Allison Kaplan Sommer, Noah Efron, and writer, TV host, and activist Ohad Zeltzer-Zubida discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week.

Primary Dolours

According to polls, fifteen political parties have a decent shot of being elected to the Knesset. Only three of those – Meretz, Labor, and Likud – hold open primaries where eligible dues-paying party members vote to determine the party list. Effusive reporters described these primaries as a “celebration of democracy.” Others, like former Labor PM Ehud Barak, expressed their antipathy for the process. Are primaries good or bad for Israeli democracy? If not through primaries, then how ought Knesset candidates be chosen?

Belabored

Last Friday, in one outlier poll, the Labor Party fell below the election threshold needed to be seated in the Knesset. This means that, if the elections were held last week, and if that poll were right, the Labor Party would not be represented in the Knesset for the first time in Israel’s 71 year history. Should we be concerned about the travails – and the incipient disappearance – of the Labor Party? If so, what, if anything, should we do about it?

Bereaved = Beloved?

Of all those being wooed in this election season, perhaps no one has been wooed with more verve than Miriam Peretz, an Israel Prize Life Achievement Award recipient whose two boys were killed as active combat soldiers. But she would be the first to say that the admiration with which she is held draws its force mostly from the death of her kids. Do these extravagant efforts to recruit Peretz to Knesset politics (which apparently failed), reflect a “culture of bereavement” here that is gendered, and sees in bereaved mothers, above all, a symbol of the uprightness of much of who we are and what we do?

Music

The power and glory of AvevA

• My Heart
• Toy vs. Breathe
• Black
• Megedenga (Gigi Cover)