Ask Haviv Anything – Details, episodes & analysis

"Ask Haviv Anything" is a podcast about history, a podcast you, dear listener, will help to shape and direct, focusing not just on what I want to talk about but on what you want to learn and discuss. Nothing is off limits. We're going to talk about big and painful things, and also beautiful and fascinating things, wars and identities and painful history. And also more light-hearted things. Humor matters, especially when facing tough subjects.

Join me on this journey.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

*Recorded Saturday night, February 8, 2025*First reflections in response to Hamas's hostage release ceremony in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza on Saturday, when Israelis discovered the extent to which the hostages had been tormented and starved.

Episode first aired Sunday on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything).

It’s hard for a modern Jew to grasp the depth of marginalization and ostracism that even the most assimilated of Austrian Jews experienced in the 1890s. Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, began his journey as a passionate assimilationist, a deep believer in European modernity and Germanic culture. It was only when these hopes were dashed that he turned, as a drowning man to a life raft, to political Zionism.

Here is the untold story of how Herzl found Zionism. (Spoiler: It wasn’t the Dreyfus Affair.)

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

American Jews constitute the biggest, wealthiest, most influential and safest Jewish diaspora community in Jewish history, and also among the most Jewishly illiterate and profoundly anxious about their future.

There's a good reason this immense and powerful community is also culturally weak and unsure of itself. There is deep history behind its illiteracy, a story of tragedy and trauma, rebellion and rebuilding.

We unpack it all in this episode.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

Recorded Thursday, February 20th

Israelis watched horrified on Thursday, as Hamas gunmen conducted a ceremony handing over four coffins, two of them with the bodies of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, aged 1 and 4, when they were murdered in Gaza, along with their mother Shiri. Oded Lifshitz, 83, was the fourth body handed over to Israel. Around the ceremony, Gazan civilians cheered and threw rice, people brought their kids to watch.

What should we make of this gruesome spectacle, of a festival conducted over the coffins of little children?

Some thoughts on what Israelis, and with them, the whole Jewish world, just witnessed.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

Israeli Jews are the last surviving remnant of dozens of devastated Jewish communities across three continents. How did this history shape them? What do they understand about the world that few others see?

Join Haviv Rettig Gur for a deep dive into the historical experience that shaped this largest community of Jews ever.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.
Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnythingIf you would like to sponsor an episode please email haviv@askhavivanything.com

In our first interview episode, Haviv Rettig Gur sits down (virtually) with Prof. John Spencer of West Point, one of the foremost experts in urban warfare who has made a special study of Israeli warfighting tactics and strategy.

Many subscribers to this podcast have asked us why Israel doesn’t seem to have won this war, why Hamas is still standing after 17 months of fighting and why Israel must still negotiate for its hostages.

For answers we turned to Prof. Spencer. We learned about the IDF’s astonishing successes, such as its groundbreaking tactical innovations in tunnel warfare. And we learned about the gaping lacuna at the heart of Israel’s strategy in Gaza — the reason it still hasn’t won the war.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

If you would like to sponsor an episode please email haviv@askhavivanything.com

This is a podcast about history, but also about this moment in history.

Today's episode is a special one. Many of you asked about the hostages, about the activism of their families, about their shattering experiences on October 7 and how they have worked to piece their lives back together since.

I can think of no better way to begin to answer these questions than by posing them to our good friend Shaked Haran.

There's no one story of the hostage families. Their experiences vary, their opinions on the war differ. All their stories are powerful and excruciating, and often also unexpectedly inspiring; all are worth hearing.

And Shaked's voice stands out among them for its clarity and courage.

Shaked lost three family members in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be'eri, including her beloved father Avshalom, or Avshal. Seven more family members, including sister Adi, brother-in-law Tal, three-year-old niece Yahel, eight-year-old nephew Naveh, and 12-year-old cousin Noam, were dragged into Gaza as hostages.

Just two weeks ago, the last family member still held by Hamas, Tal Shoham, was finally released, closing a long and painful chapter in the life of this extraordinary family.

We sat down to talk about that day, about what it feels like to search desperately for your family after a massacre, about finding the strength amid the pain and fear to launch a globe-spanning fight to rescue your loved ones. We looked at Israel's social fractures and at what holds us all together, about a morally confused world and an enemy territory that could still, she believes, flourish if it managed to come out from beneath the shadow of the murderers of her family.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com.

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Warfighting has resumed in Gaza. Israel's message is clear: Gaza's future depends on Hamas releasing hostages and surrendering its control of the territory.

But there is a larger pivot underway, a regional strategic realignment. Hamas once hoped its attack on Israel would trigger a broader regional war. In a sense, it succeeded, relegating Gaza to a marginal arena in the larger strategic struggle. That alone, gives Israel a freer hand to resume war whenever it wants. Hamas is now truly strategically alone.

Thank you to Joe and Shira Lieberman for sponsoring this episode in honor of those we lost on October 7th.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠.

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Abandoning the Democrats is a losing strategy for Israel, says Rep. Ritchie Torres, perhaps the most outspoken supporter of Israel in the US House of Representatives. The fight over Israel inside American politics is a proxy for a much larger battle over the future of the Democratic Party and the character of America, he argues. Those who don't like Israel, he says, tend to take a dim view of the promise of America.

And who is Clarence Jones, and why does Torres consider him "the greatest living American?"

Thank you to Jason and Lauriel Klinghoffer for sponsoring this episode in honor of Jason’s grandmother, Nusia Klinghoffer, a holocaust survivor who passed away last year.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠.

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur