a Zionist Jewish school and were only taught one narrative growing up.” 

The result, From The Yarra River to the Mediterranean Sea (the Yarra being a river in Melbourne), is a podcast that’s part history lesson, part therapy session and also features interviews with various peacebuilders in the region. Baker often acts like an audience stand-in, asking questions many of us have wondered about or fielded from friends—Who is indigenous to the land? Is Israel a colonial state? What does being a Zionist mean? As Flescher answers, he draws on histories from various perspectives. “I’m not telling history in a standard way—the way either a Palestinian or Israeli would tell history,” he says.“It’s a way a peacemaker would tell history.”  

I stumbled upon this podcast on my social media feed and was quickly drawn to the two hosts, whose frank and empathetic conversations always give careful consideration to the various groups affected by this conflict. “He is the brain and I am the heart,” Baker says with a laugh. Flesher “is so knowledgeable and comes with so many facts, and I internalize the facts” and react emotionally to them, she says. “We are not just talking about history, we are not just talking about politics, we are talking about people’s lives,” she adds.  

So far the podcast has been downloaded 15,000 times—no small feat for something produced independently with no budget—with 80 percent of the downloads coming from Australia. Emailed responses from listeners have poured in explaining how the war has affected their lives, their jobs, their marriages, their schools. This war “has been such a fundamental challenge to the Jewish and Zionist identity of our listeners,” says Flescher. “It affects your Shabbat dinner conversations, it affects the clothes you wear, it affects the friends you have, it affects what you post on social media. And a lot of people are looking for places to process this.”

While the feedback Baker has received is positive, she suspects there are those in the Melbourne Jewish community who dislike the podcast and think now is not the time to be exploring Palestinian perspectives. She has heard that the podcast is the subject of gossip at Shabbat dinner tables in Melbourne but views that as a positive–“at least it’s starting a conversation.”

In some ways Flescher is uniquely equipped to help people process complex stories and emotions. As he describes in one episode, his father was one of the first babies born in the State of Israel after the Declaration of Independence was signed, and he is acutely aware that without the safety afforded by the creation of a Jewish homeland for his refugee grandparents from Germany and Iraq, he would not be alive today. He also tells me his work facilitating and participating in dialogue groups such as the interfaith organization Kids4Peace means there is no one he is unwilling to speak with: “I literally spend all day either facilitating dialogue or having dialogue myself with people I don’t agree with.” This can include anti-Zionists, right-wing Jews or Palestinian nationalists.

Flescher acknowledges that dialogue has become more difficult since October 7—“because every person that lives between the river and the sea became a little bit more nationalist and started leaning a little bit more into their own victimhood”—but he thinks peacebuilding work is just paused, not stopped. “It exists,” Flescher says, speaking about an alternative to extremism in the wake of October 7. “It’s hard. And it takes a long time. But if you want peace in 20 years, you’ve got to start working on it now.”

The podcast will end its 12-episode run next month. For those looking to dive in, I recommend starting with the episode featuring Maoz Inon, a peace activist whose parents were murdered on October 7. Another key episode focuses on various solutions for the region, including the one Flescher favors, a two-state confederation. Flescher and Baker had originally planned to have the podcast run for the duration of the war—but the war has gone on much longer than either of them expected. Perhaps they will do a second season, but for now Baker wants to turn her focus to “what it means to be Jewish in Australia today,” while Flescher is finishing up a book based on From the Yarra River to the Mediterranean Sea. “But I really hope that when the war ends, people will see that we have no choice other than to share this land together,” says Flescher. “And we should do that in peace, because otherwise, we’ll just share graveyards.”

https://momentmag.com/yarra-river-mediterranean-sea-podcast-peace-flescher/

Walking for hours among the shelves and seeing everything from 300-year-old siddurim to modern books on religion, culture and Jewish thought was an incredibly moving experience. In terms of holy places for me, it’s probably as close as you can get to the experience of visiting the Beit HaMikdash, with the added bonus that the library synagogue doesn’t do three daily animal sacrifices each morning noon and night.

For me, the most impressive room on the tour was the Gershom Scholem Collection for Kabbalah and Hasidism. This was the kodesh hakodashim of the library. The sense of serenity and awe one feels when entering this space whose walls are covered with some of the most magnificent works of wisdom our people have ever written is deeply humbling.

The second reason I have been thinking of Gershom Scholem this month is that I just finished reading “My Life as a Jew,” by , which centres around the question of whether every Jew has an obligation to love the Jewish people.

A central chapter in the book recalls a series 25 letters between New York and Jerusalem, where Gershom Scholem accused Hannah Arendt of lacking “Ahavat Yisrael.” In the library tour today, my hand touched the bold oak desk of Gershom Scholem from which those letters to Arendt were written and couldn’t help but think what he would say of the place the Jewish world finds itself in at this moment.

The 1963 exchange of letters came about in reference to her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, which was very critical of the role played by the Judenrat (Jewish Councils) in the Nazi Holocaust. Scholem wrote to his old friend in America, with much anger and pain, protesting how on God’s earth she could she write in such a heartless, flippant way, that Jews had been complicit in their own destruction?

‘𝐼𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡, ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑒𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑤𝑒 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑠 𝐴ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝐼𝑠𝑟𝑎𝑒𝑙: “𝐿𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒.” 𝐼𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢, 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝐻𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑎ℎ, 𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑠𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑐𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑙𝑒𝑓𝑡, 𝐼 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠.”

Arendt responded from her home in Manhattan:

“𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒 ‘𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑’ 𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 — 𝑛𝑒𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒, 𝑛𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐ℎ 𝑛𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛 … 𝐼 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 ‘𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦’ 𝑚𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑠. 𝑆𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑙𝑦, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ‘𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑠’ 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒, 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ, 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑟𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑢𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡. 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑚𝑦𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑦 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 … 𝐼 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑠, 𝑛𝑜𝑟 𝑑𝑜 𝐼 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚. 𝐼 𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒, 𝑏𝑒𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑝𝑢𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡.”

More than 60 years, the exact same letters (although now they are Facebook posts, substacks and tweets) are being written between Jews all over the world regarding the war between Israel and Hamas.

Many Israelis are deeply saddened by those on Jewish and non-Jewish left who have been unable to share our pain at this time. Many anti-zionists Jews have responded by noting that they can only stand with the pain of the Palestinian people at this time as their people suffer immense destruction in Gaza.

So what would Gershom Scholem say? Maybe something like this which he wrote back in 1946:

“Is it legitimate to be a Zionist, that is, to declare a specific loyalty to and solidarity with the Jewish people? Or does such loyalty conflict with one’s ethical duty to humanity as a whole?

What is happening in Palestine is the most decisive event in Jewish history of this generation. With great repose, I declare myself guilty of most of the crimes you attribute to Zionism. I am a nationalist and am entirely unfazed by ostensibly ‘progressive’ denunciations of a position that people repeatedly, even in my earliest youth, wrote off as obsolete. I believe in the eternity of antisemitism.

No clever inquiries into the roots of antisemitism can prevent it from generating new crusades and new crusaders in potential fresh constellations. I am a sectarian and have never been ashamed of expressing in print my conviction that sectarianism can offer us something decisive and positive.

Even though I have a clear notion of the vast differences between partition and a binational state, I would vote for the same heavy heart for either of these two solutions. You make fun of both with truly breathtaking ignorance….

Certainly, as an old Brit Shalom follower, I am not presumptuous enough to think that the politics of Brit Shalom wouldn’t have found precisely the same Arab enemies who are mainly not interested in our morality or political convictions, but in whether we are here in Palestine at all.

I’ve been living here for twenty-two years. With the sweat of my brow, I have studied Jewish history my entire life, and I’m able to come up with an instructive treatment on the true weak points of our lives here. But for myself and other Zionists, I can’t draw one lesson out of your harmless Galut nationalism, which you combine with a spirited American something or other, I just don’t know what.

And if I may duly and respectfully mention this as well, your cynical use of lofty, progressive arguments against something that is for the Jewish people of life- or- death importance is unlikely to persuade me to abandon the sect.

Being a longtime religious reactionary, I hope for your repentance—or, as old Buber has rendered it in his marvellous style—your “return.”

With warmest greetings, but also, so to speak, with determination (I’m determined not be made a fool of).

Your Gerhard Scholem

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To Comfort the Trouble and Trouble the Comfortable

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