There is one last h*stage in G*za. He is not a symbol. Leverage. Or forgotten. He is a man by the name of Ran Gvili z”l. A man who is beloved by his family and his people. On Oct 7th he was 24 years old, and his shoulder had been broken for ten days and he was awaiting surgery. When he heard what was happening in the south, he donned his special police uniform and saved 100 people that day before he was captured. His actions mirror the man his mother Talik describes when she

I want to talk about working with your friends. I think most people are afraid to take their friendships to the next level. In many ways, true work collaboration is more intimate and vulnerable than friendship. We are afraid to mix "business and pleasure"- worry that things will get messy. And it totally can. But I want to make a plug for finding your people. Those whom you trust implicitly, who you have lived life with. I think that your closest friends can make the best wor

Yesterday, I sat with former h*stage Sasha Trufanov on Zoom. We connected because I will be interviewing him at the Get Help Israel   conference on Monday, and we wanted to talk about what he wanted to share, what he believes clinicians treating trauma in Israel need to know, and about his experiences with healing. He's a brilliant and sweet guy who has a tremendous amount to offer. I was left with a lot of strong feelings and an eagerness to have our conversation on stage, b

I remember seeing Dror's children being released back into Israel after being taken h*stage in G*za. I recognize their faces from the clips that I saw, way back on November 25, 2023. That means that they waited for two years to the day for their father's body to be returned home. Noam and Alma's parents sent them through the window, and then they followed. They all split up. Their mother, Yonat, was m*rdered on that fateful first day in Be'eri. Dror too was k*lled, but his bo

The world is living within the realms of its own lies. Telling stories that it thinks are so convincing that the truth doesn't even have a chance. Who is the oppressor and who is the victim? Who is good and who is evil? Who is the winner and who is the loser? I think it's about the speaker's volume. Whoever speaks loudest gets heard. It's about how it looks. What are the optics? Who is aligned with whom? What movements or ideas can you leech onto even if you bleed it dry and

Mamdani doesn't get to disavow h*teful chants when the same messages have come out of his mouth. And though he protests mildly, he also stated that the Nefesh B' Nefesh event at the Park East Synagogue on the Upper East Side was "an inappropriate use of a sacred space.” I have so much to say, but for now I'll just say this. I'm enraged, and I can't imagine anything more sacred than a discussion about aliyah and living in Israel. Our ancient land, which is the cornerstone of o

I've noticed a trend over the last few weeks since our last live h*stages came home. It's been like this for a while, since they started coming home in the beginning, but it's much more pronounced now. As our former h*stages are coming back into their personal lives and adjusting to the new level of notoriety and exposure from their ordeal, there has been a lot of criticism and conversation. Whether it's strong statements about controversial topics made from emotional places,

You know what I think is so fascinating about the Abraham Accords? I don't want to talk about the politics of this agreement. What I want to talk about is the spiritual process of it. Time is moving so aggressively. Systems are breaking down in various degrees across the world. In the last ten years, so much of politics, technology, business, communication, has bucked the status quo. As we, the Jews, are fulfilling the ingathering of the exiles, we are also bringing other for

Let's talk about the small acts of resistance that can sustain a life in the harshest of circumstances. This week Avitanan Or, a former hostage and partner of Noa Argamani, spoke in Washington at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly about his experience in G*za. He described digging for weeks through sandbags and a collapsed tunnel, saying, "I made myself work to change my own destiny." He continued and said, “One day, as I was digging, I hit the root of a

Last week I wrote about how stress from the w*r has affected me, somatically and mentally, and hundreds of you agreed with me and shared your stories about how you were coping in this strange lull of c*asefire that we are in. Here's a snapshot of a corner of my Israel today: Scott and I went to a spa together to celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. What I really needed was quiet. Internally and externally. To shut off my brain and just recalibrate. It was very freeing to b