Show Notes
The lighting rebel advance that toppled Syria's Assad regime came seemingly out of left field. Dr. Jonathan Spyer, one of the world's foremost experts on the Levant, helps explain how it happened and what this revolution could mean for Syria and the rest of the world.
More from In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch
Raised Christian in Connecticut after her family fled Lebanon’s civil war, Hagar Chemali learned as a teenager that her mother was Jewish. A former White House national security official and U.N. spokesperson who co-founded the Lebanon-Israel Peace Alliance, Chemali explains why she believes a peace accord between Israel and Lebanon is possible within the next two years.
The Atlantic's Franklin Foer traces how Jews moved from the margins to the heart of American life before the sun started to set on that "Golden Age." He argues that the decline has serious implications for Jewish security, American democracy and Israel's standing — and that the way forward is through continued engagement.
In this special episode, Rabbi Ammi Hirsch delivers his keynote address from the third Re-CHARGING Reform Judaism conference, a gathering of more than 350 Reform rabbis and Jewish leaders at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. Addressing what he sees as a crisis of Jewish peoplehood, Zionism and moral confidence within liberal Jewish life, Hirsch argues that the future of Reform Judaism depends on renewed commitment to the Jewish people, Israel, and the values that have long defined the movement.
In "Ghosts of a Holy War," award-winning journalist Yardena Schwartz traces the roots of today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict back to the 1929 Hebron massacre — a moment that still echoes across Israel and the Middle East nearly a century later. She explores how disinformation, religious incitement and media narratives shaped the conflict then — and continue to shape it in the aftermath of October 7.
Writer and anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein argues that antizionism is not simply a continuation of the “classical” antisemitism of the past, but a new framework for anti-Jewish hatred. Drawing on his experiences in elite academic spaces and fieldwork with indigenous communities in the Amazon, Louis-Klein explores how ideas about colonialism, identity, and power have been weaponized to reshape how many young Americans understand Israel and the Jewish people.