[SPEAKER_01]: Mosh, oh my bitch, you're written up in the nose We didn't let me hit the turret when they go And waves you as he drives anti-hider ball Is really salad easy, step to jump until one throw My foot hits his ass, I proclaim his ass Knuckles out with ass, bow down, bow down, bow down All the dark nuss, black puffer luss Zaprah on us, as far as us
[SPEAKER_09]: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Bad Haspara!
[SPEAKER_03]: The world's most inscribed in the book of Life podcast.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's right, my name is Matt Leib.
[SPEAKER_09]: I will be your most moral co-host for this podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Daniel Mattae, I'm your other most moral co-host.
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome, everybody.
[SPEAKER_09]: So happy to have you all with us for another episode if you haven't done it already do it now Five stars and review on all of the podcasting apps.
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't know what done it meant and like if you haven't done it I'm like what's you haven't done it do it done anything do something
[SPEAKER_09]: Whatever you're thinking of doing, choose a herb as long as it's positive, then do it and what I mean specifically is to subscribe to us on YouTube or on patreon patreon.com So I sped as barra get a double dose of Matt and my Tay and you can get a taste of what it's like to get two episodes a week by checking out last week where
[SPEAKER_03]: And on the main feed, we queueed up, roll the sell back, amazing episode.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we did release to the public our Patreon episode because we thought it was so important dispatched from Gaza with governments or so or who joined us live from Darrell Bala.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right, and that's what we do.
[SPEAKER_03]: We give you two Bangor episodes a week.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_09]: And you can feel that feeling all the time if you just subscribe.
[SPEAKER_09]: you know, it doesn't have to be just occasionally.
[SPEAKER_09]: You could always feel as good as you feel when you get to double, double dose of slopp.
[SPEAKER_09]: So please do that shout out to Producer Adam Levin on the ones and twos.
[SPEAKER_09]: And also this week is the week where we're all gonna be in New York.
[SPEAKER_09]: We're doing the gutter on Friday and Saturday.
[SPEAKER_09]: And then we're gonna be at the Bellhouse on Monday that's on the 13th.
[SPEAKER_09]: So if you haven't gotten your Bellhouse tickets, get them now.
[SPEAKER_09]: Click.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I may have a few tickets available for sale to, I believe, especially the Saturday show.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: So probably the way to do this is if you're interested right to batasbarra at gmail.com and put Daniel tickets in the subject header.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I will get back to you if I still have them available.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, yes, we have those went on sale so early that some people realized a month later that they couldn't go so there are some secret special tickets for the live bed as bar podcast that are happening so get them
[SPEAKER_09]: Finally, today's sponsor, today's episode is brought to you by Bridge of Solidarity.
[SPEAKER_09]: Bridge of Solidarity is an anti-capitalist mutual aid organization founded in Gaza by Yazan in Al-Masau, and I'll got to him at Moasey, communists.
[SPEAKER_09]: All the money goes directly to him.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure, that appreciated the goddamnit.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm doing my best, all money goes directly to people in need of support.
[SPEAKER_09]: These efforts are focused on the most marginalizing guys, the most at risk of dying people.
[SPEAKER_09]: This is that people without phones, English skills, social media, wealthy relatives, outside support, and living relatives.
[SPEAKER_09]: So these efforts actively combat genocide capitalism with mutual aid.
[SPEAKER_09]: and violent quote survival of the fittest ways of turning on each other with collective care.
[SPEAKER_09]: So please, if you have any money, forget the bonus episode, you don't need that.
[SPEAKER_09]: What the money is better spent at Bridge of Solidarity.
[SPEAKER_09]: You can click the link in the description the donate now.
[SPEAKER_09]: Daniel, what's that spin?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a family-themed spin zone today.
[SPEAKER_03]: My family is my nuclear family's all in town because we just had a little miracle of a sympho of my niece, my parents for his grandkids born.
[SPEAKER_03]: I talked about being an uncle last day.
[SPEAKER_03]: But so, you know, I got some, I got a record for every member of my family.
[SPEAKER_03]: God bore Zabo, the Hungarian Gypsy Jazz,
[SPEAKER_03]: Master, and I mean, maybe not just Gypsy Jazz, but a jazz guitarist with his album, The Sorcerer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: Really cool album, sick.
[SPEAKER_03]: My mom's name is Ray, R.A.E., so I've got the new album by Ray Kwon, The Chef.
[SPEAKER_09]: I thought you were going to say Lana Del Ray.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't have her, no.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, but this is closer to the spelling.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: The Emperor's new clothes, just recently came up.
[SPEAKER_07]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_03]: A little too far here, Daniel Lenois,
[SPEAKER_03]: He produced, uh, well, the Joshua tree, uh, less problematically he produced, or mercy by Bob Dylan and Amy Lou Harris is album, he's a great producer, and this is his debut album, but also featured on it is Erin Neville, uh, so that's my brother's name, and Erin Neville of the Neville brothers who sang the theme song to which season of the wire exactly.
[SPEAKER_09]: I knew it before you even asked
[SPEAKER_09]: I knew it.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know where I was going with it.
[SPEAKER_09]: I knew exactly where you were going with it.
[SPEAKER_03]: My sister Hannah is represented by Bikini Kill, led by Kathleen Hannah, married to which Jewish rapper.
[SPEAKER_09]: Um, I'm gonna say kosher deals had rock of the Beastie boys.
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay, we've got a more of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, used to be married to Ioni Skye, but now he's married to her.
[SPEAKER_09]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_09]: That is what's spinning for the Matei family.
[SPEAKER_09]: They have a lot of records to listen to in the next few weeks.
[SPEAKER_09]: Um, all right.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna play a rick one for her quite yet.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, maybe wait a little.
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay, without further ado, it is time to introduce our guest.
[SPEAKER_09]: We have a great episode for you.
[SPEAKER_09]: Very excited to introduce this guest.
[SPEAKER_09]: He recently wrote being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza.
[SPEAKER_09]: He's the editor at large of Jewish currents.
[SPEAKER_09]: And of course, he has a wonderful
[SPEAKER_09]: Welcome to the podcast, Peter Bynart.
[SPEAKER_09]: Hey.
[SPEAKER_09]: Hi.
[SPEAKER_09]: How are you doing?
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm doing fine.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_09]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thanks for coming on.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm glad we got to make this work.
[SPEAKER_09]: We've been back and forth trying to schedule this for a bit.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I'm just stoked that
[SPEAKER_09]: you still wanted to come on, you know, I think before we had you, you know, on when we were talking, I saw you had gone on John Stewart show and a bunch of others and I was like, oh yeah, I guess we are actually asking a lot to have Peter on the show.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, being on with comedians that people who are funny makes me nervous, no matter what kind of, you know, comedians they are, but I feel like maybe that was a good warm-up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was a good warm-up for you guys.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: You said you'd a pretty funny person recently.
[SPEAKER_03]: You had Hannah and I invited her on your show.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, she was funny.
[SPEAKER_06]: Although I would say more sweet than funny I would say.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's true.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like radiating kindness and goodness in the conversation.
[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe I didn't bring out her humor, right?
[SPEAKER_09]: Well, you know, the subject in general is not usually, uh, you know, filled with humor.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a special kind of pair of freaks to create a show.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm laughing about this every week.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, it's an auspicious time for you to be joining us.
[SPEAKER_03]: We're in the middle of the high holidays.
[SPEAKER_03]: We do want to just say, that's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: No halachic commandments or even...
[SPEAKER_03]: Katomu to guidelines were hurt or violated in the making of this episode.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, we will be so caught by the time we release it because we are trafist hell, but as you, my friend, are recording this with us just before air of Sukkot.
[SPEAKER_03]: So thank you for making time in this auspicious time of the year.
[SPEAKER_06]: uh... it's it's it's it's my pleasure well you know this to code is called as months in patino the season of our of our joy and it's not really a season of joy but i guess being with you is is is is is pleasurable so maybe not sense to code is starting early and we aim to bring that customary so code hospitality is right which you know the festival not the festival the the the solemn day of young keeper is just passed and it's not too much of a stretch to
[SPEAKER_03]: Imagine Jews turning the gaze, I mean, it's more of a stretch than I'd like, in the case of me to do this, but turning the gaze inward at what needs to be forgiven and perhaps what's unforgivable, and we've seen some great statements from Jewish leaders, again, way too few, about that, the festival of dense of dwellings of temporary abodes and hospitality, is something that we've been talking about in the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about the past few years, and we've been talking about
[SPEAKER_03]: Jews and non-Jews know less about.
[SPEAKER_03]: What sort of extra meaning does this holiday get infused with for you in a time like this if any?
[SPEAKER_06]: That's a good question.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, um,
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, the rabbis often compare the Sukha to the human body in terms of its lack of permanence, you know, and then you would read the book of cohaled of ecclesiasties, which is a, you know, a down or even by the biblical standard.
[SPEAKER_06]: how life is short, it doesn't really mean anything, and I guess, you know, I mean, as Sartra was a biblical character.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, actually, it's kind of a mystery why the rabbis allow it in at all, given that it's pretty heretical and it's feeling that like life has no meaning, except at the very end where they say, you know, we should believe in God.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think that, first of all, for a personal way for me, as it happened, my father died five years ago, out of secode.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, I think that resonates for me a lot in, in that sense, that sense of impermanence.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I also just think, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I do think, maybe this is melodramatic.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I mean, I think the, the horrors that we're living through in Gaza, in the United States, like, I think do pose the question for me.
[SPEAKER_06]: I would like to pose the question.
[SPEAKER_06]: I try to, you know, I hope others pose the question.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, how are we living
[SPEAKER_06]: given the fact that things are so radically impermanent and that the forces of the forces that even the world are so powerful, you know?
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, what are we doing with a very limited amount of time and resources that we have?
[SPEAKER_06]: Are we using them in a way that we can ultimately be proud of?
[SPEAKER_06]: I know myself, like I'm just constantly fighting against my own tendency.
[SPEAKER_06]: to prioritize things that I know are just not ultimately that important, but just like doing that way.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like doing this podcast or this podcast is far better.
[SPEAKER_06]: Mostly it's just like a whole list of to do things to do this.
[SPEAKER_06]: I have every day that I have to get done, which is basically all about my own interest.
[SPEAKER_06]: Did I get the laundry done?
[SPEAKER_06]: Did I do this above a law?
[SPEAKER_06]: Did I get my, you know, and it's not about the things that are ultimately I know most important, which generally have to do with like,
[SPEAKER_06]: the well, you know, with serving others, you know, and so that's a struggle for me.
[SPEAKER_03]: It occurs to me, I mean, I'm no rabbi or prayer leader by any means, but also the opportunity, I'm a more literal level of being in a half-formed dwelling, you know, with the stars, or the rain, you know, coming in might and tense, you know, might occasion some empathetic
[SPEAKER_03]: living with involuntarily and not as a, not as some kind of ritual, but as an imposed material reality in dignity and material reality.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_06]: No, that's exactly right.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I think that that one would hope that that would kind of bring that sense of awareness that the tiny little amount of discomfort you might have living, you know, eating in a stuck out could give you some tiny glimpse of basically the horrors that the United States and Israel have inflicted it on an entire population for for two years and longer.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Which reminds me of it doesn't remind me, but I'm going to use this in occasion to make a bad joke.
[SPEAKER_03]: someday I'd like to make a Blacksploitation film about this holiday called I'm going to get you Suka.
[SPEAKER_09]: And that's the kind, uh, that's the kind, intellectual prowess you're going to be dealing with here on the bat as baro podcast.
[SPEAKER_09]: If chew horned puns, having to do with Sukkot, um, make that John Stewart.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's just pretty soon.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: He could never make a pun that good.
[SPEAKER_09]: Daniel, you were telling me before the show about an experience that you had where Peter was invited to speak at something, and I want you to ask Peter, you don't know this, but you almost broke up one of my dearest friends, marriages, not really, but I won't name them in more of the exact location, but on the west coast of Canada, there's a beautiful
[SPEAKER_03]: And he went to some lengths to secure a speaking engagement for you, both at his synagogue and at his university.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it so happens that his wife is the president of that congregation.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, known provocateur and extremist firebrand, Peter Bynard, to these Gentile shores, to speak, you know, to take questions from anybody you wanted to ask questions.
[SPEAKER_03]: And, yeah, this in the gog, there was a whole furore about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: And at the university, there was all kinds of, you know, hand-ringing about how we're gonna make sure Jewish students feel safe.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just wanna know, how does it feel to be the new norm by, by Norm, I mean, Norm Finkelstein?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it is fun, as I feel like I feel bad when people invite me because they by the time I actually get to the campus or the synagogues someone is like they seem just exhausted or ready Right, but they've had to deal with just preparing for a visit.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm like, I just had to fly in, but there's all of this stuff I was recently at an event with I was recently to vent and someone was telling me about
[SPEAKER_06]: This terrific organization because I have kind of high school college age kids that if I'm concerned about my kids and where they're going to college I should get connected to this group called mothers against anti-Semitism or moms against anti-Semitism because they keep the Jewish students safe And I didn't have the heart.
[SPEAKER_03]: Are they related to mothers against drunk driving like don't drive while hating Jews?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know if they team up, but I didn't have the heart to tell this nice middle aged Jewish woman that actually like mothers against anti-Semitism had just sent like
[SPEAKER_06]: a thousand emails to a university where I was speaking in order to protect the students from the anti-Semitism of myself.
[SPEAKER_06]: So that far from me needing protection against the anti-Semitism, mothers against anti-Semitism needs protection against me, or they're trying to protect people against me.
[SPEAKER_09]: Or you need protection against them.
[SPEAKER_09]: I need protection.
[SPEAKER_06]: I need protection.
[SPEAKER_09]: Classic Jewish story.
[SPEAKER_09]: I need protection from all these Jewish mothers.
[SPEAKER_06]: I know now I mean you're the funny people You're the comedians, but I have tried out this joke a few times, which I feel like goes over pretty well You can tell me how it works.
[SPEAKER_06]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_06]: So my joke goes something like this We Jews are so creative and talented that we can thrive in even the most hostile industries
[SPEAKER_06]: Even the anti-Semitism industry, we have managed to kind of rise to the top.
[SPEAKER_06]: Because so many of the most successful and notorious anti-Semites are actually Jews ourselves, like there's really no industry in which we cannot, is we not prevail.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's a great joke.
[SPEAKER_09]: That is great.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_06]: I feel free to use it now.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I love it.
[SPEAKER_09]: Use that.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's a great joke and it is, hey, you know, I have to say whenever I see a
[SPEAKER_09]: Stop anti-semitism.org top 10 list and Jews are making up half of it.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm always like, man, we really do control just everything, man.
[SPEAKER_09]: We give us some categories in which to exceed or succeed and we will exceed all expectations.
[SPEAKER_06]: I know, I sometimes imagine like going into a meeting of like the anti-defamation league Federation, the board and saying like,
[SPEAKER_06]: So there's a new poll out which shows the 39% of American Jews think it's what's happening God's is genocide and among Jews under 40 it's like more than majority so how do we fight the the explosion of anti-Semitism among young American Jews you know?
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like what's our strategy?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, these haters, they just don't want to see Jews succeed in anything including themselves.
[SPEAKER_09]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_09]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_09]: They want to see us succeed.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, it's got to be interesting for you to kind of be in the position that you are.
[SPEAKER_09]: Now, I mean, I don't know how long it's been since you had been someone who has been, you know, disinvited from things or heavily protested at college campuses.
[SPEAKER_09]: For me, it's strange to see this reaction to you because I mean, look at you, you're not a scary guy, you know, you're now in a position in which you are being
[SPEAKER_09]: put front and center by hardcore Zionists as like a threat to Jews and to Judaism.
[SPEAKER_09]: What is that like for you?
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that must be isolating, especially since of all the commentators like on the spectrum of you lead with a certain degree of grace and empathy for people who have not yet made that.
[SPEAKER_03]: on our side of the fence who listen to this podcast who can't must do that they're just too disgusted by it and too horrified but you I would think that your blend of things would go down smoother but know it it infuriates them even more uh... yeah i mean i look i i feel like you know trying to be
[SPEAKER_06]: trying to be to kind of see the best in other people and be and be careful about like how judgmental and self-righteous I am.
[SPEAKER_06]: I feel like partly I just have to do it out of honesty because I held those views myself, you know?
[SPEAKER_06]: And a lot of other views that turned out to be really catastrophically wrong, and my views have changed a lot.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so I just, and I very well aware of times when I was taking views that other people thought were very, very profoundly morally wrong and actually were in retrospect.
[SPEAKER_06]: I really appreciate the people who kind of,
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, who argued, but also gave me the space to kind of come to things on my own terms.
[SPEAKER_06]: I generally don't find that people are likely to change their mind when they're like mocked, mercilessly, and humiliated.
[SPEAKER_06]: I just don't think that tends to work very well.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I also, the other thing, and some of the people...
[SPEAKER_06]: don't like when I say this, but I will say that, and again, maybe this is because I grew up part of my childhood in a part that South Africa.
[SPEAKER_06]: I really think that human beings are complicated.
[SPEAKER_06]: So like, I see and know people, you may know two people who's views about Israel, and maybe even America, I find really abominable, like, really reprehensible.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I see the way they act in other parts of their lives, and I think they act like really, really good people, you know?
[SPEAKER_06]: and perhaps better than me in some areas of my life.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so I just almost so like wary of like making totalizing moral judgments about people, like that's a bad person, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: There are lots of people who have great political views in our total assholes, you know, in the way they treat the people around them.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so I don't know, I just want to be careful of that, because I'm also, I mean, if I was so wrong about things in the past,
[SPEAKER_06]: It stands to reason that I'm probably wrong about some pretty big things now, and I'm going to have to apologize for them at some point, and I want people to just, you know, kind of be nice to me about it when I do.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that humility is a powerful thing, but what what what I am going to get we're going to talk about your book in more detail in a while, we're going to pivot now to to some of.
[SPEAKER_03]: you know, some of the media content that we like to mercilessly mock and pillory.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what we do on this show.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think we're going to change van Jones's mind, but we're going to help a bunch of people digest this.
[SPEAKER_09]: We have the privilege of having, you know, hot takes and saying mean things that no one's ever going to hear because no one knows what's put guess.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I wanted to say when I read your book like what I appreciate is I'm going to hear you speak and When I hear you interviewing people that I'm like, yeah, he's talking to them and when I see you interviewing people that I like oh my god I wouldn't go near that person with a 10 foot pole
[SPEAKER_03]: You do lead with that sort of human goodwill and not benefit of the doubt, but just benefit of the heart, you know what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: But when you criticize ideologies and you insist on facts and you insist on logical and moral rigor and you don't, you don't count out to or you don't pander to people's prejudices, you see them, you name them, but you don't make it.
[SPEAKER_03]: personal and I think that's that.
[SPEAKER_06]: This is something I've actually learned kind of by modeling myself after two people who I really admire.
[SPEAKER_06]: One of them is Naomi Klein who has this great line about how being like something like being on tough on systems and soft on people, which I really like.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, you know, I think about these kids who come to college campus, they, you know, especially if they're gone to like a Yashiva day school or some like super pro-wizard environment.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, this is like score to their relations for their parents, their grandparents, their whole view of the world.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like what those kids need, those kids should be challenged, but what good does it do to be an asshole to them, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I mean, you have to have some, like it's just, it's counterproductive and it's not kind.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, there's a possibility of, and the second person is Tannasiko's.
[SPEAKER_06]: And one of the things that I always struck about Tannasiko's is that he is,
[SPEAKER_06]: in a way his writing is quite brutal right because if you get in his crosshairs right like it was recently critiquing as recline but he's gone after a lot of big people in his time
[SPEAKER_06]: He marshals an argument that is really kind of devastating.
[SPEAKER_06]: But there's never any ad hominem or like nasty kind of stuff like rhetorically.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's understated and he lets the argument kind of in the fact speak for themselves.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that I don't do it nearly as well as he does.
[SPEAKER_06]: But like for me, that's been something that I've inspired to.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and one of the things that also occurs to me about Coates is that they're sorrow in his writing as much as there as fury, you know, as a disciple, I would say Baldwin, and that's a powerful mix that vulnerability, that's not muchier sentimental, but it's not trying to protect itself with a deflective wall of, I'm better than you or I don't care, or you
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, no, that's really well really what I hadn't thought about connecting him to Baldwin.
[SPEAKER_06]: That makes a lot of sense.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: Well, speaking of, uh, you know, I'm like prophetic tradition.
[SPEAKER_09]: No, no, I wasn't going to say that.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I was going to say offering grace towards people who slip up publicly.
[SPEAKER_09]: You recently commented on an apology that Van Jones had.
[SPEAKER_09]: And before we get into that, we need to play.
[SPEAKER_09]: the comment that Van Jones made.
[SPEAKER_09]: He was recently on real time.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think it's called with Bill Mar, one of television's worst shows.
[SPEAKER_09]: What's that show you're doing real time?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's also taped on Shabbat, by the way, which is my excuse for never having to have done it.
[SPEAKER_06]: That is a great excuse.
[SPEAKER_09]: That makes me want to be kosher, like maybe I should.
[SPEAKER_09]: But yeah, he went on Bill Mar and he had this to say regarding the conversation starts out with some sort of like hand-fisted Bill Mar-esque attack on like
[SPEAKER_09]: I think critical race theory for no reason.
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't care to know the context of him attacking that.
[SPEAKER_09]: I know it's whatever it is.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's racist because it's Bill Mar.
[SPEAKER_09]: But then Jones quickly changes the conversation.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I just want to play you guys this clip.
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't part of that because we had to fold everything into critical race theory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And somehow the Middle East became part of, you know, I see, I see it differently.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I love this conversation because I think
[SPEAKER_04]: Those of us who went to college give a lot more credit to college courses for how the world works than I do.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is not about critical race theory on college campus.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is about Iran.
[SPEAKER_04]: Iran and Qatar have come up with a disinformation campaign that they are running through TikTok and Instagram.
[SPEAKER_04]: That is massive.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you are a young person, you open up your phone and all you see is dead gossip, baby, dead gossip, baby, dead gossip, baby, dead gossip, baby, dead gossip, baby, baby.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's basically, well, that's Thomas Freedman, by the way, to the right of him, noted Arab cab driver, appreciator, Thomas Freedman, grinning and nodding, approvingly of this brilliant line of thinking.
[SPEAKER_09]: And an entire studio audience, which I mean, they can be forgiven if you've ever been in a studio audience.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's just like it's applesauce everywhere.
[SPEAKER_09]: Oh my god.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not, that's not DEI, that is a geopolitical adversary that is that is that is deliberately trying to divide the West against a set.
[SPEAKER_09]: That view is not.
[SPEAKER_09]: So that is the clip that recently went viral a lot to comment on with that clip because a lot is happening there.
[SPEAKER_09]: The big,
[SPEAKER_09]: outraged that that caused was the laughing using dead gauze and baby as a punch line.
[SPEAKER_03]: And suggesting that dead gauze and babies were misinformation.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, definitely.
[SPEAKER_03]: And frivolous on the level of Diddy.
[SPEAKER_09]: Well, for sure.
[SPEAKER_09]: But first and foremost, people, I think were just like, I can't believe, dead gauze and babies
[SPEAKER_09]: That is the very least what Van Jones took from the outrage is that is what he apologized for.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm going to read his apology right now to you.
[SPEAKER_09]: He said, I made a comment on real time with Bill Mar about the war in Gaza that was insensitive and hurtful.
[SPEAKER_09]: I apologize.
[SPEAKER_09]: The suffering of the people of Gaza, especially the children is not a punchline.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm deeply sorry.
[SPEAKER_09]: It came across that way.
[SPEAKER_09]: as a father, I can't begin to imagine the pain their parents are enduring, unable to protect their kids from unimaginable harm, I'm praying and working for an immediate end to this war, and for peace and safety for every family caught in its path.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm truly sorry for the pain my words caused to people who are already suffering more than anyone should.
[SPEAKER_09]: In that
[SPEAKER_09]: That is, I mean, that's the question, but Peter, I want to start by asking you, you came out and talked about this apology, giving at the very least credit for being one of the very few public figures who actually apologize is when they say something, or can you speak more on that?
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, first of all, I think it,
[SPEAKER_06]: It does say something about how the public culture has changed.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, obviously, you know, I wish it didn't have a ticket genocide to change it.
[SPEAKER_06]: But there was a time when you really, and it's still the case in the Republican Party that you can say anything about Palestinians, literally anything, the most nakedly genocidal and you never have to, you never really get any heat for it, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And so, and I think that would have been true in the Democratic Party and mainstream media too, up until recently.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, the fact that you see them who is also, you know, there's a big backlash against Pete Buttigieg when he wouldn't kind of endorse
[SPEAKER_06]: This is a shift and I think that's good and I think I really don't know van Jones.
[SPEAKER_06]: I really don't But I He's somebody You know, I might not agree with all of his political views outside of Israel But I can see a huge dissonance between the position that he takes on Gaza and Israel Palestine and the position He takes on the United States.
[SPEAKER_06]: He may not be a radical leftist about American politics But he does basically believe in the principle of equality under the law
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think with people like that, I think there is an opportunity to try to focus them on the contradiction between the principles that they claim to believe in.
[SPEAKER_06]: They even fight for it here and the principles there.
[SPEAKER_06]: I also think, again, I don't know, Van Jones.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I just think in a weird way, I sometimes try to imagine what it is like to be a non-Jewish.
[SPEAKER_06]: political pundit figure probably especially if you're black and which means you're more vulnerable Yeah, because we know that black commentators and politicians get called anti-semitic more quickly Then white white people do they have a stick and have a stick and have a stick you're at it.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's right
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, there have been a sense of re-education camps more quickly like they have to go talk to the ADL with rights There is a we all know that there is a way especially if you're a black and have a history as being a leftist or a liberal There's a way in which you can be considered you know guilty of anti-Semitism until proven guilty.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, tell proven innocent, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And then you have all of these people who claim to speak for the Jewish community.
[SPEAKER_06]: Now, you and I, we know that they don't really speak for the Jewish community.
[SPEAKER_06]: But they are the people who have the fancy titles and the media treats them.
[SPEAKER_06]: And they say, listen, we want you to support Jews.
[SPEAKER_06]: And any good person, why wouldn't you want to support Jews?
[SPEAKER_06]: And people know what's happened to Jews.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the way you can do it is to take these views on Israel.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that that happens to a lot of people.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think I, in some ways, am more angry.
[SPEAKER_06]: At the Jewish so-called Jewish leaders who play this game of say this is how this is what it needs to be pro-Jewish Then I am the people who buy into it.
[SPEAKER_06]: I really wish they didn't because it leads them to say things that I think just Don't make any sense.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, are immoral and also just non-sensical like like really like that it's a cattari Iranian Disinformation campaign like I spent a lot of time among pro-Palestinian activist types.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm sure you spend just like I just
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know, I haven't seen the guys with the Katari guys with the money bags and the money.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's just ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_06]: They think that Omar Barthovet Brown is like the whole world's loving the hospital.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's calling it a genocide because the Katari's got to him.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think in a weird way, it's our community that is created this dynamic in which there's such a strong incentive system for people like Van Jones to basically
[SPEAKER_06]: say these things and I think that in some ways like we have to change that structure in that incentive system so people like Van Jones can actually follow what I think are probably their own moral instincts which we'd be to say I believe that people should be treated equally under the law and America irrespective of religion race ethnicity.
[SPEAKER_06]: I believe that in Israel Palestine too.
[SPEAKER_03]: I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would add an add-on to that that there's another incentive structure and this is something my brother pointed out immediately in the aftermath of, you know, Van Jones, I thought half a apology, which is the incentive structure among American liberals to pin everything on foreign interference ever since Russia gate.
[SPEAKER_03]: and to and before yeah and before you know but but but hyped I mean Aaron has called it a privileged protection racket and I think that's apt and you see that here and when it comes to more a principle I've seen Van Jones turn from a radical of sorts at least as at least at his aspect that he was I mean he was a malice self-identified in college I believe.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and it's not, that's nothing new, the sort of Maoist or Trotskyite to establishment liberal or reactionary, you know, regime change warrior pipeline has been in place since, you know, Christopher Hitchens and long before.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_09]: Since whenever the FBI just started doing it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: No, no.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just saying, my reading of his moral compass and how far, how recent it's his departure from that is might be a little less charitable than yours, but I think your point is as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's also, I mean, the danger, which I think is implicit in what he's saying.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, with the TikTok being taken over right by Ellison and whatever else, and I mean this is also this does become the predicate right for then censorship of all this material right and and that is something which I think is really really worrying
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, what's I find so disgusting about this beyond the, like, you know, putting the, the using that punchline aside is that he is so clearly getting his
[SPEAKER_09]: talking points and his, his has bar straight from straight from the source.
[SPEAKER_09]: Like to me, everything he said was the most clear projection that I have seen.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean to the point where it's like, he's much better describing
[SPEAKER_09]: the Israeli digital content strategy then he is describing anything else.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, where I'm seeing like a heavily funded digital propaganda effort to use trauma porn in order to spread theory and bigotry is in the way that October 7th has been utilized by Hezboires of all stripes to, I don't know, at least put people in our community in a constant state of
[SPEAKER_09]: fight or flight a constant state of panic and wave waves of seeing as you name in your book.
[SPEAKER_09]: People are posting dead babies every day because there are new dead babies every day.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because those babies matter.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_09]: Because those are real crimes.
[SPEAKER_09]: So like I'm also I feel a little bit less charitable because to me it seems like he is so clearly
[SPEAKER_09]: Um, you know, using his platform in order to spread this kind of, I don't know, uh,
[SPEAKER_09]: propaganda that is just really a confession.
[SPEAKER_03]: And let's remember, he spoke at the March for Israel in DC and he had that that I don't know what it was, Freudian slip of, you know, we need to oppose Muslims or something like that he stopped himself.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then he tried.
[SPEAKER_03]: His first while moral compass tried to assert itself when he said, we need to protect human beings and Gaza and he got roundly booed.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, it's also, it is, you know, the, I feel like in a way, when you, you know, when you develop a kind of set of relationships and, you know, alliances that kind of lead you to basically go out and make these arguments, you, you put yourself in a position in which you've got a guy like Van Jones, who's a very smart and analyst of a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then, then he says these things and I think this is just, this is just like,
[SPEAKER_06]: completely unconvincing.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's not, and I mean, the line he was saying at the end of which you didn't show the clip is where he's basically arguing that it's kind of racist and anti-Semitic to focus on Israel because of all the things that are happening in Sudan and Nigeria.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I was thinking like, this is so beneath,
[SPEAKER_06]: the intelligence of someone like Van Jones.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I've seen, like, maybe actually really thoughtful sophisticated.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, it's just such a silly argument.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, first of all, like, I always think when people say this.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, if people are really concerned about things in Nigeria or Sudan and Mozambique and goodness knows they're like very serious problems, that ironically, the probably the biggest foreign actor who's causing trouble in Sudan is the United Arab Emirates, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Which is like the Arab country that Israel and America like the most, but like, you know,
[SPEAKER_06]: Nobody is stopping anybody from being an activist about what's happening in Sudan or Nigeria or anywhere else, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And I find that there's a whole class of people who, as far as I can tell, only mention the words Sudan, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Or Nigeria or Syria or Myanmar or anything.
[SPEAKER_06]: When they want to stop the criticism of Israel, it was like, if you want to devote your life to those human rights crusades, like, go for it, I'll applaud you.
[SPEAKER_03]: But like, well, at least those Africans died for something novel, which is to shield the Jewish people from criticism to crimes, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, but the idea that somehow that makes it tomorrow and it's, again, it's also like, as if you can't see that there's also a fundamental difference between a genocide that we in which which is being perpetrated by our weapons with our tax dollars.
[SPEAKER_06]: and countries that basically receive, basically don't receive military aid and American diplomatic sport and are off under U.S.
[SPEAKER_06]: sanctions is like a very obvious point.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like we have the greater moral responsibility for the things that we are doing.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so to hear this argument, you know, again, pedaled not by some flunky, but by a guy who actually, who I think is a pretty smart commentator in a lot of subjects, was just to be depressing and assign that this kind of alliance with the pro Israel, like world is not good for him, you know?
[SPEAKER_09]: No, clearly it isn't, and you know, it always makes you curious as to what anyone would do this for, especially someone like Van Jones who was, you know, at this point, I think his brand might be changing a bit.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think it has ever since he started becoming a willing participant in the first Trump administration with Jared Kushner.
[SPEAKER_09]: So,
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, I look at this in a completely cynical light in which I am just certain that he has certain positions that allow him to continue having the access that he has and having the name that he has.
[SPEAKER_03]: Do we have any archival records of his more radical days, man?
[SPEAKER_09]: yeah i mean he like this is only from maybe this 14 years ago he put out apparently he put out some sort of uh spoken word slash hip hop album in which he you know talked about all sorts of you know political persuasions and which is not so out there corner of west did the same thing
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, yeah definitely, but this is someone found this in one of his songs in which he is He's on some like cable news panel or show It's what it sounds like and they put a beat over it and this is what he released himself Talking about Israel people being respected
[SPEAKER_04]: And at this point, the end of the occupation, the right of return for Palestinian people, these are the critical dividing lines, global dividing line questions of human rights.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to be here.
[SPEAKER_04]: No American.
[SPEAKER_04]: would put up with an Israeli-style occupation of their hometown for 53 days, let alone 54 years.
[SPEAKER_04]: We see violence against four people and four people of color within the U.S.
[SPEAKER_04]: border, at the U.S.
[SPEAKER_04]: border, and beyond the U.S.
[SPEAKER_04]: border, and you see U.S.
[SPEAKER_04]: tech dollars funding all of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we have, you know, the snow global struggle against the U.S.
[SPEAKER_04]: led security apparatus and military agenda that impacts people here.
[SPEAKER_04]: It impacts people around the world and I think that we to see our problems is linked.
[SPEAKER_09]: So, like, just hearing that, you know, you know immediately that he has had analysis.
[SPEAKER_09]: He has had time to, I mean, I mean, that's more of a smoking gun than Obama used to
[SPEAKER_03]: sit thoughtfully and listen to Russian quality and consider what he said and not I mean there's plausible deniability in that you know here's a networker he and he had an open mind but that's an open mouth that's saying some very true yeah things there's tough to to unknown that if you once knew that you know right right and yeah yeah yeah I know I I mean it's just I you know again I I can't I don't know anything about why Van Jones is used shifted but it's just
[SPEAKER_06]: It's funny, I mean, there is a way in which when people are speaking, you know, authentically, and in a way that flows naturally from their values, it just sounds different, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Then the way he sounded on, on Bill Mar, like that sounds like the kind of thing that someone like Van Jones,
[SPEAKER_06]: would naturally believe, right, given his general orientation about what he believes for the United States.
[SPEAKER_06]: And, you know, he was there with Bill Mar, who's, you know, like a notorious anti-Muslim bigot, right, so someone who basically just practices bigotry all the time.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I think that, you know, it's a kind of authentic for Bill Mar, I think that's kind of what Bill Mar actually believes.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think Bill Mar believes that Muslims and Arabs are basically kind of like some lesser civilization.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I don't think that's what Van Jones, that's not what Van Jones wants believe.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so I don't know why he's making, why he'd make common cause with those folks.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's humiliating to watch him have to sit there and even feel the question about, I mean, that the insane, you know, just free associative anti-woke madlib that is, oh, the D.E.I.
[SPEAKER_03]: is whatever.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then Van Jones, like, actually, I think it's some other, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: You've got the wrong boogey man.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's actually a run.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's so strange to be like, no, no, no, no, no, guys.
[SPEAKER_09]: Let's pivot to this other thing that is also racist.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it is, it is very strange watching it.
[SPEAKER_09]: And, you know, for for whatever reasons, this has been the evolution of his opinion.
[SPEAKER_09]: I guess about it.
[SPEAKER_09]: But I will say the silver lining, as you pointed out earlier, Peter, is that the backlash to this was immediate.
[SPEAKER_09]: To a degree that we wouldn't have seen, I think, even just a few months ago, where people are finally, you know, seeing the Hezbollah for what it is, they're seeing the propaganda as propaganda.
[SPEAKER_09]: And even Senator Chris Van Holland,
[SPEAKER_09]: He said, this about it, you said, I'm glad Van Jones apologized for a sick joke about dead kids in Gaza.
[SPEAKER_09]: But the problem goes deeper.
[SPEAKER_09]: He spread Netanyahu propaganda that the mass killings of civilians in Gaza, including 20,000 plus kids, is Iranian fake news.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's not the students and young people who are fooled, it's Van Jones.
[SPEAKER_03]: A solid A, we get an A plus if he changed Netanyahu to the name of the actual country of which sure, or represented it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, but I think this is really, I mean, I think that you totally write to pinpoint this.
[SPEAKER_06]: Van Hollen is a liberal, but he's not a radical.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's not Bernie Sanders.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's a pretty mainstream German.
[SPEAKER_06]: He represents the state of Maryland, which is a state with a pretty large and Jewish constituency.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that my sense is that Van Holland actually always, that Van Holland feels he can lean into these things that he believes because he no longer thinks that the politics and the morality are at cross purposes.
[SPEAKER_06]: He actually thinks that saying these things, which I think he genuinely believes.
[SPEAKER_06]: He actually has a fair amount of experience in the Middle East and in Israel Palestine.
[SPEAKER_06]: that he can do that, and it's actually, it's going to help them politically.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I do think that's a shift.
[SPEAKER_06]: You can see this with Rokana, too, who is now kind of, again, he's, Neurokana is not where Zaron Mamdani or even Bernie Sanders is.
[SPEAKER_06]: But he's a politician who, I think, can see that he can lean into his convictions a little more.
[SPEAKER_06]: And actually, it's going to be good politics, and that was not the case two years ago.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the breathing and the political breathing environment is oxygenated such that they can actually
[SPEAKER_03]: in Ale and Exail naturally, in accordance with certain moral impulses, whereas, you know, it's not nearly as stifling as it was before, which raises the question why are more people stepping up like that.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, but in some of these Senate races, I mean, it's going to be really interesting to see what happens in some of these midterm races in Michigan in the Senate race in in in Maine.
[SPEAKER_06]: This even this young guy who just Michelle Goldberg wrote this column about this guy who started a bit Christian pastor this Democrat who's running in Texas.
[SPEAKER_06]: A lot of these people are saying, you know, that they want the weapons to stop and they won't take money from a pack and it's I don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: We'll see whether those it's going to be really interesting to see how they do against some of these APAC candidates, but I would be fairly optimistic about their chances.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, if there's any cause for optimism to me, it's the fact that at the very least you can say that politicians are able to gauge
[SPEAKER_09]: wind patterns for the first time in two years because I feel like you know earlier when you know Biden was running for reelection and then Kamala Harris it was very striking the ability to ignore an entire wind pattern.
[SPEAKER_09]: The way they couldn't like usually politicians will give you a little bit of populist.
[SPEAKER_09]: I see the wind is blowing this way so I'm going to give you you know
[SPEAKER_09]: And the fact that it's taken two years for the very least to see that, from American politicians, is, I mean, it's both depressing and it makes me at least a little bit more hopeful about it, but we need to continue, but first we have to take a quick break.
[SPEAKER_09]: So everyone please listen to these ads, stick around, we'll be right back.
[SPEAKER_09]: And we're back this bad as barra world's most moral podcast here with Peter Bynart how you doing Peter So we want to talk about your book which I've got right here Entitled being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza a reckoning
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm just about completeness in reading it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm really been enjoying it.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I have to say, and I hope, you know, you'll, I think you'll be okay with brooking a little bit of, sure.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if it's a critique, but it's sort of a question.
[SPEAKER_03]: I had to get past the title in order to be fully open to absorbing how good the book is, which is to say, you know, on this podcast and elsewhere, I've become much more sensitized than I ever have been.
[SPEAKER_03]: to people's understandable fatigue and just downright.
[SPEAKER_03]: exasperation and over-itness about Jewish self-absorption and the focus on Jewish feelings and Jewish existential wrangling and, you know, you know, that's the old joke, you know, the elephant and the Jewish question, everything, everything points back to what is, you know, but is it good for the Jews?
[SPEAKER_08]: Right, right.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's frankly what the title made me sort of brace for and it's not what I found at all.
[SPEAKER_03]: It takes you quite a while to even get to a kind of plumbing of Jewish liturgie to try to offer people a new way of thinking about this, but what the book starts off as is in some ways a primer for what we try to do on this podcast was just knocking down, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: with that mournful quality that I appreciated Donasi Codes for earlier, but no lack of firmness, no equivocation, and very logically, very precise, you know, and essentially it's sort of a guide for the perplexed and
[SPEAKER_03]: and persuadable, it's fortifying for people who listen to this podcast and already know this stuff because it's just full of facts, but I think it's also written in a way that people and I am getting to a question that people who may not be so comfortable listening to this podcast could absorb because of the overture you're making.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, in the final chapter, Korak's children, and by the way, Korak was my brother's bar mitzvah-pasha, or from the long time ago, you used this biblical story.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very interesting about this question of what is chosen this, actually mean, and how is the Bible,
[SPEAKER_03]: How did the rabbis look upon Jews to try to use the notion of chosen this to mean supremacy?
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you're starting to do the reckoning with what kind of Jews do we want to be?
[SPEAKER_03]: What kind of Judaism is worth preserving, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is an important question.
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, the title itself made me think that that's where we were going.
[SPEAKER_03]: immediately and we were going to stay there and all that.
[SPEAKER_06]: What do you say to that, uh, I think it's you're not the first person who said that and I, I worried about that or I thought about that when I was writing the book, I, I, you know, I probably had half dozen or, you know, so Palestinian friends who, I wanted to read the book for a whole bunch of reasons, but partly about this question.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I think you write that the question about Jewish sensibilities are elevated so radically
[SPEAKER_06]: I think that, I mean, the way I suppose I would justify this title and the book more generally is I think about what kind of contribution I can make to a struggle for Palestinian liberation, which I also do believe is bound up in a kind of Jewish liberation as I argue in the book, because I think,
[SPEAKER_06]: supremacy does, as you know, many black American writers and others have noted, supremacy may not take a toll on the body of the people who are complicit in it, but does take a toll on the soul of them, and I think we see that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Except maybe the cardiac arteries.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, yes, and I ultimately think also it's bad for your safety to basically just be inflicting massive amounts of brutal violence on people all the time.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I felt like what this is the book that I felt like I could write because I feel like I have an intimate relationship with, you know, with this discourse that is being used
[SPEAKER_06]: to convince people to basically be supportive of these profoundly immoral things.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I wanted to write to those people, partly because they're the people in many of the people they're in my own life, all over the place in my own life.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I really grapple with that on a personal level.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I also just felt like that was the contribution I could make.
[SPEAKER_06]: And to me there's like an irony, which is that like
[SPEAKER_06]: We need to create a space where anybody, first of all, first of all, of course, Palestinians, but just anybody, regardless of their background, can enter into this conversation, speak, not have to pull punches, and not have to worry about being smeared and having their career ruined and having their reputation ruined.
[SPEAKER_06]: But to get to that point, the Jewish community has to change, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Because it's the organized Jewish community that is actually the road block to that.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's
[SPEAKER_06]: the roadblock to the shifted U.S.
[SPEAKER_06]: policy that could have an effect on the ground.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I felt like I had to write to the Jewish community in order to change it to create a more open playing field for everybody.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's fair, and I might still quibble with the exact word choice.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other word in the title that made me a little screen is was after, because it's during.
[SPEAKER_03]: The destruction of Gaza is ongoing.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not completed.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not a fate I complete into treated as if it is, is almost to say, or it risks being almost to say, we need to wait for this cycle of completed destruction annihilation to, and once this Holocaust is over, which could take decades,
[SPEAKER_03]: Then we will wrangle with the who are we after this, but that's look titles or titles Headlines or headlines.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's I'm not trying to take you to task for sure.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's probably fun What I found in the book was a very able like I said
[SPEAKER_03]: just dispensing with so many things that need dispensing with.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, thanks.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I find what your answer was to Daniel's critique to ring true with me, you know, in terms of the, we have sort of the same, you know, issue that we deal with, which is like,
[SPEAKER_09]: talking about this issue without centering ourselves constantly, but also while simultaneously realizing that who we are trying to speak to is our own community.
[SPEAKER_09]: Who we're trying to speak to is American Jews who are not hearing it.
[SPEAKER_09]: They're not able to hear it from anyone else and it's, you know, it leaves you in an awkward position where you have to
[SPEAKER_09]: sort of present yourself as someone who can, you know, speak, you know, the community is comfortable with.
[SPEAKER_09]: And, you know, for you, I find it, you know, interesting because you've had such a public, um,
[SPEAKER_09]: grappling with Israel and what Zionism and what that must be like for you just because, you know, I have the privilege to have not
[SPEAKER_09]: uh, put to writing any of my previous positions back when I was, when I was a Zionist, you know, it's like, in the same way that I, I feel bad for this generation of kids growing up with TikTok and Twitter, uh, it's like, uh, I feel bad for, uh,
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, just you've had a very public evolution when it comes to Israel and Palestine and and politics in general.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: How do you, you know, how do you approach to this?
[SPEAKER_09]: Does it inform the way you approach talking about this?
[SPEAKER_09]: Do you speak about it differently knowing you have a, for lack of a better term such a history of being so publicly wrong?
[SPEAKER_09]: Like, like, like, do you?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, as I was saying, I mean, I do feel like it, I need to remind, it should, it should engender in me humility.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I hope it does at least sometimes.
[SPEAKER_09]: I mean, I sense humility just to be clear.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm not, I'm saying that you do seem to come at it with care, which I appreciate a lot.
[SPEAKER_03]: But not, but not, but not chasing them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I had this situation almost roughly 20 years ago now, where I had at a young age you know, become editor of the new Republic, and I, you know, I thought I knew a lot.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think in retrospect, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
[SPEAKER_06]: had a very, I was not, I think, a deep reader of American history and the history of American foreign policy, and I think I was very much influenced by the triumphalism of the era in which I grew up, given my positionality in the 1990s, and then it all,
[SPEAKER_06]: completely came apart after I, and the magazine had supported the Iraq War, as it happened my mentor at the New Republic, Michael Kelly was killed in the war.
[SPEAKER_06]: My sister-in-law, who was a doctor in the army, was sent to was deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq, and it wasn't long before they were, you know, you saw homeless veterans of those wars on the streets of New York, and I was thinking like, I have just fucked up so massively,
[SPEAKER_06]: And I also just wasn't really sure how it was going to continue writing because I felt like I had a, I had like a framework and the framework was so evidently had led me in such a bad direction and I, I think the thing that helped me a little bit was I wrote a book which nobody read but it was my second book called the Icarus syndrome and what it was was actually I was kind of tracing the partly the careers of a series of different intellectuals over the 20th century who had been profoundly wrong about war in particular.
[SPEAKER_06]: and had kind of like had to shift their view of the world.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was really interested in people like Rye Holdneber and Walter Lippman and how they had kind of had to learn from their initial very youthful enthusiasm for World War I. And it kind of made it, it was helpful for me to realize that like,
[SPEAKER_06]: if that people can rethink things, you know, and that in some ways, like, what's the alternative?
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I could go, I'm not good at anything else.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I could have gone to law school.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, my mother always wanted me to, and just given up writing all that, I would have been even worse lawyer than I was right, or.
[SPEAKER_06]: And, and, and, and, and I just, I knew I, and if I found some, if I could learn from some of the people who I think were reading the history of America and American foreign policy more deeply than I was, then it could inform my views.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think on the question of Israel, those were, you know, not surprisingly mostly Palestinian writers, you know.
[SPEAKER_06]: And in other cases, there were other people who had thought about Vietnam in a deeper way than I had thought about in other places, and I felt like that, and again, it's also the grace that a lot of people gave me to basically be willing to say, okay, we'll be willing to continue to read by an art, even though he and the magazine that he led did some real harm.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I feel like that was the way I think about it.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it is to your credit and not, you know, detriment that you are so I'd have been so publicly willing to grapple with your own past positions.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I, yeah, I mean, I can only
[SPEAKER_09]: put myself in your position and think about like, you know, I am lucky to have not written anything about my, my previous Zionism, especially when I was in my liberal Zionist phase because I now so heavily to satire, liberal Zionists.
[SPEAKER_09]: I wanted just ask you about your experiences
[SPEAKER_09]: that evolution specifically when it comes to Israel, we've reached a point now where I've been shocked to see how few people have had
[SPEAKER_09]: a similar evolution to you, where we've reached a point where people are literally, it's the UN, it's amnesty international, it's, you know, they've had a devolution, if anything, like no one's been able to stay, very few people have been able to stay on the night's edge.
[SPEAKER_03]: of so-called liberal Zionism, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: But many have fallen off to the other side.
[SPEAKER_09]: Right, they have just dropped the liberal and just become, you know, full on the codenix.
[SPEAKER_09]: And so, you know, at this point, it's undeniable, you know, the genocide, for you,
[SPEAKER_09]: Number one, could you even imagine this as a possibility in terms of like Israel committing this genocide?
[SPEAKER_09]: Oh, the younger version of yourself, could you have even fathomed it?
[SPEAKER_09]: Or did it was your belief in the moral righteousness of Israel just so strong that you couldn't even imagine?
[SPEAKER_03]: And part two to that question, we what was the final straw for you that where you realized I can't hold on to these two switches, I gotta let go of one.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, that's a good question.
[SPEAKER_06]: I know I don't think if I think back, you know, 10 years ago, certainly 20 years ago, that I would have been able to imagine this, but I think that's
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, that's very much connected, the fact that I don't think I had spent a lot of time thinking about what happened in 1948.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I don't think I would have said, oh, they all just ran away.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't think I was that kind of crude, but it just wasn't something that I was focused on.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I kind of was, you know, I was as liberal Zionist tend to do in a way, it was kind of
[SPEAKER_06]: had this idea that Israel could have been on an okay path if it hadn't, you know, if it hadn't gone, taken the wrong turn in 1967.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that once as I became as I over, you know, too late, but began to grapple more with 1948 and the kind of,
[SPEAKER_06]: The fact that there could have been no Jewish state without 1948.
[SPEAKER_06]: There were just simply way too many Palestinians there and they were living on most of the land.
[SPEAKER_06]: There was no Jewish state to be created without mass expulsion and without mass seizure of property that I think that then when you actually, again, this is to go back to quotes, like this is one of the things that I think
[SPEAKER_06]: makes coats is writing off and so powerful not his not only his writing off a lot of black writers but he does it exceptionally well is that like because you see American history clearly without kind of this you know without the mythology then you see that there are things there are loaded guns sitting there right right in front of us for it for an ambitious politician or for a particular circumstance right
[SPEAKER_06]: that Israel has kind of always wanted to have as much land as possible with this few Palestinians on it as possible, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And this has created an opportunity to try to move in that direction.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not going to happen.
[SPEAKER_06]: It doesn't happen overnight.
[SPEAKER_06]: It didn't happen overnight in the 19th century United States.
[SPEAKER_06]: It took multiple generations, right, to basically largely destroy the native population.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so no, I don't think I had that capacity because I don't think, you know, I just think that there are things that
[SPEAKER_06]: where there's still things, not necessarily as much of it as repalism, but about other things in the world that I just don't want to look square in the eye, you know, because they would be too deeply unsettling and they would impair my abilities just go about my daily life in the way.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't think any of us, it's very, very few of us can say that we're different.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like that's, that's a facet of of living.
[SPEAKER_03]: as we do where we do when we do it's just one of the coping.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I mean, you just walked down the street.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, you walked down the street in New York.
[SPEAKER_06]: You see things every day that like, I should stop in my tracks and say, like, what the fuck, what am I going to do about this, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And I don't, right, at best, I give someone a dollar or two, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: I say, you know, I hope you're doing better or something like that.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, and so I think that, you know, and again, you know, this for Jews, like,
[SPEAKER_06]: I think a lot of that is how the thing about Israel works is this is like, it's like a it's like this fragile thing that is like for is very intimate for people a lot rests on it I don't think people have been I don't think people have get I think it's different maybe for more younger people I do think it is easier for younger people to imagine living a Jewish life separate from this
[SPEAKER_06]: It's easier to imagine them, you know, having friends, having community, having an identity, they can see people like you, they see Hannah, I'm by the way, it's all kind of, but people, my age and older is much more difficult and you know, I've been in many more decades invested in this.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not so far, yeah, yeah, you and I are probably close to the same age.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been
[SPEAKER_03]: amazed at what I see in the millennial generation of young Jews.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a real revival of Jewish practice and a kind of customizing of Jewish practice.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was at a tubi-shvat sater in
[SPEAKER_03]: Albuquerque, New Mexico.
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't even know there was a sater for two of us.
[SPEAKER_06]: Little in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
[SPEAKER_03]: In Albuquerque, New Mexico.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was this short walk from Chuck McGill's house in Better Call Saul.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like right in Breaking Badland.
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's this deeply spiritual... Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Psychedelically informed, but very grounded in social justice.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a whole rabbinical school out there, run by Rabbi Lin, something, a beautiful community of really beautiful young people that the urban cynic in me would want to write off as burning men hippies, but they're not, they're deep thinkers, they're connecting to literature, they're connecting to ritual and community, and they're orienting themselves, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're availing themselves of the actual Jewishness of the Jewish tradition, as opposed to what Matt and I to do, which is, you know, we drink the borst right out of the belt.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's our fortification, but, you know, and it's amazing, and I'm seeing that all over the place here in Brooklyn, in the Bay Area, all over the place, there seems to be a hunger that they're actually turning to our traditions to say it.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think you're so right and this is what like again the American Jewish establishment like so fundamentally doesn't understand that you know what's distinctive I think about this generation of young American Jews is how interested they are in Judaism, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: I think much more interested than the generations of the 1930s in the 1960s.
[SPEAKER_06]: So we're obviously in some ways deeply Jewish but we're not doing two-bish Vot Sayders in Mississippi.
[SPEAKER_06]: They were in the Jews in the ANC we weren't doing this in South Africa.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's a way and you know, maybe I don't know, maybe it's because we're in a somewhat post communist age of the idea of religion as an opiate is not as maybe people are further away from I don't know what exactly it is sociologically that is led to this thing, but I actually think You know, it is going to come out of this like
[SPEAKER_06]: horror this evil is going to come a kind of spiritual renewal and you know and something that's that's alive in American Jewish life and religious practice with like commitment and study in dedication it's very very exciting for me as a middle-aged person to think that my children and grandchildren may have this available to them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well that's an expression of the title of your book that really actually lights me up you know because again what's worth preserving
[SPEAKER_03]: about being Jewish.
[SPEAKER_03]: If we equate being Jewish with, and we talk, you know, we wine and complain all the time about how anti-Semites conflate Jews in Israel.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, they don't.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're just following our lead.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if we want to sell ourselves down the river, forgive the, you know, the historically derived idiom.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you know, if we want to sell our, if we want to sell the
[SPEAKER_03]: and supremacy, and all the things the prophets warn us not to do, at a certain point, there's nothing worth preserving.
[SPEAKER_03]: So the fact that people are able to till that earth and find something that might be a healthy human contribution and an orligoying like in earnest is wonderful.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, no, I think it's not just that these institutions are morally corrupt, and that they're complicit in genocide, they also don't actually provide young American Jews with access to this tradition in a way that's really alive and that can help them grapple with the struggles that they face in their lives, because what they do is they're rabbi basically at your
[SPEAKER_06]: reform, you know, as a purpose in it, God basically thinks the people who come in here have so little interest in anything in the prayer book or in the, in the, in the, you know, in the Thumash, in the, in the Torah that I better talk to them about what was in the New York times of Israel because at least that's a subject that they have some interest in, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: As opposed to, you know, and I think that, you know, there's someone from Jewish current set to me the other day that it's now gotten to the point in Brooklyn where she says, you know, people refer to the anti-Zionist minion they don't go to, you know,
[SPEAKER_06]: right like i mean that's really that's really new and those places are forced to actually have to try to answer the question what in Judaism is compel it right has something to say to people and and i think that's amazing i hope to someday be at the point where more to that point
[SPEAKER_09]: people, you know, the old joke about the two synagogues, one that you will never set foot in.
[SPEAKER_09]: I hope one day we have that kind of option with Antisignus synagogues right out like that.
[SPEAKER_09]: Wouldn't that be a beautiful thing?
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to read something.
[SPEAKER_03]: This was the opening text of the
[SPEAKER_03]: the coal-needry service that I went to.
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't fast and I didn't attend synagogue on New York for itself.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was traveling, but I did go to the egalitarian Sephardi, Mizrahi Keela in Brooklyn.
[SPEAKER_03]: And the title at the very top here says unforgivable and that made me so happy that's the word I wanted to hear you know, I wanted Jews all over the country to interrupt the the silent Amida and and say what do we think we're gonna be forgiven for here Anyway
[SPEAKER_03]: We will gather leaning on each other in our tradition to practice a Judaism that we so desperately need now.
[SPEAKER_03]: A Judaism that does not shy away from facing and reckoning with the annihilation of the Palestinian people in the name of the so-called Jewish safety.
[SPEAKER_03]: A Judaism that resists the hijacking of the very words of our prayers to murder, maim, starve, displace, massacre, and wipe out an entire people.
[SPEAKER_03]: How do we enter meaningfully this year into the spirit of compassion, love,
[SPEAKER_03]: and reconciliation and atonement.
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the meaning of the Chuvah in our times?
[SPEAKER_03]: What is the meaning of prayer in our times?
[SPEAKER_03]: This year we will make space for rage, helplessness and humility while finding sustenance, resilience and hope.
[SPEAKER_03]: We will enter in an authentic way into the profound process of our holidays with love, gentleness, and beauty.
[SPEAKER_06]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I mean, in this idea of unforgivable, you know, I mean, the, the, the, the, the, that for the, for a who Hashem, the desk creation of God's name, young people does not atone, you know, and so I think there's something very true about that, about that line, unforgivable.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, well, I, I want to ask, you know, sort of on this subject, and I know we have to go soon, but I, I, I, I, I, I,
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, this idea of kind of the, I don't know, creation from the bottom up of these, you know, sort of new young Jewish communities that don't center Zionism that don't, that are, you know, explicitly anti or non.
[SPEAKER_09]: Sometimes, you know, I always wonder strategically what is the path, at least for, you know, Jews of conscience who want to, you know, talk about this stuff and try to actually affect change, is, you know, do you believe that these institutions that at this point have been completely co-opted by the interests of the state of Israel, do you believe that they can change?
[SPEAKER_09]: Do you believe that it is worth it to try
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't know, to try to take them back or is it more, you know, this is, we just have to abandon them and start our own institutions.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I guess it would depend on exactly which institution, but I would say I'm definitely more pessimistic about the fact of those institutions changing than I perhaps I was in the past.
[SPEAKER_06]: is not liberal Zionist, but is really a Zionism that doesn't really traffic in liberal discourse at all.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think that's where the demographic movement is given that Orthodox Jews are playing a larger and larger role in these institutions and Orthodox Jews are basically largely, you know, in the Republican Party at this point.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that, you know, also there's also more and more pressures in this authoritarian regime.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, it's crazy, but you see the anti-deformationally, basically, having to now stop calling out white nationalists because they're afraid of Elon Musk and Donald Trump and these people, that's where the power is, that's where the money is.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so I think those institutions are probably are going to move away from any kind of liberal patina, probably.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think in some ways, that's going to be clarifying, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: That this, the center that liberal Zionists have tried to hold is going to increasingly evaporate, I think.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think the choices will be clear for people.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, there's more than a silver lining in that, you know, this book.
[SPEAKER_03]: opens with an active, an open, armed outreach to somebody.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's almost written as an offering to someone who's views you find a orient.
[SPEAKER_03]: And with whom your relationship is,
[SPEAKER_03]: perhaps irreparably strained by the disparity between the ways you're respectively looking at the situation.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I watched the video of your appearance at my friend's university which he moderated the Q&A and all I see is you being generous and gracious and not not skimping on the the forceful speaking of truth and the prophetic
[SPEAKER_03]: even the fury that comes out of you sometimes are the intensity, but the spirit of of keeping an open door.
[SPEAKER_03]: How's that going for you?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's what I'm wondering.
[SPEAKER_03]: Has there have even a small trickle of people in your life or what's your experience of the utility of that and doing what you're setting out to do?
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, it's hard for me to tell to be honest.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think that, you know, I think about myself.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't think my shift didn't happen overnight because of any one doc source.
[SPEAKER_06]: It happened over a long period of time and I'm kind of peeling away of an onion.
[SPEAKER_06]: I do think I see people who even over the last two years.
[SPEAKER_06]: have shifted what they say a bit and their orientation a bit and I also do notice and we've kind of alluded to this earlier that this happens much much faster with the younger people for various reasons like one of the most striking things that has happened to me over the last two years was I got a call one day from a student who was in the Columbia JTS Jewish theological Seminary Joint Programme so studying to be a rabbi.
[SPEAKER_06]: And this person said, I have a problem, and I liked your advice.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I said, OK, and he said, well, here's my story.
[SPEAKER_06]: Basically, my grandfather was one of the founders of APAC.
[SPEAKER_06]: I went to Yashiva, my entire life, and then I in America, and I went spent two years in Yashiva, and Israel.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I said, OK, but what were you calling me?
[SPEAKER_06]: And he said, well, I've just put a Palestinian flag outside of my dorm room with the Jewish Theological Seminary.
[SPEAKER_06]: And they're going to kick me out, which I do.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I thought, like,
[SPEAKER_06]: That's where you just see the much more dramatic rapid transformation, you know, you know, people have been in, you know, and that's amazing, you know, there's so many of these kids on these encampments were in a completely different place than they were in high school, you know, and
[SPEAKER_06]: So, I think it's there, again, I can't take credit for that.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think there are many more powerful forces, but that's the much more dramatic shift that I see happening among younger people.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think older people, it's happening more slowly, but that's what gives me a sense of hope for all this.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I would like to believe that
[SPEAKER_06]: If our role in history, like tragically harbly is that we are a group of people who state the state institutions that speak for us are complicit in genocide, at least when the history books are written, there will be reference to the fact that there was powerful Jewish opposition.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, and that will be like the way in which that's what people will be able to look back on with pride, you know, that we will that that that that existed.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it's a tug of war isn't it and and we're we're all to the best of our ability or, you know, trying to pitch in at least tug, you know,
[SPEAKER_03]: and we're making whatever contribution we can and yeah I don't mean to say it's all resting on you like when are you going to succeed and turning the Jewish community around but the contribution you're making is is is loud it's consistent it's diligent it's impassioned and I think it's infused with a spirit that that is really needed so
[SPEAKER_09]: And, you know, just to complete that, thought and tie it sort of back, it also is whatever however you say it, it shows integrity, which is something that I think
[SPEAKER_09]: I look at your trajectory, your political trajectory, and I can't help but put it next to Van Jones' right now because of the fact that we just talked about him.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I think you see two sort of clear paths.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I think it is commendable when someone
[SPEAKER_09]: evolves to the, to the, to the correct moral position, which way American liberal?
[SPEAKER_09]: Right, yeah, I mean, honestly though, it is, you know, when I see someone like Van Jones, I see sort of the opposite trajectory and not just politically, but almost like, you know, in terms of cloud, you know, for the lack of a better word.
[SPEAKER_09]: Like, you are someone who, if you were to read your Wikipedia page, you see,
[SPEAKER_09]: You know, new republic all the way down to Jewish currents, you're seeing someone who's prioritizing a different thing.
[SPEAKER_09]: And what I see is you prioritizing not access necessarily to the inner workings of power and trying to be a voice to, you know, in the room.
[SPEAKER_09]: I see someone who has developed more and more politically.
[SPEAKER_09]: principled and I see Van Jones and I like see sort of I think a more common trajectory which is like I have to say this in order to get this so I'm going to say this you know and you know and yeah for that I just want to commend you because that's it's rare it is shockingly or un-shockingly rare well I mean I appreciate I I appreciate I would just say that you know as you know that there are a lot of people who never had to go through
[SPEAKER_06]: the set of positions that I had.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, yeah, it's to the first place, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm grateful to a lot of those people, you know, to who were people that I learned a lot from, and many of whom are still relegated to the margins and have gotten no,
[SPEAKER_06]: benefit for having been consistently right, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not like people celebrating them and giving them fancy jobs with these titles, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And so that's like, you know, those people in some ways are the people who really deserve a greatest of that.
[SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely, but you know, in fairness, your penance was marginalizing yourself.
[SPEAKER_09]: And for that, we can, and I've ended up on this podcast.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like this is where I lead.
[SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to the margins, baby.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, welcome to the periphery.
[SPEAKER_09]: We out here, no one noticing, welcome to anonymity, Peter Bynart.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you, seriously, for coming on the show.
[SPEAKER_09]: I really appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_09]: Glad we could make it work, plugs, where can people find your work and what should they support?
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, thank you.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, there's the book being Jewish after the destruction of the gods of this Jewish currents, where edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema edema
[SPEAKER_06]: You're around.
[SPEAKER_03]: I smoothed my cabinets like Knuttle.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_06]: So, you know, it's a good thing to do if you're at a Jewish publication.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I have a newsletter at the Bynart notebook.
[SPEAKER_06]: I also teach at the New Mark School of Journalism at CUNY, which is a great institution, really public university, really, really talented faculty, and wonderful students, and I'm a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I should say the Bynart notebook has, I mean, I'm proud of our roster of guests.
[SPEAKER_03]: But yours, I would put head-to-head with ours in terms of the people that you've had on, you know, including some people I would rather never hear from, but the fact that a Shabbat's Kesterbaum and a Norman Finkelstein and doctors in Gaza and all these voices are
[SPEAKER_03]: welcome to sit opposite you and get a hearing and it's you don't make any secret about where you're sympathy's live but you're you know you're providing some sunlight that can provide that can be the disinfectant that is needed so yeah everyone should check that out so you'll be able to find all of the links in the episode description and Peter
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_09]: Please come back.
[SPEAKER_09]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'd love to.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you guys so much.
[SPEAKER_09]: Great.
[SPEAKER_09]: And thank you to everyone out there for watching slash listening patreon.com slash bad as barra, bad as barra, gmail.com for your questions, comments and concerns.
[SPEAKER_09]: All right.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thanks so much for listening and until next time from the river to the sea.
[SPEAKER_03]: And Jones' new shit, not my cup of tea.