It’s a Date! – Sponsored Content

In honor of Tu Be’Av, the Jewish calendar’s version of Valentine’s Day, a bunch of us were in the office, sitting around our beautiful pine-wood table and talking about dates: Unusually awkward ones, surprisingly good ones, total catastrophes and blissful delights. As the conversation went on, we were reminded of what we all intuitively know – that dates are, and will forever be, fine fodder for stories. So set the table – we have a full menu of stories of (very!) Israeli dates.

As a prologue, we decided to host a blind date in our studio. But who, in their right mind, would subject themselves to a date that’s not only watched by half our staff, but also recorded for posterity?

In act one, Hagar Yanai and Eran Ben Yaakov choose to reinvent the familiar plot structure of dating, mating and procreating. With true love – and what might seem like a bit of genetic science fiction – their family is proof that writing one’s own romance need not remain solely in the realm of fantasy.

Next, we get a glimpse of what will soon be a new limited series, called Beyond the Black Hat, brought to you by Israel Story. The series takes us beyond the inflammatory headlines, the mass protests and the bouts of religious legislation, and introduces us to the inner world of yeshiva students – young teenage boys really – who live in a parallel reality: Distant but close; utterly separate and yet weirdly intertwined.

In this episode’s final act, we note that the Israeli army, for combat soldiers at least, is not usually a great time for dating: You barely come home, and it’s hard to really tend to your romantic relationships in two-week intervals. But this story is different. It takes place in January 2024, four months after October 7th, with the army on the move in Gaza.

Our end song is Chof Mivtachim (“Safe Shore”) by Yogev Glusman, with Ninet Tayeb. (Licensed by Israel Story through Acum)

Produced in partnership with The Times of Israel.

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The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.

There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.

As a Times of Israel reporter, I’m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit’s. But my colleagues and I can't do this alone. If you value work like this, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.

— Stav Levaton, military reporter