Rabbi Meir Soloveichik on "Fauda" and the Jewish Return to History

Fauda is one of the most surprising and interesting success stories of the streaming age. When conventional opinion looks with such studied contempt on Jewish expressions of strength and violence for the sake of national security, Netflix somehow greenlit a show that brings unvarnished depictions of precisely that to screens across the globe. It follows a unit of Israeli counterterrorism agents who embed among Arabic-speaking adversaries to gather intelligence and neutralize threats. The show is fabulously well done. And, well before October 7, 2023, one of its narrative arcs explored the presence of Hamas operatives in and underneath a major hospital complex in Gaza.

This week's podcast discusses the final episode of the latest season of Fauda, but not from the perspective of intelligence and counterintelligence, or from the perspective of Israeli security, or even from the perspective of the Zionist exercise of power—all of which would be worthy angles of analysis. This week, we discuss the latest season's final moments from the perspective of Jewish ritual and Jewish religious ideas

Today's guest is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who has just published an article about Fauda in the October 2026 edition of Commentary, titled "This Is Not Fauda, This Is Real Life." We discuss the relationship of art to truth, kaddish and covenant, whether the Jewish state can ever be a normal state, operating in the normal canons of politics, and what Fauda reveals about the Jewish return to history.