Over the course of Israel’s multi-front war with Hamas, Hezbollah the Houthis and beyond, I’ve received much of my news from podcasts. If, before Oct. 7, I was hooked on pop culture, history and science-minded audio programming such as Fresh Air, RadioLab and This American Life, my AirPods have lately been tuned to a more Israel-focused digital frequency. 

Here are eight of the essential English-language podcasts that have kept me in the know.

Unholy: Two Jews on the News

My go-to Friday morning listen comes from two veteran journalists – Yonit Levi, lead anchorperson on Israel’s Channel 12 news, and Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. The two tackle the trending topics of the week, usually with a special guest such as former CIA director David Petraeus; New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman; historian Simon Montefiore; and Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, parents of murdered hostage Hersh. Levy tends to skew to a more centrist Israeli experience while Freedland presents a contrarian view that often veers leftward. Each episode ends with a weekly “mensch” and “chutzpah” award.

Call Me Back

Dan Senor co-wrote “Startup Nation” and “The Genius of Israel” with his brother-in-law Saul Singer. Senor’s credentials place him ostensibly on the right – he worked as a foreign policy advisor to Senator Mitt Romney – but he keeps his politics close to his chest as he interviews for Call Me Back regular pundits such as Yediot Ahronot’s Nadav Eyal, the Times of Israel’s Haviv Rettig Gur (who’s also a frequent contributor on that publication’s excellent What Matters Now podcast), and Hartman Institute senior fellow (and former legal adviser of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs) Tal Becker. Journalist Ronen Bergman, whose book, “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations” raised eyebrows, has also appeared on the show.

For Heaven’s Sake

Donniel Hartman grew up in Jerusalem and is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute. Yossi Klein Halevi immigrated from Brooklyn to Israel in 1982 after falling out with a somewhat sordid past, as told in his book “Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist,” when he was a young acolyte to inflammatory MK Rabbi Meir Kahane. Klein Halevi subsequently wrote the much-praised “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.” Their podcast delves into moral issues as much as the news, with Hartman playing the peacenik while Klein Halevi serves as his more militaristic yet always anguished foil. 

Israel from the Inside

Rabbi Daniel Gordis, prolific author and one of the founders of Jerusalem’s Shalem College, posts to his Substack newsletter and podcast daily and includes a variety of Left, Right and Center viewpoints, from the Democrats’ Gilad Kariv to Moshe Koppel, one of the architects behind Yariv Levin’s judicial coup legislation. Gordis tirelessly translates Hebrew press for his English-speaking listeners – he uploaded a version of the Yoni Bloch AI-driven fantasy peace video I wrote about previously with helpful subtitles.

State of Tel Aviv

Vivian Bercovici served as Canadian Ambassador to Israel from 2014 to 2016. She moved to Tel Aviv in 2021 and later to a kibbutz not far from the Gaza Strip. Every week or so, either former Jerusalem Post editor Yaakov Katz or former IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conricus joins the podcast to share their insights. A recent two-part series explored the tragic explosion of antisemitism in Canada. My one complaint with State of Tel Aviv – and it’s one that I have with other Substack-based podcasts as well – is that they put much of their best material behind a paywall. If I paid for every podcast I listen to, I wouldn’t be able to afford my weekly falafel!

The Jewish People’s Podcast

Speaking of Yaakov Katz, he’s been busy in the two years since he left the Post (where he still writes a must-read Friday column). A former defense analyst and military correspondent, his books include “Israel vs. Iran: The Shadow War” and “Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power.” Now a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, Katz hosts the organization’s podcast where he brings on special guests before discussing the week’s news with recurring panelists Prof. Gil Troy of McGill University; Dr. Shuki Friedman, vice president of JPPI; and JPPI senior fellow (and author of the must-read book “#Israeli Judaism”) Shmuel Rosner.

Israel Story

Originally conceived as a local version of “This American Life,” the Israel Story podcast, hosted by Mishy Harman, was the first Israeli one I got hooked on. I loved it so much that I even produced an award-winning episode on Better Place, based on my book about the bankrupt Israeli electric car company. Following Oct. 7, Israel Story pivoted to telling the stories of survivors, hostage families and ordinary Israelis coping with a new reality. I have a hard time listening to stories that are so raw; I look forward to the day when Israel Story returns to its original mission.

Honestly

Bari Weiss launched her politics podcast in 2021 after publicly accusing the newsroom at The New York Times, where she was employed, of rampant antisemitism. She quit the Times and while her resulting publicationThe Free Press, is not exclusively about Israel, Weiss and her team return to the topic frequently. She’s recruited commentators from all sides of the political spectrum, including Matti Friedman, author of such acclaimed books as “Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai,” and “Spies of No Country”; right-leaning historian Eli Lake; and staunchly pro-Israel journalist Douglas Murray, who recently held court at a series of sold-out stadium-sized “lectures” in Israel.

When you put it all together, For Heaven’s Sake, you’ve Honestly got an Unholy Inside Israel Story from the Jewish People’s State of Tel Aviv. So, Call Me Back already!

I first shared my podcast list at The Jerusalem Post.

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Last week, when the long-awaited Israel-Hamas hostage-ceasefire deal was announced, musician and entrepreneur Yoni Bloch released one of the most remarkable videos I’ve ever seen. Indeed, every time I watch it (and I’ve gone back multiple times), I can’t stop crying. I tear up even just talking to someone about Bloch’s creation.

An Israeli train passes the Giza Pyramids in Yoni Bloch’s new AI-generated music video

Bloch has penned a vision of what the Middle East could look like if peace – true peace – were to prevail. And he’s used some remarkable artificial intelligence tools to create those images.

I first met Bloch 13 years ago when I wrote an article about his transition from indie pop darling to high-tech big wig. After several years in the mid-2000s recording a string of quirky singles, Bloch pivoted to the tech world, where he founded Interlude.fm, a start-up that developed interactive software allowing viewers to manipulate what happens next in the video.

Should the girl go home with the boy or stay at the party? Should Andy dance with the waiters or hang with the cleaning staff in the hotel lobby? What are the ramifications of choosing the black vs the red t-shirt?

Interlude rebranded as Eko in 2016 and counts as clients brand names such as Walmart and Sam’s Club. The company has offices in Tel Aviv and New York. Investors include Intel Capital, Warner Music Group, Sony, and Sequoia.

Bloch invited my wife, Jody, and I to what turned out to be one of his last performances in Israel at the time before moving to the US to set up Interlude. It was a charming concert by this musician who was clearly already channeling his inner nerd.

Indeed, Yoni Bloch didn’t set out to become a rock star. A self-professed geek from the northern Negev town of Beersheba, Bloch loved playing both video games and music, he told me during our 2012 interview. After posting a few of his songs on New Stage, a sort of Israeli MySpace, Israeli music lovers discovered him, and he became a staple of the local alternative music scene. Israeli music label NMC subsequently picked up Bloch.

For his latest single, the catchy “Sof Tov” (“A Happy Ending”), which starts with Bloch nearly whispering the lyrics before breaking out into Aviv Geffen-like wall-of-sound guitar-powered crescendos, Bloch and his writing partner Barak Feldman didn’t employ Eko’s interactive smarts. Instead, the video leans into AI to create three minutes of pure, joyous fantasy.

Some of what’s shown on the video is real, but much of it is artificially generated, envisioning the emotional response in Israel – and in Bloch’s rendering, worldwide – to the release of the hostages held in Gaza by Hamas and its affiliates.

There are parades of people cheering as blue and white balloons fill the streets and Israeli jet fighters streak across the air. “Fake news” from the BBC, CNN and other international media outlets announces the release of every single hostage. “Leaders unite to end century-old conflict,” reads one chyron feed; “Historic peace: Israel and neighbors unite” reads another. Posters are torn down to reveal… living faces. Yellow ribbons are cut and tossed away.

Party on the Temple Mount…with a giant peace duck?

Dozens of green Egged buses are shown shuttling toward the kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope, returning its Israeli residents to a new, peaceful, and safe reality.

But that’s just the hors d’oeuvres. The main course is what the Middle East could look like if everyone lay down their arms and embraced peace.

A “Middle East Union” is formed – much like the European Union – allowing visa-free travel for everyone in the region.

That leads to a red and white Israeli train shown crossing a bridge and passing Egypt’s pyramids at Giza, followed by Israeli backpackers heading out on the new “Levant Trail” that expands the Israel Trail’s current 1,000 kilometers into Egypt in the south and Syria in the north.

In Tel Aviv, billboards advertise $299 flights to Tehran.

There’s a scene where Israelis tuck their second “emergency” passports (popular Portugal is shown) into a drawer, as the need to flee is gone.

In another bit, an Israeli woman receives her draft notice – it reads “canceled.” That’s followed by an image of an IDF recruitment office boarded up and a cache of rifles locked down.

The land adjacent to (the former) IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv has been turned into a recreation center called “Rabin Park.”

Israel is back in the World Cup, qualifying for the first time since 1970. An Israeli and Iranian judo player embrace (rather than the Iranian side refusing to even compete to avoid such “bad optics,” as has happened in real life in the past). Israelis celebrate in Times Square. A massive party takes place on the Temple Mount.

And then the kicker – for Bloch certainly and for pop music fans worldwide – Taylor Swift launches a worldwide “Peace tour” with a stop in Israel. The opening act: Yoni Bloch. The AI depicts the two of them embracing on stage.

AI brings Taylor Swift and Yoni Bloch together on stage

I’m crying again just writing this.

“Sof Tov” is not the first song to envision a peaceful future in the region. 1969’s “Shir LaShalom” and Naomi Shemer’s “Machar,” composed earlier in the 1960s to depict a future with no more social strife, are notable examples.

Is Bloch naïve? A dreamer out of touch with reality? Does the future he depicts stand a chance, or will it be relegated to the trash can of failed science fiction and fantasy?

“It’s a little exaggerated and a little real,” Bloch told Channel 12. “But the purpose of the song is not to describe reality but to remind people that they shouldn’t stop dreaming.”

It doesn’t matter. For a moment, the hostage deal gives us the faintest glimmer of hope, and so does Yoni Bloch.

But be sure to bring some tissues. You’re going to need them.

To see the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLAgHIP6UM&ab_channel=YoniBloch

I first wrote about Yoni Block’s remarkable new video for The Jerusalem Post.

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Cancer is not a “battle”

by Brian on January 11, 2025

in Cancer,Health,Science

In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a “war on cancer,” with the goal of “conquering” the disease by the time of the U.S. Bicentennial. $1.6 billion (the equivalent today of more than $10 billion) was dedicated to fund the crusade.

Richard Nixon

While the intention was certainly noble, an unintended consequence is that the “battle” cliche has been applied to patients not just pharmaceuticals, and we’ve been stuck with the cliche ever since, a term that New York Times staff editor Dana Jennings writes, after “staggering through prostate cancer and its treatment,” makes him “cringe and bristle.” 

Me, too.

Calling cancer a “battle” implies that there will be winners and losers. “If someone was fighting cancer but passed away, does it mean that person lost? That he or she didn’t fight hard enough? That they failed?” asks National Public Radio’s Leroy Sievers. 

“Using the battle metaphor implies that if a patient fights hard enough, smart enough and/or long enough, he or she will be able to win the war,” write Doctors Lee Ellis, Charles Blanke and Nancy Roach in JAMA Oncology. “Unfortunately, and with rare exceptions, patients with metastatic cancer cannot conquer cancer (win the ‘war’) no matter how hard they fight … the use of the battle metaphor implies a level of control that patients simply do not have.”

Moreover, referring to cancer as a “battle” minimizes the many real issues faced by cancer patients who must live with nausea, pain, fatigue and more. If the treatment works, they then must live with a fear of recurrence. 

Yvonne Ator understands where this all comes from. “Western culture is so uncomfortable talking about death that instead it created this ‘battle’ analogy that basically shames people who die from cancer,” she posted on social media.” 

The key question, she emphasizes, is “Are you running toward life or running away from death?”

The battle metaphor can result in bad medical outcomes – for example, agreeing to unnecessary treatment in the face of negligible chances. Indeed, some 62% of patients opt to receive chemotherapy within two months of dying.

That’s what happened to my father. When he was diagnosed with cancer in 2009, he chose chemo. 

He died three weeks after starting treatment. 

Ten years ago, before I was diagnosed with cancer myself, I wrote about medical ethicist Ezekiel Emmanuel’s provocative essay in The Atlantic, “Why I hope to die at 75.” Emmanuel’s thesis: Medicine may have prolonged life expectancy, but not quality of life. 

“Healthcare hasn’t slowed the aging process so much as it has slowed the dying process,” Emmanuel writes, which is why, when he turns 75, while he would not proactively end his life, “I will need a good reason to even visit the doctor and take any medical test or treatment, no matter how routine and painless. That means no screenings for cancer, no colonoscopies, no cardiac stress tests, no flu shots; not even antibiotics.”

Emmanuel reaffirmed his stance in a 2023 interview with the Times when he turned 65It’s one that’s resonated with me: not to give up but not to fight against the odds, either.

Patti Gustafson is the COO of the Swifty Foundation, a charity she started when her young son Michael died of medulloblastoma. He may have lost the “battle,” his mother writes, but “he continued to live despite the diagnosis and burdens he carried. [So] let’s save the war metaphors for research because we must not rest until that battle is won.” 

Kate Granger does not see anything “brave” about how she lives her life with cancer. 

“Bravery implies a choice. I didn’t choose to be affected by cancer and I don’t believe being placed on the courage pedestal helps me to continue living,” she writes in The Guardian. Cancer is a natural part of the human condition. “It has arisen from within my own body, from my own cells … to fight it would be ‘waging a war’ on myself.” Even those who “beat” cancer may not wish to have “the label of ‘survivor,’ which interferes with the return to normality,” Granger adds.

And yet, “no well-wisher omits the combative image: You can beat this. It’s even in obituaries for cancer losers,” writes Christopher Hitchens in his book Mortality. “You don’t hear this about long–term sufferers from heart disease or kidney failure.”

If the dominant cancer metaphor “describes tumors as an invading army, a barbarian horde attacking from outside city walls,” a better way to think about the disease, writes Yoon-Joon Surh, is as “local residents gone bad who slowly exploit the environment around them for their own gain.”

ESPN sports anchor Stuart Scott commented, before his death to cancer in 2015, that you don’t beat cancer by living forever, but “by how you live, why you live, and the manner in which you live.”

So, if cancer is not a battle, how else can we refer to people with the Big C? Here are some reframings:

“People affected by cancer”

“People living with and beyond cancer”

“People whose lives have been touched by cancer”

“People getting on with life despite cancer”

“Life raised to a higher power”

The writer Ullie Kaye adds that “instead of saying, ‘I know what it feels like,’ let’s say ‘I cannot imagine your heartbreak.’ Instead of saying, ‘You’re strong, you’ll get through this,’ let’s say ‘You’ll hurt, and I’ll be here.’ Instead of saying, ‘You look like you’re doing well,’ let’s say, ‘How are you holding up today?’ And when there are no words to say at all, you don’t need to try and find some. Love speaks in silences, too.”

I first explained how cancer is not a “battle” in The Jerusalem Post.

Image of Richard Nixon from the Presidential File Collection, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, available for use via Unsplash.

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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 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

December 2, 2024

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

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Hotel Montefiore: Enjoying Tel Aviv under the threat of war

November 26, 2024

The first thing Adam, the assistant manager, did upon our arrival at the Hotel Montefiore in Tel Aviv, was point out where the bomb shelters were

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Will AI put me out of a job?

November 16, 2024

I started using artificial intelligence by accident. I needed a transcription from Arabic to English. And then I plunged down the AI rabbit hole.

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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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