Now that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been in office for several months, the time seems ripe to ask how he’s doing. If you ask me, the answer is pretty well under the circumstances.

In 1985, I and five others from Northeast Ohio went to the Soviet Union to visit with refuseniks – Soviet Jews who had applied to immigrate to Israel and were denied exit visas. It was a grim period for those Jews trying to leave the country, which had roughly 3 million Jews at the time. Only about 1,000 a year were being allowed out, despite the worldwide campaign to “Free Soviet Jewry,” as the slogan went.

I rarely read fiction and almost never read collections of short stories, but I just finished a book of short stories by an author who was born to a Laotian family in a refugee camp in Thailand and grew up in Toronto. The book, “How to Pronounce Knife” by Souvankham Thammavongsa, made a real impression on me.

There is a rising presence on Israel’s Hebrew-language media scene – Arabs. Arab reporters and commentators are now a more regular presence in the media here, and some of what they cover even goes beyond Arab affairs.

I got my third shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine last week. That would come as a surprise to people living almost anywhere in the world, but since I live in Israel, the third shot is routinely available here if you are 50 or over – and I am. A bit more than a week into the new vaccination campaign, 600,000 people had already gotten the third dose.

Political debate here in Israel is rollicking and spirited, but never before was ice cream at the center of the debate. That is until Ben & Jerry’s July 19 announcement it would halt sales of its ice cream in Jewish settlements in the West Bank when its license agreement with the Israeli company that manufactures and sells its products expires at the end of next year.

Israel’s new Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai found himself unexpectedly in the United States just days after taking office, on a solidarity mission to the Miami-area community of Surfside. He was in Florida in an Israeli show of support for the local Jewish community and the American people following the apartment building collapse there.

It happened. Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer prime minister of Israel. After Netanyahu’s 12 years in office, it will take a while to get used to hearing the title “prime minister” followed by Naftali Bennett.

Dramatic news indeed. It looks like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be ordering movers to come to the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem. He and his family have been living there for more than 12 years. Any Israeli under age of 20 would have little memory of anyone leading the country other than him.

Just when Israel was emerging triumphant ahead of the rest of the world from the coronavirus pandemic, we found ourselves at war with Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Israel was shaken to the core at the end of April when an overcrowded exit ramp at a Lag b’Omer celebration on Mount Meron in the country’s north became a death trap, after people lost their footing, tumbling on top of one another, resulting in the deaths of 45 people, including Yossi Kohn, a yeshiva student from a Cleveland suburb. It was the worst civilian disaster in Israel’s history.