Tamar Ish Shalom was among the most recognizable faces on Israeli television, anchoring one of Israel’s few nightly news programs for a decade. But last month, Ish Shalom traded in TV cameras for a podcaster’s microphone, hosting “Jewish Crossroads: Jewish Identity in Times of Crisis” from the Jewish People Policy Institute.

Ish Shalom’s journalism career goes back to her childhood, when she hosted news shows for children, and then the IDF, where she served as a reporter for the popular Army Radio. But she’s best known for her many years at Channel 10, which later became Channel 13, as anchor of the nightly news and, in recent years, the Saturday night newsmagazine. 

Speaking with Jewish Insider from her new home in New York this week, Ish Shalom said she informed Channel 13 that she wanted a break from the news in September 2023. Weeks later, when the Hamas attacks on southern Israel occurred and the war in Gaza began, she agreed to stay on.

“I said as long as there is a war, I will stay. I thought it would take two or three months. At a certain point, though, I said I can’t stay until we reach ‘total victory,’” she said.

Her last broadcast was shortly before Ish Shalom moved to New York in August with her three children and her husband, Nadav Eyal — also a longtime Israeli TV journalist, best known to American Jews as a frequent guest on Dan Senor’s “Call Me Back” podcast — who is researching and lecturing at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Ish Shalom found her way to JPPI through journalist and researcher Shmuel Rosner, who knew that she had degrees in Jewish philosophy from Tel Aviv University and religion and modern society from Kings College London. JPPI and Ish Shalom were still looking for a way to work together when Eyal received his offer from Columbia, and she saw an opportunity.

“The American Jewish community fascinates me,” she said, mentioning a 2008 documentary she produced for Channel 10 called “American Novel – A Different Look at American Jewry,” which won a B’nai B’rith Award.

Ish Shalom said that American Jewry played a key role in developing her Jewish identity. She lived in New York for four years as a young child and attended The Heschel School, while her father was on a diplomatic mission in the city. At 16, she was an emissary of the Tzofim — Israeli scouts — at Camp Tel Yehuda, a Young Judaea sleepaway camp, and an exchange student in a Jewish community on Long Island.

“I remember the shock coming from Israel,” she said. “In the 1990s, Jewish life [in Israel] was much less varied. I saw the joy in Jewish life for young people. I had never before seen people praying on wooden benches by a river. It was a great spiritual experience, and I’m not a religious person.”  

In addition, Ish Shalom said, her family attended a Masorti synagogue in Jerusalem when she was growing up, and she read from the Torah for her bat mitzvah. She was one of the only Israeli-born families in a mostly American-born community. 

Ish Shalom decided to host a podcast about American Jewry because of her interest in and connection to the community.

“It’s a privilege to be here in a historic moment,” she said. “It’s a terrible one that we wish hadn’t happened, but something significant and deep is happening in U.S. Jewry that justifies a second glance and an in-depth look.” 

Ish Shalom said she “came to this project with humility. I have connections to the community and my kids are in a Jewish school. But I am coming here with great interest, questions and empathy for what [American Jews] are going through.”

JPPI released four episodes of Ish Shalom’s podcast so far, each an interview with a different prominent figure in American Jewish life – Rabbi David Wolpe, author Nicole Krauss, Jewish Studies scholar Susannah Heschel and Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch. 

“There are a lot of podcasts about the war and Israel, but a lot of it is very [focused on] current events,” she said. “This podcast isn’t about the immediate here and now of the last poll or maneuver, but about in-depth influences and what we’re learning from this time, and Jewish identity.”

The interview with Krauss was her first since the Oct. 7 attacks, and the author, who writes novels related to Jewish and Israeli themes, talked about her concerns about boycotts.

“It was shocking to hear an author who isn’t even Israeli, just Jewish, worry if she’ll still have an audience,” Ish Shalom said. “When she started out 25 years ago, there was no doubt, there wasn’t any hesitation about it. Today, she’s not sure if a young author writing about Jewish identity who does not try to distance herself from Israel can get published or find an audience.”

In the episode with Hirsch, he discussed changes that should be made in non-Orthodox Jewish education.

“They wanted to raise a generation committed to tikkun olam,” Ish Shalom said, “but it came at the cost of loving the Jewish people. Many of the leaders of [campus anti-Israel] encampments are Jews who received a Jewish education. They took tikkun olam but forgot about their Jewish brothers. I was impressed by Hirsch’s call for communal introspection on this matter.”

The target audience for her podcast, which is in English, is North American Jews, but Israelis could learn a lot from it as well, Ish Shalom said.

“As Israelis, we don’t understand [the American Jewish experience],” she said, “just like American Jews don’t understand us totally. We are very far from one another, even though we have our connections. The dialogue is part of the attempt to understand. That’s what makes it interesting. There is no conversation in which I don’t learn something new.”

One of Ish Shalom’s key takeaways from the interviews she has conducted so far is how important Israel is to American Jewish identity.

“For many years, Israelis really didn’t understand American Jews in general, but specifically not the depth of their connection to Israel,” she said. “They know American Jews donate and they know about AIPAC … but I don’t think they understood the power of that connection and how important it is to the core of their Jewish identity.”

“There’s a difference between empathy and something being such an important component of their identity,” she said.

After Oct. 7, Ish Shalom said more Israelis understand that connection. 

“You see Jews who didn’t think of Israel every day, but when its existence was in danger, as it appeared to be on Oct. 7, it shocked them in a deep way. I didn’t understand how deep it was,” she said.

Friends from Ish Shalom’s student exchange program on Long Island, whom she had not been in close contact with, reached out to her to see how she was doing, and within months they told her they became more affiliated with their Jewish communities.

“I think there was amazement by many Israelis at the enlistment of American Jews … who were coming when rockets and missiles were falling. Rabbis, public opinion leaders, volunteers, doctors and nurses taking vacation from work to volunteer in hospitals — it was amazing. In the first weeks and months a lot of things brought me to tears, and [Diaspora Jews volunteering] were part of that mosaic,” she said.