The New York Times Opinion Section, Feb. 10, 2021 Matti Friedman Photo: Mohamed Somji for the New York Times Dates in the Middle East are like corn for the Maya — not just a crop but an icon, the “bread of the desert,” a symbol of life itself. The...
MATTI FRIEDMAN SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL Dec. 17, 2020 At the very end of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, the book that made John le Carré’s career at the height of the Cold War in 1963, there’s a memorable monologue delivered by Alec...
Three decades ago, a million emigres from Eastern Europe arrived in Israel, increasing its population by 20 percent almost overnight and changing its culture forever. What’s their story? Great changes in Jewish history have manifested themselves in pillars of smoke, talking bushes, royal edicts, and divine...
The Professor and the Con Man By Matti Friedman The Jewish Review of Books, September 15, 2020 The saga of the papyrus that became famous as the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife began with an email sent to Karen King, a distinguished Harvard professor, in July 2010. The subject line...
This summer’s protests against the prime minister have given Israel’s toothless left an outlet — but not power. By Matti Friedman The New York Times Aug. 13, 2020 Demonstrators dressed as aliens during a protest against the Israeli government near the prime minister’s residence on Aug. 8.Credit...
How coverage of the Jewish state became a signifier of the ideological activism that now permeates Western culture MATTI FRIEDMAN Tablet Magazine July 27, 2020 A video cameraman for the Reuters News Agency in the West Bank city of Ramallah, April, 2002. CHRIS HONDROS/GETTY IMAGES This year many people have discovered...
The Last Remnants of the Israeli Left If you seek the socialist vision of this country’s founders, it’s no longer in the Knesset — it’s on the wall. By Matti Friedman The New York Times, April 27, 2020 Children playing in the garden in the new neighborhood in Kibbutz Ma’aleh...
Netflix's "The Spy" Manages to Convey the Ethnic Irony at the Heart of Eli Cohen's Life Mosaic Magazine, Oct. 29 By Matti Friedman I’ve been wondering for years why no one has ever made a good Mossad movie. From The Little Drummer Girl (1984) to Munich (2005) to awkward fictions in between,...
The decisive factor in next week’s election — and the reason for Benjamin Netanyahu’s durability — is a repressed memory. By Matti Friedman JERUSALEM — When trying to understand Israel’s election on Sept. 17, the second in the space of six months, you can easily get lost in the details — corruption...
The Department of Lost Spies: How Israel brings its missing soldiers home By Matti Friedman The Globe & Mail, March 8, 2019 [Nissim Attiyeh, left, who was caught and killed in Dec. 1947. Another Arab Section spy, Yakuba Cohen, right in the uniform of an Arab militiaman, circa 1944....