Noam: Okay, Mijal, it is the end of the year. the end of 2025, Mijal, and we have had quite a year, quite a year. I feel like we say that every year, but what I wanna do with you on this end of year podcast is to review our year together.
Mijal: Yeah. And are you I’m just curious, you usually celebrate? Like a New Year kind of thing?
Noam: Yeah, how could you not celebrate? You always gotta celebrate the new year. There are different ways to celebrate the new year. I didn’t say I was gonna go, you, clubbing in Miami. I don’t think that’s on the bingo list this year.
Mijal: Maybe it should be.
Noam: I, yeah, maybe, maybe. I understand there are religious questions that some people have about what it represents and whatever, but no, think, listen, it’s the end of a year, the beginning of a new year. We have concepts in Judaism that you always talk about, whatever the beginning or the end of something is, you gotta celebrate that thing, you gotta reflect on that thing, goals for yourself for 2026. And we’ll get into that. Are you celebrating?
Mijal: I don’t think I’m like a New Year’s celebration kind of person. I’m not against it. just not going to grow up with it.
Noam: Right, you’re not like for it or against it you’re
Mijal: No, and also like there’s so many resolutions and I feel almost like like when everyone’s making resolutions part of me doesn’t want to make resolutions.
Noam: My God, you’re so contrarian. Do you feel that way on the Jewish New Year on Rosh Hashanah? Okay.
Mijal: I am a little bit contrarian. No, there it’s like God is like God is pushing me. It’s like not just peer pressure, but here. Like I was, it’s funny for my subs, like I was going to write like a list of the books that I read. and then I saw so many lists of books that people read and I’m like, I’m not writing that.
Noam: Yeah, isn’t that so funny? Then you’re like, ew, I don’t wanna do that.
Mijal: Exactly. But in this case, I think we should reflect.
Noam: So yeah, what I wanna do with you is I wanna reflect on the major themes of this year, of 2025.
And to do that well though, what I wanted to do is I want to just compare notes. Now, I asked you before this episode, before this podcast, I said to you, let’s not share with each other beforehand. And you’re like, no, no, we have to share notes with each other. I’m like, oh my God, we’re so different. Look at this, this is great. And you’re like, so we ended up, we didn’t share. I got my notes in front of me. No one could, I could, well, here you go. can see, boom, boom, I got my notes and Mijal has her notes. And we’re going to do a year review, five themes from each of us and they might overlap. We’ll see. Who knows? You ready? Year in review. Should I just tell you some major moments that happened first to help us?
Mijal: Yeah, I think that would be good. feel like I keep like since October 7th, everything blurs in my mind. So 2023, 2024, like everything’s just like a big blur. So, yeah.
Noam: That’s a great call. That’s a call. I know. Okay.
So let me give you just a number of key moments that happened in 2025. Let’s go back in the year. One of the things, number one is the Gaza fighting ended in the second ceasefire of 2025, officially ended. That was a major, major moment. Another thing major in the Jewish world was, you remember this, the Israel-Iran War in the summer.
Mijal: Yes, yes. 12 days of war.
Noam: That was major. That was one of those, exactly, called the 12 days of war.
Recently, the Bondi Beach massacre, the Bondi Beach attack that occurred, 15 people killed in the attack. That was something that I think shook the world in diaspora Jewry. in a way that I can’t think of something in recent memory besides Tree of Life Synagogue in 2011, no 2017, 2017, yeah.
Let me tell you another major moment in Jewish, in the Jewish story in 2025, the debate about enlisting Haredim.
Mijal: You think that’s like 2025 thing? Maybe you should say what it is first. Like, what do mean by that? They are still debating. If, whether and how to enlist Haredi Jews in Israel.
Noam: Maybe not. Maybe it’s an every year thing. Well, they debated if and how did you yeah, exactly and so the
Yes, and so Haredi, what’s described as ultra-orthodox, the members of Knesset, they insisted on maintaining this blanket exception that they have, and other government members have been calling for a change. it’s been touch and go. I don’t know if anyone really knows what’s gonna happen in the future there, but we’ll see. So that was another major moment.
How about this one? Western leaders recognize the Palestinian state. That was a big, big moment. The vast majority of the countries of the United Nations have recognized a Palestinian state, 147, and now another nine, so 156.
Mijal: I did not realize it was that much. Wow.
Noam: Yeah, and by the way, you, you know what’s a fun game, maybe we could have our producer fact check this in a second. I wonder how many more, how many countries in the world recognize Israel as a state and how many recognize Palestine as a state and to see which one is more. I bet you it’s close. What’s the answer? Yeah. Yeah. wow. Yeah, so our producer just checked in with us and the numbers are actually really close. There are 163 countries that recognize Israel and there are 157 countries that recognize Palestine. That is something that people, I did not know that. I didn’t realize that, yeah.Mijal: That’s wild. Wait, so the ones that don’t, sorry, I feel like I’m a little bit uninformed right now, but the ones that don’t recognize Israel are countries that are actively at war with Israel, let’s say. Like Iran, let’s say.
Noam: Or yeah, that they have a problem with their existence and won’t negotiate with them, won’t trade with them, won’t acknowledge them. They’ll call them the Zionist regime or something like that.
Mijal: Interesting, very interesting. Wow. I’m kind of blown away, but it’s almost, it’s just like leading me to think like, what does it matter? You know what I mean? Like there’s no…
Noam: What does recognition matter in the first place?
Mijal: I think that we are in a moment where there’s like a real crisis with just, you know, international law and recognition of states. Like there is no Palestinian state right now. You know, like a functioning state, even though it has a lot of, like, and Israel is like a reality on the ground. I’m just, sorry, I’m just thinking out loud about what that means.
Noam: Right, is definitely a longer conversation, Mijal. It’s definitely very complicated because what makes something a country is it having its own government, is it having its own borders and boundaries that are internationally recognized?
Mijal: Right.
Noam: Like, these are real questions and we should table them for now. But, okay, next one, next one, next one.
Mijal: Okay, sorry, I will not get distracted. Keep talking about 2025.
Noam: No, we can, we can. We can, we can. And the last one I’ll share is that Zohran Mamdani won the New York City elections becoming the mayor-elect, people like using the term mayor-elect, of New York City.
Mijal: My mayor, my upcoming mayor.
Noam: Yes, and a third of Jewish New Yorkers are said to have voted for Mamdani. And so this was a major moment because it was, I think, a time in which the, an openly anti-Zionist leader became the head of the most influential city in the world. So, you know, that changes the rhetoric for a lot of people, it changes the game. So those are some major moments in the Jewish world.
Mijal: Well, you know what I was thinking as you were saying this, Noam, there was two observations that came, both as to the year and as to the choice of events that we just shared. One is that most of these are not quote unquote like American things, you know? Like, just thinking about us living in America and so many of our pivotal moments are about what’s happening in Israel or in other places. I think Mandani is the only US based kind of thing.
Now, the other thing I was thinking as you were talking about this is like, these are all very fraught. It’s like war, antisemitism, shooting, you know what I mean? these are not like, you know, like happy, exciting.
Noam: Yeah. I know. I want to get, want to, I want to get exactly. this is exactly. Okay. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re saying great. You’re saying great, Mijal. Five themes. Right. I’m very, I’m like, I’m like, this is exactly where I am going with this conversation. And I, I shouldn’t be too surprised that you and I could see the similarly, but we’ll get to what’s on my mind in a little bit. Until then, let’s go through five themes of 2025. Okay. So I’ll let you go first.
Mijal: I feel like I’m your student and I’m like, Mijal, you’re doing this. I just hope that I’m such a good student. I love getting hundreds. I just hope that I understand what you meant.
Noam: Have you ever gotten a 98?
Mijal: I have, I have. I once got a C. It was really awful. That’s like a different conversation. Different conversation, by the way, is like I am a parent now. My kids are not as type A as I am. And I’m like, I am I feel like I am learning what that means. You know what I mean? Sorry. It’s like a different.
Noam: Okay. Okay. All right.give me your review, go, number one.
Mijal: Okay, so some themes. So one thing that I was thinking of, and especially comparing this year with the previous year, the previous two years, was I think that we’ve shifted from a state of acute crisis to a state of chronic challenges. So if you think about 2023, the attack in Israel, the kind of like onslaught of antisemitism, the mood that I think many of us were at was of just feeling like the world’s on fire. There’s something terrible right now. We have to respond right away. Like it just requires something urgent and gigantic and big.
And part of what’s happened since that this is like just the world is that many of those initial crises became almost like chronic conditions that you have to deal with. How whether we’re thinking about Israel, like how do you deal with still having Hamas control part of the territory and still having certain threats and being isolated around the world? When it comes to America, how do you deal with the fact that some of the things that we saw as outbursts, right, in terms of antisemitism or trying to make Jews and Zionism a more like pariah state. So I’ve been thinking a lot about that and kind of reflecting not only about that shift, which I think is very normal, right? Going from crisis to something more chronic. But I also think we have a lot of work to do as to how we respond.
Like there’s something, it’s funny by the way, I’ll just say here, like for me, part of this is thinking about the state of the Jewish people. Part of it is just thinking about the year that I had.
So I don’t know if I shared this in the podcast beforehand. Like my husband had a concussion. He was like in an accident in April. I also don’t know if I shared it in the podcast, but I’m currently pregnant. Two very different things. One wanted, one wasn’t wanted, but I am pregnant.
Noam: You are? my god.
Mijal: Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. Yeah.
Noam: Well, we say in Hebrew, be’sha’ah tovah, it should be a good time.
Mijal: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Noam: By the way, I’m messing, just everyone, I know that. Okay, I just want to clarify that.
Mijal: Yeah, Noam knew. was pregnant. Yeah. Yeah. No, but the point is like both those things were experiences that the that it’s not like an acute challenge or like an acute thing you’re dealing with one day. You’re just dealing with something that feels more chronic. And I think you are asked to have a different type of endurance and resilience that is not only about like a one time response or like a one time kind of like action. It’s much more about thinking, this is my reality. How do I change my organism to respond to this new situation? Does this qualify as a theme? Was this what you meant?
Noam: Those are very helpful. Yes, yes, I loved it. I loved it. I wrote it down. I think in terms of like, I don’t know. I don’t even know if this is the right term, but like aphorisms, I think in terms of that. So I wrote down from crisis to chronic condition. That was a theme of the year.
Let me give you theme number two for me. Theme number two is, you might like this quote. It’s that feeling you’re feeling is peoplehood. You like that? That’s pretty good, right?
Mijal: Hmm. I do like it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I should trademark it. I should make money off it.
Noam: So, so, Mijal Bitton, you wrote, I don’t actually remember when, but you wrote something about that feeling that you’re feeling as peoplehood.
Mijal: right after October 7th in reaction to the
Noam: I read it for October 7th. Right. So, so I have down that feeling you’re feeling is peoplehood is that was the October 7th, 2023, when we felt that pain. You’re like, what is this feeling? Like I don’t even for a lot of people who are described themselves as October 8th, the Jews, by the way, I’ve heard this term October 8th, non-Jews.
Mijal: What does that mean?
Noam: I’ve heard that term also, which I love non-Jews who are like, wait, what in the world is happening? Like, what is this vitriol against the Jewish people? I need to do something. I’m not Jewish, who cares that I’m not Jewish? I’m an October 8th non-Jew. I care about this issue. Something is wrong over here.
So that feeling from October 7th, that feeling that you’re feeling is peoplehood. I felt it on October 13th this year, which is when the hostages were returned to Israel, the vast majority of them.
Mijal: Yeah, we should have put that in one of the highlights of.
Noam: Well, yeah, well, I’m saving it for now, but yeah, that was the ceasefire that I mentioned earlier, included the hostages returning, or all of them except for Ron Gvili right now.
Mijal: Whose body is still in Gaza.
Noam: Still in Gaza at time of this recording. So that feeling of just euphoria that so many of us felt like just hugging people, like singing, dancing, all those things that the hostages are returned. And then on the other side, that same, feeling that you’re feeling is peoplehood, I felt on December 14th when the Bondi Beach massacre took place and in the reverse, because that feeling that you’re feeling is peoplehood as a theme of 2025, when Jewish people who you and I have never met in Australia on Bondi Beach in Sydney were killed, it was so hard to sometimes explain to people who are not Jewish, I found this often, why, yeah, it was a bad shooting, I don’t know, yeah, there’s shootings that happen all across the world. I understand that, but if you don’t understand what the Jewish people are, that we are a large, sometimes dysfunctional family, with a religion, then it becomes very hard to understand this concept of peoplehood. But that’s why it consumed all of our thoughts just 24 hours a day for many of us. It’s because that feeling that you’re feeling is peoplehood. So that’s, for me, that’s theme number one.
Can we snake this? What’s it called? And then can I do the next one?
Mijal: What’s with a snake with a snake it?
Noam: Meaning you to me, me to you, you to me, me to you. All right, sorry.
Mijal: Just do just know whatever whatever you want. I don’t know what it’s think is but
Noam: Snake, you go back and you’ve never done the gambling, have you? You’ve never done fantasy, gambling, fantasy football? You’ve never done fantasy football.
Mijal: the what? I know. No, my husband does, but
Noam: Okay, so he’ll explain to you afterwards what the snake is, the snake draft. Snake draft. Okay, so let me go with mine now in the snake draft. My second thought here is the horseshoe theory in effect. 2025 was a year of the horseshoe theory in effect.
Seeing the normalization of the outside in the Jewish people across the spectrum has been remarkable. The horseshoe theory is this theory that says that extremes, just like a horseshoe, that they’re on the other side of each other, just like a horseshoe, they’re on the opposite sides, but they meet.
Mijal: You mean like on the right and the left in American politics.
Noam: They have the same exact, I’m like, if you’re watching this, it’s like, it’s like upside down you, right? That’s what a horseshoe is. And for a while, there’s a part of me that gets angry during this part of the conversation. So, Mijal, you’ll have to tone me down.
Mijal: Go for it. No, no, get angry.
Noam: I’ve had some of my conservative friends reach out to me and say, did you know that there’s a problem of antisemitism on the right? Did you know this? This is like coming out of nowhere. And I said to them, I’m I’m a little bit frustrated and obnoxious at times. First of all, I made a video with my team on this about this four or five years ago about how antisemitism is a problem, period.
Mijal: How dare they not watch every video you make? No. I’m just kidding.
Noam: No, right, right, right, right. I know. By the way, by the way, you know what? Maybe, maybe that’s a problem.
Mijal: That is the lesson.
Noam: But so if you’re obsessed with, if you’re in this world, then like you understand that there’s antisemitism that comes from Marx and from Marx that you understand that antisemitism comes from Stalin and from Hitler that you understand that antisemitism comes from the extreme left and the extreme right that it comes from Christians and from Muslims and that doesn’t make all Christians antisemites or Muslims antisemites or all conservatives or all liberals the antisemitism is a problem regardless of what political affiliation you’re on.
And what we saw in 2025 with Nick Fuentes becoming part of our lexicon when you see Candace Owens having twice the amount of followers on TikTok than Ben Shapiro. When you hear what Tucker Carlson has to say, six and a half million, if anyone’s wondering about just on TikTok alone of her followers, six and a half million followers. Dave Smith, these are people who were on the right, who are on the right. And I remember the days when Pat Buchanan was considered a persona non grata. And now in the, what was it, late nineties, early aughts, something like that.
And now there’s this extreme hatred of the Jews, hatred of Zionism, hatred of Israel, whatever the language you want to use, on the right. the reason I was getting unnerved is I’ve heard people say, how could you be liberal and be a Zionist? I think this is the year 2025 where you could be obnoxious and say to someone, that’s so interesting. How could you be conservative and Zionist?
Mijal: Yeah. And by the way, it’s funny, knowing what you were saying, I’ve had a different type of conversation with my friends who are at home on the right. Many of them, I don’t even know how many, have come to me in the last month and have said, you know, Mijal, those conversations we had like some time ago when you were raising certain concerns, I didn’t believe it then and I believe it now. They kind of saying that I was right, you know, I’m not, I’m just, you know, no, but
Noam: Yeah, I started out right. Right, no, by the way, this is not something that we want to be right about.
Mijal: Correct. I’m dying to be wrong.
Noam: This isn’t like, like this isn’t like, like, please, I would love that. But.
Mijal: But it’s interesting for me because many of them genuinely didn’t see it or genuinely thought it was going to die down.
Noam: Well, I think, but that is, I think, you know, just like, you know, when the, it’s the golden calf-ification of politics. I’m saying the golden calf and then iffication, yeah, of politics to somehow think that your political party
Mijal: The Golden What? What is the term? calf calf. Okay.
Noam: is somehow going to be totally innocent of the original sin of Jew hatred is a deification of your political perspective.
Mijal: Right. Deification is a word. No, that’s good. Better than gold calfic.
Noam: I’m glad it’s good to it. I’m happy I was able to figure out one word. Okay, to you. did. Yeah, you’re done.
Mijal: Yeah, second theme, it relates a little bit to what you’re saying in this horseshoe theory. I think my theme is like dizziness. I feel like every other week or every other day, I’ll just feel super dizzy.
Noam: And it’s nothing to do with the pregnancy.
Mijal: Noam, like, actually, that’s why.
Noam: I’m not I’m not a doctor but Okay, okay All right, all right, but besides that yeah
Mijal: Sorry. I’m like, oh, that’s why now you just solved it for me. Besides for that. No, just like I just think that we’re having put my I’m having such a hard time kind of like understanding this moment in some ways, like even like even last night. OK, like sometimes I go on X at night, which is not smart. I don’t sleep well when I do that. It’s just like not a good habit to have. What?
Noam: You should get a whoop. A whoop. No, I think it’s called a whoop. It measures your sleep. And… You’re gonna find, okay.
Mijal: Is that another made up? What is it? Yeah, no, I don’t want to do that. Sorry. No, no. My husband does it and I’m a contrarian. So I’m just not doing it.
Noam: Too many people are doing it. Not gonna do it. Yeah. Okay, fine.
Mijal: Yeah, two people are tracking exactly how much they said. I’m like, never happening to me. No, no, no. This was there was like a random exchange last night with like Yoram Hazony, who’s like a nationalist intellectual in like the right wing circles.
Noam: Yeah, great description. I like that. Yeah, he’s a nationalist intellectual. That’s what he is. Brilliant guy, brilliant guy.
Mijal: Yeah, I used to hang out with a lot of Christian nationalists and things like that. And he has been both saying, whoops. Yeah, and he’s been both saying, whoops, there’s a dissonantism on the right. And then he had this like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he had this like long thread. I think it was like last night in which he said, but are we 1930s Germany? And he was like, well, no, because of this, no, because of this, no, because of this. And all of them had like a yet next to it. You know what I mean? It hasn’t happened yet. And it just reminded me, I have a good friend who I really respect a lot as a historian. And I think every other week I text him and I’m like, do you think we’re there yet? Like have things happened that have changed the way that you think about the status of Jews in diaspora. So I’m just saying there’s like a dizziness because it’s both incredibly worrying and at the same time,
I think my dizziness is like other parts of our life are flourishing and going great. So as an example, this weekend, I was together with 900 people at a school retreat in Connecticut, for my kids’ somewhere in Connecticut. And it was beautiful. They go to the school called Barkai. It’s a wonderful school. And it was beautiful and it was joyful. And we are in a free society and we’re able to do this and no one’s stopping us.
And you know what I’m saying? So there’s like this funny, like not as funny, but this exhausting sense of dizziness. Yeah. OK. That’s my second one.
Noam: Yep, I like that. I like that. Dizziness. So here we go. got, number one is crisis to chronic condition.
Number two is that feeling that you’re feeling is peoplehood. Number three is horseshoe theory in effect. Number four is dizziness. Number five, I’m gonna kind of riff off of a little bit of what you said from a positive perspective, is I would describe this year also as a year, at least for me, that I’ve been hearing and seeing unexpected solidarity. Unexpected solidarity from people. I’ll just…
Mijal: interesting. I have not.
Noam: You haven’t seen, okay, I just want to give a couple examples of people who just stand out to me. And I’ll say them on a personal, you asked me to be personal before, so I’ll be personal. One is the Palestinian moderate named Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who we’ve spoken about on this podcast before, who is,
Mijal: And you’ve interviewed him for Unpacking Israeli History, so you can go over there if you wanna watch the show.
Noam: Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, Unpacking Israeli History, but he’s become a real friend. And I think Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, is somebody who, and I don’t want to mis-describe him, and people should check out his content to just figure who he is out for yourselves, but it’s not just him. There’s also people like Samer Sinajlawi, and we’ve had him on the Unpacking Israeli History podcast, and other Palestinian moderates that I’ve been in conversation with, Mohammed Dajani Daoudi, and others who…
I have found Ahmed to be somebody who is doing something different, which is he is not going to be a mouthpiece for the Israeli government. He’s not supportive of the Israeli government. doesn’t agree with the Israeli government. He doesn’t have to agree with the Israeli government. He disagrees with them. And he’s also using his microphone and his ability to teach to say, just because I am opposed to the Israeli government and what they’re doing doesn’t mean that I have to also support everything that my people are doing. And in fact, the opposite is true. I’m incredibly disappointed with the allowance, the permission that people give to Hamas to have a free rein over Palestinians. And he is fighting so hard against that. And he is someone who really shares solidarity. I’ll give you another example.
Mehnaz Afridi. Mehnaz Afridi is a Muslim American scholar and she reached out to me right after. One of my few non-Jewish friends who reached out to me right after was Mehnaz Afridi. And right after, she’s a Muslim American scholar, teaches at Manhattan College, Manhattan University, I don’t remember which one. And she is somebody who is a scholar of genocide and the Holocaust. And she reached out and she just said, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. She understands the concept of peoplehood.
And I’ll give you one other example. And I texted her before and asking if I permission to mention her name positively on a podcast. But Danielle York, who is not Jewish, not Muslim, comes from the Christian world and she’s an owner of the her husband is the owner of the San Francisco 49ers. And she reached out and just like in general, just like cares so much about truth and about the Jewish people and about positivity and about like that that there should not be hatred or vitriol towards the Jewish people. It’s only hurting non-Jewish people, first of all, and it’s dumb. So stop it. Stop acting this way. And Danielle York is someone who just cares. She just cares about truth. She cares about goodness. She cares about solidarity. And so I wanted to give examples from a personal perspective to say it’s not just the case that people love dead Jews.
It’s also the case, to quote Dara Horn, that people love dead Jews. But there are people out there that also just want to see a thriving Jewish world and a just society and ensuring that there isn’t this horrific polarization and extremification, another made-up word that they’re seeing around them, and that they’re standing up against that. And we have people out there. We really do.
Mijal: Right. I mean, I love all the examples that you brought and I’m grateful for all of them. I guess the reason I had like an immediate reaction when you said that is that they do, maybe I’ll be cynical right now as we go into the new year. In terms of the noise out there, they feel often like the exception more than the rule. So I don’t know how you think about that.
Noam: Yeah, no, you’re probably right. You’re probably right. But I just, I can’t tell you how, I feel, and it makes me say, Noam, you gotta do this more also for other people. can’t just be the withdrawal on this end and you gotta be depositing also. hearing from people who understand just how evil it is to be sidelined and out and just tossed to the side and they know it’s wrong, they see that it’s wrong. That means a lot. So if you’re not Jewish, don’t feel shameful to reach out. Never, never, never. Be part of this. It means a lot. It means a lot. I took one of your spots, by the way. You were supposed to get two in a row. I just realized I messed up. Okay. It’s a good principle.
Mijal: I don’t do the snake thing, it’s okay. No, I’ll just say it’s true when I get email responses to this weekly substack that I do, and I often hear from non-Jews, from Christians, from others, and it does make me feel less alone.
Noam: Yeah, yeah, and they’re out there and we have to and we have to just just like social media has created rage bait and seen so much of the amplification of like the worst aspect of our deep thoughts and feelings. We can also, if we could figure out a way to do whatever is the opposite of rage baiting and we could, like we could elevate all of these people. I’m not just trying to be silly and like Pollyanna-ish about it, but like they’re out there.
Mijal: No, you’re offering hope. You’re insisting on hope. Right.
Noam: Yeah, they’re out there. They’re out there. They’re out there. So I mean, it means a lot. right. Number six, go for it.
Mijal: What I was going to say, like one of the themes that I had was like Jewish resilience. So I know that I felt this. I’ll give two ways in which I felt this very strongly. One was I was privileged to visit Israel this past October for about a week. And, you know, there’s still a lot of dysfunctionalities that you can talk about. And the war is over in some ways. In some ways, it’s not. There’s a lot of fighting that’s happening again at the governmental level. But in terms of like people, know what I mean? Like grassroots energy. I just remember every day being so blown away and feeling so blessed to be part of this amazing people where people are not broken by by like two years of incessant kind of like crisis, but actually still asking what do we have to do now to make things better?
And I have a lot of friends and family in Israel and I am really inspired by them. I don’t want to romanticize too much. I’ve been accused of being too like idealizing, you know what I mean? So I without romanticizing too much, I’ll just say that I am a romanticized anyways. Know that I think it’s really it’s really amazing.
And I feel something similar, I would say in in America. I’ll say it in this way. I feel like every week or something, I’ll have an exchange with people who describe themselves either as October 8th Jews or people who have become awakened in some way. And I think part of me has been like as somebody who’s like, you know, I work in Jewish communal life, so I expect myself to be invested. But there was a part of me that thought people will be invested for a little bit after like the crisis and then they’ll lose interest.
Just because whatever, I don’t know if I’m being cynical or just, I don’t know what to call it. But I feel like nearly every week I have encounters with people who are dedicated, are totally in, have more energy than ever. They’re like, no, we’re doing this, we’re doing this project, we’re doing this thing. I’m all in, I’m creating this, I’m creating that.
Noam: Couldn’t agree more. Couldn’t agree more. Couldn’t agree more. I love that.
Mijal: And I really, yeah, I love being part of my people.
Noam: Yeah, I, I, I, it’s a little bit similar to what I was saying in the non-Jewish world about that unexpected solidarity in the sense that I don’t know that the data backs it up, but the individual stories that, the encounters, they are plentiful.
And just to back up what you said, I had my son, my wife and I, we had our son’s Bar Mitzvah in Israel. I have, it was, it was.
Mijal: Yes, you have not shared anything on is like your first like like bar mitzvah but mitzvah like it’s your oldest right
Noam: Yeah, here’s the revelation. was, yep, our oldest and both of our sets of grandparents oldest bar mitzvah as well, first bar mitzvah as well. So it was very special. My parents have, my brother has a older daughter who’s a bat mitzvah. Okay, anyway, but bar mitzvah, the first bar mitzvah, there it is. And we all went to Israel and it was, it was amazing. It was…
Mijal: That’s so nice.
Noam: It was a dream. And one of the things that I experienced there was this civic society that you’re talking about flourishing. We spent a day just picking sweet potatoes with an organization called Leket. And you just…
Mijal: I love Leket. You want to say what they do? They’re so great.
Noam: They provide 450,000 people in the land, in the state of Israel, sorry, with food a week. Like, that is a lot. Yeah. Yeah.
Mijal: And a lot of it is both through volunteers and also trying to refuse to waste food sources that corporations or farms usually have.
Noam: So I can’t speak to the government. I can’t speak to what the government does well. But I’m just looking at the people. Instead of talking about connecting to Israel, we should be connecting to Israelis and to human beings. Israel is an abstract concept. What is Israel? Israelis are humans. They’re people.
Mijal: Right, right.
Noam: They’re there. They’re doing things. I don’t know. I just loved it. By the way, I loved my schnitzel sandwiches also. They were great. Okay, but let’s…
Mijal: Nice. Mazal tov, by the way. That’s a very, very big milestone and it’s very special.
Noam: Thank you, thank you. It was amazing. he, my son was amazing. He was amazing. He was just, he was such a good kid.
Mijal: Did you guys do like a party there or like?
Noam: We did a party. We were, we did it all. my God, it was awesome. It was really, really, really nice. So let me get to number seven. Number seven is…I will describe it, go back to kind of not positive, but I felt this was the year of what I’m calling the Overton window expansion.
Mijal: Is that similar to your horseshoe theory one?
Noam: Definitely similar. And here’s what I mean, though. I said some examples from early in 2025. I think that and one of them is Mamdani becoming the mayor of New York City. Now, what I think is something for all of us to consider about.
Mijal: By way, he hasn’t even been mayor yet that he’s taking so much real estate in our head.
Noam: Well, so I don’t, so what, but I’m using him as an example for the, as a stand in for this point.
Mijal: Sorry, I’m just saying. No, I know, I know. I’m just commenting.
Noam: I could talk about Tucker Carlson. I could talk about many other folks. But what is legitimate, what is within the legitimate room of perspectives has seemingly expanded the Overton windows like the standard legitimate. What are there’s always got to be more than one opinion, two opinions, three opinions, four opinions, five opinions. But it seemed to me for a long time that the public square, the idea of saying the Jewish people shouldn’t have their own Jewish state, the state of Israel, that that that that, you know, that’s not OK for that for us to have that expectation that to believe such a thing would never enter the public square in major places. And certainly wouldn’t be if you go to, and I’m not recommending people do this, but on TikTok, I saw a TikTok video of a yeshiva in Israel where boys were describing who their favorite rabbi is. And so many of the comments were actually about, I’ll tell you who the greatest rabbi was, he had a mustache and he lived in Germany in the late 30s. And you see comment after comment after comment after comment of that.
Things that like you would never put in a public square. And that is the public square, by the way, that is the public square. You could trace like these are these. It wasn’t just these weren’t bots. These were human beings. And that over to window expansion has. The rhetoric that I’m seeing across the world that people are seemingly OK with things that used to not be OK that I 20 maybe and I think is building up 22, 23, 24 to see this happen in 2025, the over to window expansion.
This is the year of that expansion.
Mijal: Yeah. The only thing I would add, Noam, just from a positive perspective, not in terms of antisemitism, but in terms of just public discourse in America. think that we had some years where the culture wars made some topics really hard to talk about. And I think this last year, so they became narrower in ways that I felt weren’t healthy. I’m not talking antisemitism here. I’m talking ability to ask questions about even know what even like pros and cons of like COVID vaccination mandates let’s say things like that. So in some ways in that area there has been some healthy rebalancing of the Overton window even though I agree with you the yeah.
Noam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay fine. Give me eight and nine. You get two in row, then I’ll finish off at 10.
Mijal: Sure. one is like, just, the theme is like noise exhaustion. I just feel like a lot of people that I’m talking to and you know what, I will put myself here. I think I’ve hit a certain limit of how much noise I can take. So as an example, I’m consuming way less media than last year, my, you know, except for Wondering Jews. But, but, Unpacking Israeli History and whatever, sorry.
No, but really, my ability to be able to be constantly plugged in has radically plummeted. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I think I’m hearing from a lot of people who just like, it’s too much, it’s too overwhelming, too much noise.
Noam: Put the music back on.
Mijal: Music for me actually this year like you know, yes,
Noam: Reading books.
Mijal: I have been I have been reading books that I don’t need to read.
Noam: That’s great. That’s great.
Mijal: Which you know, book I read that I’m really proud of can I just show off here?
Noam: Tell me, you gotta show off.
Mijal: I read The Power Broker back-to-back by Robert Caro about Robert Moses. I was very proud of myself.
Noam: Tell me one insight from it.
Mijal: Well, I am not jealous of his writing and research skills the way that he wrote that before the internet. It’s a fascinating biographical portrait that just shows a lot. One insight or one question that I had, because the author Robert Caro obviously hates his protagonist Robert Moses. But one of the things that it shows really clearly is that this guy, Robert Moses, is incredibly capable, totally reshapes and transforms New York City, but at the same time does so in a way that is corrupt, self-serving, etc. But the question remains that most other people couldn’t do what he did. It’s almost like it’s a portrait of how do you build great cities? This is my read, it requires a cost that you have to pay. That’s an underlying question throughout the book.
Noam: I’m gonna read this. I haven’t read it. I’m gonna read it.
Mijal: It’s very hard. It’s very long. It’s the longest book I read. Honestly, I’ll just tell you. I’m saying I read it when I was very sick in my first trimester. I don’t think I would have had the time to read it otherwise, but also it was like a dare with.
Noam: Okay, you’re saying I can’t do it. But I like that noise exhaustion, reading more books. You’re not the only one on that. Okay, give me number nine.
Mijal: Number nine? I’m going to kind of like cheat. Can I say that my hope is number nine?
Noam: Uhhhh, fine. I’ll let it slide. I’ll let it slide.
Mijal: Okay, thank you, thank you. Now I hope that we can both personally and as a community focus on like the important but not urgent things. Like I think we’re so reactive all the time because of the world we’re in right now and from some aspects I agree with that and I’m like we have to react, we have to respond to the world and what’s happening. On the other hand there’s just so many things that we push aside, like conversations about what it means to live a good life, to be a body with a soul, to read great books of literature, to ask what it means to be human in the age of AI. Like all these things are in the quadrant of like important but not urgent. And for me, I know that I want both our communities and also for me on a personal level to focus on that more.
Noam: You know, I like that. I like that. that is, so we have nine from crisis to chronic.
You know what? Let’s just do nine. I like these nine from crisis to chronic condition.
Mijal: You’re not going to do the tenth? That’s cheating.
Noam: Nah, let’s do nine. Let’s do nine. Everyone does top tens. We just did top nine.
Mijal: Okay, fine.
Noam: We’re not sheeple. We make our own decisions. So we’re–
Mijal: Okay. Exactly. We’re contrarians.
Noam: exactly. So let me say them from crisis to chronic condition as a theme. Number two, the theme number two is that feeling, the feeling is peoplehood. Number three, horseshoe theory in effect. Number four, dizziness. Number five, unexpected solidarity. Number six, resilience. Number seven, the Overton window expansion. And number eight, noise exhaustion. And number nine, a hope to focus on the Stephen Covey important over urgent. You didn’t quote him, but yes, but that is who really…
Mijal: I didn’t quote him, but sure. That’s the quadrant. Yeah. The great chart. Yeah. The seven habits of highly successful people. Successful, effective, the seven. Sorry. Okay.
Noam: Yeah, that’s the great quadrant. Everyone should check out that book. Seven Habits of Highly Effective… Yeah, it’s great, it’s great. Okay, effective, effective, it’s effective. It’s okay. That’s why I had to talk over you.
Mijal: Right. Thank you. Thanks, Noam.
Noam: So, let me just end the way I started. I asked you, what’s next? What should be our focus in 2026? What should be our focus in 2026? That we say on December 31st, 2026, you and I are having this conversation and we look back. And what do we say? What did 2026 bring us?
So I feel like you kind of started answering that question with your cheat answer. That was your hope, right? Or do you have something else you want to add, add.
Mijal: I could have had something else. So I was recently re-listening to a speech that Jonathan Sacks gave in 2014. It was a state of world Jewry speech. And he was speaking about antisemitism there. And he was one of the earliest voices kind of warning about antisemitism and describing it. And one of the things towards the end of the speech, he gives what he thinks are three prescriptions. And I really appreciated them side by side.
Like each alone is, I think the combination is interesting, but to me they’re like the north compass of what we should be doing. So prescription number one for him was find friends and allies. And that’s a little bit what you were talking about, Noam, before. To refuse to become ghettoized, to refuse to fall into despair and to recognize that antisemitism will never be solved by Jews alone. So if there’s one thing that we can do this year is double down on that prescription number two that he had there was he wrote Focus on Jewish Unity. So he described how the greatest catastrophes that happened to the Jewish people tended to come when we were weak and fragmented and how much strength comes when we work on thinking of ourselves as a collective.
And the third prescription that he wrote about, and it’s funny because I read Deborah Lipstadt write this, but this was before her book. He wrote about, you know, to not just focus on the oil of being Jewish, but to focus on the joy. And he has some beautifully poignant language there. But a lot to not be to not be Pollyanna ish and to realize we have to fight, but to not that that not not let that take over who we are and what we’re focused on.
Noam: Love it. It’s amazing how that’s an eternal truth, those three finds, friends and allies, unity, and from oy to joy. You quoted one JS, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. I’m going to quote another JS, Jeffrey Solomon. Jeffrey Solomon, I actually just had lunch with right before we were recording. Jeffrey Solomon has been a major leader in the Jewish world for years. He was one of the influential people who created Birthright and many other institutions. He’s really just done an unbelievable job as a leader in the Jewish world. I told him that you and I were about to do this and I asked him,
Mijal: Mm-mm. So you cheated? Okay, fine.
Noam: Yeah, of course I cheated. So I asked him, not everyone could be an A+ student like you alone. So I asked him, I said, what would you say the message should be for 2026? And he looked at me and he said, we are living in an era of the third temple. And when the third temple, when the first two temples were destroyed, specifically the second temple, you have to reassess everything. Everything has to be reassessed. And when the 7th of October happened, the Jewish world, you have to look at yourselves and say, how do we reassess everything in the Jewish world? What does that mean? Kind of like what you’re talking about. How do we all get along better? How do we? What are we going to do about that? What are we going to do about this? Are we going to go back to the way it was prior to the 7th of October?
I hope that’s not the answer. How are you gonna teach about Israel? He and I were talking about. Is it gonna be the same way you always taught about Israel? And we went through example after example, but his point was that we have to be thinking about a radical reassessment of everything in the funding in the Jewish world and beyond in the content, in the education in the Jewish world.
And so what I would say is the radical re-examination of 2026 to end of 2026 is to do what you and I were talking about, which is kind of two things. One is so many of our examples, and I’m guilty just like you of, well, I’m more guilty in this case in 2025, is that we talked a lot about the terrible things that happened to the Jewish people. So little of what we spoke about, you gave good examples in the reverse, but so little of what we spoke about is what the Jewish people contributed, what the Jewish people accomplished, what the Jewish people did, how the Jewish people reassessed. And I would love for us to say at the end of 2026 that we built a major Jewish education project. We built this arc that, you know, our friend Sarah Hurwitz and, know, who has been on the podcast twice, you know, how to build that arc, plank by plank when you see a flood, how do you build that arc? How do you actually have this Jewish education arc? I would love to teach about that. I would love for us to be spending all of our time imagining what it could look like for every single Jewish person in the world to be literate with their Judaism, every single non-Jewish person in the world to understand the story of Judaism and to have an amazing relationship with each other and to build and create and cultivate. Like, I would love that. So I don’t have a specific thing that I want to see the end of December 31st, 2026, but I do know the generality is that we spent the year of 2026 building that arc, plank by plank. The second thing though that I wanna say though is there’s a psychological, the way to do this, there’s a psychological thing that we do. It’s called the propinquity effect. By the way, I’ve only read the word, I’ve never actually heard it pronounced, so I hope I’m right.
Mijal: I am the wrong person to correct your pronunciation.
Noam: Okay. So the propinquity effect is when you form relationships with people that you see regularly. And there’s a great psychologist named Robert Zions who said that people form negative attitudes towards imaginary groups of unfamiliar people and repeated exposure can change this sort of thing. I would say to the Jewish people and to non-Jewish people, we are living in this psych matrix when we don’t pay attention to these sort of effects, the propinquity effect.
The Jewish people, if we want to actually build these Jewish educational projects together, and we have to actually start seeing each other and having actual exposure to the other. Now, Mijal, you’re lucky. You live in a family that’s pretty diverse, it seems like. There’s Chai Radim in the community, they’re in your family. There are non-Chai Radim in your family, Israelis, Americans, and you’re able to see each other. Maybe that’s why you’re able to have such strong relationships with each other and have empathy towards each other. But I think it’s a microcosm for the Jewish world that we could say at the end of 2026, we worked on this issue of the propinquity effect. We formed relationships better with people because we saw them regularly. And we built this arc plank by plank in a way that we are able to actually focus on what we’ve contributed, what we’ve developed as opposed to, you know, the horrible things that have happened to us and that we’re able to like assert ourselves in a healthier way in 2026. That is my blessing to us in 2026.
Mijal: That’s That’s beautiful. Let’s focus on building.
Noam: So that’s what I got for you, Mijal. Those are our top nine and our hopes for 2026.
Mijal: Great. Do you have a personal hope or what’s it called? No commitment. Resolution.
Noam: I personally, yeah, I wanna hoop like three days a week.
Mijal: You mean like basketball?
Noam: Wanna hoop, I wanna, what was that motion? What were you doing? What was that motion? I didn’t know if you were doing like raise the roof.
Mijal: No, no, I was like hope I’m like, are you talking about a basketball hoop? OK, OK.
Noam: That was your shot? Hooping, hooping, yeah, playing basketball. wanna do drills more often. wanna get like an open jump shot from like 18 feet away, 20 feet away. I wanna get that to like when I’m by myself hitting that 65% of the time, 70%.Let’s see what I can do. What about you?
Mijal: I have been dreaming of writing a book and there’s like two different books that I’ve been working on and I think this year I would love to get a contract for one of them that would feel really really good you know and they’re like they’re important but not urgent parts of my life.
Noam: Let’s make it happen. Let’s make that happen.
Mijal: yeah yeah okay now I’ll see you in 2026 yeah but same Jewish year.
Noam: Love it. Let’s do it.
Yes, yes I will. Party hard.
Mijal: All right, bye now.
Noam: Alright, peace out. See you later.