28 | JULY 23 • 2020 

Eretz

I

n the summer of 2010, native 
Israeli and Harvard grad 
Mishy Harman gathered 
his belongings and his dog and 
embarked on a 13,000-mile 
road trip across the United 
States. Just outside of Vicksburg, 
Mississippi, he said, his life tra-
jectory changed. It was when 
Harman switched from listen-
ing to books on tape and Bible 
Belt radio to an episode of This 
American Life. 
As he listened, Harman 
remembers being transport-
ed into the lives of different 
Americans across the country. 
In what he describes as an invig-
orating and dizzying moment, 
he said his conception of 
American reality was expanded.
“The first thought I had was 
maybe we could do something 
like this in Israel, create an 
Israeli version of This American 

Life, because Israel is this rich 
human tapestry of so many 
different traditions and back-
grounds and identities,
” he said. 
Two years later, in the sum-
mer of 2012, after visiting TAL
studios in New York to learn 
more, Harman and three child-
hood friends released the first 
episode of their podcast, Israel 
Story. At the time of its release, 
Harman said about a dozen 
close family members and 
friends downloaded the first 
episode. 
Just a few months later, 
Harman secured a prime-time 
Friday afternoon slot on Galey 
Tzahal, Israel’
s leading national 
radio station. Now, in 2020, at 
the start of their fifth season, 
Israel Story has a production 
team of 15 people and hundreds 
of thousands of listeners. 
Before starting the podcast, 
Harman said he and his friends 
had humble expectations for its 
outcome. They aspired to share 
multifaceted stories of individ-
uals from different cultures and 
backgrounds — people who 
might not otherwise get to inter-
act in an extremely fragmented 
Israeli society. Harman said he 
hoped that by eliminating a 
visual element of storytelling, lis-
teners might be able to suspend 
their judgments of the show’
s 
guests just a little bit longer. 
“Maybe you would be able 
to listen to a story and forget 
for the first 90 seconds that the 
person is a Bedouin teenager 
or an ultra-Orthodox grand-
mother, and just listen to them 

tell a story and relate to them,
” 
he said. 

REACHING OUT TO 
AN AMERICAN AUDIENCE
After the end of a successful first 
season on Israeli public radio, 
Harman saw a larger potential 
for what started as a late-night 
passion project. After writing 
1,000 letters of inquiry to vari-
ous foundations in America, he 
realized Israel Story would need 
to be adapted to suit a larger 
audience. 
“That was the very first time 
we had the somewhat coun-
terintuitive idea of making the 
American version of the Israeli 
version of This American Life,
” 
he said. 
With a grant from Steven 
Spielberg’
s Righteous Persons 
Foundation, Harman and his 
team created new English sea-
sons of the podcast and formed 
a partnership with Tablet 
Magazine and the Public Radio 
Exchange. With this adapted 
show came the opportunity to 
portray a more nuanced version 
of Israel to an American audi-
ence. 
For Skyler Inman, who moved 
from the United States to Tel 
Aviv in 2017, it’
s the attention 
to detail on the podcast that 
helps allow for these nuances. 
Now a full-time producer on 
Israel Story, Inman said that a 
team member may spend six to 
nine months working on a story 
for one episode, among other 
projects. 
“From start to finish, there’
s 

so much attention that goes into 
every square inch of the tape, 
a fine-toothed comb,
” she said. 
“It’
s a pretty amazing experience 
from a learning perspective.
”

ISRAEL STORY AND COVID-19
Amid a global pandemic, how-
ever, the Israel Story team has 
had to come up with innovative 
approaches to their carefully 
produced podcast. 
Harman said that COVID-19 
has posed massive challenges 
for the show, especially in terms 
of fundraising. Originally, the 
team had their annual world 
tour scheduled for April and 
May, which was eventually 
canceled due to the pandemic. 
Harman said this live tour usu-
ally accounts for about a third of 
their annual budget. 
“We were worried we were 
going to run out of money,
” he 
said. “We tried to think of every 
possible way to keep the opera-
tion running.
”
Inman, who joined the pod-
cast in February, about a month 
before the pandemic broke out 
and Israel issued strict quar-
antine measures, said she has 
been impressed by Harman 
and other team-members’
 cre-
ativity in the wake of the health 
crisis. She said that one day in 
April, Harman came up with an 
idea — a 12-hour long cultural 
extravaganza on Zoom.
Inman says that two sleepless 
weeks later, on April 29, Israel 
Story held its first “IsraPalooza,
” 
an all-day 12-hour event in 
which team members inter-

MADELINE HALPERT CONTRIBUTING WRITER

In its 5th season, podcast shares
lives of ordinary Israelis.
Israel Story

A 12-hour event held in
April by Israel Story.

ISRAPALOOZA

AVISHAG SHAAR YASHUV

Mishy 
Harman