Yitzik (pronounced "Itzkik") Crombie is a long-time tech entrepreneur who founded Mego, a training program aimed at integrating into the higher-level Israeli workforce. The work is supported through the Kemach Foundation.

Yitzik also runs Bizmax, a co-working space geared for chareidim, among other ventures.

Several years ago, he published a book, "When the Chareidim Will Be the Majority," (Hebrew) exploring the challenges and solutions relevant to this community, and beyond.

Iyun Institute founder and director Rabbi Yehoshua Pfefferrecently “put his body where his pen is,” enlisting in the IDF in its “Shlav Bet” program within the Homefront Command. Fresh off a month-long basic training, R’ Pfeffer shares his reflections and takeaways from the field.

Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie is a longtime Chabad Shaliach (emissary), co-director of the North County Chabad Center in Orange County, California. Author of the book Secret of Chabad, he has recently released a groundbreaking biography of the “Friediker Rebbe” - the Sixth Rebbe of the Chabad chassidic dynasty - called “Undaunted: How the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn Saved Russian Jewry, Reimagined American Judaism, Ignited a Global Jewish Renaissance.”

In this episode, we review Rabbi Eliezrie’s own background and this most recent work, then springboard into an analysis of Chabad’s perspective on Zionism, secular nationalism, army enlistment and the modern state of Israel.

Dr. Yechiel Reit is an American-born emergency medicine doctor, an IDF

reserve combat physician and the author of "Applied Monotheism: The

Chareidi Response to Modernity."

In our wide-ranging conversation, we discuss Dr. Reit's IDF experience

and his analysis of "Charediism," as he argues for an ideological, not

cultural, definition.

Sam Sokol is a veteran journalist, currently the Knesset Affairs correspondent at the Times of Israel. In this episode, we explore his journalistic background, and his unique perspective on the charedi parties in the landscape of Israeli politics.

After a long hiatus, we return with a crossover episode - Yaakov Wolff, host of the Shtark Tank podcast, interviews Rabbi Yehoshua and Rebbetzin Tamar Pfeffer.

More original episodes to come shortly!

Since inaugurating this podcast, and focusing a long series on charedim

and army service, one episode has conspicuously been missing: a full

treatment of the halachic parameters of the notion of milchemes mitzvah,

as well as an analysis commonly advanced ideals such as "Torah magneh

u'matzleh" ("Torah study protects"). In this episode we remedy that void

and address these issues that are vital to any Torah-centered Jew.

To do so, we speak with Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak Lifshitz, a noted rav and

rosh Kollel based in Yerushalayim, who has written extensively on these

topics in recent months. Rabbi Dr. Lifshiftz is also a professor of

philosophy at Shalem College.

Dr. Moshe Koppel is a leading computer scientist in Israel, with a

specific expertise in AI. But over past twenty years he has led an

intellectual movement promoting judicial reform within Israel.

Through his Kohelet Policy Forum, Dr. Koppel researches alternatives to

the entrenched judicial dynamics, and advocates for what he considers a

more balanced and democratic approach, in line with other Western

countries. Obviously, this topic has been at the center of stormy

debates and protests in Israel; while it seemed to subside in the wake

of the October 7th tragedy, this issue has returned to the foreground,

with broad implications for swaths of Israeli society, perhaps most

notably, the chareidim.

We speak today with Dr. Koppel about the history and intellectual

perspective of this movement, how and why it seemed to unravel, and

where the typically non-ideological and narrowly focus charedi public

fits in to the story.