← Conversations with Coleman
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- [00:01]
Coleman Hughes
Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Josh Hammer. Josh is an American political commentator, attorney and columnist. He serves as the senior editor at large at Newsweek, where he hosts the Josh Hammer Show. In this episode, we talk about his new book, Israel and Civilization. Josh and I have a lot of agreements about Israel, but this conversation focus mainly on our disagreements, in particular on the special status of Judaism as a set of religious beliefs and on the ethics of religious intermarriage. So without further ado, Josh Hammer.
- [00:44]
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- [01:17]
Josh Hammer
Yeah.
- [01:17]
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- [01:41]
Coleman Hughes
Okay. Josh Hammer, thanks so much for coming on my show.
- [01:44]
Josh Hammer
Coleman, it's a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for having me.
- [01:47]
Coleman Hughes
So I've read about two thirds of your book and there's a lot of interesting material there to discuss. I anticipate we're going to have a lot of agreements about Israel, Palestine, and broadly. Who are the good guys in that story and who are the bad guys in that story? And then there's a lot of other topics where I anticipate we're going to have some interesting disagreements like on the role of religion and history, the role of religion and reason in morality, and some of the broader philosophical claims and kind of background that you're coming from as opposed to where I'm coming from. So I'm excited to talk about all those topics. But before we do, can you give my listeners a sense of who are you, where are you from, and what's the story that led you to write a book about not just about Israel, but about what Israel should mean to the West?
- [02:53]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, sure. So, you know, great to meet you, of course. So look, I've been in the media Space for some years now. I host my own show, the Josh Hammer show, read a weekly syndicated column, and this is my first book, you know, my personal story. Coleman, as someone who grew up in a very secular Jewish setting and has become more observant, more religious, and, you know, kind of a longer trajectory, it didn't happen overnight, but, you know, call it over the last 10 years, give or take, that, that personal story is very much there in, in the book. But, you know, even before I was becoming more observant, I've always been passionate about the state of Israel and just the, the thriving and flourishing of the Jewish people. It has always been pretty obvious to me, Coleman, that the Jewish people are, are not just this tiny, you know, way less than 1% of the world's population there, but when you accept the notion that a massive majority of the world subscribes to some sort of monotheistic religion there, I mean, it just should be obvious that this tiny smidgen of the globe, the Jewish people, you know, they gave monotheism to the world there, and that the fate therefore of that original nation should have some greater bearing than this tiny statistical minority might otherwise entail. But the state of Israel obviously itself being under constant assault. But ultimately it was not, Coleman, October 7th itself. It was not the horrific pogrom on that day that encouraged me to write this book. It was really the world's reaction to that pogrom. It was really just looking around what I saw in the week or two, the month after October 7, 2023, full disclosure, I actually was planning on writing a totally different book. I had a book proposal ready to go and I saw the world's reaction to October 7th. And my agent said to me, you might want to consider writing about this because like so many other Jews, so many other defenders of the West, I was just so shocked and horrified at what I saw. So that's kind of what led ultimately to changing course and to writing this book, which as you properly note, is not merely kind of a, you know, a blue and white Magen David, Star of David kind of style of hasbara of a pro Israel book. It certainly includes elements of that, for sure, but the book really is fundamentally a defense of the Jewish people, of the original children of Israel, of Judaism, of monotheism, and ultimately really of the Bible as well there. So, you know, it all germinated though, Coleman, from the reaction that I saw to October 7th. The wor the world had an opportunity there to see this barbaric 7th century Islamist death cult attack on this tiny nation and see that as a proxy for the assault on the west that it was. And they had a very stark moral opportunity that they could have seized and taken advantage of. They failed to do so. And it was really just the shock and dismay at that that I think galvanized me to ultimately write this.
- [05:43]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, okay, so I guess let's start there. You already mentioned a bit about the importance of monotheism as a concept for you and the significance of the fact that Judaism is to my knowledge, the world's first monotheism, certainly the one that survived and brought birthed Christianity and Islam. By turns you talk about sort of paganism as the alternative to monotheism. Now paganism is not a word you hear very much anymore, unless you're a historian that's studying Greek and Roman cultures or pre Christian Europe or Hindus. And very few people sort of raise their hands and identify as pagans. And it's almost a joke word or kind of like a joke insult. But paganism really just refers to any religion that's not a monotheism where you believe in many gods, many deities. And so, you know, from my perspective as an atheist, I fail to see a massive difference in principle between paganism and monotheism. To me, the devil would always be in the details, right? Like what did the Greeks believe about their pagan gods and how did that differ from the Hindu beliefs about their pagan gods? And the same question would go for monotheism. It's like, okay, you're a monotheist, but what does your God tell you to do? How does he tell you to behave? And that's where I'm going to judge the value of the religion, not whether it's a multi God system or a single God system. So where do you see, why do you see a principal difference if you do, between paganism and monotheism?
- [07:39]
Josh Hammer
Well, I think that the more interesting way to go about discussing this, we could talk about kind of abstract differences between monotheism and paganism. But to me, the more interesting part of the conversation is what is actually entailed in the monotheistic scripture in the Bible and what does it actually say? How is it actually sculpted the way that what we now refer to as the west as it was formed than how it was conceived and how it has developed in subsequent millennia. So to give, there's, you know, there's, there's so many examples obviously, but to kind of just start with, with kind of some low hanging fruit here. I argue in the book that one of the very first verses in the entire bible, literally the 27th verse, Genesis chapter one, verse 27, the divine image imperative, which kind of is kind of emblematic of monotheism, right? This, this is, this is the famous, the, the famous exhortation that God made man in his image, male and female. Coleman, in some of the earlier chapters of the book, I argue that this is really the singular underlining moral imperative for all of Western civilization. And I'm also a lawyer. I didn't mention that in kind of my brief intro to your viewers. But the law shapes a lot of how I think I clerk for a federal appeals judge. I'm a huge lover of America and a student of American history. To kind of just give one example here as to Genesis 1:27, I think how it relates to the American story and maybe kind of to what you're getting at as well, I oftentimes do a little bit of a thought experiment there. So Thomas Jefferson, writing, writing the Declaration in 1776, famously says, we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. And he was of course largely copying, not entirely, but he was largely kind of imitating John Locke from the Second Treatise over in England about a century prior. But the thought experiment, Coleman is essentially as follows. I asked myself, is this actually self evident to every single person all throughout the world? For instance, you know, if you are a goat herder in the mountains of Afghanistan, you know, is it true that you could kind of just close your eyes and kind of just say, oh wow, it really is self evident that all men are created equal. They are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights. And I think that the intellectually honest person has to answer that. No, it is not self evident for every people, in every context, every situation, all throughout the world. Rather, the reason that it struck very smart men like Locke and Jefferson as self evidence, because they were thinking and writing in a certain milieu, in a certain cultural context there. And to me, that's all ultimately downstream of certain biblical claims, such as Genesis 1:27, this assertion that we are all made in the image of the divine. It follows that if we are all made in God's image, then we all have a spark of the divine. We absolutely all have some inherent moral worth, some inherent dignity. And ultimately, I think you could probably take that even further and say that Genesis 127 is really kind of the ultimate undergird for the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment there. It's really kind of the ultimate reason among others of course, that we are in such good position to kind of fight back against modern wokeism, modern so called DEI and all sorts of other divisive ideologies that would seek to divide us on things, anything other than our equal moral worth in the eyes of our creator. So you know, that would just be one example there of kind of a specific claim in the scripture that I think is just overwhelmingly powerful and is truly undeniably shaped the course of human history there. How about private property rights? Private property rights are all throughout, all throughout the Bible. Anyone claiming to be a socialist and a Marxist and a religious Jew or a religious Christian, I genuinely do not understand how you can possibly reconcile that. I mean there are literally multiple of the ten Commandments that affirm private property rights. Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet there. There are literally entire treatises of the Talmud, of the Oral Torah dedicated to explicating the also private property there. So you know, in many ways, you know, the modern notion of private property rights is kind of downstream of the Bible as well. And basically just comparing on an empirical level, I mean, GDP per capita, you know, just general economic metrics when it comes to private property rights systems versus non private property rights systems. Seems to me that there is a clear winner there and it is private property rights. That would just be another example of something downstream from the specific monotheism of the Bible as well. There's any number of other examples, but I don't want to go too far astray as well.
- [12:16]
Coleman Hughes
Okay, so yeah, I think this may be an area where we have a disagreement because I would definitely acknowledge that Judaism and Christianity are a part of the legacy and the inheritance of Western societies, including with things like property rights, individual liberty. I don't think it's totally an accident that those ideas would come down the line from biblical roots. At the same time, I really think there's a lot of other, there's a lot of other influences that don't come from the Bible that, that account for that. At the same time, I think the founding fathers existed at the high point of the Enlightenment which took aspects of Christianity, rejected others, took aspects of the Old Testament and added frankly new ideas about reason and individualism that allowed for the first time a group of people to write a constitution that for instance had strict separation of church and state. And you know, had those ideas not been so ascendant at the time because of the Enlightenment in particular, America might have defaulted to a much more heavily Christian forward state of affairs in terms of its statecraft. At the same time, you see societies around the world that don't have Christian roots, whether it's, you know, Japan or South Korea, which, which have pretty strong property rights and have gotten there through other routes. And then you have, you know, the countries where Islam is ascendant, which would share many of the aspects of the Judeo Christian creation story and yet have gone in totally different directions. And so from my point of view, it looks like there's kind of a bath of ideas where Christianity, Judeo Christian, the Judeo Christian inheritance is like one element, but, but it has to be mixed in the soup with, with, with the European Enlightenment and with other ideas in order to get America and the modern West.
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Josh Hammer
Yeah, so look, a lot to respond to there for sure. Look, I, I am a fan, to be sure, of various non Jewish or non Christian thinkers. I happen to be a big fan of Aristotle actually. So, you know, one of my, you know, one of my side projects, Coleman, I mentioned my legal background. One of my side projects for the past five years has been explicating a somewhat bespoke take on the question of constitutional interpretation. I call it common good originalism. It's a, it's a slight twist on original. It's neither here nor there for present purposes. But one of the ways that I like to explain my approach there is it's actually very heavy on the Aristotelian phraseology of a telos, of having a teleology there. I actually quote Aristotle, you know, kind of in my seminal essay on the topic, a lot actually. So look, there's any number of pagans, you know, shall we say, you know, influences that have had tremendous, tremendous positive impact on, on civilization there. And you know, I, at a fundamental level, I don't even necessarily reject the, the Straussian conception of Western civilization as being forged out of the crucible of both reason and revelation, of being the crucible of both Athens and Jerusalem. Rather, my claim is that I think that revelation and the Bible has tended to get the short shrift so to kind of, you know, to kind of give like a very clumsy analogy, you know, modern post World War II American conservatism has often been conceived of as this fusionism is, is the term between libertarianism or laissez faire economics and moral or social traditionalism. So the same way that I think a lot of social conservatives feel that they've gone the short end of this bargain, so too do I think that that Revelation has tended to get the short end of this bargain. And the American founders are very interesting because you're right, they were extremely well read. But you know, if you, if you go back and you actually look and various people have actually tried to empirically deduce this, if you look at, at the books that the colonists were, were most frequently reading and talking about that sermons and churches the original colonies were most talking about, you know, I think a lot of contemporary students would be forgiven for thinking that they were most frequently reading John Locke's second treatise, books like that. It really actually was the Bible that above all that was the most frequently cited and discussed work around that time there. And you know, another couple of examples there. I mean, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, you know, famously has the verse of Leviticus there. Leviticus, chapter 25. Thou shalt proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof. Thomas Jefferson, you know, who himself was not exactly a theologically orthodox Christian. Even Jefferson won the great national seal of the United States actually to be Moses and the Israelites parting the Red Sea. So, you know, this kind of biblical phraseology and symbols are really just all throughout the American story as well. But yeah, of course, I mean, look, I mean every country is going to have its own unique story there. I mean, you mentioned South Korea is one example. South Korea is actually a very Christian country this day. I'm not entirely sure at exactly what point they decide to have the extremely strong private property rights protection they have there. Japan is, Japan is interesting because Japan is definitely not a primarily Christian country. You know, did their system of private property rights really kind of only come into place after they kind of open themselves out to Western style influence? Probably, but you know, neither here nor there perhaps for present purposes. But look, the point is, I think that I absolutely agree with your implicit point that a lot of other influences are important there. I think you and I do have a pretty profound disagreement on the issue issue of so called separation of church and state. I'm going to warn you in advance, you're probably not going to like parts of the final chapter of my book where I talk about this at great length. Actually. I happen to think that so called separation of church and state is actually a historical legal misnomer. I say this as an Orthodox Jew, by the way, but you know, neither here nor there for present purposes. But I agree with you certainly that the American founding was intellectual medley, that they were not simply trying to transpose the Bible into the US Constitution. But I do think that it probably was the plurality or predominant influence probably more so than anything else.
- [18:59]
Coleman Hughes
Right. So there's a section of your book where you talk about where morality comes from, and you're quite hard on the idea that it could come from science, because science is. Science deals with the realms of facts and explanations for why things happen the way they do in the physical world, but not with how you should live your life, not with questions of good and evil. And faith obviously does. So, you know, my question there is, you know, as, as an, as an atheist, as someone that I don't believe that I know for sure what, what, what. Who created or how the world was created. But I think science gives us probably the best provisional answers. And I find it hard to believe that any particular faith tradition happens to have the revealed truth. And, you know, to me, all religions, they don't look the same in their consequences, but they do look pretty much the same in terms of how likely they are to be the true story of. Of the universe. And yet I still find it. I find it easy to believe that there is such a thing as right and there's such a thing as wrong. And rather than be grounded in Scripture, I find my sense of right and wrong to be grounded in, you know, broadly what promotes human flourishing and what doesn't. And there can be lots of disagreement about that question. People can be wrong about it. But I don't find it at all difficult to motivate that space of morality without a God giving me permission to do that.
- [20:47]
Josh Hammer
So, you know, Coleman, you're a very smart person. I've been a fan of you for many years. It's great. It's really great to be on your show. I mean, I mean, you are clearly capable of doing logical reasoning in a sophisticated manner there. You know, unfortunately, a lot of people who don't start, I think, with a principled starting position of, you know, as it says in Leviticus, I am the Lord your God, you shall be holy, because I am holy. Those who are not starting off at a starting point like that there can, Can. Can go off the rails a little bit when it comes to just trying to kind of think in the abstract about what is the good, what is the bad, what is, what is human flourishing. I mean, the book Israel and Civilization opens with my visit to, to Treblinka there in Poland, the second deadliest of all the Nazi death camps after Auschwitz Birkenau. And, you know, there's not a whole lot left of the Treblinka death camp, because what happened was when the Soviets started Invading from, From. From. From the Eastern Front. The Nazis, unlike Hamas, who literally lives crimes, the Nazis at least didn't need to try to cover it up. So there's not a whole lot left, actually, of the infrastructure at Treblinka, but there are the remnants of. Of the railroad tracks from the Warsaw Ghetto, which is about an hour, hour and a half drive to the southwest of Treblinka. And, you know, in some ways, German, quote, unquote reason when it comes to kind of German doctrines, such as the doctrine of. Of Lebensraum, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, this, this notion that there are certain just so grotesquely inferior races to the Aryan race, the master race, that the only logical cause, you know, you know, ends up being euthanasia or extermination. You know, that was their logical conclusion of what they thought promoted reason or human flourishing. Which again strikes me and strikes you as the quintessence of evil. And it is. It is obviously the quintessence of evil. I guess the only question that I would say, though, is on what objective criteria can you or I definitively say that this is actually evil there? And unless there is at least some sort of recourse to something other than our own subjective morality, which. Which has tended to change a lot there. I mean, just to give, you know, another. Another example there, you know, we were talking about paganism a little bit earlier. So, you know, one of the most recent portions of the Torah, one of the most recent parsha, the recent parsha that we just read in synagogues about a week ago or so, is a very famous parsha called Parsha Kodeshim, where there are very, very famous lines in here, such as the famous exhortation that you shall treat your stranger as your own fellow there, that's in this parsha. And among the exhortations in this particular Torah portion is there are multiple references to Malach. Malach was a pagan God around the time that the Bible was codified thousands and thousands of years ago there, you know, these pagan societies would literally engage in child sacrifice there. And they. I guess they did so because they thought that that was what promoted human flourishing. So, look, I mean, there are all sorts of kind of crazy examples that I can whip out there, but I just struggle to discern how exactly someone can definitively say that this is right or this is wrong, absent recourse to something beyond just the limits of our human knowledge.
- [23:59]
Coleman Hughes
Okay, so I think there's two parts to my response. The first part is that one can objectively say that something like the Holocaust was evil or something like, you know, burning children alive and as human sacrifice is evil because you know, we know that, that, that physical pain with no silver lining is, is a bad thing if, if the word bad means anything. Just burning everyone alive for no discernible purpose is evil. Right. And so insofar as there actually isn't a God that wants us to sacrifice those children, all we're doing is, is causing harm to the child and to their family with, with no discernible upside. Now you could say without religion. How do I know that that's not just my opinion? Well, I think, first of all I can think, I think I could make a pretty good case based on what we know about how humans suffer and how humans. Based on human nature really. Right. Like we, we know all humans are attached to their children pretty much, except for, you know, people that are broken essentially. And we know that severing the bond between a mother and a child causes both immense suffering. We don't have to pretend we don't know this. We don't have to pretend we need a religion to tell us this. And so to do that with no discernible upside. I think you can say that's evil without religion. But then the second part of my response would be you could easily turn that argument against religious people to ask just like, where do you get anti slavery from the Bible, right? If, if, how, how can you say as, as a Jew or a Christian, really, you read the Bible cover to cover, you're going to see many, many ways in which slavery is condoned, though it's regulated, obviously even in ways that were probably progressive for the era it was written. But you just can't get an argument that slavery is everywhere and always a bad thing from the Bible or the Quran. So I would turn that back on a religious person on you in this case. Like where do you get the immorality of slavery if not by a reasoned critique or even a reasoned like clever rereading of certain passages?
- [26:39]
Josh Hammer
No. So fantastic question. Look, so you know, I hesitate, Coleman, to kind of go, you know, full scale biblical apologia mode. That's not necessarily my claim to fame or anything like that there, but I guess I'll attempt to do the best I can here. So look, the best reading, and look, I can't really speak frankly to the New Testament. That's just, that's not my holy book. That's kind of beyond the confines in my area of expertise. But the Hebrew Bible is and especially the five books of Moses, what we call the Torah, was given at a a very specific time for a very specific nation. This is a key point there that was given at a certain time in a given context. The same way that the US Constitution was codified at a specific time for a specific context there. But even accepting that premise there and again, this is actually really explicated in the Talmud, in the Oral Torah, much more so than the actual written Torah. There are all sorts of rules about manumission, about freeing slaves there. And the rabbis of the Talmud slaves in the biblical era were given the opportunity to free themselves. Every seven years was a number from their slaveholders. They actually had the opportunity if they were happy to stay. And the rabbis of the Talmud look extremely harshly on slaves who choose to stay because they recognize that the ideal obviously is human freedom and that you should not be bondage and servitude for any longer. So as you accurately note, you know, the Bible, the Talmud and so forth there was actually very, shall we say, progressive, a word that I don't typically use every day, but very progressive even for its era when it comes to this particular issue there. But even kind of fast forwarding a little bit there and taking it to closer to modern times, the whole 19th century Antebellum slavery debate there. Look you look at some of the most famous abolitionists just for context. Coleman. I'm born on Abraham Lincoln's birthday. He's my hero of all heroes in American history. I quote him on a seemingly daily basis. Seems there you look at a lot of the great abolitionists there in the lead up to the Civil War. I'm not going to say that every single person obviously was motivated by their intense faith, especially their intense Christian faith. That would be a remarkably over inclusive statement. And I wouldn't be justified in saying it, but a very, very strong percentage of the leading abolitionists in the call it decade and a half, two decades Lena Civil War were motivated not in spite of, but due to their Christian faith. Abraham Lincoln himself actually was probably the most biblically literate statesman in American history. I mean his second inaugural address, this pithy inaugural address which he gives just about a month, month and a half before he's tragically assassinated. It's literally 700 words. I mean it's an op ed but it's considered to be perhaps the greatest political speech in American history. Almost every line has a biblical reference in there. He's referencing the Old Testament, the New Testament there. He was really, really, really clinging to his faith above all. And you know, the most obvious place that you could point to to say that, okay, this is actually the logical starting point to say that slavery is, is, is irreconcilable with the biblical vision of human flourishing. The most obvious starting point would, would be where we started our conversation maybe 15, 20 minutes ago or so, which was Genesis 1:27, this notion that, that we are all made in the divine female God created them there. So, you know, that certainly is, I think, what many of the antebellum Christians were, were leading up to. But again, I don't want, I also don't want to be seen by, by your viewers as being wholly dismissive of reason. I, I absolutely think that reason has a role here. I, I, this is a little bit in the early chapters of the book as well. So, for instance, Maimonides, one of the great medieval Jewish sages, actually writes about this a lot. Maimonides what, himself was a scholar of Aristotle, of various other non Jewish, non Christian pagan sources. And Maimonides essentially argues that using reason as an analytical tool is wholly appropriate when it comes to secondary or tertiary reasoning. The whole point, Coleman, and this is kind of, you know, my, my point of talking about the, the horrors of, of Treblinka or Moloch and child sacrifice. To me, you have to have a starting place. And then from there, once you, once you have an exogenous worldview, a worldview that has been formed by exogenous forces, then reason can be absolutely wholly appropriate there when it comes to logical deducements about secondary tertiary conclusions there. But I guess where I struggle still is then just having it kind of as your principled starting place.
- [31:17]
Coleman Hughes
Right? So a few things. One, you know, I, I think I, I do view the Christianity's force into slavery debate as differently than you in the following sense. You know, in the 19th century, in the lead up to the Civil War, I think it's fair to say over 95% of Americans were Christian, if not 99%, something close to it. So obviously, you know, Christians were on both sides of that issue. The difference was that if you go back and look at the minutes of Congress when they would debate the morality of slavery, pretty frequently in the decades leading up to the Civil War, the Southerners that were pro slavery would simply devastate the Northerners with quote after quote after quote from the Old Testament and the New Testament with the example of the Apostle Paul, like telling a runaway slave to go back to his master with the fairly devastating argument from a Christian point of view that Jesus would have encountered many, many slaves in, in his area of the Roman Empire during his lifetime. And there's no record in, in the Bible of him just saying the simple sentence slavery is wrong. Right? When, when he was he, he had no compunction being extremely controversial in his moral views at the time, which is, you know, ultimately what got him killed. And so the truth is that the Southerners had the better argument from a point of view of biblical scripture, and certainly northerners that became abolitionists. You know, Christianity was the only moral language in town. So there was, there really was almost no such thing as making a moral argument that didn't come from a Christian perspective. And if you had a thought, you had to frame it in a Christian perspective for it to even make sense to yourself, much less to make sense to other people. Because I don't think there was a language of secular morality that anybody really knew how to speak in a Christian nation. So to me, I view this partly through the lens of like the following thought experiment. If there were just one sentence either in the Old Testament or the New Testament, like instead of all the stuff about how to treat your slaves, just one unambiguous sentence akin to thou shall not kill, perhaps even handed in the Ten Commandments, I think the entire history of slavery is, is different. Would you, would you, would you agree with that? Like, I think it gets abolished much earlier. I think we probably, it's probably never exists in America if it's just totally unambiguous.
- [34:08]
Josh Hammer
No, I, I, I, I, I would certainly agree with that. I, I, I guess my view of the Bible's grappling with slavery, you know, including kind of the Talmudic rabbis viewing it disfavorably along the lines of what I said there, was not necessarily wholly dissimilar from the American founders view of slavery. The American founders, some of them, look, some of them obviously were overtly pro slavery. I mean, you did have your John C. Calhoun types, he was not a founder, but you have people like that who genuinely viewed it as a positive good. That's, that's the infamous line associated with John C. Calhoun's social thought. But the, the, the more predominant way of viewing slavery at the time, the American, of the American founding, was that this was something that was wrong. And we are going to kind of put the, the starting places to eventually kind of lay the seeds for this eventually being eradicated and phased out. That's kind of the entire conception of Abraham Lincoln as leading a second founding, a new founding there, which Leo Strauss and many others have talked about there. And you know, just get. There's, there's a lot of examples there in the U.S. constitution. But for instance, the fact that the word slavery never appears, the fact that they actually phase out the importation of new slaves after the year 1808, there's a clause to that effect there. So I think similarly, again, kind of getting back to what I was saying about how the Bible is given in a specific time for a specific, specific nation in a specific milieu there. They, they were not ready at that time to eradicate what was then a ubiquitous institution there. But again, the fact that slaves being freed, manumission of slavery there is, is well established. There are rules and regulations for it there. There was, there was really no context of a slave being held for life. And then even those who just chose to kind of to stay of their own volition were actually look, looked deeply, deeply negatively upon there. You might suggest a similar argument such that yes, it is there, but there are any number of other factors indicating that it was not viewed particularly favorably and that one day it ultimately might be phased out or eradicated. But I'm not going to object to your question. I think that your conclusion is sound, which is that if there had been a very simple thou shalt not own a fellow human being as a slave provision there at some point in the Bible, then the course of Western civilization, history definitely would have taken different course. I totally agree with, with you on that.
- [36:28]
Coleman Hughes
So the idea that the way I see your, your book is that you're. You hope to sort of convince people that care about the west that Israel is an important cause to them too. Is that part of, would that be an accurate way to describe part of the purpose of the book?
- [36:50]
Josh Hammer
Yeah. And again, the word Israel here, Coleman, is, is something of a double entendre, right? I mean, it is referring to the state of Israel. It absolutely is referring to the post October 7th hostilities between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, everything that we've seen for the past year and a half. But it along the lines of, you know, the past 35 minutes of our conversation, it's also referring not just to the capital estate of Israel, but also the, the nation of Israel, the children of Israel and this entire notion of a biblical inheritance. And it's, it's arguing that just as the state of Israel is the geopolitical canary in the coal mine for the broader west west, so too are the children of Israel, the Jewish people, the canary in the coal mine as well here. And the same way that the broader west would be deeply, deeply mistaken to forsake the state of Israel as being an indispensable cog in in the broader apparatus. So too would would Christians and everyone else who cares about what state we refer to as Western civilization. So too would they be gravely mistaken to try to forsake or abandon the Jewish people as well.
- [37:54]
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- [38:52]
Coleman Hughes
In your book you talk a lot about how sort of the fruits of secular America and secular liberalism have led to a situation where, you know, by default, young liberals, young Democrats, progressives hate Israel. If they weren't developing some, if they weren't already anti Semitic, I think many of them have developed anti Semitic tendencies and resonances in the past two years at minimum. And one solution to this, you say is a kind of like a Christian revival which you hope will retie the bond between a Christian society and its Judeo Christian roots. Is that accurate?
- [39:49]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, I think it's broadly accurate. I have long believed that one of the greatest things that could happen to America would be some sort of Great Awakening similar to an 18th or 19th century mass Christian revival. Look, I mean, it obviously depends on what type of theology we're talking about here. We actually are are tragically increasing seeing the rise, albeit still on the fringes, but the rise of at least some strand of Christian anti Semitism, which has always been pretty foreign actually to the American story. This is a. I mean, look, there have been exceptions, obviously. I mean Father Coughlin, the infamous anti Semitic radio host on the airwaves there during the FDR presidency in the 1930s. So there have been exceptions, but for the most part, theologically Christian anti Semitism has been a fringe phenomenon. But. But yeah, generally speaking, I mean, just looking at a lot of the great social maladies that afflicts current contemporary America. I mean Teenagers who are suffering from tragically high percentages of loneliness despondency, spending too much time on TikTok Instagram, looking at people who are too skinny, having eaten disorders. I mean, you know, all the things that, and there's a lot that's currently affecting America. I mean the drug crisis, I mean my cousin tragically seven, seven, I guess eight years ago now, overdose and died from fentanyl. I mean, I know, I know this personal. There are a lot of social maladies here in America there. It seems to me that one of the best bang for your buck propositions if it were to happen to not be a literal panacea, but about as close to a panacea as we could realistically aim to get for there. And this includes trying to shore up the pro Jewish philosemitic foundations of this country upon which our founders like George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, they spoke so beautifully on this topic. Topic, yeah. I think one of the best bang for your buck propositions would be some sort of Christian revival for sure.
- [41:43]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah. So I, I agree about the problem. I definitely agree that intersectionality and wokeness has led to a, a type of anti Semitism that whether or not it's, it's the, the intention is anti Semitic, the result clearly is. Right. Like the result is a, a totally out of proportion focus on Israel increasingly a focus on just Jewish presence and Jewish overrepresentation in various fields. A kind of paranoid, borderline schizophrenic obsession with pointing out every time you see a Jew, you know, anywhere in society or in a leadership position like this is. I see it on, on, on Twitter, I see it on YouTube and so forth. Yet you know, at the same time it's not obvious to me that Christianity would be the solution. Partly for reasons you point out. Right. This gets at something that's a bit of a puzzle and I don't think I've ever thought about, which is why did American Christianity never go all in on anti Semitism, where European Christianity for, you know, a thousand years could not get enough of anti Semitic beliefs between, you know, the Jews are drinking the blood of Christian children, which Candace Owens believes and propagates now to just the programs all over Eastern Europe, Christian societies, to the Inquisition, to the general allegation that the Jews killed our prophet, the Jews killed Christ. Why did all that stuff live so deeply in European Christianity but not American Christianity?
- [43:40]
Josh Hammer
Excellent question. I actually was just asked this on a recent show as well. That was the first time I was asked. This is not only the second Time I've been asked it. I don't pretend to know the exact answer, Colin, but I can talk you through at least some of my hypotheses as to why that is the case. Case and the basic reason is that when you, when you look at the founding of America, not just in the late 18th century, but literally going back to the sailing of the Mayflower, something that I talk about as well in one of my earlier chapters of the book there, and you, you look at the way that the men in the, in that case who sailed across the ocean on the Mayflower, that they actually conceived of themselves, they literally did think of themselves. And this is a matter of public record, it can be easily googled. They, they thought of themselves as new Israelites crossing their version of the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, Sir William Bradford, the captain of the Mayflower who ends up becoming the second governor of Plymouth Colony, he himself was a student of a well known Christian Hebraist from back in England. Hebrais is one of these antiquated terms, kind of like pagan, I guess. A Hebrais is someone, as the name would imply, who studies biblical Hebrew, the Bible and so forth there. And as a student of this man, Ainsworth, Sir William Bradford, the captain the Mayflower actually himself spoke about a thousand words given or take of Hebrew. There actually was some, even some chapter on the Mayflower about potentially just issuing a clean break with the English language upon landing at Plymouth Colony and then just starting to speak Hebrew. It never happened obviously, but they did discuss it actually. And it was this imagery, this notion of America being this new birth of freedom akin to Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. As we mentioned earlier, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin won the national seal of the United States States to be Moses parting the Red Sea there. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia with, with Leviticus, George Washington, this beautiful letter to the Hebrew congregation of Newport, Rhode island in 1790. Again, I, I think that that the type of Christians that lived in America, quite literally going back to as far back as the Mayflower, had this positive view of the Hebrew Bible of the Old Testament. That's not to say that they were here, there and everywhere themselves Jew lovers. They were not necessarily the kind of people to just kind of, you know, gush about how every Jew they met was the greatest person. I mean, to be clear there, there, there is some of that. I mean John Adams and Alexander Hamilton at times say something pretty similar to that. They are very philosomatic. I'm not claiming that all the pilgrims were themselves Phylo Semitic, but they had such an attachment to the Old Testament story there that I think it ultimately kind of permeated into kind of, of fighting for religious liberty, certainly in a way that would benefit the original people of the book, the Jewish people there. Now, look, there's something, there's probably something to be said as well for the fact that even though there was a large Catholic population, certainly at the time of the American founding, especially in Maryland, which was the largest percentage Catholic of the original colonies there, it really was Protestantism and kind of, this very kind of Old Testament heavy conception of Protestantism that really was, was pervasive, if not outright ubiquitous there. So the specific kind of type of Protestantism that really proliferated there in the colonial era probably had a lot to do with it as well. But I don't think anyone has a singular definitive answer. I will tell you this, Coleman. I am deeply, deeply worried about what I see in certain pockets of the discourse, call it these days, about a distinctly anti Semitic strand of Christian thinking kind of increasingly being let out of the bag there. You know, when I see some people talking about, you know, you know, how, how God abandoned the Jews for, you know, forsake the Jews. You know, you mentioned Candace Owens there certainly some, some of Tucker Carlson's guests seem to have very problematic thoughts on these matters, shall we say, you know, increasingly this, this cat is being led out of the bag and it's, it's trying to, trying to prevent as much hemorrhaging on that front as possible. That is definitely one of the reasons why I wrote this book, that's for sure.
- [47:45]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah. Okay, so in another passage of, of the book, you talk about intermarriage for Jews and you worry that this is to say a Jew marrying a non Jew can produce religiously confused or outright non Jewish children and this is something you mourn. So to my ear, that to me sounds like someone that has valued, chosen to value membership of the tribe and norms of a tribe greater than an individual's freedom to fall in love and not freedom rather, but an individual's choice to marry someone across religion. And so I want to get at what's, what's, what's going on there for you. Is it the marriage or is it Jews having Jewish children and, and intermarriage being harmful to that goal?
- [48:55]
Josh Hammer
Well, it's both. I, I think, I think the two are essentially the same thing. I mean, look, let me just kind of say off, off, off the get go here. You know, I think one of the greatest lies of Kind of modern post World War II liberalism in both its left and right leaning strands, you know, is this notion that, you know, e pluribus unum, that of equality, you know, of, of egalitarianism. I think one, I think one of the greatest lies is that modern equality and egalitarianism necessarily negates the tribal nature of humanity. But I, I just, I fundamentally reject that. I mean, I can, I can believe two things at the same time. I, I can believe that human beings are, are in many ways inherently tribal, that tribalism is simply inherent to the human condition and has been since time immemorial. And on the other hand, I can absolutely also believe in the genuine equal morality and dignity of all mankind. With again, my lean citation to that being Genesis 1, chapter 27 there. So Jews, like, I think a lot of other people, are tribal. And this has a very long strand in Jewish thinking. Literally the opening of one of the most famous Talmudic tractates called Perkei avot. It's about the ethics of the fathers. It's one of the most oft cited Talmud tractates because it's not necessarily about kind of the minutia of property rights. You know, your ox gore someone. What do you do? No, this trate is really more about ethics and values and like how you ought to live a good life more broadly there. And literally the opening Mishnah, the opening lines of, of per Kay of O, Chapter 1, Verse 1, talks about the intergenerational transmission, how Moses received the word from God, Moses gave it to Joshua, to the elders, and on and on there. So this notion of an intergenerational transmission of ideas, customs, worldview, way of life is bedrock to how the Jewish people think of themselves. But I think it's also bedrock to how any tribe or nation ought to think of itself as well. So I'm a big fan of Edmund Burke. For instance, the late 18th century British statesman Burke famously describes the entire idea of a nation as being this intergenerational compact between the dead, the living and the yet unborn. You know, to me that seems to be saying the exact same thing. For instance, as per K of O to chapter one, verse one there. So, you know, thinking about Jews and the question of intermarriage, it seems to me to be very simple that if you actually think that Judaism, that the Hebrew Bible and all that flows from that has very important, important things to teach the world, then you want to strengthen and fortify the Jewish people. And the easiest way to do that is, yes, to marry fellow Jews and to raise Jewish children there. And look, I mean I've seen this in my own life. I've seen so many examples of people who have a mother or father of different religions there. It sometimes works out. I have friends for whom it has worked out. Definitely. I can absolutely vouch for that on a personal level, some of my friendships. But certainly the best bang for your buck proposition if you are trying to better secure the Jewish future, the future of the original people of the book is this launching off point to the broader biblical inheritance there. It seems to me that marrying your fellow Jews and having Jewish children is the easiest and best way to do that.
- [52:12]
Coleman Hughes
So if you're Jewish and you marry a non Jew, but you raise your kids as Jews and you do all the traditions, what's wrong with that in your book?
- [52:23]
Josh Hammer
Well look, I mean we could talk about literal halaka, like Jewish law here. So I mean under Jewish law you are Jewish for one of two reasons. One is your mother is Jewish or two is that you have a legitimate conversion under, under Jewish law, these, yeah.
- [52:39]
Coleman Hughes
So if you convert the kids.
- [52:42]
Josh Hammer
Well look, if, if, or it's a.
- [52:44]
Coleman Hughes
Jewish mother and a non Jewish father. Mother.
- [52:46]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, so, so the latter is an easier example. Right. So I mean I, I have personal friends, I, I have numerous personal friends who grew up with a Jewish mother and a, and a non Jewish typically Christian father and they actually have grown up to, to, to, to be very, very strong Jews, strong supporters of Israel, strong Jewish identity and so forth there. So look, I mean every situation like this is going to be necessarily a little bit over inclusive as a potential remedy. Coleman, I'm just saying that the best bang for your buck proposition there if you're trying to maximize the chances of having the succeeding generation of Jews be one Halakic, like actual Jews under Jewish law and then two, be proud Jews who have a Jewish education, who have steeped in Jewish culture, who value the traditions, the weekly Sabbath and so forth there the best proposition is to have an authentically Jewish home and for Jews to marry fellow Jews.
- [53:40]
Coleman Hughes
So the assumption there is that your choice of a marriage partner should above all prioritize Jewish values as opposed to say who you fall in love with as an individual and want to raise a family with. Right.
- [54:00]
Josh Hammer
I think that's a, that's a fine. I'm not gonna, I'm not going to object to that. Yeah, look, I, I, I, I, I think that the notion of choosing your spouse, spouse because you know, this is the one person absent any kind of constraints, any, any, any sorts of unchosen obligation of choosing a spouse solely and exclusively because this is the person that.
- [54:18]
Coleman Hughes
You, that you want to want to spend the rest of your life with, your one life.
- [54:22]
Josh Hammer
That is not the Jewish way of dating at all actually. In fact, if you look at many very religious Jews, you know, you know, black cat Jews, Haredi Jews, they will oftentimes get engaged to one another within weeks, literal weeks. So you know, within two weeks, two, three, four dates there, you know, at that point the contract is sealed there. That's not how my wife and I did it to be. I'm not gonna pretend like that's how that, that's how we did it, that that is essentially how my very religious brother in law over in, in Israel did it there. But the idea here is that you want to lock in the values and what you care about over the mid to long term. And then, you know, things such as love and kind of a Hallmark card, sort of the sense they're kind of this kind of, you know, burning kind of physical desire, that sort of stuff is secondary, tertiary, and then we'll come out after that.
- [55:10]
Coleman Hughes
So I, I, I, I just went to a, a while ago, Passover Seder with a family that is Jewish father, non Jewish mother, Jewish kids and converted Jewish kids. And I, I, I have to say, I, I, I, I don't see anything in principle wrong. You have a goal of maintaining your Jewish identity and making sure, as this particular person does, that his kids are Jewish, his kids learn Jewish values, and that their Jewish identity is important to them. Conversely, I mean, I'm sure you and I both know tons of Jewish couples that have kids whose Jewish identity lapses despite the fact that both parents are Jewish under Jewish law and they're Jewish under Jewish law. And so my feeling is that whatever your value set is, whether it's religious or more about choosing the individual you want to spend the rest of your life with from the perspective of your happiness as a couple, excluding people on the basis of religion before getting to know them, I think is the wrong approach.
- [56:29]
Josh Hammer
Look, I think there's any number of reasons why someone would want to marry or not marry another individual. So if you are, you know, if you are a very smart person, okay, then you might not want to, to marry someone who is not, you know, has like half your intelligence, right? I mean, I, I mean there's any number of other reasons outside of religion why you simply would not necessarily want to make and, and just spend the rest of your life with that particular person. Right? But I mean to use your example of the Passover Seder, I mean, I, I don't, I, I don't know this family. Obviously, if the children had a legitimate, you know, halakhic conversion under, you know, you know, authentic Jewish law, they converted. Typically, how that would work would be at the time of their bar mitzvah, I suppose they would have a formal conversion if that's how it all worked. And they're, and they're, and, and their great. I mean, you know, that sounds, I.
- [57:25]
Coleman Hughes
Don'T know, but I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure it would have been.
- [57:27]
Josh Hammer
Yeah, that sounds fantastic. I mean, I mean, you know, far be it from me to criticize that. I mean, and to your point as well, of course, I know families for, you know, you know, very strong Jewish upbringing and the children, you know, go astray. And to be clear, you know, this happens in Christian families as well. This is obviously not just a Jewish phenomenon, but rather here, I mean, we're talking here necessarily in over inclusive statements where there's always going to be exceptions on both sides there. I'm just saying, for a bang for your buck proposition, if you truly earnestly think that Judaism has an important message to teach the world and the Jewish people are called, as the Book of Isaiah calls us, to be, to be a light unto the nations there, and that is grounded in this notion of being the original chosen people, the people of the book and so forth there, then the easiest and best way to do that is to try to put social and cultural incentives such that Jews marry fellow Jews and then, and then raise Jewish children. There are obviously going to be exceptions there, but we're just talking here generally about the rule rather than the exceptions.
- [58:28]
Coleman Hughes
I remember having an argument with a Jewish friend of mine many, many years ago about this exact topic. And when it came down to it, what he said to me is, you know what? My grandfather is a Holocaust survivor. And the notion that the line of Jewish identity would end with me and my kids is too much of an insult to my ancestors. And that's what it was about for him, especially considering how many people have tried to get rid of us. The notion that we might dwindle ourselves as a result of intermarriage is too much to bear. And I thought I understood that. I don't think it's how I would make my choices irregardless. But do you think anything like that is partly motivating your psychology here? Or is it, is it, is it really the reason you just gave so.
- [59:26]
Josh Hammer
That your friends would probably be the more typical reason that most American Jews would give as to why they choose to at least non orthodox American. I, I don't know if your friend is Orthodox, but like that to be clear, I was raised super reform secular. So I am not besmirching unnecessarily all all. But that is the typical answer that I think most non orthodox American Jews who marry fellow Jews is probably something along those lines there. That's not the way that I would answer the question. But I frankly don't much care necessarily how you answer the question as long as you get let's not call it the right answer. But the answer that I think is best of the available options there. Now I do say in the book Coleman, I'm critical of kind of this overemphasis on the Holocaust. Now the Holocaust is one of the unique tragedies in human history. I mean here I'll show the your viewers. I have here. This is literally on my desk at all times. It's the rock from the crematorium at Auschwitz. So it's right here on my desk. I keep it next to me every single day. I say it in the book just to kind of remind me about, about, about who I am. So I think about the Holocaust at some point, probably every single day of my life. And I think that most Jews in America today probably do. But, but you can overdo it, frankly with the Holocaust. And when your strongest claim to your fellow Jews, your friends, your congregants, your children and so forth, when your strongest claim is that we are compelled to do this, that we have to go to synagogue, we have to have a Shabbat dinner or a Passover state or whatever, simply because our ancestors would be livid us. I'm not entirely sure that that's the best or the most compelling reason to do so there. If you are an impressionable child and you're kind of inclined to be inquisitive and maybe challenge assumptions and ask questions there, as I was, as you probably were too, if I had to guess when you were a kid, a parent saying to you that you have to do this because Hitler killed 6 million Jews may be not the most compelling answer. I think a better answer in terms of trying to motivate your children to be the inheritors of this tradition, to take kind of the torch of generations past there, to me the better answer, or at least the more compelling answer is to say that no, we're doing this because we actually have something important to teach the world there. And this again gets Back to the entire thing that we started on when it comes to the Bible, monotheism, the imperative of being a light unto the nations as the original people of the book and so forth.
- [61:55]
Coleman Hughes
But wouldn't an inquisitive child also question that rationale on many bases? I mean, you, like you said earlier, you think a lot of faith traditions have something important to contribute to the world. So might not an inquisitive child also wonder, okay, so then is religious intermarriage in general wrong? Are you arguing every religious person should stick within their faith with who they marry, or is it specific to Judaism?
- [62:32]
Josh Hammer
Most of my pious Christian friends, Protestant or Catholic, would, I think, would probably say that, you know, an evangelical Protestant should probably marry an evangelical Protestant, that a traditionalist Catholic should probably marry a traditionalist Catholic there. But there is a big, there is a noted distinction here between Judaism and Christianity here. They're not quite exactly the same thing in any number of respects. But even holding theology aside, there's a key difference here, which is that Christianity is a universalist faith. That is the creed of Christianity, that is John 3:16. I mean, this notion that if you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then you are a Christian. That's not how Judaism works. Judaism is not a universalist creed. It's certainly not an evangelizing faith. In fact, Judaism is probably better, not described as a faith at all. I happen not to like that term. Actually. Judaism is probably best described, you know, religion is fine, but it's really a nation. It is really a nation that comes from a specific plot of land, Judea, hence the name Jew. As all nations do, they are tied to a certain part of, you know, a certain parcel of the globe. And there are unique kind of, you know, tribal affinities that happen to come about because of that there. So I do think that the case, and I've really never thought of this, to be honest with you, but I think that the case for the overarching imperative of Jewish intra marriage is probably stronger than the case for the overarching imperative of Christian intra marriage. But certainly just based on my own observations, many of my best friends to this day are very devout Christians. I think most of my devout Christian friends would say that you ought to marry someone who has your same religious worldview. But I think that the case for Jews is probably even stronger for the reasons that I just said.
- [64:30]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, well, I think I would disagree with your Christian friends as well. I mean, I just, about a year ago, I went to a wedding where the bride was Catholic the, the, the groom was Protestant. And I mean this was an amazing guy. He's like, he's in the army, he's up for being a Green Beret. He's just a total, a total stand up guy and excellent choice. And her grandparents would not come to the wedding because he wasn't Catholic. You know, and so this kind of family breaking difficult, really tragedy, it happens, you know, thousands of times a day all over the country, which this, this thing of, you know, I'm not even going to meet him because he's not the right religion. Doesn't matter how amazing the person is, right? This seems to me to be, to totally get priorities backward, right? Because if the idea is you want your child or you want your grandchild or yourself to marry a fantastic person with amazing values, really deeply held and amazing values, then you should not prejudge them based on what you assume their values to be based on the faith that they have on paper. You should actually try to meet the person and you may then learn that their values are actually quite similar to yours. And if they're not, then they're not. And then, and then, and then you know that and then, then you can disapprove of them for all the right reasons. But you know, to me the, the amount of suffering between families that, that has been caused by the just prejudiced disapproval of, of, of a mate based on, you know, essentially the concerns you're, the exact concerns you're voicing is really troublesome to me and is why I find it difficult to put myself in your mindset.
- [66:47]
Josh Hammer
Well, you know, you're saying you're talking here about meeting people for whom you share values and for whom they might be good values. To me that's kind of circular reasoning actually, because if you know what values you stand for and you know, if you are a Jew who believes in the claims that I believe to be true that Judaism brings to the world, then you, then you ought to look for someone who shares your values, which in this particular case means someone who believes in Judaism.
- [67:17]
Coleman Hughes
So let me give you an example from your book. In your book you talk about how Judaism really invented, if not dispersed, if not invented the golden rule. Don't do unto others what you would not have others do unto you. You do to your neighbor what you would want your neighbor to do to you, and so, and so forth, right? So you talk about this as a, as a distinctly Jewish value. But the truth is this, you know, this was also, this is in, you know, this is in Hindu, Sanskrit, epic poems it's also in Confucius said verbatim, right, don't do unto others what you wouldn't have them do unto you. And so if that's an example, just one example of a value that you really want in your spouse or your kid's spouse or your grandkids spouse, wouldn't it make more sense instead of to say the person has to be Jewish or the person has to be this faith to actually try to learn what their values are first and then see whether it matches the values that you put into the container of Jewish values.
- [68:32]
Josh Hammer
If you're going to limit Judaism to things like Leviticus 19, chapter 19, verse 18, to treat a stranger as a fellow, then yes, maybe we can draw kind of cross civilizational ties and say, oh, you know, kind of independently the Hindus, Confucius so forth thought of the same thing. This kind of reminds me of learning in high school about, you know, how like two or three different civilizations simultaneously claim to kind of create the concepts of the number zero, which, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I think it was like the Indus River Valley people, you know, some, some Muslim civilization, I can't remember, it doesn't matter. But yes, there, there, there are certainly there are obviously going to be examples of this. But to me again, the values here is one. Yes, I agree with you and this is where I think you and I do agree is that we can to an extent, to an extent, and I'll qualify with to an extent we can identify absence recourse to anything else, that something like the Golden Rule is a good thing to an extent, I'm not willing to kind of go the whole way and say that we can kind of wholly determine this is a good thing absent recourse. But I think to an extent we can have a moral, moral intuition that this is a, that this is a good thing. I would argue, by the way, that that moral intuition comes from the spark of divine within us because of Genesis 1:27. But, but we can have some moral intuition that this is a good thing. But more generally speaking, you know, Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18 is only one verse in this entire revelation, you know, so for instance, you know, we just had our first daughter who was born in, in December, you know, when she's only five months old now. But when she gets, you know, when it gets time for her to date, you know, in theory, I would like for my wife and I to kind of raise her in a manner such that she believes in the truth of Revelation at, at Mount Sinai a Claim, you know, by the way, that that Jewish tradition teaches there were, I forgot the exact number, but around 600,000 to just slightly over a million people standing there to witness this. It was not kind of just, just one or two people there, but the entire nation of Israel was congregated there at the base of Mount Sinai. I want her to, to believe in, in the truth of that revelation and all that that entails. That does not necessarily mean the truth simply of these more kind of universalist moral ideals like Leviticus 19, chapter 18, or you know, even, you know, even the notion that as we're commands do that if, that if you are a, a farmer or a gardener, that you have to leave the corners of your field unfarmed essentially for the poor there, you know, all these moral rules are very nice, but there are also all sorts of particularist rules that are kind of lumped together there with the universalist ideals there. So for instance, there's a laws of kosher, the laws of kashrut there. And all of these, I think have to be accepted if you accept the legitimacy of the divine revelation itself there. So it's not. I'm not solely interested in trying to find cross civilizational pollination between the various abstract moral ideals that the Bible says there. To me, there are all sorts of particularist claims from a specifically Jewish perspective as well here. This is, I'm obviously not talking here about Christian Dane, but from a very specific Jewish dating upbringing and married perspective there. There are all sorts of things that are not necessarily universalist because again, Judaism itself is not a universe religion. It is a particularist form of nationalism, frankly, because Judaism really is a nation that's end of the day.
- [72:14]
Coleman Hughes
Got it. So I think, I think that I've been misunderstanding the way we're using the word values because it's. There's two different sets of values. There's particularist Jewish values which include for instance, believing the, in the literal truth of the Mount Sinai story. Right. That's a value you hold that I don't. And then there's these other values which are more abstract, more universalizable, but which you, I think you would also agree Judaism has played a part in disseminating, including to non Jews, including to Christians, including to atheists and so forth. So that's the set of values I was thinking about, really. Like when you talk about how you feel the Jews have, have something to tell the world, essentially have something to teach the world, you're not talking about the Mount Sinai values because that would be proselytizing a particular faith, which is not what Judaism's about. You're talking about the, the values that are by definition universalizable, like the Golden Rule and like the dozen other things like that.
- [73:24]
Josh Hammer
Not necessarily, no. I think so to get back to the Mount Sinai story. So when God says in Exodus 19 that you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, this is kind of the origins of the book of Isaiah's famous line about being a light unto the nations there. The idea here is that the nation of Israel, again, this is what Judaism holds. It was chosen to be essentially a moral exemplar of what it means to embody collective holiness and to be a holy nation, to be a nation that is living as God's toehold here in, in this realm. To essentially be an example for the rest of the world. Not to evangelize, not to subjugate, certainly not to. To spread by force, by the sword or anything like that. Definitely not that. But to basically just, just live in totality by observing all the commandments there and by embodying this notion of being a kingdom of priests and, and a holy nation. So, yeah, that's going to include some universalist exhortations, such as the Golden Rule. It's also going to include a lot of particularist rules as well, such as the laws, for instance, of kosher keeping, kashrut.
- [74:34]
Coleman Hughes
One last question. We've seen this crop up a lot recently in the. The American debate, not over, not not only over Israel, but also also Ukraine, the role of, of aid, military aid and economic aid. Do you think that America should still be giving economic military aid? You can distinguish between those two to Israel, or do you think the critics of our spending on Israel at this point are right?
- [75:12]
Josh Hammer
Okay, so a couple things there. So one is the specifically economic aid portion was phased out in the 1990s. 90s, but military aid has persisted. And military aid is, you know, Israel is one of, if not the largest receiver of US Military aid. So Coleman, for a very, very long time, this, this is becoming an increasingly popular argument. For over a decade now, I've been making the argument, it was very, very unpopular when I was making it over 10 years ago, that the U.S. israel Aid alliance should unwind, that it ultimately should end. Now, I'm not saying cut off the spigot tomorrow. I think that's a bad idea in the middle of a war. War, for instance, not just for Israel. But what message does that, does that send from the United States to all of our other allies there? But over the mid to long term, I would absolutely like to see a plan to unwind this foreign aid arrangement. The foreign aid ends up being to me, something of a mutual bear hug where both sides don't really know how to extricate themselves. But I'm not sure frankly that either side ends up benefiting this. To be clear, Americans benefit a lot from joint US Israeli investments and collaboration when it comes to trying to to procure the most advanced forms of missile defense. Everything from Iron Dome to Arrow three and the Jewish space lasers to try to make Marjorie Taylor Greene happy. Right. I mean all this stuff is awesome. It's totally awesome. But I'm not sure that you need to go all in this multi billion dollar aid decennial boondoggle in order to do it there. So let me just kind of elaborate briefly from a specifically American perspective, Colin. This aid, which under the 2016 memorandum of understanding that Barack Obama signed, ends up being about $3.8 billion annually, that aids Israel. It doesn't stay there. I mean Israel essentially has to spend a massive percentage, I mean well over 90% of that aid back in the United States. And it ends up essentially becoming something of a corporate slush fund, a cross subsidization of Boeing and north of Grumman. So it's really the defense contractors who end up being the biggest beneficiaries of the US aid to Israel. Which makes sense because when you look at when the, this aid bill gets renegotiated every 10 years, it's usually the defense industry lobbyists that are the largest proponents of it there. So from a kind of just kind of Tea Party era crony capitalism perspective as well as just a good old fashioned kind of fiscal conservative perspective, as an American, I don't particularly love it. Perhaps even most pernicious though, I think that this aid ends up really undermining Zionism itself because people like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, not particularly pro Israel presidents, they actually love of the US AIDS here is, well, because it emboldens people like Joe Biden to act as he acted after October 7th and to basically threaten to withhold aid to Israel to stop weapon shipments. Unless, you know, like don't go into Rafah, don't go into this city, you know, don't go into this precinct. You can't do this, you can't do that there. And it basically allows you to dictate all sorts of XYZ military minutiae that frankly the United States would never do for any other country there. And all this has the effect of undermining Zionism, which is the claim that the Jews control their own destiny in their own ancestral and biblical homeland there. So I think from both an American and an Israeli perspective, I think that this ultimately does more harm than good. Actually, it was just this past week that I saw Prime Minister Netanyahu for the first time talking about possibly extricating America, or, excuse me, extricating Israel from American military. It was the first time I've ever heard Netanyahu say that we'll see what happens. But I think that this is starting to become increasingly a common opinion and in my opinion, it's something that really ought be to happen at some point.
- [78:46]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah, I mean, my worry is that if that does happen, you know, Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah are all going to be throwing parties celebrating the fact that from their perspective, the strategy of terror has worked. Right. Their whole thesis is that if we make it uncomfortable enough, if we kill enough Jews, eventually they'll go back somewhere. Right. It doesn't make any sense and it doesn't take into account that Israeli Jews have nowhere to go, which I think is, is perhaps the biggest miscalculation on the part of Israel's enemies in the region. But I would hate the idea that as a result of October 7, as a result of slaughtering civilians, a knock on consequence of that is Hamas gets what it wants, which is, is the severing of American Israel financially, militarily, as the first step to yada, yada, yada.
- [79:47]
Josh Hammer
Well, I think that what America wants, Coleman, are strong allies, are strong self sufficient independent allies. I mean, this is kind of the raison d' etre of President Trump's foreign policy realism, of his nationalist maga, shall we call it, approach to foreign policy. I mean, he wants allies who are genuine activists, allies who can be trusted to patrol and secure their part of the world in a way that redounds to not just that country's national interest, but also to the American national interest there. I think the failed model of alliance, and Trump has also gone at this when he criticizes Europe for not meeting their NATO required 2% of GDP and military spending monetary threshold. I think the failed model of alliance is not really an independent alliance at all, but essentially that of a far flung province or a satrapy. This notion that America kind of has this vassal state and we're controlling it there. That's certainly not how President Trump thinks of foreign policy. And personally, as a foreign policy realist, myself, as someone who values strong, independent nation states, that's certainly not how I think of foreign policy. I think it's probably not how Israel should think of it either.
- [80:56]
Coleman Hughes
Yeah. All right, Josh Hammer, the book. Give me the name of the book one time for my audience.
- [81:03]
Josh Hammer
So the book is Israel and Civilization, the Fate of Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West, Amazon, Barnes Noble or wherever books are sold.
- [81:10]
Coleman Hughes
And they can follow you on Twitter, I presume, or a website.
- [81:13]
Josh Hammer
Yep. I'm on X. Joshammer, Instagram, Josh Bhammer. My own show is the Josh Hammer Show. I write a weekly syndicated column as well at Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, Real Clear Politics, bunch of other places as well.
- [81:24]
Coleman Hughes
All right. Thank you so much, Josh.
- [81:26]
Josh Hammer
My pleasure. Thank you.