Is a break between Israeli Jews and Jews of the Diaspora inevitable? GESHER believes it's not, and is working hard to build real bridges

Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis · Feb 11, 2026 · 40m

A couple of months ago, I happened to be in New York over a Shabbat, and along with my brother and his family, got invited to a Friday evening dinner which was being hosted in honor of some participants in a program called GESHER, which means “Bridge” in Hebrew.

As you’ll hear in our conversation with JJ Sussman today—which I invited him to have after he and I had both returned to Israel—GESHER was originally created by a now legendary Israeli educator to build bridges between religious and secular Jews. But in recent years, GESHER has expanded its work in several ways, including building…