Israel’s fourth quarter: catastrophe or hope?

by Brian on December 29, 2024

in In the News,Judicial coup,Politics

In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 invasion, the Israeli government essentially stopped functioning. Volunteers from civil society stepped up to the plate, distributing much-needed equipment and food to soldiers, working with refugees in their hotel homes, organizing transportation, and providing emotional and physical support. 

Even before Oct. 7, an organization called the Fourth Quarter was trying to narrow the gaps between Israelis that the country’s current coalition has been manipulating for its own destructive benefit. 

Fourth Quarter conference (credit: Haggai Lavie)

Founded in 2022 by strategic consultant and historian Yoav Heller; organizational psychologist Ella Ringel; PR agency owner Eitan Zeliger; and Ori Helman, whose background is in tech, civil society and government, the organization takes its name from a phenomenon that has been repeated throughout history: Nations tend to do well for the first three quarters of their initial 100 years, then in the final 25 years, they fall apart.

The American Civil War happened in the fourth quarter following the founding of the United States. 

The Communist and French revolutions also crumbled at the beginning of their respective fourth quarters.

Closer to home, both Solomon’s kingdom and the Hasmonean dynasty were beset by internal strife in theirfourth quarters, allowing external enemies to destroy the Jewish State.

That pattern is happening again.

In modern Israel’s first quarter, there was a clear, shared mandate: to establish a state. 

The next quarter was all about building national infrastructure.

By the third quarter, from 1998 to 2023, Israel had a world-leading economy. Our defense was strong and we believed we were no longer under existential threat.

Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, foresaw what was coming. 

When queried if he was satisfied with the establishment of the Jewish State, he replied, “Ask me when the state of Israel is 75 years old … at that point, assuring the rightness of our path will require redefinition, based not on what was but on what will be.”

I wanted to know more about the Fourth Quarter, so my wife, Jody, and I recently hosted Haggai Lavie, one of the Fourth Quarter’s leaders in Jerusalem, for an English-language parlor meeting at our home.

Lavie didn’t mince words. 

Haggai Lavie at our house for parlor meeting

“If we continue the way we’re going now, it’s going to end in destruction. There won’t be a state of Israel. I know that’s very harsh. But something radical needs to change for this not to happen for the first time in Jewish history.”

The extremes, Lavie adds, “are getting stronger,” with their opponents labeled “traitors” and “enemies of the state.” Once they’re setting the tone, an internal war is inevitable. 

There’s a solution to this fourth quarter crisis we find ourselves in: broad agreements and unity, rather than one side trying to force-feed its goals on an unreceptive public.

But when the Fourth Quarter places “unity” as its goal for national repair, people respond with incredulity. “That’s what’s going to solve our problems? Come on,” Lavie says he hears all the time.

To which Lavie nods in agreement. “It’s a tough thing to do because if you want to reach broad agreement, it means you will have to compromise on some of your values. It’s impossible for everybody to get 100% and still be able to live with other people.”

What we need is “trust,” which Lavie describes as “the attribution of good intentions.” 

Lavie says he’s not talking about good intentions towards oneself or one’s country. “The question is if I think you have good intentions about me. Do you want me to have a good life? If so, then we have a lot we can do together.”

The flip side: “If I think you want to force your values on me, then I’ll stay away from you because you’re dangerous.”

Being able to argue is key. “Without it, you can’t agree on anything. Which leaves only one option: to win while the other side loses. In that case, both sides lose.”

The Israeli public must understand everyone will have to give up on certain things, so we can all live under the same canopy. “That’s a change that Oct. 7 taught us. If you’re working against unity, you’re working against our very existence.”

So, how do we get there?

There’s a “huge moderate majority where Israelis agree about more than they disagree,” Lavie stresses, “but hatred has become far worse and doesn’t let this group cooperate anymore.” After all, “when you really listen to someone, they might persuade you. And who wants to change his or her own opinions?”

The Fourth Quarter proposes the creation of a new “Israeli story,” one that incorporates a diversity of views, including some that many Israelis will be “barely able to swallow,” Lavie acknowledges.

It seems to be working.

At one parlor meeting, Lavie recalls a participant standing up and saying, “’Israel is a liberal democracy and those values need to be shaping the system here.’ And no one in the audience yelled or flipped over a table. Then someone else said, ‘Israel is a Jewish state and Jewish values should be dominant in the public sphere.’ And again, no one left.”

The Fourth Quarter holds large-scale seminars, nightly Zoom meetings and around 100 monthly salon meetings in private homes, like ours. Forty percent of its members are secular, 35% religious Zionist, 21% traditional, 4% Haredi and 1% Arab. 

While some 150,000 Israelis of all political and religious stripes have joined the organization, “we need a million” to move from what Lavie dubbed “submission politics” – where one side demands the other bend to its will – to “hospitality politics,” where the goal of the “host” is to “make sure that all the different groups in society feel at home.”

The question before Israel now is: Can we as a nation be that family with the secular father, the national religious mother, the ultra-Orthodox son-in-law and the gay daughter? Or will too many of us opt to sit shiva, unwilling to bridge our differences?

To learn more, visit: https://q4israel.org.il/english/

Remember how, a few posts back, I shared an AI-generated “podcast” of one of my columns? I’ve done it again here with a NotebookLM-based dialogue about Haggai’s parlor meeting. Check it out here.

I first covered the Fourth Quarter for The Jerusalem Post.

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“I’ve never been with a bald man before”

by Brian on December 13, 2024

in Cancer,Health,Science

I was prepared for my hair to fall out. Just not the way it started.

I had expected it to be in clumps. I’d be in the shower and a handful of hair would come off in my hands while I was rinsing off. Or, as Nurse Shlomit explained, I’ll start to see hair piling up on my pillow.

Instead, I was sitting having a bowl of soup when a single strand tentatively floated down from my head to the kitchen table. I touched my scalp and another wisp was launched airborne. 


My hair loss started more with a whisper than a bang. 

That I would lose my hair was a given when I started this latest round of chemotherapy to fight off an increasingly aggressive case of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. My journey started in 2018 and has comprised two brief remissions followed by relapses and several years of “watch and wait” (but do nothing for now), which is common when battling this typically slow-growing cancer.

But following the unexpected and rapid expansion of a tumor that threatened to compromise one of my kidneys and caused excruciating pain, my hematologist told me I had no choice but to address it without delay. No more tarrying was warranted.

My doctor’s treatment of choice: CAR-T. Which plunged me into a panic.

CAR-T is intense and riddled with risks. First, your T-cells are “harvested,” then sent to a lab in Europe where they’re re-engineered to produce proteins called chimeric antigen receptors (“CARs”) which, when injected into your body a few weeks later, recognize and bind to specific antigens on the surface of cancer cells to fight your particular disease profile. 

When I first was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma seven years ago, the mantra was, “This is a chronic cancer, incurable but usually treatable. You won’t die from it.”

But on that day, after failing chemo, radiation and even that bispecific antibody I was so optimistic about, the prospect of CAR-T was, frankly, terrifying. Not the process itself – although that’s tough, too, including a three-week in-patient hospital stay while you’re monitored for potentially fatal side effects – but rather what CAR-T symbolizes.

It is in many ways the end of the road: If I were to fail CAR-T, all that’s left are clinical trials, which may or may not work, and new drugs in the pipeline that are not ready yet.

When CAR-T was first introduced, some people reportedly never relapsed at all. But we have more data today and, while upwards of 90% of patients go into remission after the treatment, for 60%, the cancer will be back after a year or two. 

Given my track record, it’s a race I may have no choice but to run.

Then our HMO said no. 

I had only failed two lines of “systemic therapy” (radiation doesn’t count). I needed to flunk out three times to be eligible for CAR-T. 

Was I caught in a nauseating healthcare bureaucracy? 

“We can do a bridging treatment,” my hematologist offered. “Two rounds of chemo, then a scan to see if it’s working. If the tumors are shrinking, we’ll continue through the full six cycles. If not, we stop; you’ll have officially failed a third line, and we go on to CAR-T.”

The “bridging chemo” she recommended is called R-CHOP. It’s the strongest, most toxic treatment one can get for my kind of lymphoma. It comes with a host of nasty side effects, including nausea, bone pain, fatigue, runny nose (apparently due to one’s nostril hair falling out), tummy troubles and possible infections. I started a few weeks ago and have gotten every single one of them.

As for my head hair, I know it will grow back, and this is just temporary. I nevertheless can’t deny my vanity. I’ve long been proud I never went bald. In college, I didn’t cut my hair for two years. I was happy during previous treatments that I didn’t present publicly as a cancer patient in a ski cap. 

Now, there will be no hiding it.

“I’ve always found the Israeli-man-with-the-shaved-head look to be very sexy,” my wife, Jody, said. 

I searched for a snappy rejoinder, but as I ran a hand through my hair, the follicles on my scalp ached, as if they were prepping to angrily disgorge any remaining locks.

Should I eschew brushing my hair, to preserve a clump here or there, for as long as I can? Or would it be better to bite the bullet and give myself a hipster buzz cut and buy a funky fedora or a hippie bandana – maybe even a fur shtreimel like the ultra-Orthodox? 

“You should worry more about the cancer than your hair,” well-meaning friends will try to comfort you. But hair is a part of our identity, our relationships and culture. 

The author Christopher Hitchens, who died in 2011 of esophageal cancer, writes in his book Mortality that, “I wasn’t quite prepared for the way my razor blade would suddenly go slipping pointlessly down my face, meeting no stubble.”

Nurse Shlomit’s prediction came true eventually: My pillow would be peppered in hair by morning, of which I had no choice but to lay in, as I was too exhausted to change the pillowcase. 

Then the unexpected happened: my hair loss strangely stopped. Would I be left with just a partially bald new do? Or was this a brief respite before the recommencement of the main act?

I’m trying to stay positive, reassuring myself that if my hair is falling out – whether fully or not – the R-CHOP must be working. I’ll know in another few weeks. 

In the meantime, how do you think I’ll look in this topper?

I posted about my hair originally at The Jerusalem Post.

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How to preserve a legacy after death

by Brian on December 2, 2024

in Cancer,Health,Living Through Terror,Politics,War in Gaza,War with Hezbollah

Everything came crashing down at once.

A trifecta of physical and emotional stress washed over me, leaving me despondent over politics, war and a sudden change in my health.

The combination left me so deeply depressed that I couldn’t stop crying for several days. Until I realized that my malodorous mood was being fueled by inadvertently going cold turkey off a high dose of steroids. Frankly, I’m lucky I made it through those three days of withdrawal alive.

Israel’s multi-front war, coupled with the implications of the U.S. elections and Israeli coalition machinations, would have been enough to sour just about anyone’s outlook on life. But I had a physical reason to be discouraged.

My cancer had come back. 

Its sudden advance came shockingly fast. In September, my wife, Jody, and I spent 10 days on vacation in Portugal. Just a few weeks later, I was writhing in pain, trying to find a comfortable position on the hard plastic waiting room chairs at the emergency room at Hadassah Ein Kerem. 

After spending some nine hours there over a Friday night, the radiologist’s report revealed the culprit: a tumor was pressing on my ureter – that’s the tube that connects the kidneys to the bladder. I’ve never had kidney stones but I’m told this is what it feels like. 

The super-cool bispecific antibody I had been getting for most of 2024 knocked out 95% of my cancer, but one tumor proved refractory. 

I was put on prednisone on the chance it would shrink the tumor somewhat, if only temporarily, before I’d need to start a much more aggressive protocol of chemo for my cancer. 

Over the course of my depression, I began to grapple with my mortality, not for the first time but in a more open, serious way. I’m not in danger of dying anytime soon, but the failure of my previous treatments and the harshness of the next one (and the statistical probability that it, too, will fail) resulted in one of the worst things that can happen to a human being.

I lost hope.

Any expectations I may have harbored about how long I’ll live and what kind of quality of life I’ll have going forward were dashed by the pervasive doom and gloom.

When I started the bispecific antibody, I imagined being cancer-free for years. I would live at least as long as my father (he died at 81); Jody and I would celebrate 50 years of marriage; I would dance at our grandchildren’s bnei mitzvot – maybe even their weddings! 

And now – I have no idea. I could be gone in a couple of years, or if I’m feeling optimistic, five or ten.

Will I have energy to kick a ball around with three-year-old Ilai? Push one-year-old Roni on the swings? Will we still be able to hike? Travel overseas? 

Or will my new normal be one of limitation and discomfort?

When I’m feeling under the weather, I can spend hours doom-scrolling online.

Which led to another morbid thought: Is that what life is, really – a multi-decade-long distraction from death? Are all the things we do – from raising a family to work – essentially a way to keep from fixating on the inevitable? Is it at all possible to add anything lasting and meaningful to the world? Or will all that be forgotten in a generation…or less?

If I believed in an afterlife, I might be less bothered by my eventual demise. But for me, I’ve always viewed immortality as being all about legacy. William Shakespeare, David Ben-Gurion, Moses – all are unlikely to be forgotten. 

For the rest of us, once we’re gone, our children will remember us for a while, but if we die too soon, for the grandkids, we’ll just be that old geezer with the funny voice on the videotape.

Can technology help? 

Thirty-one-year-old computer engineer Muhammed Aurangzeb Ahmad describes to David Zvi Kalman in an episode of his podcast, “Belief in the Future,” how sad he was that his father, who died young, would never have a relationship with Ahmad’s yet-to-be-born children.

Ahmad built an AI tool dubbed “Grandpa Bot” into which he uploaded his father’s text messages, recorded phone conversations and home videos to create an interactive simulation. 

Ahmad isn’t alone. In South Korea, a woman reunited with her dead daughter using virtual reality. A Chinese software developer has reportedly created AI simulations for 600 families.

Ahmad knows Grandpa Bot isn’t really his father. “It does not have a consciousness,” he tells Kalman. “It just mimics a few aspects of my father’s personality.”

Originally, Ahmad limited Grandpa Bot’s knowledge to just what Ahmad had uploaded. As a result, his father was not able to relate to current events. That confused his children. “So, reluctantly, I’ve added some bits of data here and there.”

Kalman sees the value in this kind of AI. But it’s important, he adds, to ask whether you are “simulating the dead because you want to stay in the past or because you want to move forward with your life.” 

Could AI simulations of the dead let us “chat” with Maimonides or Rashi? If the sages had access to the modern Internet, could they rule on contemporary issues? Would a chatbot Talmud be more accessible to the masses than its current form? Could it “bring back” Rabbi Menachem Schneersen of Chabad, who died in 1994, turning him into a virtual messiah?

In my pursuit of legacy, I realize that I could be obsessing over an outcome that, for me, is far from ordained. My next cancer treatment could cure me. I could live until my 90s, healthy and hale, climbing up mountains (and climbing over grandchildren). 

Or the world could end in nuclear annihilation and, then, who cares about legacy, anyway? 

Oops, that was the prednisone talking again.

I first wrote about preserving a legacy after death for The Jerusalem Post.

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Hotel Montefiore: Enjoying Tel Aviv under the threat of war

by Brian on November 26, 2024

in Living Through Terror,Only in Israel,Reviews,Travel,Uncategorized,War in Gaza,War with Hezbollah

The first thing Adam, the assistant manager who took us to our room at the Montefiore boutique hotel in Tel Aviv, did upon our arrival was point out where the bomb shelters were. The hotel itself didn’t have one, but there was one in the office building just across the street and another one a block and a half away. 

Entrance to hotel

Such are the times we live in, where something as simple as reviewing a hotel can mean risking your life. 

Adam’s timing was, unfortunately, impeccable. As we relaxed in our foliage-encrusted balcony sipping herbal tea, we heard the sound of the Iron Done in the distance. No siren went off and there was no panic on the street. Still, the news that morning was full of rumors that Iran would launch its long-awaited attack that night. (Spoiler alert: they didn’t.) Still, we wondered whether we should cancel and reschedule for another date.

Just another day vacationing in the new normal of a Middle East at war. 

My wife Jody and I had come to review this 12-room property, situated just a couple blocks off bustling Rothschild Boulevard and close to trendy Nachalat Binyamin Street, which at night is transformed into a packed pedestrian outdoor eatery. It’s another 20-minute walk to the beach or the Neve Tzedek neighborhood with its designer clothing shops, art galleries and cafes.

None of the guests in the Montefiore’s hip resto-bar, which mixes French and Asian cuisine seemed too concerned about any looming attacks. Indeed, the restaurant has been a hipster mainstay for 17 years. The restaurant and hotel are both operated by the R2M group, a key player in Tel Aviv’s tourist and culinary scene, which also owns the R48 hotel on Rothschild (reviewed here) and other eateries including Coffeebar Express and Herzl 16

The hotel itself feels almost like an afterthought to the dining extravaganza on the ground floor – indeed, the check-in desk for the hotel and the restaurant are the same; a discreet black doored elevator is the only clue that there’s more upstairs.

The restaurant is not kosher and, while that normally wouldn’t take it off our list, there were just a few too many dishes made with calamari, shrimp, mussels and pork to suit our tastes. We opted for Nini Hatchi, a well-known and highly-rated kosher sushi place a 20-minute bus ride away. 

We did partake of the Montefiore’s sumptuous breakfast (served fashionably late from 9:00 am to 11:00 am). Unlike most Israeli hotels, this was not a buffet but a la carte and served to our table. Our lovely server Adva was attentive and brought my wife not one but three cups of excellent cappuccino. 

For me, she offered a treat: a stack of pancakes (“the best in the city,” Adva assured me; she was right) following the lavish plate of poached egg, breads, spreads, salad and pastries I had already ordered. Adva (nor, in fact, any of the Montefiore staff) knew that we were reviewing the hotel, which made the above-and-beyond service that much more genuine.

Adam suggested when we arrived that we could also order the same meal as room service for no extra charge, but we wanted to be in the center of the action downstairs.

The three-story salmon-colored building housing the Montefiore was built in 1924 in the “eclectic” architectural style, just prior to the more no-nonsense Bauhaus design sweeping Tel Aviv and giving it the moniker “The White City.” We stayed in a 25-square-meter corner room with a balcony and wrap-around windows. Adam explained that the rooms are regularly refurbished, and ours seemed fresh, with a king-sized bed, waterfall shower, teas and chocolate treats, a fancy coffee machine and a big-screen TV. 

Wall of books

A wall of multilingual classic books extends behind and above the TV, going all the way to the top of the high ceiling, making it more of a cool design touch than a truly useful feature. (I did find a “Dune” book I hadn’t read before by climbing on a chair to reach it!) The room also has some lovely artwork by contemporary Israeli artists, dark hardwood flooring, and black marble floors in the bathroom.

The Montefiore has no rooftop pool, no gym or sauna, although there is free valet parking for guests – that’s worth a couple hundred shekels compared with a Tel Aviv public parking lot.

The hotel, which was the first boutique hotel to open in the city, is located on a quiet street, just far enough away from the construction of the purple line of the Tel Aviv light rail on Allenby St, although not quite far enough from the hubbub emanating from guests of the restaurant seated outdoors directly below our room. 

Another quirky downside: The door to the bathroom has a window in it – emulating perhaps that typical 1950s-era Tel Aviv apartment feature – but the windows in the bathroom itself have no blackout curtains, so light streams in as morning comes. 

Pro traveler tip: bring eyepatches!

The Montefiore is ideally located and tastefully designed. Prices range from NIS 1,500 to NIS 2,000 depending on the room and whether you’re booking for a weekday or weekend. Israeli citizens must add VAT on top of that. If you do eat in the restaurant, except to pay upwards of NIS 600 for a couple, including wine or cocktails from the bar.

And if you do get to experience the spectacle of missiles during your stay, there’s no extra charge for the bonus fireworks.

This review first appeared in The Jerusalem Post.

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Will AI put me out of a job?

by Brian on November 16, 2024

in Covid-19,Health,In the News,Only in Israel,Reviews,Technology

I started using artificial intelligence in my writing work almost by accident.

I was writing a case study for a client about a Wolt-competitive delivery service based in Umm al-Fahm called HAAT. Some of the interviews we conducted were in Arabic. We had a HAAT employee help ask the questions, but when we got the video back from the interviews, we didn’t feel comfortable asking the translator to pour over hours of tape and write down everything she heard.

So, I ran the audio through a Mac-based app called Whisper Transcription. Whisper transcribed it into both Arabic and English text. It even included the timecode so we could easily add subtitles to the video.

Whisper Transcription uses artificial intelligence to work its magic. I have extracted salient points from dozens of podcasts this way. Compared to how I used to do it – painstakingly playing the audio while typing, stopping and scrolling whenever the audio got ahead of me – this has saved me innumerable hours of annoying grunt work. 

The next step in my AI evolution was not a work-related issue but a personal one. 

When Covid-19 hit, I moved my therapy sessions from in-person to Zoom. I’ll then take notes either afterward or during the session itself. 

Then I discovered Read.ai. A more fully-featured AI transcription tool than Whisper, Read.ai has a plug-in for Zoom that automatically launches and captures any audio. When you’re finished, Read.ai sends you a link to its transcription online.

Read.ai does more than transcribe: It also summarizes the conversation, presents a list of action items, and even grades you on how personable and attentive it felt you were during the session. I now take my hands off the keyboard during therapy and highlight the text later. 

Whisper and Read pale in comparison to the incredible utility that comes with Google’s new NotebookLM tool.

Utilizing Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro AI, NotebookLM (the LM is short for “large language model”) is astounding. Aimed at helping writers make sense of their research, you simply upload your documents, and, like Read.ai, the AI will summarize them for you.

That’s just the start, though.

NotebookLM suggests query topics, or you can type in your own. I gave NotebookLM a PDF of my book, Totaled. “What were the key factors that led to the failure of Better Place, according to the author?” it asked. “Evaluate the management style of Shai Agassi as to the success or failure of Better Place.” 

Which got me concerned: Will our content-creating jobs someday be threatened by AI? 

I didn’t think so – until I discovered a NotebookLM feature that blew me away. The app can generate a 10-minute podcast based on your material. Two chirpy NPR-style narrators banter back and forth, talking over each other, disagreeing, then coming together, as they discuss the merits of your work. 

The result is unnervingly realistic. The narrators don’t sound like they are computer-generated (other than a few grammatical gaffes here and there). They can, at times, be quite smart, unlocking insights I didn’t even realize I’d written. 

For example, I’ve been noodling for a few years now on ideas for a novel but have been having trouble figuring out the main plot points. I plugged my notes into NotebookLM. The podcast hosts honed in on what the main thrust of the book should be (spoiler alert: It wasn’t necessarily what I was thinking) while surfacing some illogical contradictions.

I’ve used AI in various other ways.

  • For a book I’ve been working on with a client, we wanted to include a series of graphics that would have a consistent look and feel. Dall-e, an AI image-generation program, did a yeoman’s job.
  • I’m a huge fan of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis. So, I asked an app called Songer to write me a song in the band’s early 1970s style. The song sounded more like Rush or Black Sabbath than Genesis. Still, it’s only a matter of time before musicians join the list of artists disintermediated by AI.
  • When I was working on the audiobook version of Totaled, I considered using an AI tool such as Revoicer or Podcastle to turn my text into narration. They did pretty well, especially with a British-accented voiceover, but when I uploaded some samples of my own voice to “clone,” the result came out choppy and distorted. Plus, the AI had trouble enunciating Hebrew words and names. I stuck with the old-fashioned way and recorded it myself.

Beyond my personal experience, Israeli high-tech is fast becoming an AI leader. Among the companies worth tracking:

  • Immuneai is mapping the entire human immune system to explain why people react differently to viruses, cancer, autoimmune and degenerative diseases.
  • IdentifAI has developed a noninvasive prenatal blood test that can detect problems with the fetus with a low level of false positives.
  • RespirAI has created an algorithm that uses sensor data from smartwatches to predict when respiratory deterioration is imminent.
  • Clarity.ai is tackling what CEO Michael Matias calls “the invasion of deceit” – specifically, deepfakes that have confused audiences as to whether Taylor Swift did that or whether Donald Trump said that (he probably did).
  • Visionary.ai has partnered with Qualcomm to bring better pictures and videos in low light to an Android smartphone near you.

Do I believe these newfangled AI tools will send the creative class to work at a local McDonald’s? No. That doesn’t mean the day won’t come when computers surpass human cognition. Elon Musk is betting his latest company, Neuralink, on just that. Ray Kurzweil predicts in his 2024 book The Singularity is Nearer that AI will reach human intelligence by 2029 and merge with humans by 2045.

To see what’s coming next, go to http://bit.ly/4fFKSSB where I asked NotebookLM to generate an AI podcast version of this column. 

I first wrote about my AI adventures in The Jerusalem Post.

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Is Jewish universalism the source of antisemitism?

November 2, 2024

Sometimes an idea can upend decades of thinking. That’s what Dara Horn’s recent essay in The Atlantic on universalism vs. particularism did for me. 

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30 years of aliyah

October 20, 2024

Last week, our family marked our thirty-year “aliyaversary,” since we moved to Israel in 1994. Here are 30 reasons to live in Israel.

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The black swans of Rosh Hashana

October 6, 2024

The term “black swan effect” refers to the kinds of big phenomena one never thought would happen and that have a potentially catastrophic outcome. How does that relate to Rosh Hashana?

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Post-debate dilemma: Who’s better for Israel? Harris or Trump?

September 22, 2024

I still have significant reservations, and I truly wish these weren’t the only two candidates running, but Harris will be getting my vote. 

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Can you still feel joy?

September 10, 2024

As Jody and I embark on a vacation, we wonder – can we still feel joy while our people are in the midst of war? And then Hersh happened.

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