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‘Fleishman is in Trouble’ hits FX Thursday. Just don’t call it a Jewish series, says its creator.
(JTA) — From Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s point of view, her best-selling 2019 novel “Fleishman Is in Trouble” wasn’t all that Jewish. She’s a little perplexed by the deluge of press junket questions about its Jewish essence.
“It’s funny: I don’t think of it as a Jewish book. I know people do,” she said.
Brodesser-Akner, a journalist famous for her sharp celebrity profiles, is now the showrunner of the book’s star-studded TV adaptation, an 8-episode FX series that debuts on Hulu on Thursday. In the story, Toby Fleishman (played by Jesse Eisenberg) is a 41-year-old Jewish hepatologist who has recently divorced Rachel (Claire Danes), his ambitious, icy, blonde theater agent wife. Early on in the story, Rachel disappears in the middle of the night, leaving Toby with their two children and a truckload of resentment. Toby, who had a nebbishy and romantically insecure youth before marrying Rachel, is now drowning in the sexual bounty of dating apps.
On Zoom, Brodesser-Akner was speaking a few days after the show’s blowout bash at Carnegie Hall and Tavern on the Green, an iconic Central Park restaurant. “I’ve never been to an event like that. It was 600 people,” she said. It sounded like a scene that could have been plucked right from “Fleishman,” which is set on the extremely wealthy Upper East Side, and in which the responsibilities of marriage and parenthood are at odds with the ambitions and personal longings of its middle-aged characters.
Brodesser-Akner, 47, who was both adrenalized and a little frazzled, had to balance the premiere with parenting duties — she’s a mother of two boys, ages 15 and 12. “I’m still picking sequins from my teeth.”
As a writer, Brodesser-Akner likes to play with the power of subjectivity, and she built “Fleishman” on it. Though the story begins as Toby’s, it eventually morphs into a “Rashomon”-esque take on the divorce and what really went wrong in the Fleishmans’ marriage. The story is narrated by Libby (Lizzy Caplan), Toby’s friend from their year abroad in Israel. A former men’s magazine writer, Libby is now a lost and frustrated stay-at-home mom in suburban New Jersey (and a stand-in for Brodesser-Akner). Adam Brody steals scenes as Seth, an immature finance bro and another year-in-Israel friend with whom Toby reconnects after the divorce. (His presence is a homecoming of sorts for those of us who spent our tween years watching him play a different Seth in “The O.C.”)
“I don’t think of it as a Jewish book,” says Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
Brodesser-Akner pieced together the story’s Jewish elements: a doctor named Fleishman, a bat mitzvah, Friday night dinners, a year abroad in Israel, a few jokes about Jews being bad at home repairs (which is the subject of a very funny scene in episode six between Toby and Seth). There are a few insidery details that she fails to mention, like a fake Jewish sleepaway camp called Camp Marah, which sounds like the real Camp Ramah but roughly translates to “Camp Bitter” in Hebrew. Does all this add up to a “Jewish” story?
“I read ‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen, and it mentions Christmas I think 47 times. I read ‘Crossroads’ and it’s about the family of a youth minister. But neither of those is ever called a Christian book. This is called a Jewish book. I don’t object to it being called a Jewish book. But to me it’s mostly an American story. As a writer and as an observer of the culture, I think that calling this a Jewish book is proof of the answer to an old question: are Jews considered Americans? And the answer is no.” She threw in her characteristic meta analysis: “So now you have a very Jewish profile. How Jewish is that, Sarah?”
The self-aware comment is a good reminder that although her responses may be unguarded, she has not forgotten that she’s on the record. A name in New York media, Brodesser-Akner wrote for GQ and is now a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, having profiled Gwyneth Paltrow, Ethan Hawke and Tom Hanks and written about the Joshua Cohen novel “The Netanyahus,” the television show “Thirtysomething” and much more. She inserts herself often into her writing, not to make it about herself, but to remind the reader that every profile is by nature filtered through the lens of the writer crafting it. Her writing is searing, self-deprecating — so raw it’s still bleeding and often quite funny.
“I wrote the book the way I would write a profile, just like I always do. But this man doesn’t exist,” she said.
RELATED: 5 Jewish places that inspired Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s ‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’
We had tried to meet in person near her home on the Upper West Side, but by the time she was available, I was in Tel Aviv, placing us along the Israel-New York axis on which “Fleishman” is set. When Toby suddenly calls Libby to tell her he’s getting divorced, he catapults her into memories of their early twenties in Jerusalem. Those thoughts make Libby miss the possibilities of her youth, the ones time has ruthlessly and inevitably extinguished. Eventually her longing for her past becomes so overwhelming that it threatens her marriage to her menschy and patient husband, played by Josh Radnor. (For more longing-for-younger-days while in Israel content, Brodesser-Akner wrote a Saveur essay about vegetable soup in Jerusalem — her Proustian madeleine. Interviewing Brodesser-Akner from my friend’s apartment in Tel Aviv, a city where I lived in my twenties, I found the theme of longing for the past hit almost too close to home.)
Part of the reason Brodesser-Akner doesn’t think the “Fleishman” story is all that Jewish is that she doesn’t feel all that Jewish — at least not relative to her mother and sisters, who are aligned with the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement and live within a few blocks of each other in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
“I don’t think any writer has ever gotten it right,” she says of her Jewish background. “They say I was raised Orthodox. It’s interesting because it always makes me look like the black sheep in my family, when really they are. I’m exactly how I was raised to be until I was 12.”
After her mother, a secular Israeli, and her father, a Conservative Long Islander, divorced, her mother put Brodesser-Akner and her sisters in Jewish school. Some Jewish observance trickled back to her mother, who ended up going the Chabad route.
“My mom had never been inside a synagogue until the day she married my father. Now that is what we call ironic,” Brodesser-Akner said.
Brodesser-Akner’s two sisters followed, and her mother eventually remarried and had another child, the only sibling born into a religious household.
“The thing that made me a journalist was being raised in a home where, at age 12, I was relegated to observer. I had to learn how to understand other people’s points of view. And now that’s what I do,” she said.
Despite their religious differences — Brodesser-Akner attends an Orthodox synagogue but sends her children to an unaffiliated Jewish school and says she wakes up “every morning with new ideas” — the author is very close with her family, and her sisters were at the “Fleishman” premiere.
“They were at the premiere of my perverted sex show,” she joked with a laugh referring to the Hulu series, which features some sexual content as Toby explores the post-divorce New York dating scene. “They show up for me and I show up for them. I have my challenges with it, but I think their challenges must be greater. They never say this to me, but they must think that my life is comparatively…” She looked away thoughtfully, trying to find the right words. “They must think my lifestyle is comparatively less worthwhile. But we really love each other.”
To Brodesser-Akner, the most Jewish show on television is “The Patient,” which she calls “the best show I have seen in 100 years.” And that’s not because it (like “Fleishman”) is on FX. “I’m not that kind of interview!” she said.
Lizzy Caplan plays Toby’s friend Libby. (FX Networks)
“It’s the most Jewish show in all of the Jewish ways. It grapples with a Jewish prisoner; with the difference between a Conservative Jewish female cantor whose son becomes ultra-Orthodox — I’d never seen that on screen. It was kind of the only relatable Jewish matter I’ve ever seen. People ask me if I’ve watched ‘Shtisel.’ And I always say, I’m in the 47th season of an ultra-Orthodox family drama myself and not really interested!” She laughed. “But also I think of the other Jewish matters on television, which are adapted memoirs of people who were ultra-Orthodox and now aren’t. It’s like no one can imagine religious people being happy in their lives. And that’s really shocking to me. My family is very happy.”
Brodesser-Akner wound up with her dream cast: she had a list of five actors — Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Josh Radnor and Adam Brody — and no backup plan. She noted the fact that viewers have seen them grow up on screen as one reason they were right for the roles. For many, watching Caplan, Eisenberg and Brody sit across from each other in a diner will feel like a camp reunion, the fulfillment of a Jewish television fantasy they never knew they had.
“One thing that we were trying to get across is ‘how could it be that I am this old when I was once this young?’ And the fact that you have a memory of Claire from ‘My So-Called Life,’ or Jesse from ‘The Squid and the Whale’ — that does so much of the work of the show without writing a word,” Brodesser-Akner said.
Besides Danes (who plays the only main character with a non-Jewish parent, whom the book makes clear she resembles) the lead actors are all Jewish — a notable fact in a time when Jewish representation on screen, and who should be allowed to play Jewish characters, is the subject of continued debate.
Last month, New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum, who is Jewish, tweeted, “There is a simple solution to the question of whether various non-Jewish actors are allowed to play Jews & that is to ask me.” Brodesser-Akner responded to the tweet, writing “[Non-Jew] Oscar Isaac in Scenes from a Marriage is the best ex-ortho I ever saw on screen!”
About casting Jewish actors, Brodesser-Akner noted a legal issue rarely mentioned in the representation debate: one can cast based on looks, but it’s illegal in the United States to cast based on religion. She took this very seriously.
“I spoke to [‘The Plot Against America’ director] David Simon about it and he said, ‘They’re actors. You let them act.’ And I agree with that. The question that I asked myself was who was perfect for it?” she said.
Even if Brodesser-Akner rejects the claim that “Fleishman” is a definitively Jewish story, wasn’t she consciously playing with some Philip Roth-inspired Jewish archetypes? Toby the nice Jewish doctor, the devoted, idealistic dad who’s also self-righteous, horny and insecure.
No, she insists she wasn’t. But also Philip Roth is so ingrained in her that who’s to say? And isn’t the question flawed in the first place?
“All I can say is that I am made out of Philip Roth. I’m so formed by his books. I actually would say that you have a bias in the asking of your question, in that you’re Jewish too. And you also are made out of Philip Roth books since you’re a writer. Again, that goes back to the same question as ‘are we American?’ To me, Toby is not ‘a Jewish guy.’ He’s just a guy! He’s the kind of guy I know! I was just trying to be myself.”
“Fleishman is in Trouble” premieres its first two episodes on Hulu on Nov. 17. It will release each of its six remaining episodes weekly on Thursdays.
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Israelis head to the polls in country’s most consequential election in decades
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – More than 7 million Israelis are eligible to vote Tuesday in an election that many are calling the most consequential in the country’s 78-year history.
It’s the first parliamentary election since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, mass attack and comes amid security concerns that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday framed as a fight for “Israel’s existence.”
Yet, political analysts who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in recent days said the vote for the 26th Knesset, Israel’s parliament, was more about domestic issues, namely the future character of the country as a democratic and liberal state.
“It’s a referendum about Israeli democracy,” said Udi Sommer, a professor of political science who heads the Barak Leadership Center at Tel Aviv University. “It’s also about Netanyahu’s performance and accountability for the people who were in charge on Oct. 7.”
The question of whether Netanyahu and his coalition of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, which were in office when the Hamas attacks occurred, should remain in power or whether it is time for a change appears to be at the heart of the election.
Facing off against Netanyahu’s bloc is an ideologically diverse group of opposition parties led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot.
“This election is consequential for both sides,” Tani Frank, director of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Center for Judaism and State Policy, told JTA.
“For Netanyahu, it could be his last major opportunity — not necessarily because he has set a retirement date, but because he may see the remainder of the Trump administration as a final window to secure what he views as long-term strategic gains for Israel, particularly completing the mission in Iran and expanding and consolidating the Abraham Accords,” Frank said.
“For the opposition, the election is framed as an urgent effort to protect Israel’s democracy and international standing, restore effective governance, address the rapidly growing Haredi community, and ensure its fuller integration into Israeli society,” he added.
According to data shared Sunday by the Central Elections Committee, roughly 7.3 million Israelis are eligible to vote in the election. Additionally, there are estimates that tens of thousands of Israeli nationals living abroad have returned to cast their ballots – literally a slip of paper placed inside a blue envelope. Voting is conducted in person, generally at the polling station assigned to the voter’s registered address.
Election Day is a national holiday in Israel, with most workplaces and schools closed. Shops and entertainment venues, however, remain open, with some stores offering Election Day sales, lending the day a celebratory feel.
According to the Central Elections Committee, 12,018 polling stations will be set up across the country, with around 18,000 ballot boxes and 450 million ballot papers printed for the election. The papers bear the letters or acronyms identifying the competing party lists.
Thousands of election workers and volunteers will staff the polling stations, while around 20,000 police officers will be deployed nationwide “to ensure that all eligible voters can safely reach the thousands of polling stations across the country and exercise their right to vote,” police said in a statement on Monday.
The election committee also said approximately 15,000 cameras would be used by election-integrity inspectors to help detect irregularities at polling stations. Police said their cyber units would work to prevent the spread of disinformation online.
These measures come as the country prepares for a closer-than-ever and high-stakes election.
According to the final set of public opinion polls, published Friday, neither of the main political blocs is projected to secure the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-member Knesset.
Although Israelis do not vote directly for prime minister, Netanyahu and Eisenkot are the leading contenders to form the next government, though a few other prominent leaders could emerge. The outcome will depend on which party leaders can assemble a parliamentary majority.
Most polls published in the final days of the campaign put Netanyahu’s bloc at around 50 seats, while Eisenkot’s Yashar party and its potential partners appear better positioned but still short of a majority of 61 seats. The two Arab-majority political groupings, the Joint List and Ra’am, are projected to win a combined 14 or 15 seats.
Neither Arab grouping is expected to join a government led by Netanyahu. Some political analysts believe one or both could nevertheless support an opposition-led minority government, although the terms of any such arrangement remain uncertain.
Three other parties are also hovering near the electoral threshold: Amcha Yisrael, the Reservists and the Haredi Public Party. Each must win at least 3.25% of the valid votes to enter the Knesset. If one or more crosses that threshold, it could significantly alter the distribution of seats and the prospects for forming a government.
Frank said the most likely scenario was that neither bloc would win a clear majority.
“A key question, then, is who remains in power if Israel heads to another election. Netanyahu’s aim would be to stay on as prime minister during additional rounds, as happened in 2019–2020,” he said. “The change bloc, meanwhile, would need to increase its numbers enough to replace the government without depending on Arab parties — particularly the Joint List — even if only to enable the transition rather than form a stable long-term coalition.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israelis head to the polls in country’s most consequential election in decades appeared first on The Forward.
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Polls show a deadlock, but betting markets strongly favor Eisenkot to replace Netanyahu
(JTA) — Traders on the Kalshi and Polymarket prediction markets are betting that former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot will replace incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s next prime minister following Tuesday’s election.
That assessment comes despite polls released last week showing that neither candidate has a clear path to a governing coalition with a 61-seat majority.
Most polls predict what has been dubbed the “change bloc” led by Eisenkot at 52 to 56 seats, while Netanyahu’s coalition is polling at around 50 seats.
Kalshi traders, however, give Eisenkot a 52% chance of becoming Israel’s next prime minister, followed by Netanyahu at 28% and the former prime minister Naftali Bennett at 10%. On Polymarket, Eisenkot’s chances stand at 58% and Netanyahu’s at 27%, with no other candidate above 15%.
Moran Ofir, a professor at the University of Haifa’s Faculty of Law who has researched prediction markets, explained the discrepancy, telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that there are two fundamental differences between polling and prediction markets.
Polls measure which party voters intend to support, while prediction markets ask a different question: Who will become prime minister?
Secondly, she said that the methodologies are fundamentally different. While polls rely on samples designed to be representative of the electorate, Polymarket reflects only those who choose to put their money on an election outcome.
Also, Polymarket’s percentages represent implied probabilities of winning, rather than shares of voter support.
At first glance, Ofir said, the fact that Polymarket participants have to put money behind their bets should protect the platform against deliberate misrepresentation, to which polls can be vulnerable.
“The promise of these platforms, like Polymarket, Kalshi or PredictIt, is to aggregate the wisdom of the crowd faithfully,” she said.
But that vision is far from the reality on the ground.
In a study conducted by Ofir, Joshua Mitts, a professor of law at Columbia Law School, and Dan Zimmermann, chief intelligence officer at Betting Intelligence (BETINT), the researchers analyzed 1.2 million transactions. They found that 18% of all the money backing Netanyahu on Polymarket was concentrated in a single account, while just seven accounts held 29% of the money bet against him.
“What we see in our research is that the Israeli election market on Polymarket is not a market driven by the wisdom of the crowd, but one dominated by a very small number of relatively large players putting up very large sums of money,” Ofir said.
She described the election betting market as “fragile and highly susceptible to manipulation,” adding that participants may not be acting to maximize profits, but rather to influence public opinion ahead of the election.
“Perhaps Polymarket was, for years, a platform that reflected the wisdom of the crowd. But powerful actors with vested interests identified it, and today, in the world of elections, it has become a platform where large and powerful players step in to shape public perception,” Ofir said.
Another example identified in the study took place last summer. Two accounts placed bets on Ofer Winter, the leader of the Amcha Yisrael party, which was hovering around 3.25%, Israel’s electoral threshold to qualify for seats in the Knesset. The researchers identified two newly created betting accounts that wagered $3,200 on Winter becoming prime minister. The bets briefly pushed him above Avigdor Lieberman, an established Israeli political figure who heads the Yisrael Beytenu party, in the market’s ranking of candidates’ chances of becoming prime minister.
“Two days after the party’s launch: Ofer Winter overtakes Lieberman,” a major Israeli newspaper declared just hours later. Ofir suspects the bets were intended to create a misleading impression that would help persuade Winter’s supporters that his party could clear the electoral threshold.
Ofir said the researchers interpreted betting patterns by the account that placed large wagers on Netanyahu as evidence of possible access to nonpublic information. Other accounts that wagered substantial sums showed similar patterns related to the war with Iran, she said.
Brazil and Serbia held elections over the weekend. On Polymarket, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić had a 72% chance of winning. In Brazil, incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had just a 17% chance of victory.
Vučić lost. Lula won.
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‘We need to save our country’: Bay Area Israelis fly home to vote in pivotal election
(JTA) — This article was produced by J.–The Jewish News of Northern California in partnership with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
ABOARD EL AL FLIGHT 48 — Ayelet Frank was one of the first people to check in on Sunday, Oct. 25, for a nonstop flight from San Francisco to Tel Aviv. A resident of Redwood City, California since she left Israel in 1984, she is flying back for one reason: to vote in the Oct. 27 election.
It’s the first time in her more than 40 years abroad that she is going back to cast a ballot.
“This election is unique. It’s very different than any other,” she told J. “It’s about Israel’s very existence. This election is between the destruction of the country, or building it up in a positive way.”
A native of Kibbutz Ein Harod in the Jezreel Valley, she is spending only two days in Israel before returning to California. It’s a long way to travel just to vote, but, she said, “It’s that important.”
Frank was one of 271 passengers on El Al flight 48, which landed in Israel less than 24 hours before the polls open. It was the first nonstop flight from San Francisco to Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Many on board were part of what one organizing group estimates is a wave of 67,000 Israelis abroad flying home for an election widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a tight race, the Israel Democracy Institute said, that many voters could swing nearly two Knesset seats.
Those travelers are spending thousands of dollars for the chance to cast their ballots in what many are calling the most consequential election in Israel’s history.
The mood in the boarding area at the San Francisco International Airport was buoyant. Lots of people seemed to know one another and were running up to hug friends and chat excitedly. There were families with children and plenty of babies in strollers and carriers. There were a smattering of black kippahs as well as one Hasidic family. There were also Israeli residents returning home from vacation in the Bay Area. But judging from the conversations as well as from people interviewed by J., most passengers were Israeli expats flying back to vote.
Capitola resident Udi Pardo left Israel in 1983, a year before Frank. Most of his family still lives in Israel and he visits twice a year. But for him, this was his first time flying home for an election.
“I never tried to go and vote before because I don’t live there,” he said. “But now it’s a national emergency. I can’t not go.”
“Israel is on the verge of an abyss,” he continued, saying that he has not yet decided between Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar and Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad — both center-right parties opposed to Netanyahu’s government. “We need to bring back sanity to Israel and to Israeli politics and reestablish liberal democracy because it’s about to disappear.”
The Oct. 27 election is the first since the Hamas attack and the war that followed. The stakes are so high, pundits say, that Israelis living abroad are flying home to vote in what appear to be unprecedented numbers. Israel does not allow absentee voting, except for diplomats and other state employees posted abroad, so expats who want to cast a ballot must do so in person.
The 67,000 estimate comes from Fly & Vote, a project of the U.S.-based America Israel Democracy Coalition to help expats navigate the logistics of participating in the election. The group cautioned that the figure is based on a voluntary August survey and its own registration data, not a count of arrivals. No comparable data exists for previous elections.
Israel’s Likud-led government has tried to impede Fly & Vote’s efforts with legal action, which was blocked in October by Israel’s Supreme Court. The government reportedly also considered closing or slowing down traffic at Ben Gurion International Airport in the days before the election. Analysts say this is because Netanyahu and his allies believe that many, if not most, of those responding to Fly & Vote’s initiative will vote against the current government.
Indeed, that seemed to be true of most of the expats on this El Al flight from San Francisco. Every person interviewed spoke about the “need for change” in Israel’s government, and those who declared their support for candidates mentioned either Eisenkot or leaders of other anti-Netanyahu parties. The Silicon Valley-based Israeli expat group UnXeptable, which emerged to protest Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul and has become a major anti-Netanyahu voice globally, had a large presence on the flight, with about a dozen key members sporting light blue T-shirts emblazoned with the date of the election and the Hebrew words for “Flight for Change.”
They were handing out shirts to any other passengers who would take them, some of whom put them on right away. Local TV stations showed up for an UnXeptable press conference held at the check-in counter.
Roni Bar-Niv of Sunnyvale is one of several people interviewed who is spending just a few days in Israel, in her case enough time to vote, turn around and fly back to the Hebrew-language school she runs near her Silicon Valley home.
In the 26 years since she left Givatayim, a suburb of Tel Aviv, Bar-Niv said, she visits Israel four or five times a year but she, too, has never flown back to vote until now.
“I thought I didn’t need to vote because I don’t live there,” she said. But everything changed, she added, after Oct. 7. “If we pay taxes — we have an apartment there — and if we send money for the war effort, and if we have children there — my daughter made aliyah five years ago — we need to go and vote,” she said. “The direction our country is going is very bad, for Israelis living there and for us also.”
Berkeley resident Rivka Amado left Jerusalem 22 years ago. A retired ethics professor and Ladino singer, she said it’s the duty of Israeli expats to show up.
“This election is critical, and it’s important for every Israeli to vote, whether you live here or there,” she said.
The surge in emigration since Oct. 7 has also swelled the pool of Israelis abroad. Some 82,800 Israelis left the country in 2024, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, up from 55,000 in 2023. More than 69,000 left in 2025, the Times of Israel reported, the second straight year that emigration outpaced immigration.
Gilad Kariv, an opposition lawmaker from the Democrats party who chairs the Knesset’s Diaspora Affairs Committee, has warned of a “tsunami of emigration,” according to the Jerusalem Post. He has called it a “strategic threat to the future of Israel” tied to the government’s conduct.
J Street regional director Shimrit Braun Kamin (left) hugs Galit Lipsitz Goldental near the El Al counter at San Francisco International Airport, Oct. 25, 2026. (Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff/Report for America)
Experts point to the war in Gaza and opposition to Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul as driving forces, suggesting that many recent emigrants are critical of the government.
Thirty-seven parties are on the Oct. 27 ballot, but only about a dozen are expected to clear the 3.25% electoral threshold needed to win Knesset seats. With Netanyahu’s Likud party polling neck-and-neck with his main opponent, Eisenkot’s Yashar party — the final pre-election polls show Yashar winning 22 to 23 seats to Likud’s 19 to 21 — every seat matters.
Neither party is projected to win a clear majority, meaning either one will have to negotiate intensely to form a governing coalition.
That’s why these expats have ponied up the dough, packed their bags and jumped on planes.
Eyal, a tech designer in his 40s who has been living in Mountain View since 2004, declined to give his last name because of his former job in the Israeli military. This, too, is his first trip home to vote.
In general, he said that he agrees with Israelis who believe expats should not have a voice in elections that no longer affect them personally.
“But in this particular election, I think a lot of Israelis want us to come and vote,” he said. “I know my parents do.”
Shlomi from Sunnyvale, who left Israel more than 15 years ago and also declined to give his last name, is worried that if there is not a new government, Israel’s brain drain will accelerate.
“We are in the final moments,” he said, likening Israel’s political situation to a soccer game. “If the government doesn’t change, I think a lot of good people who contribute to the future of the country will leave Israel.”
Shlomi is also worried that Israel will lose its partnership with the United States.
“It’s not about right or left,” he said, declining to say how he’ll vote. “It’s about dignity, about taking responsibility, about leaders that actually make decisions for the people rather than their personal benefit.”
Iddo Tal, a Jerusalem native, has lived in Palo Alto for 15 years, where he is a tech entrepreneur and teaches fundraising to startup founders around the world. He has launched “five start-ups and two kids,” he said, joking that “the kids have been a huge success.”
Unlike most of those interviewed, he has traveled back to vote before. He made the trip to visit his parents but timed it around an election.
“They always say every election is historic, and they’re always right,” he said.
Tal believes expats should vote, saying it keeps Israelis at home and abroad closely connected. “There’s something very exciting about making the Israeli diaspora part of Israel [proper], by coming back to fight, to raise money, to vote,” Tal said.
Hadar Aviram teaches law at UC Law San Francisco while studying to become a rabbi through Hebrew Union College. Born in Israel, she grew up “all over the world” and landed in San Francisco in 2001 for grad school. She wore one of the blue UnXeptable shirts and has joined some of the group’s protests.
“Let’s start with taking accountability for the Oct. 7 massacre and the ensuing war,” she said. “And long before that, we were all hostages to this hateful, bigoted, corrupt government.… I’m flying to release us from him, and him from us.”
She bristles at people who don’t understand why Israelis like her feel so strongly about this election.
“If some of those ignorant folks ask what Zionism is, I invite them to look around at all the people here who have packed their bags and emptied their savings accounts because they want to save their country,” she said, waving at the crowded boarding area. “When you love something very, very, very much, you are willing to go to great lengths to save it.”
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