Beth El Congregation is set to host Haviv Rettig Gur, the senior Israeli analyst at The Times of Israel, on Dec. 7.
“The idea [is] that it’s important to keep Israel on the community’s agenda,” said Beth El Rabbi Steven Schwartz.
Rettig Gur is the host of the popular “Ask Haviv Anything” podcast and is a Middle East analyst at The Free Press. He also has a large following on social media, with over 70,000 followers on X and another 73,000 on Instagram.
Rettig Gur has reported on Israeli politics and the country’s foreign and regional policies from over 20 countries. Fluent in Hebrew and English, he served as director of communications for the Jewish Agency for Israel, Israel’s largest NGO. He has lectured in Israel and abroad on Israeli society and history, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and more.
Schwartz told Baltimore Jewish Times that the congregation is providing an opportunity to “explore issues that are important to us as American Jews, vis-a-vis Israel, and to Israelis — what Israelis are thinking about and wrestling with and all those kinds of things.”
The opportunity “to just think about Israel” is not for “just the synagogue [but for] the community,” Schwartz added.
According to Schwartz, well over 100 people have RSVP’d as of mid-November to the event, which is being sponsored by Rachel and Marshall Klein.
Schwartz said Rettig Gur typically wants to explore “what are American Jews doing and thinking, what are Israeli Jews doing and thinking, and what’s the space between those two? Why is the space there? What are Israeli Jews on the right thinking? What are Israeli Jews on the left thinking? How is that conversation?”
All of which Rettig Gur also discusses on his podcast, which he started in early February of this year.
“He likes to kind of explore those spaces — and he’s a very sharp guy,” said Schwartz. “Given that it’s important for the community to think about Israel and process what’s happening in Israel … It seemed like a nice thing to do for the shul and our community at large.”
Schwartz said he listens “on and off” to Gur’s podcast and reads his articles often. “I would guess that people who follow Israeli issues and try to stay upon Israeli news will know who he is,” he said.
On the most recent episode of the “Ask Haviv Anything” podcast, titled “Hard Times Make Strong Jews,” Rettig Gur discusses these topics, including a possible upcoming election in Israel.
“Is the [Gaza] war over?” Rettig Gur asked on the podcast. “There are two forces in this world that wants the war to be over: one is the Trump administration — which is a significant element in the world — but there is an even more powerful one when it comes to the question of the war being over in the narrow context of Israelis and Palestinians, which is that, like, all Israelis want it to be over. And that’s, I think, the reason I actually think the war is probably over.”
“Now, what do I mean by the war?” he explained. “The war is the kinetic maneuvering war in Gaza, that’s over. Gaza is already, half of Gaza, has already been retaken by Hamas … and in that sense the Israeli-Hamas contests over the future of Gaza, whether it’s a future that Israel can live next to, or is a future Hamas insists on making [where] Israel literally cannot live next to … that contest remains.”
Asked how the end of the war might be affecting local Jews’ mood regarding Israel, Schwartz said the release of the remaining living hostages from Gaza in October — as a part of a cease-fire deal facilitated by the Trump administration — has “reduced the temperature.”
“If it was a pot of boiling water, it’s down now to a simmer,” Schwartz said. “I think people are grateful and very relieved the living hostages are free. I think there was a burden that all Jews were bearing to a certain extent and [Israelis] very much so when hostages were in captivity, and I think that burden has been lifted, though it’s important to get the last few bodies back. But certainly, the return, the release of the living hostages has lightened things for people.”
That doesn’t mean interest in Israel has lightened, and the temple is expecting an large and engaged crowd for Rettig Gur’s talk.
