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Politics Lab launches Thursday, April 11th. Follow

1:03

the show wherever you get your podcasts. What

1:09

I want Jews to do is not back down on

1:11

their opinions, but just to remember that the other

1:13

Jews, the ones who are on the other side of this issue,

1:16

they're also trying to be Jewish. They're

1:18

still family, and they're trying their hardest in

1:20

good conscience to do the right thing and

1:22

to think the right thing, and

1:24

that can be maddening. What

1:34

could go right? I'm Zachary

1:37

Carabell, the founder of The Progress Network,

1:39

and I am joined as always by

1:41

my co-host Emma Varvalukas, the executive director

1:44

of The Progress Network. And

1:46

What Could Go Right is our weekly

1:48

podcast, which echoes our newsletter of the

1:51

same title, What Could Go Right? And

1:54

this is a way of drawing attention To

1:56

things going on in the world that are

1:58

more constructive than destructive. But as

2:00

many of our podcast demonstrate, we

2:03

are not. Relentlessly. Staring

2:05

at sunny days and spring flowers,

2:07

we are looking at hard issues.

2:09

We are looking at things that

2:12

are often going wrong and but

2:14

with an eye toward. What?

2:16

Are the Colonel's of understanding one of

2:18

the Colonel's that we can tease out.

2:21

That. Will lead to more constructive future.

2:23

We've. Done a few discussions of what's

2:25

going on between Israel and Palestine,

2:28

which is fairly. Remains.

2:30

Top. Of mind legitimately from many, many

2:33

many people. But we're also gonna look

2:35

today about what does it mean to

2:37

be Jewish? In a world that has

2:39

have a very complicated relationship. To.

2:42

Do So. Even. Though Jews are

2:44

an incredibly small portion of a

2:46

global population, there's an outsized attention

2:48

paid. I've. Been looking for. To

2:50

this conversation we're gonna touch someone whose

2:53

work I have deeply admired and continue

2:55

to and. It. Is absolutely

2:57

the right moment to have this conversation.

2:59

So our. Today or can we

3:02

talking with no thousand And he's a

3:04

law professor and the founding director of

3:06

the Program on Jewish and Israeli Law

3:08

at Harvard University. He specializes and if

3:11

you different things including constitutional studies, But

3:13

today we are going to be talking

3:15

to him about his latest book and

3:17

he has written nine previous ones. By

3:20

the why we're talking about today is

3:22

called to be a Jew and were

3:24

com be exploring that questions questions relating

3:26

to Israel A soccer matches I ready

3:28

already know have felt bend or should

3:30

I say Professor Noah Feldman. It's a

3:33

pleasure to have you. We both know

3:35

you should say no Surrealist or two

3:37

but today about your recent book although

3:39

we may organically talk about the other

3:41

nine bucks and wars that. You've done!

3:44

I personally found this. Fascinating.

3:46

I'm not. Sure, I would rather if I didn't. Know.

3:49

You and you want to plunge into

3:51

this because it's kind of the unfortunate

3:53

elephant in the room. He wrote the

3:55

book before October Seventh and before the

3:58

six month plus at the time of

4:00

this record and seven or eight months

4:02

whatever will be at the time people

4:04

are listening Conflict between Israel and Gaza

4:06

Conflict between Israel the Palestinians which certainly

4:08

goes way before October Seventh. I believe

4:10

you had to change the title or

4:13

he decided to take the title partly

4:15

in light of that. If you had

4:17

sat down to write this book, now,

4:19

would you britain a different but. I.

4:22

Wouldn't Now as you said, I.

4:24

Was finished with they. Matters. To

4:26

drop. But I was done with the book before

4:28

October seven by had a galley abound. galley that

4:30

was ready be sent out to reviewers. Which means

4:33

that's basically the final form of a book. And.

4:35

Then October seven happened, and I

4:37

did a fair amount of rewriting,

4:39

but the rewriting was mostly aimed

4:41

at recognizing the special sensitivities that

4:43

everyone is feeling after October seven.

4:45

Taking. Out some of them were lighthearted aspects

4:48

of the book, including the title, but you

4:50

alluded to the original title the book was

4:52

gonna be. Bad. Jokes which I thought

4:54

was the best book pedal I was ever gonna

4:56

come up with in my entire life and. Unfortunately,

4:59

it will never be is now he's not by me, although

5:01

I'm sure someone else we use that at some point. But.

5:03

I also tried to take on board.

5:06

And. The rewrites. Just. The extent

5:08

of what I recall: intergenerational

5:10

trauma. That shapes the

5:12

experience of interacting. With.

5:15

The events of I Told Her Seven for so

5:17

many Jews. And. By the way it is

5:19

also hundred a tunnel trauma know Palestinian side. What?

5:21

I mean in particular is the way that

5:24

present many jews seeing but edge of the

5:26

Hamas attacks. They didn't experience is

5:28

just as an attack on Israel killing

5:30

innocent people. they also experienced it to

5:32

the lens in the holocaust. Do.

5:34

And pogroms, And. Really Therefore,

5:36

through the lens of a multi generational

5:38

narrative and experience of pain and suffering

5:41

and death and that's and an enormous

5:43

impact. On. People's emotional reactions

5:45

which is meaningful and I

5:47

enhanced some of my recognition

5:49

about in the rewrite. And.

5:51

Then the last thing that I really had to add

5:53

was two ways that I had new examples of a

5:55

general claim that I was making in the book and

5:57

one of the things that I say in the book.

6:00

It. Had for almost all Jews almost

6:02

everywhere. You. Have to have

6:04

some relationship to Israel. To.

6:06

Think of yourself as a Jew. including.

6:09

Possibly a negative relationship A could be

6:11

a positive support He could be. And

6:14

negative distancing you could be a loving criticism

6:16

and are a of other options to. But.

6:18

The option of just not thinking about Israel

6:20

at all and just trying to not engage

6:23

it, which I think a lot of jews

6:25

honestly would like to be able to do

6:27

psychologically. Has gotten much much

6:29

harder to do in recent years.

6:31

And. October Seven I think is really brought that home.

6:34

One of the other things I try to

6:36

say and the book is young Jews who

6:38

are criticizing Israel sometimes very very harshly and

6:40

the wake of October seven. Are

6:42

doing it really from a standpoint of their own Jewishness?

6:45

That's. A Jewish reaction. But your Judaism

6:47

is a judaism, a social justice. Of.

6:50

Repairing the World which I think is

6:52

true for many many progressive Jews. Then

6:54

you can support Israel. If you see, Israel

6:57

is similarly standing up for those values. But.

6:59

When you think Israel isn't setting up for

7:01

those values, you sometimes feel a felt the

7:03

need to criticize Israel. But. As a

7:05

Jewish reaction and I think it's important for people who

7:07

run the other side. Of. This issue.

7:10

And. Are instinctively strongly in solidarity with Israel.

7:12

To remember that you might disagree with the

7:14

critics of Israel and not knowing this book.

7:16

do I heard anybody to change their views?

7:19

What you really believe is what you believe,

7:21

but what I'm asking is for people to

7:23

step back and see. That. Both

7:25

reactions are genuinely Jewish reactions.

7:28

Sewn. On any ties into that

7:30

first plane. I was surprised and

7:32

even friends of mine who had us. I

7:35

would say like strongly. Spears.

7:37

They do as they were surprised by their own friends.

7:39

And families reactions to that to a

7:41

center attacks by friends and family that

7:43

were similarly ton of. Maybe. Lightly

7:45

do I shall we say. Had

7:47

a really intense reaction. And

7:49

it was curious even to them. So

7:52

I guess the question is. Why?

7:54

Is it so impossible to

7:56

ignore Israel? Pay like. A. could

7:58

have been a different situation could have been Israel was

8:00

created. Everything went in one way

8:03

and then it was just like, okay, Israel's existing and

8:05

that's it. So how do we

8:07

get where we are now? Yeah, it's a great question.

8:09

And it is one of the reasons I wrote the book to

8:11

try to answer that. A big part of

8:13

how we got where we are goes

8:15

back to what the original aspiration was

8:17

of the people who founded Israel, the

8:20

early secular leaning Zionists, and then

8:22

what actually happened in practice, which turned out to be

8:24

pretty different from what they imagined. What

8:27

they wanted was a

8:29

secular nationalism like the

8:31

secular nationalisms of European

8:33

countries. And in their picture, being

8:35

Jewish was... It was kind of a bad

8:37

state of being. It was

8:40

associated with being weak, disempowered,

8:43

a minority living in

8:45

diaspora. And they figured

8:47

that the solution to the problem of being

8:49

Jewish and they thought it was a problem

8:51

was for Jewishness to kind of fade away

8:53

and be replaced by a national identity of

8:55

Israeliness. So in their perfect

8:57

world, every Jew would have moved to Israel and

9:00

we would have all been part of a single nation,

9:02

could have been called the Jewish nation, would have been

9:04

called the Israeli nation. They weren't particular about the name,

9:06

but that wouldn't have been a religious identity.

9:10

And it wouldn't have been a strange or an unusual identity

9:12

and it wouldn't have been an ethnic identity, it would

9:14

have been a national identity. And this

9:16

is really characteristic of the period where they were coming

9:18

up with these ideas, you know, the late 19th century,

9:20

the early 20th century when nationalism was

9:22

really riding high. And lots

9:24

of people all over the world thought that having your own

9:26

country was the solution to all kinds of problems. In

9:29

the Balkans, for example, a lot of people thought the solution was

9:31

if everyone can get their own country with their own kind of

9:33

people, we'll all be able to get along perfectly. And

9:35

that didn't happen in the sense that part of

9:38

it did happen. I mean, Israel came into existence

9:40

and it became a real nation. So as a

9:42

result, among other things, Jews aren't really a nation

9:44

today. Because Israelis are a nation. If you

9:46

meet an Israeli and you're a Jew who's

9:48

not Israeli, it's obvious. They have their own language,

9:50

their own culture, their own cultural style, their own

9:52

experiences, their own TV shows, their own beliefs. Not

9:54

every Israeli is even Jewish. And

9:57

so they're a nation. So that happened. But

9:59

what happened to relationship between Jews and Israel

10:01

was something more complicated. What happened was that

10:03

Israel started to become very slowly and gradually

10:05

and really picking up in the last 30

10:07

or 40 years a

10:10

reason for being Jewish in

10:12

a world where the reasons for being Jewish

10:15

are a little hard to figure out. So, let me say

10:17

just a quick word about what I mean about that. In

10:19

every era of Jews, going back at least

10:22

2000 years, Jews had to answer the question,

10:24

why am I doing this? Sort

10:26

of like a version of the Passover question that

10:28

the simple son asks on Passover, you know, what

10:30

is this? Why am I doing this? It's

10:33

a logical question to ask. And

10:36

the answer sometimes was, well,

10:38

I believe in a specific kind of

10:40

personal God who appeared on Mount Sinai

10:42

and made a covenant with my forefathers

10:44

and gives me these rules. And that was

10:46

one reason to be Jewish for lots of people. Today,

10:49

fewer people, the Orthodox would certainly answer it

10:51

that way. But fewer people would

10:53

answer it solely in that way. And people

10:55

would talk about their values, their spiritual connection.

10:58

And in Jewish synagogues, especially

11:01

progressive ones, camps and

11:03

youth movements, and even in sort

11:05

of the general culture in America, Jews started to say

11:07

there are really two reasons to be Jewish. One

11:09

is to commemorate the Holocaust and make sure that

11:12

Jewish lives were not lost in vain. And

11:14

the second is to support or be

11:16

in some positive relationship to Israel. And

11:19

those go alongside their other Jewish

11:21

values, like following the law if

11:24

they're more Orthodox, following

11:26

the tradition if they're conservative, and

11:28

pursuing social justice for many, many progressive

11:31

Jews. So Israel kind

11:33

of snuck in there in a

11:35

serious way. And it started to be a

11:37

reason to be Jewish. And it's in

11:39

the nature of being Jewish that since it's a community,

11:41

if other people are thinking about part of it in a certain

11:43

way, you're influenced by that. And

11:46

that's what happened. Israel became a reason to

11:48

be Jewish for a lot of Jews. And

11:50

so that's why even Jews you're describing, Emma,

11:52

who, I like your phrase, they sort of

11:54

were lightly Jewish, found out in this moment

11:56

that they weren't lightly Jewish, that They actually

11:58

had much stronger feelings. I'll use them.

12:01

They thought I let Israel was the

12:03

trigger. For. Those feelings for

12:05

them as juice. The Us

12:07

in particular were saying thousands

12:09

of American jews you know,

12:11

showing up sir alleys calling

12:13

for a ceasefire, seeing the

12:15

the violence and guys and

12:18

and and ceiling echoes of

12:20

violence that has. That

12:22

are people have experience in

12:24

the past and and saying

12:26

that the lesson of well

12:29

we'll have learned from the

12:31

fight against Anti Semitism is

12:33

a universal message of fighting

12:35

against. Racism. And discrimination

12:37

and state violence not just for us,

12:39

for for all people. It's.

12:41

Intriguing. Why? Messier.

12:43

My own reaction told us that. This

12:46

was not a trigger at all. The

12:48

trigger was the absence of arrows. And.

12:51

Mercator World as one person. When one

12:53

story, enough about me, let's talk about

12:55

me. And i am struck and

12:57

have by fucking freezing of and says

12:59

as I've gotten older. In. A

13:02

way that I can new into actually but

13:04

as become much more or something else that

13:06

there are sixty million jews and a old

13:08

of nearly a billion people and. Even.

13:11

In a narcissistic way of like will all

13:13

want to pay more attention to ruin tribe.

13:15

It. Is still increasingly bizarre to

13:18

me how much attention Jews

13:20

get negative and positive relatively.

13:22

And it's not just in

13:24

the United States, I'm in.

13:26

I. Grew up in New York City which and

13:28

told the early two thousand was the largest jewish

13:30

city in the world where there are more juice

13:33

of in the are sitting there were in Tel

13:35

Aviv and told toi ten or two thousand and

13:37

five something like that. And.

13:39

So you had the luxury I think growing

13:41

up in that environment of didn't really have

13:43

to think much about your identity as being

13:45

jewish because the bars that if we're if

13:47

there was no other. Way. With there

13:49

was no otherness but it is odd in and I

13:51

do find some the reactions in the past six months

13:54

to what's going on between Israel and the last. One

13:56

of the things that. Seemed. Out

13:58

of proportion is. Because while

14:00

all this is going on between Israel and

14:03

Hamas and Israel and the Gaza and the

14:05

Palestinians, you have this massive

14:07

civil war in Sudan that has disrupted

14:09

three million people. The entire city

14:11

of Khartoum has emptied out. And

14:14

I would challenge anyone to find much in

14:16

the way of news about this globally.

14:18

Yeah. So, there's

14:20

a reason for that. And the

14:23

reason is stories. This

14:25

is embedded in the

14:27

foundation stories of Christianity

14:29

and Islam. And

14:31

together, they account for nearly four

14:33

billion people around the world. And

14:37

so, that's the first stage. If you're

14:39

a Christian or a Muslim of any kind,

14:42

you grew up with stories about the

14:44

ancient Israelites, the patriarchs, the Jewish people,

14:46

and your religion is incomprehensible without some

14:48

relationship to them. So, that's point one.

14:51

And point two is that Israel

14:53

is bound up in the stories of

14:55

Jewishness because it grew out of the

14:58

stories of Jewishness. And

15:01

so, Israel then becomes part of that narrative.

15:03

And if you want like a nice

15:05

little proof that this is the real reason, the

15:08

proof is if you compare how

15:10

the news in China or

15:13

India thinks about Israel,

15:16

there's far, far, far

15:18

less engagement, interest

15:21

and energy because the

15:23

great majority of people in

15:25

India, I'm not counting Muslims because there are a

15:27

lot of Muslims in India, but the great majority

15:29

of Hindus in India, for them,

15:31

Jews aren't bound up in any of their

15:33

foundational stories, myths and narratives. And in

15:36

China, it's not bound up at all in any of

15:38

the very many traditions that exist

15:40

in China. So, it's really a

15:42

product of the way that these

15:44

two great world religious traditions came

15:46

out in some way of Jewishness

15:48

or came into existence in some

15:50

complex relationship to Jewishness. And

15:52

that's why when people say to me, why can't Jews be

15:55

treated or why can't Israel be treated as a country like

15:57

any other or the Jews be treated like any other small

15:59

group of people? I say to them,

16:01

this is not going to happen. That's never

16:03

going to happen. I'm not saying that anti-Semitism

16:05

can't be improved upon. There are actually areas

16:07

where there's been a lot of improvement, although

16:10

there's been a morphing of anti-Semitism too. I'm

16:12

just saying that in a world where we make our

16:15

own meaning by stories, the Jews

16:17

are too central to too many foundational stories

16:19

and Israel is too continuous with the stories

16:21

of the Jews. And I want to ask

16:23

on this, one of your backgrounds

16:25

or strong part of your background, as

16:27

mine as well, was studying Islam and

16:30

learning Arabic and delving into that.

16:34

You quite prominently at one point as

16:36

an advisor in Iraq in the aftermath

16:38

of the US invasion occupation

16:40

trying to think about what a constitutional framework

16:42

for the state of Iraq would be. When

16:45

you were doing that, how much of

16:48

that was you reflecting on your identity

16:50

as being Jewish, learning about Islam as

16:52

a proximate other? I know for myself,

16:55

partly I delved into that. I had had

16:57

so little education about Islam just in high

16:59

school, right? It was this kind of bizarre

17:01

thing that got completely elided from most curriculums,

17:04

right? So I just kind of wanted to

17:06

know what was this other part

17:08

of the world that was fascinating. You had

17:10

a much more Jewish upbringing. So how

17:13

much of that was wanting to know the other?

17:15

Was it trying to know yourself? It

17:18

was both. It started because my family

17:20

took me on trips to Israel and the

17:22

street signs were in Hebrew and in Arabic.

17:25

And I went to a school where they taught me Hebrew. And

17:27

I sort of thought from a child's eye view, and I was

17:29

a child, well, I guess I should learn

17:31

Arabic because it's obviously just as important a

17:33

language in this country that everyone is telling

17:35

me should be so important to my way

17:37

of encountering the world. And then

17:40

I got a little bit older and saw that there was a conflict

17:42

between Israelis and Palestinians and between Jews and Arabs.

17:44

And I thought, oh, well, this is a very

17:46

American thought. If there's such a conflict, what could

17:49

I do to help both egomaniacal and very American

17:51

at the same time? And

17:53

so I thought, well, got to learn both sides, got

17:55

to learn something about Islam. And then the minute I

17:57

started studying it seriously, the minute I had

17:59

some language. started to read, I was

18:01

just blown away by the

18:03

complex intermixing, interpenetration,

18:05

intermingling, and the kind of

18:08

comparing contrast was totally constant.

18:11

And I would say, so that really thrilled me. And I

18:14

also think there was a little bit

18:16

of displacement. Even in the 19th century,

18:18

some of the greatest Western scholars of

18:20

Islam were Jews, in fact, Jews with

18:22

a traditional religious education, who

18:24

then threw their whole lives into becoming leading

18:26

scholars of Islam. And they had these names

18:29

like Ignaz Goldfir or Yosef Shaach. I mean,

18:31

these guys sounded like they could have been

18:33

rabbis because they could have been rabbis, but

18:35

instead they became scholars of Islam. In one

18:37

famous case, a Jew even became like a

18:40

major figure and he converted to Islam and

18:42

became a major advisor to the King of

18:44

Saudi Arabia and to the Pakistani government. For

18:47

those people, and maybe a little bit for me at that time

18:49

too, I was doing that very

18:51

Jewish thing of throwing myself into a tradition

18:53

and trying to study it and learn about

18:55

it and understand its arguments and contribute in

18:57

some way to it. But it just

18:59

wasn't my own tradition. So there was a kind of displacement.

19:01

It was in a way almost like

19:03

a safer thing to do, or it

19:05

felt like a safer thing to do. And it

19:08

felt like it was less self-involved in that way.

19:10

And that's actually a big tradition for Jews, whether

19:12

it's Marxism or psychoanalysis, there

19:14

are lots of nominally,

19:17

totally not Jewish intellectual

19:19

movements or social movements that

19:21

Jews have thrown themselves into. That

19:23

I think for some of those Jews, many

19:25

of them even, reflected a kind of way

19:28

of being Jewish without

19:30

being Jewish. So

19:32

no, I want to pick up on that because that

19:34

I think exactly is how you explain

19:37

what's going on with Gen Z

19:39

right now as far as their

19:41

reaction to Israel. You describe

19:44

the kind of intense reaction

19:46

to Israel's attack on Gaza

19:48

as an anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, Israel

19:51

is 100% the bad guy,

19:54

as a Jewish reaction for a lot of

19:56

Gen Z Jews, which I explain for us

19:58

how that works. Yeah. And I should say

20:00

two things. One, I'm speaking personally and in

20:02

the whole book I speak personally. My kids

20:05

are 17 and 18 and although

20:07

they're not on the front of the ride as activists on

20:09

this issue, I talk to them about it all the time

20:11

and I have a pretty strong sense of where they are

20:13

and a lot of their friends are. And

20:15

second, that I'm not speaking of everybody.

20:18

There are lots of communities of young Jews,

20:20

Gen Z Jews, including say modern

20:22

Orthodox Gen Z Jews or ultra-Orthodox Gen Z

20:25

Jews who are very much not in the place

20:27

that I'm going to describe. What I

20:29

think is going on though for a lot

20:31

of progressive Jews who are kids or teenagers

20:33

or you know, 20s is they

20:36

were brought up to believe in

20:38

a classically progressive Jewish ideal

20:41

of social justice Judaism. They

20:44

were told repair the world, Tikur olam is the core

20:46

value of Judaism. This is the message that goes all

20:48

the way back to the prophets. And

20:50

the way you are expressing your Jewishness in life

20:52

is through your social and your political values, which

20:55

is a beautiful and an old way of thinking

20:57

about Jewishness in a very powerful way. They

21:00

were also told you should support Israel

21:02

and they were told that by a generation of

21:04

parents and teachers, some of them millennials, some of

21:06

them Gen X, who believe that

21:08

it was possible to do both of these things so that

21:10

they were really compatible with each other and still believe that.

21:13

That you could be pro-Israel and also a

21:15

social justice Jew. But

21:18

their experiences in their lives that for

21:20

the Gen Zers are all

21:22

seeing news of Israel retaliating

21:25

against some until

21:28

October 7, small to

21:30

medium sized attacks into Israel with

21:33

overwhelming force. You know, there have been in

21:35

my kid's lives, this is the third time

21:37

that Israel has retaliated heavily against attacks

21:40

from Gaza by going into Gaza. So

21:42

their life experience of Israel is that Israel

21:45

seems safe, that Israel

21:47

seems capable of retaliating with its big

21:50

army at will. They

21:52

didn't experience 1967 when Israel had

21:54

a big victory, but only after

21:56

feeling threatened or 1973 when Israel

21:58

was genuinely threatened. in a

22:01

surprise attack to say nothing of 1948. And

22:04

so they've grown up with an experience of

22:06

Israel as a powerful, strong country, and

22:08

they've grown up with the message that Palestinians don't

22:10

have a state of their own. And

22:12

I think as descriptions of the world, both of those things are

22:14

true. And so when they

22:16

look at an event like October 7, I

22:19

think they can see the horror of the

22:21

attack, but they also see

22:23

the retaliation from Israel's perspective,

22:26

not the way I think many

22:28

Jews of older generations like mine see it, namely

22:31

as maybe overdone, but as a

22:33

serious attempt to reestablish stability. And

22:36

with the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust in

22:38

the background, instead, they see

22:40

it as a disproportionate reaction. You

22:42

know, 1200 people died, that's horrific

22:44

on October 7, and the numbers

22:46

are well over 32,000 when we're speaking

22:48

now. And I pray that those numbers will

22:50

stop going up, and perhaps they will, but

22:52

perhaps they'll continue to go up. And

22:55

so I think from their perspective, they ask,

22:57

what did my religion ask of me?

23:00

And they were brought up to hear that the true

23:02

Bible verses that say, you shall love the stranger, for

23:04

you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You

23:07

have an obligation to the other. You have to fight for

23:09

social justice. And they look at Israel and they

23:11

don't see that. They don't see that picture. They

23:13

see an Israel that's aligned with the powerful

23:15

United States, and they can sort of do what it

23:17

wants in response. And also they see that it doesn't

23:19

seem to be helping. The last point I would

23:21

just add is, when I was in

23:23

my teens in Tifada, the first

23:26

uprising of Palestinians demanding independence in

23:28

the post-State of Israel period started,

23:31

and it was very noteworthy, and

23:33

I remember as a teenager being very affected by

23:36

it. And there was an obvious solution

23:38

to it, which was that there would be a peace process

23:40

and Israel and Palestine would become two states side by side.

23:43

And that almost happened. We tend to

23:45

look back and say, oh, it had no chance of happening, but

23:47

it did almost happen. Within a couple of years of the first

23:49

in Tifada, there was a handshake on

23:51

the White House lawn between the Prime

23:53

Minister of Israel and the head of the Palestine Liberation

23:55

Organization. And then there was nearly a decade of efforts,

23:58

serious efforts, to try to make a deal. So,

24:00

there was a kind of hopefulness around it. But

24:02

for the Gen Zers, there's never been a

24:04

moment of hope. In their entire lives, this has just

24:07

been an unending conflict with no end in sight. When

24:09

they ask the adults, will there be a solution to

24:12

this? The adults say, we have to say, honestly, I

24:14

mean, we wish there would be, but we're very far

24:16

from being able to tell you realistically that's right around

24:18

the corner. There's a chance. But

24:20

I don't know anyone who's a specialist in Middle Eastern

24:22

affairs who thinks it's a high chance in the near

24:24

future. And so, that's another

24:27

feature from their perspective. So as Jews,

24:29

they feel we need to not

24:32

be on the side of the side that we see

24:34

as the Goliath and not

24:36

the David. The

24:44

government of Kenya pledged to end gender-based violence

24:46

by 2026. The

24:48

Ministry of Health in Uganda is trying to eradicate

24:51

yellow fever. It's ambitious to make

24:53

these kinds of pledges, but it is much harder

24:55

to achieve these lofty goals. Are

24:57

these leaders really delivering on these promises for women

24:59

and girls? Tune into a new

25:01

season of the Hidden Economics of Remarkable

25:03

Women, a podcast from Foreign Policy. As

25:06

reporters across Africa meet courageous women

25:08

holding leaders accountable in various sectors,

25:10

including healthcare, startups, and the government.

25:13

Listen to Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women wherever

25:15

you get your podcasts. Hey,

25:18

everybody. I'm Scott Schaeffer. And I'm Marie

25:20

Salago. We're the hosts of Political Breakdown,

25:22

a show that pulls back the curtain

25:24

on the people and forces driving politics

25:26

in the Golden State from KQED in

25:28

San Francisco. And

25:31

now ahead of the 2024 election, we

25:33

are bringing you even more, more

25:35

conversations with the top movers and

25:38

shakers of the state capital and

25:40

national politics. But the dyslexia was the

25:42

greatest gift that ever happened to me. Nothing was

25:44

wrote. Nothing was linear. I had

25:46

to work around things, work differently, see the

25:48

world differently. And I say that to young

25:51

people and say, know how important your

25:54

participation is. And I think it's the time

25:56

for this generation to put forward new voices.

25:58

More reporting with analysis. It's

26:00

been a very good session for organized labor, but

26:02

hot labor summer hot labor summer It's turning out

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to be a nice fall as well more

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politics with personality. That's what election

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hear that political breakdown daily

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goes daily starting January 8th

26:37

It occurred to me when you were talking about

26:39

the Oslo process in that moment of we were

26:41

on the road to a kind of Just like

26:43

it happened with the end of apartheid

26:45

in South Africa There was this kind

26:47

of belief that this Intractable conflict of decades

26:49

was gonna come to an end or Northern

26:51

Ireland Right like the left romanticizes the 70s

26:53

in the United States in the 60s and

26:55

the right romanticizes the 50s and 80s No

26:59

one romanticizes the 90s and yet

27:01

from like any Possible perspective

27:03

of end of the Cold

27:05

War affluence European Union We

27:08

should be romanticizing the 90s like all collectively and

27:10

yet it's like the forgotten my kids are wearing

27:12

my clothes from the 90s I don't know if

27:14

that's romantic. I Look at

27:16

those clothes and I'm like these are things that I don't

27:18

know why I didn't throw them out I know these big

27:20

baggy things were never coming back and sure enough. They're wearing

27:23

them all the time now That is facts.

27:25

I remember at one point during that first indie

27:27

fought and as a college student I probably was

27:29

more sympathetic to the Palestinians and I was the

27:31

Israelis at that particular moment of just wanting statehood

27:34

But also acutely aware of the fact that

27:36

somehow in a tribal sense There

27:39

was a real feeling of like you

27:41

couldn't as an American Jew really credibly

27:43

critique Israel Israel could critique each other

27:45

but you couldn't as an American Jew

27:47

critique Israel and that has gotten I

27:49

feel like it was bad It's off

27:52

the charts bad now. in terms of that divide,

27:54

you don't get a right to have a voice.

27:56

I Remember one a college friend blurting out on

27:58

the street. I Hate. Anti Semitic

28:01

Jews. And. I just cracked

28:03

up at that. Because. I to sort of

28:05

the funniest thing I had heard in in the Irony

28:07

of It, right? But. Either

28:09

today feels like. You. Can him

28:11

with us or you're against us Want to come so

28:13

a towel his or on. this is true before

28:15

October seven Do for the simply be Jewish about

28:18

that or is a just. A. Manifestation tribal

28:20

identity were if you're perceived as being

28:22

within the tribe you can with in

28:24

that fatigue and debate but if you're

28:26

perceived as not then you don't have

28:28

a voice. Well. When it's a bookstore

28:30

and then I'll answer that at spend that same period

28:32

of time that you were describing. There

28:34

were some Chinese students selling tee

28:36

shirts and Harvard Square. At.

28:39

The time of that turn on men. Protests.

28:41

And massacre. And this before

28:43

the massacre. On the front that the

28:45

famous picture of the guy standing upright the tank

28:48

with his arms outstretched. And. On the

28:50

back that a Chinese character that stood for freedom.

28:53

I bought my the t shirts and I put it on. And.

28:55

I went to the Harvard Hillel for a meal

28:57

and someone to saw the front of me which

28:59

had the predicted with his arms extended and the

29:01

tank mega really mad at me with my camp

29:03

leave Your Wagon Pro Palestinian t shirts. And.

29:06

I just turned around and sort of the back. Up

29:08

that. Capture and Thing of the ceiling. That and

29:10

I would call it a feeling of paranoia

29:12

in that particular moment. Even. Paranoid

29:14

people have enemies though, and I think October seven

29:17

shows that. So. Here's my real

29:19

answer to your question. He. Goes back to

29:21

the Central. The really most important thing I'm trying to say

29:23

in the book. I'm. Trying to make the

29:25

argument that. Jews. Are like

29:27

a big. Loving. And

29:30

fairly dysfunctional family. And

29:32

families are where we have our first experiences

29:34

of love. And they're also

29:36

where we have our first experiences of struggle.

29:39

And. For me, the answer of what it means

29:41

to be a do today is to be engaged. In.

29:43

A loving struggle. With. Ourselves

29:46

with each other, with our beliefs, with our

29:48

sense of the spiritual or the divine. And

29:51

that's something we do collectively. and it's very

29:53

Jewish. to me the

29:55

disagreements among jews about the right way

29:57

to think about israel right now as

29:59

it And sometimes these debates are really

30:01

vociferous, as you say. These

30:03

debates are the essence of what it is in fact

30:06

to be Jewish. They are the cousins or the equivalent

30:08

or really the same thing as

30:10

two Jews sitting in the study house and arguing

30:12

with each other at the top of their lungs

30:14

about the meaning of a page of the Talmud.

30:17

If you visit a study house, a traditional study house, a lot

30:19

of people are shocked to see what it sounds like and

30:22

they're like, why is everyone so mad at everyone else? They're

30:24

not. That's just a cultural style. That's

30:26

just Jews arguing. And they're doing

30:28

it not just for the sake of argument, but that's

30:30

for the sake of learning and study and connection. And

30:33

so to me, the debates that you're

30:35

describing are ones in which

30:38

different Jews with different points of view,

30:40

say, on Israel, are saying, this is

30:42

what we fundamentally believe in. We really want to convince

30:44

you that you're in the wrong and

30:46

that you're getting it wrong. That's the

30:48

part that I love. That's the part I want

30:50

to encourage. I want to encourage Jews to say to each

30:53

other and if necessary, yell at each other about what

30:55

the right thing to do is. From

30:57

a place of familial love,

30:59

and as you know, as everyone with a

31:01

family knows, the fact that someone's in your family doesn't mean you're

31:04

not mad at them. It's often the opposite. Sometimes

31:06

you're angry at the people who are in your

31:08

family is much greater than you're angry at other

31:10

people. Not necessarily for any good reason except that

31:12

they are your family. So that's

31:14

how I think about it. And what I want

31:16

Jews to do is not back down on their

31:19

opinions, but just to remember that the other Jews,

31:21

the ones who are on the other side of this issue, they're

31:23

also trying to be Jewish. They

31:25

are still your family, they are still family,

31:28

and they're trying their hardest in good conscience

31:30

to do the right thing and to think

31:32

the right thing. And that can be

31:34

mad at me. Just the same thing

31:36

applied to American politics as an American,

31:38

meaning would you say the same about

31:40

someone supporting Trump and someone supporting Biden?

31:42

I'm not trying to like purposely trying

31:44

to be difficult on that. I'm saying,

31:47

does the same idea apply? I would say it's

31:49

a cousin of the idea. It's

31:52

a cousin of the idea. I think Americans

31:54

aren't exactly a family.

31:57

We're something a little different. We're citizens.

32:00

of a republic. And

32:02

citizens of a republic do their best when

32:05

they disagree civilly and remember

32:08

that the other citizens are

32:10

also committed to the republic. They're just

32:13

differing about the best way to advance

32:15

the republic. And republics and democracies do

32:17

worse when people start thinking that

32:19

the people they disagree with are their

32:21

fundamental enemies who have to be fought

32:24

and eliminated. That's the biggest danger to any

32:26

liberal democracy that we think of it that

32:29

way. So it is what's similar is that

32:31

when I hear people saying, oh,

32:34

you know, that person voted for Trump, they're a

32:36

bad person. I want to respond

32:38

by saying, listen, we could argue about that. But

32:40

I don't think they're a bad person. I don't

32:42

want to think that because if so half the

32:44

country are bad people almost. And then

32:46

how can you be in a common country with them?

32:48

I mean, that happened, we did have a civil war

32:50

in our history where we just decided that the other

32:52

side were genuine enemies. That's the part that

32:54

has something in common. The part that's a little different

32:56

is I don't think we have to love

32:58

all other Americans. I think that's asking

33:00

for a lot. We just have to be able

33:03

to coexist with them in a

33:05

common enterprise. And

33:07

in contrast, I think that to be

33:09

Jewish requires mutual

33:12

love among Jews. But

33:14

by that, I don't mean they were getting along all

33:16

the time. I mean, love like you love your family.

33:19

And that is in fact, a prerequisite of

33:21

it being a family, that even in

33:23

those moments when you hate each other the most,

33:26

you still love each other. And in fact, that's

33:28

partly why you hate each other. This is Jacob

33:30

and Esau who hadn't seen each other in 20

33:33

odd years. They meet each

33:35

other and Jacob is literally afraid that Esau

33:37

is going to kill him and his entire

33:39

family. And Esau says to him, I

33:41

think very movingly, and Jacob tries to bribe them

33:43

with a lot of stuff, which is a very Jacob move

33:46

in the Bible. And he says like, I got

33:48

plenty, it's good to see you and they hug each other

33:50

and they cry. And that to me is,

33:52

you know, this ideal. And it's not like they

33:54

ever see each other again, either. And the same

33:56

Bible that's telling us that story also knows that

33:58

the descendants of Jacob. Jacob and Esau are likely

34:00

to be at odds with each other, maybe for

34:02

millennia. And so

34:04

the basic notion is that you

34:07

can still be connected and

34:09

still have love even in the midst of

34:11

your conflict. And that is, I think, the

34:14

distinctively Jewish version of this that differs from

34:16

the American version. I suppose

34:18

the cousin to Zachary's question is then,

34:20

when you have Israelis fighting about Israeli

34:22

politics, are they fighting as citizens of

34:24

a republic or are they fighting as

34:26

Jews? It's both. And

34:28

I love that question. That's actually a brilliant question, emotional,

34:30

I had not thought of before. But I think the

34:32

answer is that it's both, because some

34:34

of the time, they really are arguing about

34:37

politics and policies. And it's important to add

34:39

that there are nearly 3 million citizens of

34:41

Israel who actually aren't Jews. They are

34:43

Palestinians mostly, there are other people

34:45

too, but they're mostly Palestinians or

34:47

Israeli citizens. They should be able

34:49

to and can argue as citizens of a republic.

34:52

And there are a lot of policy issues that the Israelis

34:54

argue about. And I think the

34:56

judicial reform debates that were going on in Israel,

34:58

where there were nine months of protests are an

35:01

example of this. You can imagine a reasonable person

35:03

thinking, we need a more powerful court. And you

35:05

can imagine a reasonable person thinking, we need more

35:07

democracy and a little less judicial liberalism. That's

35:10

sort of a citizen's debate. But

35:12

then when Israel talks about existential

35:14

issues about what it means to

35:16

be a Jewish state, for example, then

35:18

they start arguing like Jews.

35:22

And you can feel the temperature going up.

35:26

You can feel also the tension of the question about

35:28

what about the citizens of the state of Israel who

35:30

aren't Jews? How can they be included in

35:32

that debate? It's hard. For example, a

35:34

debate that's going on in Israel that I feel confident

35:36

will continue to go on for the foreseeable future, never

35:38

going to be solved is should the

35:40

ultra-Orthodox of Haredim who will currently

35:42

or not draft into the Israeli military be

35:44

drafted into the Israeli military? What's a Palestinian supposed

35:47

to think about that? It feels not so much

35:49

like a national debate or a citizens debate.

35:51

It feels more like a debate among Jews. And

35:54

so they're doing both. And that's very,

35:57

very complicated. I think it's sometimes really,

35:59

really confusing. Really, really

36:01

confusing for Israelis. Hey,

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or wherever you get your podcasts. The

37:13

coexistence question, I mean, I want to highlight

37:15

what you just said. I wrote this book

37:17

once about peaceful coexistence between Muslims, Christians, and

37:20

Jews and tried to say that people's

37:22

romanticizing of coexistence is

37:25

part of the problem. Like it's not, I love

37:27

you and I honor your views

37:30

even though I disagree with them vehemently.

37:32

It's like, I can sit there

37:34

recognizing that your views are abhorrent and

37:36

not have approximate need to kill you.

37:39

And that's true in a republic and

37:41

it's worth reminding Americans, reminding

37:43

ourselves, there has been a civil war

37:45

where we got to a point where

37:47

like we can't actually live together. Like

37:49

that is not an acceptable, that bar

37:51

is actually not acceptable.

37:54

But unless you have some sort of moral thing

37:56

like slavery, you better be able to live with

37:58

people whose views you find abhorrent. As

38:01

long as I guess you don't find their actions abhorrent.

38:03

It is an interesting question about like love within

38:05

a family. And like the Greeks

38:08

had a lot of different words of love. We

38:10

have one that kind of encompasses probably too much

38:13

for any one definition thereof. I

38:16

think the kind of love you're talking about may be

38:18

more similar to the republic than you acknowledge

38:20

meaning the respect of someone else's humanity

38:22

even if their views you

38:25

find are just grating to

38:27

the point of pain. Because I don't know.

38:29

I mean, I find that love as a

38:31

notion other than more of a

38:33

spiritual one may be a higher bar than even

38:35

Jews with each other can meaningfully be expected to

38:38

have. I mean, I like the aspirational part

38:40

of it. I'm not sure if it's always

38:42

true. I find that a very provocative

38:44

and the best sense of the word common. I was

38:46

going to say one more thing about your great love

38:49

point. You know, you're totally right. The Greeks such a

38:51

nuanced and subtle set of differences. And

38:53

I agree that there's a certain kind of love, a

38:55

philia kind of love that they expected to have even

38:57

in the republic. But the Bibles

38:59

just got this one word for love. And

39:02

it says this is the same word that

39:04

explains God loving the children of Israel, the

39:06

children of Israel loving God, the children of

39:08

Israel loving each other, and the children of

39:11

Israel loving the stranger. And

39:13

it's very dysfunctional in the book of Hosea, which

39:15

is an obscure book of the Bible, because it's

39:17

so challenging. In the first

39:19

verses, God commands the prophet to

39:22

marry a woman who has another

39:24

lover and will continue to be

39:26

adulterous. And then the quote is, just

39:29

like the love of God for the children

39:31

of Israel, who are always chasing after a

39:33

foreign God. And then the guy

39:36

actually does this in the Bible,

39:38

and he's completely miserable. And

39:40

that's the whole book of the Bible. You know,

39:42

I mean, so that's a prophetic vision of what love

39:44

is. So that's a very complicated

39:47

love. This was not necessarily a picture of

39:49

a healthy relationship, but it is a

39:51

very real one. And that's the thing about Jewishness,

39:54

you know, it doesn't have an idealized

39:56

picture of even what your relationship

39:58

to a spiritual being was. God would be like.

40:01

It's not idealized. It's super grounded

40:03

in what real love is like, which

40:06

combines the deepest feelings of

40:08

support and emotion and connection,

40:10

and also profound struggle

40:13

and pain. So, Noah, unrelated

40:16

to what point, but I would like to ask

40:18

you this before we run out of time. You

40:21

mentioned earlier in the conversation, the

40:23

kind of new forms of antisemitism.

40:25

And I

40:27

wanted to ask you in particular how you parse

40:30

things out in an environment where, you know,

40:32

you have something like a slowdown from the

40:34

river to the sea. And

40:37

some people are absolutely sure that that

40:39

by its nature is an antisemitic statement.

40:41

Other people that are absolutely positive that

40:43

it's not, that it's a political statement,

40:45

right? And then there are those who,

40:47

depending on their level of knowledge, think

40:49

that it is or it isn't, not

40:52

because they are tied to it in

40:54

some kind of political or emotional way,

40:56

but just because they might not know

40:58

what kind of history is pulling on,

41:00

what kind of tropes is pulling on. So how

41:02

do you look at things like

41:04

that? Yeah, thanks for asking that.

41:07

We're in a moment where the

41:09

president of my university lost

41:11

her job for, among other

41:13

reasons, trying to say

41:15

that some things are complicated and they depend

41:17

on context. So that tells you something

41:19

about the environment we live in. It's hard

41:22

to talk about complexity and context.

41:25

From the river to the sea, Palestine must be

41:27

free. First of all, it's clearly an anti-Israel statement

41:29

and it's meant to be an anti-Israel statement. And

41:31

taken in a certain light, it sounds like it's

41:33

an argument that Israel shouldn't exist at all. You

41:36

could imagine someone saying, well, what I meant by it

41:38

was only that there should be a single

41:40

state of Israel-Palestine that's a democracy for all of

41:42

its citizens and no one has to move and

41:45

no one has to be killed. And

41:47

such a person, I think if they said that and they

41:49

sincerely meant it, I think you could say about

41:52

that person, you might not be anti-Semitic

41:54

in saying that. And I

41:56

certainly have very close Palestinian friends

42:00

be one state, everyone should be a

42:02

citizen of it, it should be a liberal democracy. And

42:05

in that sense, that would be free. And I

42:07

don't think that that point of view is anti-Semitic.

42:09

It's also true that some people using that

42:11

slogan are picturing bringing an end to the

42:14

current state of Israel and the

42:16

rise of a Palestinian state. And that's what they mean

42:18

by a Palestine must be free. And

42:20

in that state, they may

42:22

imagine that Jews won't be there, that

42:24

they'll have to leave or that they,

42:26

heaven forbid, would be killed. And

42:29

that point of view that you want

42:32

to displace seven or eight million Jews from

42:34

their homes or heaven

42:36

forbid kill them, that obviously is

42:38

in the heartland of anti-Semitism, that would

42:40

be a tragedy on a par with

42:42

or greater than the Holocaust. Of

42:44

course, that would be archetypal anti-Semitic. Now

42:47

the problem is you can't go up to people in a

42:49

march with a handheld microphone and

42:51

say to them, what was the nuance with

42:53

which you meant that? Because that's

42:55

not what marches are about. The whole point is for

42:57

it not to work like that. That's why I always

42:59

feel, even when I really believe in an issue, I find

43:02

it almost impossible to stand through a march. I

43:04

would say sit through it, but you're supposed to

43:06

be standing in a march. Because people are chanting

43:08

these slogans and you're like, oh my God, I'm

43:10

not really totally on board with that slogan. I

43:13

think it's just a sign of a person who

43:15

doesn't fit well into that kind of a movement.

43:17

But I have almost visceral resistance. And that's even

43:19

when I totally agree with the side of the

43:21

people that I'm marching with, I still feel super

43:23

uncomfortable because you can't do that. Totally. So when

43:25

you ask, the best thing to say when people

43:27

say, is this phrase anti-Semitic is to say, the

43:30

phrase can be, it can certainly

43:32

be construed to be. And we

43:35

should probably try to avoid saying things that

43:37

can and probably will be construed

43:40

as anti-Semitic. But if someone says

43:42

that, and then you ask me,

43:44

is that person anti-Semitic, that individual person,

43:46

I would say, I don't know. I don't know them. Ask

43:49

them what they meant by it. And

43:51

then we can begin to get a better sense

43:53

of it. So those are two different kinds of

43:55

questions. I think they can both be true. All

43:57

right. So given that this is the What Could

43:59

Go Right podcast, let's talk for more. moment about

44:01

what could actually potentially go right. Now, it

44:03

is true that we have different relationships

44:05

over decades to this idea of progress

44:07

or change. So, things are darkest

44:09

before the dawn as kind of a cliche and a

44:12

trope seem to have great weight

44:14

through much of my life. But

44:16

in the past years, winter is coming, seems to

44:18

have a greater cultural resonance and

44:20

they speak to very different cultural sensibilities. It's

44:23

hard in these moments to look to kind

44:25

of either a redemptive future or a better

44:27

one. It's clear that not every government, not

44:29

every system that's broken changes for the better

44:32

in North Korea seems to be doing just

44:34

fine being a totalitarian,

44:36

autocratic, weird hall of

44:38

mirrors dictatorship. Maybe that'll

44:40

change in our lifetimes, maybe it won't. The only good

44:42

that I can see in the Middle East today is

44:44

the fact that weirdly enough compared to how you and

44:47

I grew up, every other

44:49

Arab state in the region really doesn't seem

44:51

to care nearly as much as the Gen

44:53

Z students in the United States or London

44:55

do about what's going on in Israel and

44:58

Gaza. Maybe that's a terrible thing but

45:00

from kind of a systemic level, it's actually somewhat

45:02

of a good thing. I don't

45:04

know, like where does this go? Do we look back in this in 10

45:07

years and go Israel,

45:09

the Jews became more tribal, more insular,

45:11

loving each other, but us against the

45:13

world? Is this a breakthrough moment? I

45:15

guess I'm not asking you to forecast

45:17

a future that none of us know.

45:19

I'm just asking you for your own

45:21

sensibility of... Yep. ...is there an arc

45:23

here? Is there? Or is it

45:26

just kind of an endless dialectic

45:28

where there's no actual synthesis?

45:31

So, I want to distinguish what could go right for

45:33

Jews broadly as Jews living as

45:35

Jews and from the

45:37

question of what could go right in the

45:40

Israel-Palestine conflict. On the what could go

45:42

right for Jews, Jews could continue

45:44

as they've been doing for at least 2000 years depending

45:47

on how you count could be longer to realize

45:50

that there are lots of different legitimate

45:52

positions that you can take on almost

45:54

any issue as a

45:56

Jew and that Jews have

45:58

a lot in common with each other. other through their

46:00

commitment to struggle together in love, to try

46:02

to get it right and to take

46:05

the real problems of the real world seriously, not to

46:07

just gloss over things that appear

46:09

to be hard, but really to go hard within

46:11

themselves and to say, you know, what do I

46:13

think about this issue? What do I think about

46:16

this challenge? And in that sense,

46:18

there's an old joke that every generation of Jews

46:20

has in common with the previous generations. It's

46:22

complete certainty that it is going to be the last

46:24

generation of Jews. And

46:26

that's never been true. And is

46:28

that going to be true now? In that sense,

46:31

I think there is progress. What can go

46:33

right is that Jews can have loving respect for

46:35

one another, even in their disagreements, and

46:37

try to participate in making the world a little

46:39

bit better. That's to me a real what could

46:41

go right. Then there's the recurring

46:44

difficult question of the Israelis and the Palestinians.

46:47

And there, the thing that could go

46:49

right, and I'm not saying that it has

46:51

a great probability, is that

46:53

the pressures of the region of Saudi

46:55

Arabia, which badly wants to normalize its

46:58

relationship with Israel, partly because of

47:00

its opposition to Iran and partly because it wants

47:02

a closer relationship with the United States, coupled

47:05

with the fact that, as you say, most other

47:07

Arab countries, I mean, a whole bunch of them

47:09

now have normalized relations with Israel, will

47:11

push Israel to realize that

47:15

it needs to give some basic

47:17

state to Palestinians

47:20

who, because doing so is

47:22

in Israel's interest, in

47:24

its short-run interest and its long-run interest, the

47:27

frustration that many Arabs, especially Arab governments,

47:29

I would say not individual Arabs, who

47:31

I think tend to be very sympathetic

47:34

to Palestinians, but Arab governments tend to

47:36

be pretty frustrated with the Palestinian leadership

47:38

and feel that the Palestinian leadership hasn't

47:40

actually taken the opportunities that's been offered to

47:43

it. That that pressure on

47:45

the Palestinian side also drives the Palestinian

47:47

leadership to compromise, because Israel

47:49

has offered a couple of compromises in

47:51

the past to Palestinians. I'm not saying

47:53

they were great offers. I'm

47:55

saying they were compromises and the

47:57

Palestinian leadership turned them down pretty flatly, which

47:59

is... partly how we got where we are today.

48:01

It's not the whole story, but it's part of the story. So

48:04

I could imagine that what could go right is

48:06

that both sides could gradually come to see in

48:08

the wake of a horrific tragedy like

48:10

happened in October 7 and the horrific tragedy

48:12

that's been ongoing in Gaza, that

48:15

this isn't working. That just standing there and

48:17

shooting each other is not working and

48:20

that they desperately, desperately, desperately need to

48:22

come up with some form of coexistence

48:24

in the aftermath of this. And

48:26

so, again, without prognosticating or putting any probabilities on

48:29

it, I'm not saying this is right around the

48:31

corner. It is possible and

48:34

it does fit into the what could

48:36

go right framework, I think,

48:38

very well. Well, now,

48:40

I want to thank you for

48:42

your time today for the book,

48:45

which I think whether you're Jewish

48:47

or not is eye-opening and offers

48:49

a real perspective, particularly in a moment where

48:52

there's a lot of heat and not a

48:54

lot of light. So that is,

48:57

I think, helpful for those of you, anyone who

48:59

knows books is a lot of light, maybe

49:02

some heat too in a good way,

49:04

but a corpus worth looking into in

49:06

retrospect. And thank you for the work you're

49:08

doing. Thank you, Zach, and thank you.

49:10

I really, really appreciate the time. Thanks, Noah. So

49:13

I love, love, love

49:16

that conversation with Noah in

49:19

whatever Greek definition of love

49:22

we use. And I think that's a profound

49:24

conversation whether you're Jewish or not because the idea of how

49:26

one deals with us versus them, how you

49:29

deal with people who you identify as

49:31

part of your family, whether that's your

49:33

literal family or your civic

49:36

family. People talk about the United States as

49:39

a civic religion, I think

49:41

is relevant in multiple contexts

49:43

and that kind

49:45

of ending message of how do you

49:48

navigate difference, even intense, almost

49:52

shattering difference. And we've touched on

49:54

this in multiple

49:56

different conversations throughout our

49:59

seasons, right? about how do you engender

50:02

civil dialogue and discourse between

50:05

deeply opposed parts of the United States or

50:07

deeply opposed parts of the world and what's

50:09

going on between Israel and Palestinians and Israel

50:11

and Gaza is one

50:13

of the more egregiously difficult ones but

50:16

that doesn't mean that the principles of how

50:18

you engage difference don't apply. So I think

50:20

it's an incredibly important book

50:23

but it's also an incredibly important set

50:26

of templates that go well

50:28

beyond what does it mean to be

50:30

a Jew or how to be a Jew. Yeah, I

50:32

have to say I mean reading the book,

50:34

I'm not Jewish, I've never had any like

50:36

particular interest in Judaism either aside from, you

50:39

know, the intersection of Jew-boo

50:41

which is a Jewish, Buddhist

50:43

lovingly termed. And it

50:45

was fascinating just to read

50:48

someone wrestling with finding

50:51

the common thread between what

50:54

he calls Beigle and Locke's Jewish

50:56

people, right? So someone that might be

50:58

nominally culturally Jewish and somebody

51:00

who's an ultra-orthodox Jew and the

51:02

way that he tries

51:05

to keep them all in the same

51:07

family is really remarkable

51:09

because it very easily can turn into,

51:11

as you mentioned, a us

51:14

versus them type thing, particularly

51:17

when you have, as we mentioned throughout the

51:19

conversation, lots of intergenerational trauma,

51:22

perhaps paranoia but paranoia coming

51:24

from very valid historical reference

51:27

points. It is

51:29

important to recognize that

51:32

what goes on with Jews, what goes on with Israel,

51:34

what goes on between Israel

51:36

and the Palestinians has

51:39

for decades and especially

51:41

now attracted disproportionate

51:44

attention in the Western world,

51:46

in the Judeo-Christian

51:48

Islamic world, relative

51:51

to other things going

51:53

on in the world that are statistically

51:55

more dramatically bad and

51:59

whether that's what's going on. on the Sudanese Civil

52:01

War now or what's going

52:03

on in Myanmar because of the

52:05

story, because of the roots of

52:08

so much of Judaism, Islam, Christianity.

52:10

And therefore, it kind of occupies

52:12

disproportionate mind space

52:14

and heart space relative to

52:16

whatever numbers that we're talking about. And that

52:19

doesn't mean it's not important. Full

52:21

stop. It just means that we

52:24

can lose sight of what we're talking

52:26

about here. And I think that's certainly true

52:28

in the heated Gen Z reaction to what's

52:30

going on in Israel and Gaza, which has

52:32

not then echoed in

52:34

multiple other parts of the

52:37

world where other atrocities and

52:39

other complicated, divisive, horrible

52:41

conflicts are taking place. Right.

52:44

Israel doesn't loom large in those national imaginations

52:46

the way it does in the United States,

52:48

which also, you know, it does have to

52:50

do with anti-Semitism as well. This is not

52:52

a what could go right comment, but a

52:55

lot of the time when I look up

52:57

data points for the newsletter, it's almost always

52:59

like the numbers are not as high as

53:01

you might imagine. Looking up hate crimes against

53:03

Jewish people in the United States, not as

53:05

like an absolute number. I don't know how

53:07

you would call it, particularly high or particularly

53:09

low, but as a proportion of hate crimes

53:11

in the United States, it's over

53:13

half or directed at Jews, at least if you

53:15

look at the federal data. And

53:17

that's still a lie and well in

53:19

the States and in Europe and maybe not so much,

53:22

you know, in China or India or

53:24

other places in the world. So that's

53:26

a factor as well. Not a positive

53:28

one, but one. Not a positive

53:30

one. And again, like, I mean, the whole point of

53:32

this is not to relentlessly stare at

53:34

everything that's good. It's to relentlessly stare

53:37

at what's not good and how do

53:39

we ameliorate it. So, look,

53:41

I don't have

53:43

and you don't have and Noah

53:46

doesn't have some sort of perfect

53:48

solution to the Israel anti-Semitism conundrum,

53:50

nor to what's going on between

53:53

Israel's massive and potentially disproportionate retaliation

53:55

against the Palestinian. So, we're

53:57

not going to solve that now. We have no...

53:59

content of solving it. But try to put

54:02

these things in context and bigger picture and at

54:05

least try to understand everything human

54:07

beings do demands understanding.

54:09

That doesn't mean it demands sympathy,

54:12

but it does demand

54:14

understanding. And any pathway

54:17

forward demands coherence and recognition

54:19

of what's going on. And

54:22

easy condemnation doesn't quite get you there,

54:25

right? I mean, generations have studied what's going on

54:27

in the Holocaust or what's going on in the rise

54:29

of Nazi Germany partly as a way

54:31

of saying we actually need to understand what happened.

54:33

Just calling it crazy and evil doesn't actually get

54:36

you there, right? It gets you

54:38

there with moral clarity, but it doesn't get you

54:40

there with some understanding of how

54:42

do human beings behave and why do they behave that way

54:44

and why did they behave that way in time. So,

54:47

all that is in the service of crafting

54:51

a more peaceful future.

54:54

All right. News of the day, news

54:56

of the week. All right, let's do it. Let's

54:58

look at some of the stories that you

55:00

were looking at and the rest of us weren't Emma.

55:02

All right. So, last year, the US

55:05

and a handful of other countries approved

55:08

the very first gene therapy treatment

55:10

for sickle cell disease. The results

55:12

in the trials were very, very,

55:14

very good, essentially clearing the disease

55:16

with like a three-year follow-up, something

55:18

like that. Of course,

55:20

prohibitively expensive for many

55:22

blood insurance companies in the US have

55:25

agreed to cover it. And the first

55:27

commercial patient just started his

55:29

treatment as a 12-year-old boy in Washington.

55:31

He said that he hopes that he'll

55:33

be cured from sickle cell so that he can grow

55:35

up and become a geneticist, which I almost

55:38

cried the first time I read that. It was just so

55:40

sweet. Are these therapies

55:43

different than like the immunotherapies? And these

55:45

are like really even more specifically targeted?

55:47

They basically go in and they like cut off

55:49

the part of, this is a very non-scientific explanation,

55:51

but they cut off a part of the gene that's

55:54

like producing or doing something

55:56

that it shouldn't be doing. Well,

55:58

add to the incredible... long

56:01

and sometimes complicated list of scientific

56:03

breakthroughs that have led to medical

56:05

breakthroughs that are leading to less

56:08

and less of the diseases that

56:10

will kill us. We're recording this

56:13

right during Trumpanalia.

56:15

It's somehow not new, it's

56:17

exciting to talk about the 12-year-old being

56:19

cured of sickle cell and it is to be listening

56:22

to what Stormy Daniels has to say

56:24

about whatever sexual peccadillos the

56:27

once and maybe next president of

56:29

the United States had to offer her. Yeah,

56:31

I mean, the treatment is so involved and

56:33

thorough that right now very small numbers of

56:35

people can access it, which is one reason

56:37

why it's not a kind of plaster all

56:39

over the news. Another reason is

56:41

like a social justice issue because sickle cell, it only

56:44

really strikes people of color. So

56:46

the lack of funding over sickle cell was an

56:48

issue for a really long time and it's

56:51

another reason why this is exciting where not only

56:53

is it like could basically be

56:55

a cure but and

56:57

using really cool scientific stuff to do it.

56:59

So over time it could lead to increasingly

57:02

ubiquitous treatments and put the millions of people

57:04

with sickle cell disease on much better footing

57:06

for their lives. What else have you got

57:08

for us in your bag of news tricks? Let's

57:10

talk about how rich millennials are now. Ooh.

57:13

Finally, good economic news about millennials. A

57:16

lot of millennials just threw something at the wall

57:18

when they heard that, you know, rich millennials, my

57:20

ass. What are you talking about? I'm not rich.

57:23

Essential and they're not wrong, right? So

57:25

the Center for American Progress did this

57:27

analysis of the post COVID economy, which

57:29

we've talked about on this podcast, and

57:32

they tracked back wealth for Americans under 40 from

57:35

2000 and previous. And it really is a

57:37

sad chart. It's just sagging

57:39

and then drops during the recession

57:42

around 2010 and then it starts climbing

57:44

back up, but it's kind of anemic. It doesn't get to

57:46

the wealth that we had around 2000 until

57:48

2019. And

57:51

then in 2019, the chart just

57:54

jumps like an astonishing and fast

57:56

amount. So the Center for American

57:58

Progress found that wealth for Americans. American Center

58:00

for 40, obviously has seen a 50%, almost 50%

58:02

increase since 2019. And

58:06

it's the fastest recovery from

58:08

a recession or economic crisis,

58:10

let's say, the pandemic that

58:12

they've ever seen. So

58:15

we are much, much wealthier in

58:17

the last, let's say, four

58:19

years than we have been for the last

58:21

two decades, specifically, if you're under 40. I'm

58:24

sure there are millennials listening to this going, oh, give

58:26

me a break. That is

58:28

just ridiculous. What are you talking about? Those

58:30

numbers are wrong. And even if

58:32

they're right, it so doesn't correlate with my experience.

58:34

So I don't know what you're talking about. That's

58:36

part of the challenge of the Biden campaign in

58:38

2024 to say on the one hand that these

58:41

numbers are very good, but fast numbers of people under

58:43

the age of 30 are absolutely

58:46

convinced that the economy is terrible, whatever the

58:48

economy means, their economy, their job prospects, their

58:50

ability to own a home, all the things

58:53

that people measure the economy by

58:55

in terms of their lived experience. I

58:57

did get into an argument with at least

58:59

one newsletter subscriber about this news. So the

59:01

reaction that you are predicting is probably correct.

59:03

But I don't know what the data says.

59:06

And I should caveat that this was an

59:08

average. This is average wealth. They did look

59:10

at the data and sort of see if

59:12

it also held true for median, basically like

59:14

making sure that a small number of really

59:16

rich millennials weren't throwing the data off. And

59:19

they found that, yes, these gains were broadly distributed. So we're

59:22

just reporting the facts as they

59:24

are. We're not trying to

59:26

report the feelings as they are experienced.

59:29

Please let us know regardless. Absolutely. Send

59:31

us your woes, your angers, your general discontent. Oh,

59:34

please don't. So the last but not least, well, send us

59:36

your woes. Just don't direct them at me personally. Last

59:38

but not least, this is interesting because I've

59:41

never seen it before. I mean, maybe readers

59:43

or listeners rather will know other countries

59:45

that do this. But the Australian

59:47

government after a pilot program

59:49

is now making this a

59:52

generalized government program. And

59:54

we are pledging up to $1,500 in cash and $3,500 in cash. in

1:00:00

goods and services to help

1:00:02

women leave situations of domestic abuse.

1:00:04

And I was like, yeah, interesting.

1:00:06

Lots of critics, particularly people

1:00:08

saying that when they apply for their program, it's much

1:00:11

too hard to get approved. And how much

1:00:13

of that is really reaching people at a

1:00:15

day? All questions, but I

1:00:17

was interested in the fact that it exists in

1:00:20

the first place. You wouldn't want

1:00:22

to have to go through hoops to prove that you're

1:00:24

being abused. Like, that would be, I think,

1:00:26

pretty humiliating and almost

1:00:29

reliving the trauma experience. Every

1:00:32

government program is open to manipulation by

1:00:34

bad actors who would take advantage of

1:00:36

it, right? Meaning they aren't

1:00:38

suffering at all from domestic violence. They just want

1:00:40

to get the money. And so

1:00:42

it's understandable the governments want to establish some criteria

1:00:44

whereby you have to demonstrate that you are eligible

1:00:47

for this. I don't know a way around this.

1:00:49

I guess one of the ways around it would

1:00:51

be you accept that some people will take advantage

1:00:53

of the program, but that's

1:00:55

the price to pay to help a lot of

1:00:57

people who will be saved by it. It's easy

1:00:59

to say, look, we should do this. It's hard

1:01:02

to implement it unless you are, in

1:01:04

fact, willing to go, look, a certain amount of

1:01:06

fraud that will happen is worth it. It's

1:01:08

worth it for a few bad actors in

1:01:11

order to make it possible to help a lot of

1:01:13

people. That's probably where I would come down. I think

1:01:15

people obsess too much over, oh my God, 10 people

1:01:18

took advantage of this program. But in the meantime,

1:01:20

you helped 100 women, right, who otherwise wouldn't have

1:01:22

had it. I don't see why that's not a

1:01:25

trade-off that's acceptable. But people do tend to get

1:01:27

really agitated by it. Like, oh my God, I

1:01:29

can't believe we did this government program and people

1:01:31

scammed us. But in the meantime, you helped all

1:01:33

these people. So... It was

1:01:35

a pilot program, so it was very small. So

1:01:37

we'll see if it's like a more general rollout. They're probably going

1:01:39

to fix some of the things that went wrong in the

1:01:42

pilot program, I would assume. All right. Thank

1:01:44

you for being with us again for this week.

1:01:46

We will be back next week with another What

1:01:48

Could Go Right. Clearly, this is a

1:01:50

world where people remain pretty

1:01:52

fixated on all that is going wrong. And

1:01:55

truly, there's a lot that is going wrong and you can

1:01:57

spend a lot of your time fixating on it. these

1:02:00

conversations at least add

1:02:02

a different element, a different tone

1:02:06

to the daily news diet that we are

1:02:08

all subject to and makes us think a

1:02:10

little more about what is possible for the

1:02:12

better and not just what is possible for

1:02:15

the worst. So thank you for listening. Thank

1:02:18

you, Emma. Send us your thoughts.

1:02:20

Again, not personally directed at Emma

1:02:22

or me. But do send us

1:02:24

your thoughts, complaints, concerns, questions and

1:02:27

we will do our best to integrate them and

1:02:29

address them in a conversation. So talk

1:02:31

to you next week.