← Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, it's Dan. This is a sneak peek from the members only edition of our show, Inside Call Me Back, where we pull back the curtain and have the conversations we typically have after the cameras stop rolling. Over the past couple of years, Call Me Back has grown into something much bigger than we ever expected. A place for clarity, context, and honest conversations at a time when those things can seem hard to find. That's what ARC Media is all about. Building a truly independent voice, which means no one shaping what we say or how we say it. To help support our rapidly expanding operations, we created inside CallMeBack, our members only feed. If CallMeBack has been meaningful to you and you want to be part of what we're building, I hope you'll join us. Right now we're offering an annual subscription for $60. That's just $5 a month. Your contribution goes a long way in helping us show up when it matters most. You can subscribe@arkmedia.org or through the link in the show and to our insiders. Thank you.
- [01:11]
B
You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [01:22]
A
Welcome to the inside edition of the Call Me Back podcast where we pull the curtain back and have the conversations we typically have after the cameras stop rolling. Thank you for subscribing to the show and supporting the Call Me Back podcast and everything we do here at ark. Your support through subscriptions makes a huge difference today. In the hot seat to address your questions and help you contemplate your personal dilemmas is ARK Media contributor Tal Becker. Tal, as our listeners know, is the vice president of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and he's a longtime diplomat in multiple Israeli governments and a legal advisor, longtime legal advisor to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and has represented Israel in some very complicated and tense international negotiations and disputes and even legal proceedings. Tal, welcome back to the Inside.
- [02:13]
B
Good to be with you, Dan. I have to tell you, I was visiting Australia and you have no idea how popular you are here. If you ever visit, they will never let you leave. You are so loved. I think there are some women here who may contemplate leaving their husbands for you. It's really. I've never seen anything like it.
- [02:31]
A
Well, that's wonderful to hear. Now, I'm struck by that because, and this is something Elon has been banging me over the head with, that we have this big following. He can see it in the data and he's obviously also in touch with many of our members of the commonback community and the art community in Australia. I guess my question, what I'm always confused about is we have a strong following in the us, but we have an especially strong following in places like the UK and Canada and France, where I think there are parts, pockets of the diaspora that feel under siege. So there's a logic, I guess, why they feel a connection to our content and our community. But Elon is constantly telling me, no, but Australia is like another level. So I guess. Have you sensed, because you've been to some of these other countries I'm talking about, do you sense that the dynamic. Is it because they're even more under siege? Like, what's going on in Australia that makes this so intense?
- [03:21]
B
I think it's fair to say it's probably not only your charm and good looks and brilliance. There are probably some other factors, though I don't want to dismiss the importance of those. But I do think you're onto something there in terms of you have a community that not just feels under siege, that feels alone, that is kind of way devastatingly sad at what has happened in Australia. This is a country. I grew up in Melbourne, like many Melbournian families, my family on my mother's side, Holocaust survivor families, and they came to Australia fleeing fear. And they're now in a position, so many of them. And this, I've. I've heard this from my friends and. And so on, of contemplating leaving Australia because of fear. And this is a country, it's such a beautiful country. So much bounty and promise. And yet what has happened here in terms of the surge of anti Semitism for a community that loves Australia, that found in Australia a home, has been really devastating. And so I think what Call me back in a way offers is kind of not just making sense of this moment, but really a kind of sense of opportunity. I mean, there was a story today about a Hellenic choir that essentially decided that it couldn't perform together with a Jewish choir for a memorial for the Bondi massacre, partly, according to reports, because of fear, but also partly because somehow the toxicity and the degree of anti Semitism is such that you can't even sing with the Jewish choir. I mean, it's really quite insane.
- [04:43]
A
You can't sing with the Jewish choir to memorialize a Jewish tragedy. I mean, that's the part that I saw the press reports and you and I were exchanging articles about it offline. Like, it'd be one thing if a non Jewish choir, not that this would be okay, but like, one thing. They said, well, we can't appear with the Jewish choir for some other cause that's sort of quote, unquote, Neutral. But this. This isn't even neutral. This is actually to honor the victims of a terror attack against Jews. And then what is the non Jewish choir saying? They can't appear with Jews when honoring the lives of Jews that were murdered.
- [05:13]
B
Yeah, I had to read the report a couple of times. I still kind of don't believe it in the shockingness because it's just so much not the Australia that I remember or recognize, but essentially they were saying that, you know, this association with Jews is not something they're willing to do for one reason or another, even for the memorial of the Bondi massacre. If that story is accurate. I mean, it tells a kind of moral bankruptcy and a kind of devastatingly sad reality here and problematic reality that I think it's no wonder that the Jewish community is looking for any source of comfort and guidance and strength. They need moral courage from Australia's leaders. They're having a hard time finding that. And they're really a community that needs a lot of support and understanding and sympathy.
- [05:55]
A
Okay, let's jump into the conversation, driven by questions from the inside. Call me back, subscribers. I'm gonna start with Steve from Scarsdale, New York, Writes, as I think about what is going on in isra, I think back to my rudimentary Jewish history and wonder if we are just witnessing the splintering of the Israeli people into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Is this comparison appropriate? What can we learn from our history? What reading or classes on Jewish history would you recommend? Wow, there's a lot here. This is calling on many aspects of your knowledge base here, Tal. So begin where you want to begin.
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B
Yeah. So first, I would say Jews disagreeing with each other and being very serious about their big disagreements agreements is a feature and not a bug of the Jewish people. And if the questioner mentioned the Jewish history, I'll just say, at the great moment of the forming of the Jewish people, in the exodus from Egypt, when we went into the Sinai Desert, you might have expected that the Jewish people would camp in one big camp because they were one united people. But we're told they camped in their separate tribes, and when they entered into the land of Israel, the land was divided into tribes. Rashi famously says at Mount Sinai that Mount Sinai was the only time that the Jewish people acted with, as he says, Keisha, Chad Belevichad as one person with one heart and every other encampment. They were fighting with each other is the way Rashi puts it. And I frankly think that this idea of consensus and agreement is a kind of False God for the Jewish people. How impoverished would our peoplehood be if we all agreed our tradition is too rich and the tendencies within our texts and our experiences are too rich? So in that sense, the division itself is not something that worries me. I kind of love the cacophony of Jewish voices.
- [07:43]
A
And I want to be clear, this is going back. I mean, where Steve is anchoring this is like all the way one ad in Jerusalem. I mean, this is going back. I just want people to understand we're not talking about anything contemporary.
- [07:54]
B
No, no, no. But I am talking about the kind of the sweep of Jewish history and the way our divisions. So there are times when our divisions have been a method of self sabotage and produced the way that he described two separate kingdoms. But it isn't the division itself. That's what I'm trying to say. The division itself is a feature of our condition. One of the ways I being Jewish is that Jews are the people who argue about what being Jewish means. If you're engaged in that conversation, if you're trying to drag us in one direction or another, the chances are you're invested in that conversation. But how you have that conversation really matters. And for me, one of the metrics or one of the dividing lines is whether you're making your case because you're committed to the welfare of the Jewish people and they're thriving and that's why you have a certain position. In which case, for me, you're part of the conversation. Or whether, as David Hartman Zichon Olive Racha famously said, whether you're criticizing Israel like a mother in law rather than a mother. Right, not my mother in law. Of course. I have a lovely mother in law
- [08:55]
A
who I guess is an inside. Call me back subscriber.
- [08:58]
B
Yeah, of course, of course.
- [08:59]
A
Otherwise you wouldn't have made sure to add that key clause.
- [09:03]
B
That's right. Even if she's not, she will hear this. There's no question. But you know, there is that version of criticism that is designed not to improve a situation or be constructive, but is designed to actually destroy. And people actually, you know, that Howard Jacobson, the British Jewish author, has this thing of the category of Jews who are proud to be ashamed. You know, the Jews who are proud to be ashamed. Right, right, yeah. Of trying to kind of. You're not really interested in the welfare of the people. You're interested in lifting yourself up by distancing and criticizing there. I think you have to avoid the. And maybe one more thing to say about this is I do think, Dan, that We might be living at a period of Jewish history where the stories we have had for the last few decades about what is compelling and meaningful for Jewish identity are beginning to fade. And we are in the process of needing to develop some new stories because we had some operating mechanisms, stories of what being Jewish meant in the Diaspora and in Israel that to some extent, have been really shattered and challenged by October 7th and the aftermath of October 7th. October 7th. And at those moments, you're kind of torn as to whether you want to reclaim the story that you lost or kind of craft a new story. And this isn't a new thing in Jewish history. At key moments in Jewish history, you have a kind of organizing narrative about what being Jewish is about. And then a kind of crisis comes, and it creates this division about what to do. Like the classic example given is the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD where Jewish identity revolved around the Temple and the priests and so on. And you can imagine if you were Jew in At the destruction of the Temple, you're facing a moment where the story you had of being Jewish has to undergo massive transformation. And those are always moments that you risk losing some Jews because the sky has fallen. I don't know what you being Jewish means anymore. And then very often, in the case of the Second Temple, you had the figure of Yochanan Ben Zakay, who was the figure who really imagined what Judaism without the Temple could look like. And he talked about Tenle Yavnet, Chachamea, give me Yavneh and its disciples. And he injected these ideas of the possibility of a Jewish identity that didn't revolve around sacrifice. And the priests, you could access truth through text study. The synagogue became a critical part. The mitzvot commandments between people became much more significant. There's a beautiful gemara. You'll stop me when I'm doing too much Torah study here.
- [11:30]
A
No, no, no. This is great. This is great.
- [11:32]
B
There's actually a beautiful gemara, I think, in Tractate Shabbat. It is where Yohanan Ben Zakaya is walking with his disciples, and they see the ruins of the Temple. And his disciple says, how terrible it is that we can no longer bring sacrifices. And Yochlon Ben Zakay looks at him and he says, don't worry. We have something almost better than sacrifices now, and that is the capacity to do acts of righteousness to one another. And what he's saying there is really quite profound, and that is that there is a way to imagine Judaism even without the Temple. And it isn't the vertical relationship between human beings and God. Rabb Yochanan ben Zakir was saying in place of the sacrifice to God, you acts of chesed of self righteousness between people. And he was really in the business of creating a new story of Jewish identity. Modernity was another moment of crisis. For example, most Ashkenazi Jews, this is a little less true of Sephardi Jews. But most Ashkenazi Jews, the version of Judaism they have developed is a response to modernity. Ultra orthodox Jews is a response to modernity. National religious Jews are a response to modernity. Reform Judaism is a response to modernity. And because of the enlightenment and, and what it produced is a need to reimagine Judaism. You had this moment of division and stories being told and in that process, Jews get lost. And I guess I want to say that we're at a moment where it may be similarly there's going to be a competition over the story of being Jewish. Now, as this model of maybe a simplistic way of saying it, that American Jews to a significant extent built their version of Judaism on a principle of acceptance that they would live. Live a Jewish life where they were welcomed by their broader surroundings. And it may be that they need to transition to some extent to a model of preservation rather than acceptance.
- [13:20]
A
That's it for our sneak peek today. If you want to catch the full episode, please subscribe to inside. Call me back by following the link in the description or by going to arkmedia.org that's ark media.org your support is what allows us to do what we we do here at arc Media. I hope to see you there. Call me back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Our community manager is Ava Wiener. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.