Jewish Philanthropy Podcast · Dovid M Cohen

Rocket Man Ari Sacher

·49 min·3 clips

Ari says Israel could lose water, electricity, and cell coverage on day one of war.

David M. Cohen opens by introducing Ari Sasher as a rocket scientist with real experience briefing American lawmakers on Israeli missile defense. Ari has become a sought-after speaker, especially at AIPAC events, where he helps lay audiences make sense of technical subjects without flattening their seriousness. The conversation soon moves past the résumé and into meaning. Ari says the people who inspire him most are those who fought in Israel in 1948, because they acted before the country’s outcome was known. He keeps coming back to the physical and moral courage of ordinary people who helped build the state. A story about trucks heading toward Jerusalem turns into a reflection on whether he himself would have had the nerve to make that drive. He speaks about the Palmach Cave and about places where history still seems to sit in the landscape. The tone stays personal rather than academic. He sounds like someone living inside the memory he is describing, not outside it. Cohen follows those threads with questions that keep the guest moving. Ari then describes Moreshet, a community in the Western Galilee. He explains that the community has grown well beyond its original family count because families there tend to be large. That detail gives the episode a grounded domestic texture after the larger sweep of national memory. Ari also speaks about his weekly email and the pleasure he takes in sharing depth and breadth on the parashah. The discussion suggests that his public science work and his Torah teaching are parallel ways of serving. Israel appears here not as an abstraction but as an everyday place of duty, memory, and home. The episode keeps returning to gratitude, especially gratitude toward those who came before and made present life possible. That gratitude becomes its emotional center. The result is a conversation that feels communal, intimate, and spiritually serious without becoming formal. It is most interested in how knowledge, faith, and responsibility meet in one life.

As heard by us

A warm conversation about courage, memory, and responsibility in Israel.

Ari comes across as both technically formidable and deeply rooted in the world he describes. He is presented as a rocket scientist and a sought-after speaker on Israeli missile defense, but the stronger thread is his sense of service, responsibility, and debt to the people who…

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Listen if you want a rocket scientist to make Israeli missile defense feel accessible.

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