A 90-minute salon briefing on The Greatest Threats Facing Israel: Internal and External

Join me for an in-depth briefing—over coffee and cake in Israel or via Zoom—where we step beyond the frenzied news cycle. Together, we’ll examine the forces shaping Israel’s security and cohesion, distinguishing the daily headlines from the deeper constants that define the nation’s reality.

We’ll look at:

• Geography, demography, and political culture — the structural factors driving Israel’s dilemmas.

• Metro Jerusalem — east, west, north, and south: how terrain, population, and politics intertwine.

• Gaza — where Hamas endures and evolves despite repeated blows.

• The West Bank (Judea & Samaria) — where lawlessness and fragmentation threaten the Zionist project.

• Iran, Yemen, Lebanon — external challenges shaping Israel’s strategic horizon.

My goal is to concentrate on the fundamentals: what does not change day to day but profoundly determines Israel’s future—and what urgently needs to be done.

You might be surprised by what you can learn from a balding, portly Jewish man from the Lower East Side.

What I bring to the coffee table.

Life experience. Work experience. Academic credentials. And a post-ideological, post-denominational analytic outlook.

I identify as a Lower East Sider more than a New Yorker. Born when Dwight Eisenhower was president and Robert F. Wagner was mayor, I have journeyed from the public housing projects on Avenue D to the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot.

I have worked chiefly in journalism, NYC government, academia, and the not-for-profit sector.

My journalism experience includes 11 years as a senior editor at The Jerusalem Post, including as the paper’s leader writer (editorialist) under Bret Stephens and David Horovitz.

I left the Post to become the founding managing editor of Jewish Ideas Daily (now Mosaic). I also worked as a night editor at Newsmax, covering U.S. politics. Between and betwixt, I wrote for The Jerusalem Report and the pro-Israel Christian magazine Israel My Glory. In 2021, I edited Isi Leibler’s authorized biography, Lone Voice, by Prof. Suzanne Rutland. Leibler was a truly great man, and Rutland is the foremost scholar of Australian Jewry.

My own books include:

1. Jewish Civilization and its Discontents: A post-October 7 Primer and Polemic

2. The Balfour Declaration: 67 Words, 100 Years of Conflict

3. The Pater: My Father, My Judaism, My Childlessness

All my life, I have been mainly interested in two big, intertwined subjects – politics and the civilization of Judaism. I love teaching and taught politics at the university level for some 10 years in metro-NY.

My perspective today — which did not come easy — is to dread majoritarian democracy, disdain populism, scorn utopianism, reject zealotry, and embrace Jewish literacy.

I earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from New York University, an M.A. in International Relations from NYU, and a B.A. in Jewish Studies from Brooklyn College. I got my Jewish education at Yeshiva Chasen Sofer and at Mesiftha Tiffereth Jerusalem.

To arrange an in-person salon briefing in Jerusalem or via Zoom, please email me: elliot_jager@yahoo.com