Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:10 My name is Danielle Hartman and I'm the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute. Today is Thursday, December 17th, 2020. And this is for heaven sake, a podcast from the Hartman institutes I engaged the project, I think for today's podcast is entitled the return of the Jewish crisis narrative in each edition of, for heaven's sake. You'll see Klein, Halevi senior research fellow at the Institute here in Jerusalem and myself, we'll be discussing a current issue central to Israel, the Jewish world. And then you let us Stein Hain director of the heart and faculty in North America. We'll explore with us how classical Jewish sources can enrich your understanding of views. At the Hartman Institute, we approached the Israel conversation as we do all conversations from a perspective of Jewish values, seeking broad and deep engagement. Our aim is to encourage a serious and respectful conversation on Israel, across political lines, promoting understanding, and strengthening Jewish people, a unique and exhilarating aspect of American Jewish life.
Speaker 1 00:01:14 Over the last few decades was the decrease in the centrality. And for many the relevance of the Jewish crisis narrative, Nope, what's the Jewish crisis. Now it's a narrative which sees Jewish life and survival as inherently tenuous. And it has been a part of Jewish history since our national inception in Egypt, thousands of years ago, we were then, and for much of our history continued to be the outsiders whom the indigenous population attacked and marginalized for many Jews around the world. Israel was worthy of support because it provided a safety net should be subjected to antisemitic attacks. Israel was the singular place where Jews would always be at Oh, and accepted Israel was the solution to the crisis that the uniqueness of the American Jewish experience is an unparalleled sense of openness and acceptance with a consequence, the ministry of this crisis experience with America, serving as home, the significance of the crisis narrative for the relationship with Israel also diminished as a result, the major educational objective of the institutes I engage project is to develop ways to replace this crisis based narrative with a values-based one, thus ensure an ongoing relationship with Israel for North American Jews who are at home, but something seems to be changing despite this predominant sense of American Jewish at homeness.
Speaker 1 00:02:50 Over the last number of years, we have witnessed a dramatic increase in Jewish anxiety about antisemitism in America. Why has the crisis return as an integral part of Jewish life? Is it again, a factor in Jews relationship with Israel? What significance does this have for Jewish life in the future? You'll see, let me begin with the following question for the last 12 years. You and I have been spending so much of our life trying to replace and develop a coherent values-based narrative to replace the crisis based one in a moment, we're going to talk about the return of that, which we thought was over, but why was it so important for you personally when you join this project? Why was it so critical for you to build a relationship with Israel around the values narrative, and what is this values narrative that you were searching to find?
Speaker 2 00:03:44 Look, I grew up with a crisis narrative that not only defined my Jewish identity, it defined my soul, and I know how exhilarating the crisis narrative can be. It can really get you going, but I also know the tremendous price that you pay spiritually in terms of your creativity. When you allow your enemies in effect to define you, when they set your agenda, you're always in a responsive mode, you're always defensive. And I spent the first half of my life immersed in the crisis narrative and the second half of my life trying to free myself. Right? And so when you offered me a place at the table at our weekly seminar, where we were trying to figure out how do we create an alternative to the crisis narrative? That was exactly what my soul was longing for. And so, look, you're not, to me it's really important for me, that Jews should be smart about threat, that we not be naive. You know, there's something deeply embedded in us. We have a naivete gene. We so much want the world to be different than what it is. And so Jews need to be alert. We need to be smart, but at what price, at what price do you allow this constant feeling of threat to take over your identity?
Speaker 1 00:05:16 You know, it's interesting, the values narrative, which I was looking for, and we've been looking for together is one which asks not why do you need Israel in order to save you from death? But why our relationship with Israel enriches your Jewish life? How does Israel inspired me now? One of my greatest fears about the crisis narrative and you and I over the years debated, does it still exist or is it still there? Is it not there? Part of what I always believed is that not only as you said is the crisis narrative does not give us a purpose and control of who we as Jews, but crisis narrative, I don't believe was going to be effective because if the defining feature of North American Jewish life is that we're Jews by choice. We don't have to be Jewish. We could believe this is not Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1 00:06:13 This is not defining you by race. And if 50, 70 plus percent Jews are married to non Jews and in the future, we'll have one Jewish parent, one, not Jewish, one choose a Jewish identity, which is laded with death when you have an alternative to leave. And the only reason to be Jewish is because it excites you. And if we are all Jews by choice, we also have to be Zionist by choice because I can't guilt you, or I can't force you into a relationship because the danger is not an inherent part of your American existence, if you could opt out, but let's now go straight into where you're pushing us. See what's the fundamental cause for the change and the resurgence choose our testify. Yes, I'm frightened. And I hear it by the way, across the board, I hear it on campuses. I hear it in synagogues. I hear it in cities where a third of the population is Jewish. What's the reason for this strange phenomenon, or maybe it's back to the old normal,
Speaker 2 00:07:16 Well, it's back to the old normal where most of world jewelry has been since the second Intifada, you know, the 1990s was a time of hope for Israelis during the Oslow years. At least for many of us, I spent a year in Europe, 1989, 1990 reporting on the fall of communism and traveling to Jewish communities in Eastern and Western Europe. And there was the sense of unbelievable hope that the promise of a new Europe was finally being realized there too. They felt it. And so the crisis narrative through the 1990s really seemed to be on its way out. The second NC father comes, the blow back is happening all around the diaspora terror attacks on Jewish communities in Europe, elsewhere, only American jewelry, Stephen, to be protected in some way, immune from the crisis narrative. And now in the last few years with America seeming to come apart, the atmosphere of fear and hatred and mutual recrimination, American Jews are inevitably feeling less safe. They're feeling caught between growing anti-Semitism from the far right from the far left. There's feeling squeezed from both ends. And so there really is a sense that American Jewry is now much more emotionally aligned with the rest of the Jewish people,
Speaker 1 00:08:48 But empirically it's, it's not as bad. It's not the same as stress. So what is it? Why is it so prevalent now in the contemporary Jewish experience also in North America?
Speaker 2 00:08:59 Look, I think partly it is a reflection of just how at home American Jews are that as America convulses Jews are feeling it in their souls and the post world war II liberal era that allowed American jewelry to thrive and to fully own its at homeness that's, what's under assault in these last few years. And so in that sense, when American Jews say to us that they feel existentially threatened, and we say to them, from the perspective of living in Jerusalem,
Speaker 1 00:09:36 That's a problem. Let me tell you about my problems.
Speaker 2 00:09:41 We need to listen to their angst more deeply.
Speaker 1 00:09:44 I think there is objectively a real shift. And I wonder what you feel about this because you mentioned this idea of being pushed from both sides. I think Jews always, always knew that there was right-wing antisemitism. There always were groups of people who we knew hated us, but they were on the radical fringe of the right. And we, we know that they were there. And I think part of what's changed is their political significance and mainstreaming or the fact that they're not clearly and immediately removed. They're part of in the American partisan discourse. They're part of, one of the, of one of the colors they're there. And they're vocal all of a sudden from the right, it was there, but it's much more significant. It's not rejected. It's, it's supported by various dog whistles of a precedent or other people at different congressmen or senators or et cetera, it's there.
Speaker 1 00:10:42 So on the one hand is now much more impressive, but I think there's another side, you know, you and I, we have dual citizenship, we live in two worlds. We live as Israelis and as Americans. So much of our time is back and forth. A big part of the American dream for me. And I'm sure for you was the sense that America wasn't going to be Europe, that liberal America, we were accepted in a way that we would never be accepted in Europe, but that at homeness came from the liberal side. And I think part of what's confusing Jews is that we know about the right wing. We know about one and we had learned how to handle it because liberal America, marginalized. But now there's an increased sense that Jews are being pushed to the outside and the liberal gap tube. We fought for minorities. We fought for human rights and now we're being positioned as part of this white majority. We're we're being silenced too. We're not welcome. I know that I had to design this and it's not the same as anti-Semitism, but the experience of the Jews, Israel is important to me. And when other B, because of my position on Israel, that I experienced that as anti-Semitism. And so where do I belong?
Speaker 2 00:12:01 I think you're hitting on a really important point, which is that most American Jews live in liberal spaces. The university, the media, and the irony is that these are now becoming the battlegrounds. And certainly Jews who feel a connection to Israel are under siege are feeling increasingly under siege. I spoke at a Midwest Western campus. I won't say which one and a couple, both professors invited me to dinner and needed to pour out their hearts to unburden themselves. And they told me that they had invited almost owes to speak on campus. Now, almost all a love of Shalom. The late almost us was not only arguably Israel's greatest writer, but one of Israel's leading voices for peace and reconciliation. One of the stalwarts of liberal Israel, because they invited almost almost to campus. They were being ostracized by their colleagues. They were being labeled as the sinus, that this was a mild Midwestern campus. This wasn't Berkeley, and they had it's desperate needs to tell me this. But what I remember most about that conversation was that we're sitting in a restaurant and they're leaning over to me and whispering, as they're telling me this story now objectively, there was no need to whisper. They weren't under any threat. And I don't know how deeply they were really being ostracized. They both had tenure, but there's something deep that was triggered. And that for me was a kind of a bellwether of what was coming
Speaker 1 00:13:50 Again. You know, this sense of, of being at home, but being a little less at home or America, listen, America still not frats and Jews are unbelievably at home. And I think also part of the violence of this partisan atmosphere makes everybody a little less comfortable violence is in the air. And whenever you're a minority, you're frightened even more. But I would ask you one last question. What do you believe this return of? It's not a crisis narrative, let's call it a crisis experience as, as a part of the American Jewish experience. It's not a neurosis, it's, it's real, you're on campus. And if you're pro Israel, you're othered, it doesn't feel as safe. Who are we are we allowed to March in this liberal cause or that liberal cause where are we, how do you think we have to respond in the future? It's there. So obviously we don't want to deny it.
Speaker 2 00:14:47 I love what you've just said, that it's not the, of the crisis narrative, but it is the return of a crisis experience. And I think that that's a crucial distinction because a crisis narrative is a worldview and experience is part of a larger web of life. And American Jews will need to adjust to a new reality in which there is an element of threat that wasn't there before, but that's not the defining characteristic of their Americanness of their at-home it's. And I think this is especially important. I think we as very least have a very important role to play here because we need to stop pointing to examples of antisemitism and American Jewish insecurity as proof that the classical Zionist critique we won, we won and you're now we have our problems here too, and I don't want Zionism to win at the expense of the diaspora.
Speaker 2 00:15:52 Something really wonderful happened to Jewish life in the last few generations. And that was the end of exile. And the end of exile had two components. We achieved national sovereignty in Israel and we transitioned from exile to diaspora abroad, and I'm not ready as an Israeli-American those two precious identities. I'm not ready to concede either of them to concede that the Zionist vision and the American Jewish vision that we grew up on, that we were nurtured on that freed us as Jews, as human beings. I'm not ready to give up on that and we still live. And this is so important for us to affirm. We live in the most blessed time. I believe in all of Jewish history. I know that's a big statement, but I don't think Jews have ever been freer more secure, more powerful than we are now. And potentially I hope more creative.
Speaker 1 00:16:53 You know, as we were talking, I felt the need to drop the word narrative. And I think part of what you want to do as somebody who, who feels obligated to listen to people and not to tell them who they are, but to listen to their experience is that we need a more nuanced, complex, multidimensional relationship with Israel. And when you tell somebody, ah, you have no fears, they're not in the room. And part of what we have to recognize as we are running to a new future, to recognize that that future is not beautiful. There's a lot of problems on that road. And I think we have to add that back into the conversation. And that will be part of the experience. The question will be whether that will be the only part of the experience. We haven't always been that successful in navigating back and forth, but everything becomes a part of your, either a crisis experience Jew or a values experienced Zionist.
Speaker 1 00:17:49 And the truth is why can't we have both? Why can't we accept that in many places in Jewish life, in North America, it doesn't feel as safe. It doesn't mean that Israel, by the way, is the most safe place either. It just means that part of what Israel is about is that's the one place that I will always be at home, or at least it's worthwhile talking about that maybe on a future podcast, whether Israel really is at home for all Jews, but, but at least I have that. And then with that sense to ask the larger question, where are we going now? Let's bring in our Ruta Elana Stein here,
Speaker 3 00:18:26 Shalom. My name is Alisha. And I want to invite you to join me on an exciting intellectual journey together with faculty from the Shalom Hartman Institute, you know, new Hebrew language podcast, escape map. In our first season, we're focusing on the long history of cultural clashes between Judaism and its surroundings from the Bible and til today, looking at how it's interacted with everyone from canal Knights, to Christianity and Islam, discussing thinkers, like my money, these theater in the harder app, you can find the show on Spotify and the other podcast platforms by searching for escape, which might Unibrew or by going to our website, Elana,
Speaker 1 00:19:13 Wonderful to be with you. What classical sources could you share with us that could help us think about this question and the experience of this time
Speaker 4 00:19:23 Before I do that? I just want to make one quick comment on what I heard there. I think the question of sacrifice is something I would add in there, which is my great grandparents knew that they had to sacrifice something of their Jewishness in order to fit in in America. And I'm not sure that my generation knows what that feels like. And the convergence of antisemitism on the left and a Descemet's ism on the right is making Jews realize that there are moments when we're being asked, what are we willing to sacrifice in order to fit in, in order to make coalitions with other groups? So I just wanted to add that to the conversation in terms of a piece of Torah that I think really captures this. I think what we're really talking about in crisis narrative and values narrative is the question of coercion versus agency, right?
Speaker 4 00:20:08 How much are we sort of forced into this and how much are we choosing it of our own volition? And for that, I think the classic really just beautiful image is evoked by the rabbis. When they talk about the revelation moment, you know, there's a strange word used in the Bible in Exodus, 19, describing where the Israelites were standing. Vis-a-vis Mount Sinai at the regulatory moment. And it says they were standing bit to TTR, which probably means just the bottom of the mountain. But of course the rabbis look at this and say, Oh, they're standing under the mountain. We can do something with this. And I want to share with you two different versions of how the rabbis understand under the mountain and being under the mountain, because I think it's very relevant to what we're talking about here. The first is from the Hilda, which is pretty early.
Speaker 4 00:21:01 I mean, it's the first few centuries of the common era and it describes this idea of God lifting up the mountain of Sinai and the Israelites going under for protection and love and intimacy. And here's what it says. And they stood at the front of the mountain. This teaches that the mountain was torn from its place. And the Israelites came nearer and stood onto the mountain. As it says in Deuteronomy. And you came near and stood under the mountain concerning this song of songs, says the following verse, my dove in the clefts of the rock in the covert of the cliff, show me your countenance. Let me hear your voice. Your voice is sweet and your face is there. The image that's being evoked here is one of protection and intimacy and love. And you know, it's not people are chasing us under the mountain and that's why we choose it.
Speaker 4 00:22:00 It's we want something special. We want something just unique, a relationship and a few, literally just a few centuries later, the Babylonian Talmud completely changes. The image listened to this version. They stood at the foot, literally under the mountain. This is Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat, 88, a rabbi of DME, the son of Hama, the son of HASA said, this teaches that God held the mountain over them like a barrel and said, if you accept the Torah, great. And if not here shall be your grave. You mean they took an image, which in one generation is protective, intimate home. And in another general feels well, that's coercive. You felt threatened. You had to go there because you were threatened because it was crisis. You didn't have a choice. And I love Eva just this beginning because I think there's truth in this for our Israel story. What one generation looks at as what an incredible sanctuary, what a home, another generation looks at.
Speaker 4 00:23:13 Why are you telling me? I have no, no other, I have plenty of choice. There's no crisis here. I'm doing just fine. And so this time you, the passage continues and actually doesn't want this to be the defining feature of the relationship with God. And so it continues as follows rabbi. The son of Jaco said, this is a great claim against the Torah could use, can say, of course we never wanted this. We were coerced. Let us out of this. So Rob said, don't the coercion ends at some point, when in the perm story, they excepted the Toga again in the days of a hush Bay, Roche in the perm story, as it is written, they upheld and they accepted, which is about they upheld and accepted the days of program. But Rob says they upheld what they already accepted. The Torah. The thrust of this image is we don't want a commitment that is inspired mostly by coercion and by crisis, it doesn't last, people turn around and say, I was forced into this.
Speaker 4 00:24:23 Why are you forcing me into this? We want an experience that is motivated by some sense of agency. And the perm story I think is perfect because where's God in the current story is God's name. Even in the book. God's name is not even in the book. It's a complete choice for a group of people who could have said, we just solved something on our own. Politically we're perfectly at home in Persia. Everything is great. We just solved a big political problem. Using political means, what do we need God for? And they choose. And they say, we need God, because God's actually a key part of our lens on the world and who we actually want to be. And one more layer of this choice in this agency, the story is being told in Babylonia, in the Babylonian Talmud, it's being told in the Persia of their day, geographically, even.
Speaker 4 00:25:15 And this is the rabbi's way of saying we're willing to continue this, even though no one's forcing us to. So I look at these images and I ask myself, where does commitment? And long-term commitment come from. It may be a mix actually that you might have needed to get a little coerced to start the movement. And you had no other choice, but how does it grow into something that represents you and flourishing, not just human escape, right? And that I think is what the rabbits are trying to get at in all of these different ways of looking at this.
Speaker 1 00:25:48 Let me ask you a question. When I heard you talk, there was a hierarchy we're flourishing into, this is where we're getting to, even though historically in the tub, the first one was the flourishing and the later one was the coercion, but that's what we're experiencing now where together with the flourishing and the choices that America provides, there's now a sense of I'm being forced. I'm being outed, I'm being othered. What happens when it goes backwards? What do you do?
Speaker 4 00:26:16 I think what's very instructive is to look at the 2000 years of Jewish diaspora. So much of our creativity was born out of circumstances that didn't always feel perfect. And yet we strove and we built coalitions and we learned from other people and they learn from us. And I think what we're feeling right now is a moment where we are to hold the realism of things, kind of constricting and not abandon our agency within that. So there are places where a person might decide, for example, that it just becomes too difficult to be a Zionist on the left. Now I'm going to assert that's not coercion. That's a choice that you're making. If you can see within an environment that is getting increasingly pressured, the places where we have agency, and we have to make decisions about what we're willing to give up on and what we're not that to me is what this moment to mans and calls for and kudos to the people on the right and on the left, who are doing that nuanced work of saying, you want me to be something simple. I refuse to be something simple.
Speaker 1 00:27:39 I want to turn the ladder to you and TLC. We recognize that there's a crisis reality, but listen, the crisis narrative had a profound impact on Jewish identity, both our Jewish identity, I'm Zionism. It created an experience of an importance of Israel, which fed generations and generations of Jews. I know I would wish that we would never have it, but is there a place for us as Jewish educators to say, you know what, maybe we don't have to run away from this so much. Maybe it also has a place Ilana. And then you'll see
Speaker 4 00:28:16 I'm, uh, uh, Tommy this by training and by disposition, because listen to this source that I just read to you, it's not willing to give up on the crisis narrative. There are moments where your identity is clarified because you're in a time where something becomes as obvious as day that you don't quite fit. And we are definitely in a moment like that. Thankfully, not as violent as it could be, but we in America, we are in a moment of recognizing that we do not fit. And what are we going to do with that understanding of our identity? To me, it's not enough to just take sanctuary. Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:28:57 You're not, I love the metaphor of the mountain over our heads for this time. Especially the opposing ways of understanding that because we're living on the one hand with a sense of unprecedented security, despite everything we did, Jewish people today is more secure, better able to protect itself than we've been in thousands of years. On the other hand, we're feeling something of the mountain hovering over us in the sense of threat and vulnerability. And we're going to need to relearn something which Ilana, you mentioned about the rabbis and Babylonia, which is that you can live under circumstances that are not ideal. And yet you live as if you are completely your own master and Jews used to know how to do this. In some sense, I think we've all gotten used to not being in a place of acute vulnerability. That's really been our generation's experience. And we're going to have to relearn ambivalence living under the mountain, both simultaneously protected by the mountain and also threatened
Speaker 1 00:30:12 For so much of Jewish history. The sense of being outside, the sense of a collective identity created by alienation. We mourned it, but we also benefited from there's something about another dimension of Jewish identity. Maybe choose by choice is great. Maybe Zionism by choice is great, but maybe it assumes such a level of thoughtfulness, such a level of intentionality, which might be too. Maybe we're not as interesting as we think we are. There's something about, about walking a path in which you feel a connection to Israel and Israel's importance and that it's there now build on it. But you know, you have something I wish for a day when we don't need it, but maybe we're more like Jews throughout Jewish history, despite the uniqueness. And maybe it behooves us to develop a Torah of the value of this second. It's not that we want the crisis, but maybe there's something powerful that crisis also does for Jews and maybe it's time for us to see the value in it and not juxtapose crisis to value. I so much appreciate y'all see any lineup being with you as always for heaven sake is a product of the Shalom Hartman Institute. It is produced by <inaudible> our managing producer, his dad Friedman and music is provided by so-called to learn more about the shell of Martin is to visit us
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