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Matti Friedman

Matti Friedman

Author Matti Friedman (Jonathan Bloom) / A view of the Beaufort Castle in southern Lebanon as seen from northern Israel, May 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
June 2, 2026, 9:44 pm
Matti Friedman: As Israel plays king of the castle in Lebanon, what’s its endgame?
In a week in which the country marks the fallen in the first Lebanon War and announces the recapture of Beaufort Castle, the journalist and author draws on the past to understand the present
By Amanda Borschel-Dan and Matti Friedman
Matti Friedman / Troops of the 300th 'Baram' Regional Brigade operate in southern Lebanon, in a handout photo issued by the military on March 18, 2026. (Israel Defense Forces)
March 18, 2026, 6:20 pm
Matti Friedman: Israel’s forever wars in Lebanon
Before turning to yet another conflict with Hezbollah, the author dives into his newest book, ‘Out of the Sky,’ on the real pre-state heroes who parachuted into Nazi Europe to save Jews
By Amanda Borschel-Dan and Matti Friedman
Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein-Halevi, Daniel Gordis: 'This is a moment for alarm'
August 20, 2023, 6:18 pm
Diaspora Jews: Time to take a stand
Why world Jewry should support Israel, but not its current government, and ways to do so – beginning with a live webinar with us on September 4, 2023
By Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein Halevi and Daniel Gordis
Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein-Halevi, Daniel Gordis: 'This is a moment for alarm'
February 2, 2023, 12:48 pm
An open letter to Israel’s friends in North America
Diaspora Jews have both the right and the responsibility to speak out against a government that is undermining our society’s cohesion and its democratic ethos
By Matti Friedman, Yossi Klein Halevi and Daniel Gordis
Illustrative: An Iraqi farmer collects dates in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016.. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
From the WebFebruary 11, 2021, 4:12 am
An Israeli sensor is helping the Middle East save its dates
Israel’s new normalization deals were founded on a common Iranian foe, New York Times reports, but are also helping nations of the region unite against threats from a tiny weevil
By Matti Friedman
Matti Friedman, pictured during his IDF service in the late 1990s (Courtesy Matti Friedman)
July 12, 2016, 1:23 pm
How Lebanon humbled, but didn’t break, Israelis
On the 10th anniversary of the Second Lebanon War — another chapter in Israel’s long, painful, and unfinished conflict in Lebanon — an excerpt from the new book ‘Pumpkinflowers’ examines the impact of decades in Lebanon on the Israeli psyche
By Matti Friedman
From the WebDecember 1, 2014, 4:17 pm
What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel
Matti Friedman writes in The Atlantic that the news tells us less about Israel than about the people writing the news
By Matti Friedman
Matti Friedman
January 22, 2014, 2:51 pm
Matti Friedman
It’s the words that bind
A deep connection to Israel can be formed only by an intimacy with the real life of the real people of this surprising country
Edgar Bronfman Sr. (CC BY-SA LadyLorna860/Wikipedia)
December 22, 2013, 7:17 pm
How Edgar Bronfman changed my life (without meeting me)
I spent six weeks in Israel on a high school program he founded to ensure kids like me gained access to our complex Jewish world. Six defining weeks
By Matti Friedman
Evangelical Christians celebrate at Ein Gedi, last week (Courtesy of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem)
September 24, 2013, 2:08 pm
A journey of faith, from Germany to Jerusalem
What the battle for the bridge at Arnhem in 1944, a Red Army prison camp and a vegetable garden have to do with the thousands of evangelical Christians flooding Jerusalem this week
By Matti Friedman
Max Liebermann's "Garden in Wannsee," 1923 (photo credit: Courtesy of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem)
May 28, 2013, 4:01 pm
Israel Museum (briefly) returns painting seized by Nazis
1923 Impressionist work by Max Liebermann restored to the Jewish family that owned it before WWII, then repurchased by the museum
By Matti Friedman
A manuscript from the Dead Sea Scrolls collection on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on September 26, 2011 (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
May 28, 2013, 2:26 pm
News of Dead Sea Scrolls for sale highlights complex legal status
Israel might want the treasured fragments, but there is no obvious legal barrier to selling them on the private antiquities market, officials say
By Matti Friedman
A fragment from Maimonides' legal compendium Mishneh Torah, found in the Cairo Geniza (photo credit: Courtesy of the Cambridge University Library)
May 27, 2013, 4:38 pm
9th century, meet 21st: Supercomputer revolutionizes Cairo Geniza research
When complete on June 25, a computation project in Tel Aviv will have matched thousands of fragments from the famed collection
By Matti Friedman
Some of the Al-Aqsa beams were brought to the settlement of Ofra in the 1980s. Pictured: Ze'ev Erlich, who helped truck the ancient wooden pieces from a junkyard north of Jerusalem (photo credit: Matti Friedman/Times of Israel)
May 22, 2013, 5:14 pm
Did ancient beams discarded in Old City come from first and second temples?
A collection of neglected wooden beams from the Al-Aqsa mosque offer a glimpse at ancient Jerusalem — and possibly at the biblical temples themselves
By Matti Friedman
Dror Etkes, left, and Herzl, along the Green Line (photo credit: Matti Friedman/Times of Israel)
May 20, 2013, 7:19 pm
Houses, fences and fruit trees: A decade of watching settlements grow
A trip through the West Bank with Dror Etkes, who tracks how Israel’s settlements are altering the physical, political and human landscape in one of the world’s most complicated pieces of land
By Matti Friedman
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