Matti Friedman | Selected articles by Matti Friedman

11 Jul Washington Post review of “Kingdom of Olives and Ash”

Posted at 14:37h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman

A review (The Washington Post, June 23, 2017) of a new collection of essays about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank: What happens when famous novelists ‘confront the Occupation’ in the West Bank By Matti Friedman Last year, the American novelists Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman and Dave Eggers led...

13 May The Peculiar Language of Soldiers (The Atlantic, May 4, 2016)

Posted at 21:33h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman

JERUSALEM—“We have two flowers and one oleander. We need a thistle.” Listening to the Israeli military frequencies when I was an infantryman nearly two decades ago, it was (and still is) possible to hear sentences like these, the bewildering cousins of sentences familiar to anyone...

08 Apr Holy Rubble and Rabble (Wall Street Journal book review)

Posted at 13:14h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman

April 1, 2016 “Whoever did not see Jerusalem in its days of glory has not seen a beautiful city in his life,” the Talmud says of the days when Herod’s temple shone at the center of a city that symbolized the gateway to the divine. The world...

02 Feb The Age of the Terror Selfie (Tablet, Jan. 5, 2016)

Posted at 12:22h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman

At a lonely army outpost in 1994, Israel was shown the difference between radicals and fanatics—and between soldiers and storytellers. But the West didn’t learn. This fall and winter have seen many of us here in Israel consuming a miserable kind of reality TV: blurry clips of young...

02 Feb When One Israeli Went Too Far (Review, Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2015)

Posted at 12:20h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman

One Saturday night in late 1995, I was with a few other 18-year-olds at a kibbutz in northern Israel, watching a Hebrew B-movie called “Lemon Popsicle” on TV. Words began scrolling urgently at the bottom of the screen, a news flash: The prime minister, Yitzhak...

02 Feb Israel’s Happiness Revolution (Tablet, Aug. 31, 2015)

Posted at 12:14h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman

What my preschooler's taste in pop says about where the country is at The Israeli culture wars arrived in my kitchen a few months ago when I discovered that the cure for my daughter’s grumpy preschooler moods was a Hebrew dance hit called “Happiness Revolution.” The...

18 May Jerusalem, Spring 2015: What Is Normal Here? (Tablet Magazine, May 15, 2015)

Posted at 11:16h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman, Uncategorized

Before dawn one day early last year, I tagged along with a garbage truck picking up trash around the southern part of Jerusalem. The crew was Jewish and Arab, and so was the trash. (“Everyone eats the same potatoes,” one of the crew chiefs told...

06 Jan The Sistine Chapel of the Jews is restored to life in Jerusalem (Tablet Magazine)

Posted at 05:46h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman, Uncategorized

Tablet Magazine, Jan. 5, 2015 Yaakov Stark died penniless and unknown. His murals at the Ades Synagogue are a masterpiece of early Zionist art. In 1901, in Ottoman Jerusalem, members of the wealthy Ades family funded the construction of a synagogue for Jews who had moved to the...

08 Dec What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel (The Atlantic)

Posted at 13:34h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman, Uncategorized

The Atlantic, Nov. 30, 2014 During the Gaza war this summer, it became clear that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has become less an observer of...

08 Dec An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth (Tablet Magazine)

Posted at 13:29h in Selected articles by Matti Friedman, Uncategorized

Tablet Magazine, August 26, 2014 The Israel Story Is there anything left to say about Israel and Gaza? Newspapers this summer have been full of little else. Television viewers see heaps of rubble and plumes of smoke in their sleep. A representative article from a recent issue of The New Yorker described...