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- [00:00]
Duncan Trussell
Hello, pals. It's me, Duncan. Just got back from Hawaii. I went every. Just about every year I missed last year. I go to these Ram Dass retreats. It's called open your heart in paradise. It's the best. Really, it's the best. If you can make it out to one of these things, you should definitely go. But this one in particular, it's crazy sometimes, you know, I hear this from, like, ayahuasca people sometimes, or psychedelic people. Like, you don't even realize how crusty you've gotten. Sometimes it's really easy to crust up, you know, like, your feet. Like, if I look at my feet right now, it's terrible. I feel like I'm looking at, like a pterodactyl's foot. Or I've got like, old man feet, weird toenails. I need to go and get that fixed, you know, get them amputated or something. But the. You with your feet, you could just see it. You hear the horror, you know, from your wife, just like, what. What happened? Did you stick your foot in the Necronomicon? Like, how did. How is that your foot? That's not a human thing. And then you can, you can. You can get it fixed. But, you know, it's really easy to, like, have the exact same thing happen to your heart. You don't even realize. You've gotten all crusty. You've gotten thick down there. You've gotten like. Just imagine if we could see each other's metaphysical hearts, you know, and you realize, you look at your heart, you're like, Jesus Christ, I've got to. I got to get a hearticure, something to shave these calluses off of my heart. And that's the Ram Dass retreats. That's what they have always been for me. Also psychedelics sometimes. But it's really cool when you go to these retreats because they're multi denominational. You've got Buddhists, you've got bhaktis, you've got Christians, and you've got rabbis. And that's who today's guest is. You have so many great conversations there. And I was having a conversation with Rabbi Paula Marcus, and we were just sort of talking about, like, the thing that so many of us have been talking about fixating on. And, well, in our conversation, I realized I walked away with, like, far less of a cynical perspective, which doesn't just apply to, like, the Middle east, but a general sort of lazy worldview, one where, like, I don't know how any of this shit works out in the way that, you know, the LSD showed me it could, or the meditation showed me it could, or, you know, you just get this general kind of a feeling of, like, hopelessness. And I realized just a one conversation with a rabbi and suddenly I was like, oh, my God, there's more stuff going on in the world than I'm seeing out there. And let me tell you, I go on all the conspiracy boards and stuff, but that talks about other kinds of things happening while we're. While all this stuff is going on on the main stage of the world, which seems to be sort of. What are they calling it now? What are they calling media now? It's really cool. Vintage media. They have a weird name for it, Archaic media. There's legacy media, the old format. You know, while you're seeing all this stuff, general. A general horror show pointing you finding all of the most foul things happening in the world, from military incursions to babies getting eaten by crocodiles to new diseases. This is kind of the buffet that you're going to get from legacy media. Essentially a sermon on what to be afraid of. While all that stuff is going on, you have all these stories that don't make it to the top. I guess they have meetings at newsrooms and it's like, okay, we've got a crocodile. Eight, five babies. Or there's two people, one of them from Israel, one of them from Palestine, and they're marching through the Middle east to show that some kind of peace is possible. It's like crocodile. No one wants to hear the peace shit. Do crocodile. Not selling fucking Ozempic with some peace march. Crocodile attack. Crocodile attacks on the rise due to satellites or. The point is these retreats and getting around people, not just people like me, who have a kind of like who? Pendulum between some kind of idiot utopian vision of reality and an equally idiotic vision of just a death spiral that we're all marching in. When you run. When you run into people like Rabbi. Rabbi Paula, who are out there, who are actively flying into war zones, who are going to places and saying things that maybe don't align with, like what you would expect from a rabbi, it's. It's definitely. What's it called? You eat sorbet. Palate cleanser. It's a palate cleanser. And so Rabbi Paul was generous enough to give me some of her time today. And if you're looking for a refreshing view on world events right now, then this is the episode for you. Now, please welcome to the DTFH Rabbi Paula Marcus. Hello, Rabbi. Paula. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
- [06:18]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
You're welcome, Duncan. It's actually really an honor to be able to have this conversation with you.
- [06:22]
Duncan Trussell
Thank you. I was wondering how you ended up at the Ram Dass retreat. I've seen you there for a while now, and I'm curious, what was your pathway to start going to those retreats?
- [06:38]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Good question. So this year was my 10th year, and my husband, who died a year ago May, was quite familiar with Ram Dass because he was in Berkeley in the 60s, and he actually even knew and saw him as Richard Alpert before he became Ram Dass.
- [06:56]
Duncan Trussell
Wow.
- [06:57]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Yeah. Yeah. I've got posters, psychedelic posters with his name there. And I had gone to Kirtan with Krishna Das, and so I said, hey, you know, I heard this retreat going on, on in Maui. He's like, ram Dass, let me go. So that's how we first got there. Yeah. You know, before it was, you know, 12 years ago because of the COVID year. And then the following year, he wasn't well enough to go. So 12 years ago was our first time there.
- [07:27]
Duncan Trussell
I guess I should have gone back a little further. How did you end up becoming a rabbi? How does that. How does that happen?
- [07:34]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Yeah. So, I mean, I have an interesting path. So I grew up in New York, and the synagogue I was part of was very focused on social justice, and it was in White Plains in Westchester, and I loved singing. And the cantor there had a group of students, high school students, who were basically in a rock choir. It was one of the first synagogues to bring, you know, electric guitars and drums into the sanctuary. And so I got really jazzed about the music and started teaching music, Jewish music, went to camp. The cantor gave me voice lessons. So he kind of became my mentor. So I was a cantorial soloist for a long time. And I thought to go to cantorial school in New York, but I wanted to leave New York. So I came out to California, worked in Santa Cruz teaching preschool. Very Jewishly connected my whole life, but in a progressive community. And so when there was a seminary that opened up about 20 so years ago down in LA that you could commute to, I flew for four years from San Jose to LA to this trans denominational seminary that's still in. That's still going strong. And so I would study with rabbis from all different movements and cantors and teachers. So, you know, there were. There was a rabbi whose family's from Morocco, one from Iraq, Persia. There was other women rabbis, very lgbtq, inclusive Lots of really interesting teachers. So I decided I could have done the Kantorial program, but I was studying a lot of texts because I've been going back and forth to Israel and Palestine for many, many years. So I spent a year there, and my Hebrew was pretty good. So I said, you know, I want to study texts, so let me be a rabbi that sings. So that's basically what I do.
- [09:21]
Duncan Trussell
Has it always been. Has it always been controversial? No, never.
- [09:29]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Sorry, go ahead.
- [09:30]
Duncan Trussell
Has it always been so? Now, as a. You know, it seems like. And I guess I should tell you that just some backstory here. I have actively avoided talking about what's happening in the Middle east because of a general sense of not understanding it at all and knowing that anything I declare is sort of coming from not just a lack of understanding, but just a warped. A warped stew of data, which I think a lot of people have, you know, because a lot of the information that we're getting about what's going on over there, depending on where you're getting the source from, it's got bias attached to it. And that the history of the thing itself, I think, requires some diligent effort to, like, even understand how we ended up here. So even though lots of people who listen to this podcast have scolded me in a variety of ways for remaining silent, I didn't succumb to that, knowing that if I said anything without fully understanding what's going on, then that would just make me look like an idiot. So I haven't said anything. So, as I'm telling you, I'm fairly illiterate when it comes to the subject matter here, and anything I think I know about it, I have a general sense that that is only a fragment of what could be happening.
- [11:08]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
So I want to say first, thank you, because that's an unusual behavior. Should I say, although, knowing you like I do, you're a thoughtful person and you thought I was going to say you were unusual. That, too. But the truth is that a lot of people are speaking out without having a nuanced understanding and using language that I personally don't think is helpful. So people ask me, are you a Zionist? I'm like, I'm not going to tell you that answer because I have very complicated feelings about Israel. Is this genocide? I'm not going to answer that. Like, I want to take a position that says the way forward needs to be constructive. Right. So just a little background again. I grew up with a very, very Zionist grandmother who I was really close to. Can you define.
- [12:03]
Duncan Trussell
I'M sorry to cut you off. Let's just start with big definitions. Let's. Oh, wait, it says you're recording.
- [12:10]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Sorry about that.
- [12:10]
Duncan Trussell
Okay, no problem.
- [12:14]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
I'm back. Sorry. Somebody. I put my phone on. I put my phone on Focus, but somebody called me about a funeral. Just. Just so you know.
- [12:22]
Duncan Trussell
Do you need to take that call?
- [12:23]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
No, no, no. They're gonna find out. They'll figure it out with somebody else. Different Rabbi, let's start with the definition of Zionism.
- [12:29]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, yeah.
- [12:30]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
So Israel as a Jewish homeland is basically the basic definition of Zionism. That Jews have a right to Israel as their national homeland. That's like the basic definition, but now we've got probably about 15 different words associated with that. Non Zionist, anti Zionist, post Zionist, contra Zionist is a new one. So there's a lot of different ways in which people are trying to figure out how to identify. And to me, I want there to be a place where Jews will be safe and Palestinians will be safe and treated as equal human beings, as they should be. So. But when I grew up, I had no. We did. We were not. And this is very, very common, Duncan. We were not taught much at all about who was in the land before the Jews came in 1948. We were given the same method, the same message that, you know, Israel was a land without people, for people, without a land. That was the message that I grew up with.
- [13:30]
Duncan Trussell
So you got the same message we got here. You got the message I got growing up in western North Carolina, totally, where there was a general sense that, like, Columbus sailed up and it was just vast, empty land.
- [13:45]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Empty land. Right, right. And with Jews, you know, that the, like, Jews, The Holocaust was also used as a reason for why Jews needed a safe place, which I totally understand. And the question is, now what do we do? So, you know, there are two people in this land. There's Palestinians, there's Israelis. Nobody's going anywhere. So the question is, what are we going to do now? But I will tell you that it was like, 26 years ago when I first went to go see refugee camps in the west bank, that I started to understand what exactly was going on. And now I have friends who are Palestinian, who I've listened to their stories about what's happened in their families, and I've seen destroyed villages, and I was at a demonstration when I was there in September, I went to two demonstrations in September. I was there in March. So I'm seeing the complexity of this and understanding the history. There's a very important new book that I want to recommend publicly it's called the Necessity of Exile and it's by Rabbi Shaul Magid. S H A U L M A G I D and he really addresses this question of Zionism and the history of Zionism and where are we now and what do we need to do? But people don't like hearing that. You know, you're trying to think about what's the path forward. People are still litigating the past and trying to unpack what's happening right now as a way of understanding, you know, what the dynamic. But really the only way forward is going to be either a two state solution or to understand that there are both people living in the land and there are many groups that are working on different ideas that we in this country don't hear about. Last Sunday I interviewed two journalists, a Palestinian journalist and an Israeli journalist. And they were in Oslo and they had a written out two state solution plan that they were meeting with people, international leaders in Oslo about. So if you're gonna, if you're gonna kind of say there's no hope for the future and we have to, you know, get rid of them or we have to get rid of them, they know better. I mean, they know better. The people on the ground know better. And that's the big thing I wanna say. When people say to you, you're not addressing what's happening, how come you're not talking about it? Tell them to follow and I can send you links, people who are doing the work on the ground, because coming and screaming at me or anybody else and that's been happening doesn't help the people there. You know, I have a friend that was just dragged out of a courthouse, Palestinian woman, because they're trying to silence human rights groups in Israel. She's Palestinian Christian, lives in Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, and she was speaking about, you need to let people talk and free speech is important. And they dragged her out of a courtroom.
- [16:34]
Duncan Trussell
Wow.
- [16:35]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
So you're screaming at me because I'm letting, I mean, I'm in a congregation that's a big tent, that's the other piece of all this. And so I have people speaking there who I don't agree with. They are much more Zionist, you know, more towards the right, but they need to have a place to also share their ideas. A synagogue is a big tent, right? I may not like the message of some people, but if I want to be able to speak and I want to bring my speakers and my films and I want to raise consciousness about what I'm seeing On the ground, I need to provide a space. And it's really, really hard because people want to put you in a box. And that's why I'm glad you haven't said anything.
- [17:16]
Duncan Trussell
Okay, well, let me now just sort of summarize my understanding of this situation and then maybe you can tell me where I'm wrong. Tell me where I'm right. So you've got. How long has Israel existed in its current form in the Middle East?
- [17:40]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Since 1948.
- [17:42]
Duncan Trussell
1948. Okay. So since 1948. So, you know, you have generations now. You have generations of people. You have generations of people living in this area. It's where they were born. They think of it as their home. But the problem being that Israel expands out into Palestine, there's expansion that happens. There's this sort of creep moving into Palestinian territory.
- [18:08]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Where you have 1967 is when that also accelerated.
- [18:13]
Duncan Trussell
So 1967, you have this accelerating creep. And the creep is happening because the people doing the creep are saying, no, this is actually historically our land. We have a right to it.
- [18:26]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
It's worse, they're saying, this is God gave us this land. They're not even talking about. I mean, there are some cases where. So for instance, the city of Hebron in the west bank, that's where the grave of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs is. So they are. That is considered a holy city according to the Bible.
- [18:44]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [18:44]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
But the problem, but the problem is that was a thriving city with Palestinians. And you know, in, in the Six Day War, when Israel started going in there and the settlers starting going in there, now they're trying to get rid of all the Palestinians there.
- [19:02]
Duncan Trussell
So that's true. So you have people who believe God is giving them a mandate. It's a sort of crusader mentality. Right. Like the Europeans were like, we've got to take the land back. And so this is, this is a holy war, you could almost say. And so.
- [19:22]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Absolutely.
- [19:24]
Duncan Trussell
Okay, so that's true. So there's this expansion happening now. And also, again, I'm sorry if what I'm saying is like, I know it's 101, but so like on both sides you have people in the same way. Whoever's listening, you were born in America or wherever you were born. This, you don't. You're not thinking, this isn't where I belong. You're thinking, this is my home. Both sides. So then what's happening is you have vastly superior military capabilities. And so, meaning that that expansion is really difficult to stop. And certainly, like Legally, it doesn't seem like you can stop it. And so, well, yeah, I want to thank BILT for supporting this episode of the dtfh. Guess what? I just took a trip to Hawaii and I paid for almost all of it with points. Can you believe that? It actually fucking worked. And you know, I'm a late bloomer, so using stuff like that just seems insane to me. But here's the good news. Now you can actually get points just by paying your rent. There's no cost to join bilt, and as a member, you'll earn valuable points on rent and on your everyday spending. BILT points can be transferred to your favorite hotels and airlines and even the ones you haven't heard of. There are over 500 airlines and 700,000 hotels and properties around the world. You can redeem your built points toward points can also be redeemed towards a future rent payment and unique experiences that only BILT members can access. So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is, why not start earning points on rent you're already paying by going to join Bilt.com Duncan that's J O I N B I L T.com Duncan make sure to use our URLs. They know we sent you. Join Bill.com Duncan to start earning points on your rent payments today.
- [21:55]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
And it's not just, I mean, it's not just military capability in terms of, you know, big weapons. It's also that settlers are being enabled by the Israeli Defense Forces in the west bank to go and, you know, chop down olive trees that have been there for generations and to shut off water. And so they're protected by the Israeli military. And, you know, I don't want to get into the details, but there's different military zones, there's different zones A, B and C. And we could talk more about that. And Oslo got into that, kind of into the details about that. But even the area that was not supposed to have any expansion of settlements according to the Oslo Accords, that's happening there now, too. So it's happening all over. And it's not just like I say, you know, big weapons. It's just. It's military presence too.
- [22:46]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [22:46]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
You know, so it's on the ground. And you know, the demonstration I was at in September, one of the women that I was, I was in a car with a woman who picked us up in the west bank. Friend and I. Palestinian friend, She's Palestinian. And she basically got harassed by the Israeli Defense Forces because she had bought a used car, a Few days before, it seemed to be battered up. And they said, you can't drive this. It's not safe to drive. She just had it inspected two days before and showed them the paperwork. So I saw right there this friend of mine, the same woman that got silenced in a court who works with an Israeli and Palestinian peace organization, this demonstration was completely peaceful. After 45 minutes, an hour, they said everybody needed to leave. Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Muslims and Christians were all there peacefully, and they made us disperse. So I got to see how the military enables the agenda of the settlers. And of course, with Netanyahu, it's only gotten worse because his coalition is so messianically driven by the vision of what Israel, the full Israel should be. They don't call it the west bank or Gaza. They say Judea and Samaria, which are biblical terms for that part of the country.
- [24:06]
Duncan Trussell
So of Palestine, all that being said, now let me give you my cynical. And you helped me. Cynicism is bad. But when you don't even realize how cynical you've gotten, that's where it's like hopeless, I guess you could say. Before our conversation at the retreat, I think my view had become fairly hopeless. And so let me. This is, and I think my view, I think many people think this, which is, I'm living in Palestine, I was born there. And if you live in Palestine at this point and you don't know anyone who's been exploded, you know countless people who have lost everything, you've seen where you were born transformed into rubble. And I know if something happened, like one of my children, I don't know that I could forgive who killed my child. And so what you have, where it seems like hopeless is how do you, aside from all of the other stuff, how do you make a parent who has lost a child? And I also am aware of the fact that in Israel, parents have lost children, had their children kidnapped. So on both sides, you have what in nature is the most dangerous thing, what don't we. God help you. If you're out in the woods and you see grizzly bear cubs, you're dead meat, like. And so it's a primal sort of rage on both sides. And sprinkle in, God, sprinkle in. Like, this is a divine mandate or a jihad or whatever. And it's like you have a recipe for the apocalypse, for endless, never ending, solutionless conflict. Like, it's gone too far. No one wants to hear any kind of peace, anything. They killed my kids. Fuck off. I don't want to hear It. And this has produced a sort of death spiral.
- [26:19]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Right. And that's all we hear about. That's all we hear about. Right. So there are two peacemakers who are really actively involved and they just. One of them is Israeli and both of his parents were murdered on October 7. His name is Maoz Enon. And they just did a four day walk from northern part of Israel to the south, as far north as you can go, given what's going on. And they ended at the place where his parents were murdered.
- [26:47]
Duncan Trussell
Jesus. And who was the other one? I'm sorry?
- [26:50]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Aziz Abusara. So his brother had been in jail after one of the intifadas and beaten so badly that when they let him out, he died. And Aziz was just a kid and his brother was at like 19 or 18 or something like that. So I've been in. I've been with his parents. I've been with Aziz's parents in the house, in the family home where they have a picture of the son that was. That died after being beaten up in the Israeli prison. So these two guys are working together and the story is beautiful and you can find it online. They were the ones that kicked off the TEDx Vancouver conference after Oct. 7, when Aziz, who had kind of known Maoz, but not that well, he heard about his parents being killed. He texted Maoz, the Israeli, and he said, I'm sorry to hear about your parents. And Maoz texted back very shortly, I'm sorry for all the children that are being killed in Gaza. I'm sad for my parents being dead. And so the two of them. So this is an example, Duncan, of the opposite of what you're talking about.
- [27:51]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [27:52]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
And these two men have been traveling all over the world. There's a movie now coming out that they're part of. It was just shown in New York. And there they. And Mao says it beautifully. He says, through our joint pain, we have to build hope. We know what loss looks like. We can't keep going down this path. We have to build hope. And so you know the organization, the company that Aziz created is called mejd M E D J I and Interact, which is an educational platform and they travel to conflict zones. Aziz started it with a different Jewish guy from the US So they travel to conflict zones. So they go to Ireland, you know what I mean? They've gone to. We're going to go to South Africa in October to see how other places have done this and to work with people. They use nonviolent communication in their trips. I've Done two journeys with my congregation, interfaith journeys with that company. And I've gone twice with Aziz and met Maoz the first time. So it's not an option. You know, it's like I gotta say sometimes, you know, you hear people saying, I've given up hope, I feel lost, blah, blah, blah. After the last election, some people were just desperate. It's like, you can't give up. There are people there. These people lost their family members. Maoz lost to both of his parents. We met with a woman who, her daughter, son in law and grandchildren were all killed on October 7th. Israeli woman who said, I was really hopeful during the, you know, when Sadat and Begin made peace and Egypt got the Sinai like that, nobody thought that would happen. You know, that was, that was, that's something that happened. And then, you know, Oslo was hopeful, although after Rabin was assassinated by a right wing Israeli settler, the left wing kind of fell apart. But now there's a resurgence and some of it actually really came up in protest against Netanyahu. Before October 7, people were out in the streets every week, thousands and thousands of them.
- [29:50]
Duncan Trussell
I remember that.
- [29:51]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Yeah. So it's not like people don't have. And the last thing I guess I want to say about this is Gershon Baskin, who is an amazing journalist and he was one of the people who negotiated the release of Gilad Shalit many years ago. And those people in Hamas, he said, don't pay attention to the polls among Palestinians or Israelis because as you pointed out, everybody's in trauma.
- [30:16]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [30:17]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
So these polls, people are going to be reactive. But the truth is they just finished a four day peace group, you know, walk through from the north to the south. April 3rd and 4th. I'm going back now. I just decided last night, day before, because they're doing another peace event. They did one in July. So Palestinians and Israelis, there's a group called Bereaved Family Circle. And they are all people who have had children, spouses, babies killed by the other side. So there's all these groups, combatants for peace, who have given up violence as a way of moving forward. There are so many people on the ground doing the work that nobody hears about.
- [30:55]
Duncan Trussell
Why don't we hear about it?
- [30:57]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Well, because that's not the sexy stuff. We want people throwing rocks and we want people screaming at each other. And Haaretz, which is the news that I follow, there's two news platforms I follow. Haaretz is an amazing daily newspaper in Israel. And now Netanyahu is taking money away from them from the government because he doesn't like what they're saying about him. There's that, and there's another one called 972, which is all online. So you have to know who to follow, because, you know, look at what happened with this election and the news. Lousy news coverage we had of all the stuff that's going on. People don't know what's happening. And my job as a rabbi is to elevate those voices. And you're giving me an opportunity to do that right now that I don't want to hear you screaming at each other, whether you're pro Israel, pro Palestinian. That is not helping the situation. What helps the situation is to support the people who are doing peace and justice every damn day of their lives, who are living in danger. Many of them, many Palestinians are. You know, when I was whatsapping, when I saw my friend Angela on, you know, on a real, you know, talking in the courthouse and getting dragged out of there, I whatsapped her, and I said, I'm so proud of you. Are you okay? And she wrote back, I'm okay. It is dangerous to speak out. So that is happening. But if we don't support these people who are speaking out there, then I don't give a crap if you're wearing a kefir or not. If you are doing the work of trying to build peace and understanding and care and love, like Ram Dass would say, you need to understand who just even Googled peace groups in Israel and Palestine. It's not that hard. People can find them. It's not mainstream, obviously. You know, there's a movie I just watched called the BB Files, which is unbelievable footage of all the crap that he was up to. It shows him testifying and banging on the desk and just being a jerk. But that's not on MSNBC or Fox or anywhere. That's something that I had to find through an organization I'm part of.
- [33:09]
Duncan Trussell
Well, it seems like in the mainstream, he's kind of getting lionized. And. But. And also, I remember that when those protests were happening and you were getting a visual of how disgruntled and unhappy with him, seemingly, like there were so many people at those protests, and this is one of the conspiracy theories that floats around. Is that not that he instigated the thing, but it was allowed to happen because of his precarious political situation?
- [33:45]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Oh, yeah. And not only that, it's been shown that he actually was making sure that Hamas was getting funds because he wanted Hamas to be stronger than The Palestinian Authority.
- [33:57]
Duncan Trussell
And this is verified. This is not conspiracy.
- [33:59]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Oh, that's not conspiracy. That's been verified. There's articles about. If you look up Netanyahu and Hamas funding, you're going to find a lot of stuff about it, number one. Number two, there's another piece of all this. He's preventing an investigation into what happened on October 7th. He's really working hard to prevent that because there were reports of the possibility of a big attack on October 7 in the Gaza envelope is what it's called the border there. But he was busy sending troops to the west bank to take over Palestinian areas. So his people really cared a lot about the West Bank. So one of the reports came from a woman, and she was totally shut down. Like, there are people who had an idea something big could happen on October 7th, and they didn't pay attention to it. And now he's blocking an investigation of what his. I mean, he's blocking a lot of investigations, but he is working hard to block an investigation of what really happened and how he was at fault for taking his eyes and ears off of the situation. I mean, you know, his people want the west bank to be Israel, so they sent a lot of resources there and they took resources away from the border with Gaza. Well, I mean, and that's verified.
- [35:15]
Duncan Trussell
So it seems like the idea is there's only one solution now at this point, I'm saying from, I guess what would be considered the right wing there. The only solution now is utter destruction. Like, yeah, like use all force to completely decimate Gaza for sure. Gaza, and then expand, expand, lockdown. And so that's the view. The view is we tried. This is the other thing. It seems like the idea is like, look, we tried, we tried to work things out. They kept launching rockets at us. They kept pushing back violently. We gave them. And again, I'm just saying what I've heard, like, we, we gave them funding. They used it to dig tunnels. We gave them this and that, gave them funding. But also one last little piece of it. In this description of why so much violence, what you do is you create this kind of like, idiot version of Palestinians. They're all the same, all involved. Palestinians got together, they voted, hey, you know what, let's use this money to dig tunnels. Everyone somehow complicit, because if you could pull, then somehow you don't have to feel bad about the bombing or something like that. Similarly, every Israeli gathers around and says, yep, there's no choice but absolute destruction. And so this produces. And this seems to be the narrative that you hear spun out from the mainstream because it seems very non nuanced. And of course, if you buy into that narrative, whichever side you're for, then you're going to be for a kind of like, you know, utter destruction. Yes. For one side or the other. The narrative itself seems to spawn violence. And I would love.
- [37:20]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
But it's so stupid because it's not working. I mean, that's the stupidity of it. It's not working. This, all the wars have not brought people to feel more secure. What Israel's doing right now is not gonna make Israel safer because it's like you say, it's traumatizing more and more people who oftentimes those are the folks that turn to violence when you're traumatized. But I will say one thing that I wanna be really clear. I was totally traumatized when I learned about what happened on October 7th. That should not have happened. It should never have happened. I will say one thing that has changed though. The Abraham Accords, what Trump was trying to do with Jared Kushner and with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and come to a peaceful in the area Arab Israelis accords agreements. But guess who wasn't part of that. Palestinians. There was not any mention about a two state solution or what should happen in Gaza or what should happen in the West Bank October 7th. Put that back on the table. So moving forward, they can't be cut out of any kind of arrangement that Trump, you know, I'm just going to say it tries to do with Jared and you know, Jared's dad, who's going to be involved in all of this because he's got very, you know, very intense business connections in Saudi. So. And then we haven't even gotten to Syria, which I can't talk about a lot because we don't really know what's going to happen there. We don't really know what's going to happen with Syria. And some people are hearkening back to the Arab Spring, right. That happened, you know, started in Cairo, in Egypt, right. And didn't, didn't end well. But the point I guess I'm trying to make is there's a lot of things that are part of all of this. And October 7th definitely changed the equation in terms of not ignoring Palestinians anymore. I mean, you can't right now, right? Gaza and the west bank, you can't, you can't keep them out of the, any of these negotiations. And you know, who the hell knows what he's going to do day to day. Trump, like I Don't even like using his name. But that orange dude, who the hell knows what he's going to do? But I have heard more than a few people, journalists say he may want a Nobel Peace Prize. He may want, yeah, if he can do something to make something happen here.
- [39:44]
Duncan Trussell
It's all about, well, you know, Biden sure couldn't. And I think, you know, I think that if we pull out a little bit, like zoom out from the planet and kind of look at this echo that's happening all around the planet. Assad, Putin, some people even say Zelensky, you do see a, a situation where one, the population has been reduced to a singular opinion. And also you have some dude who is like invoking war. I mean, this is, this is everywhere you could in the United States, everywhere. And then when you're like on the ground, and it is very rare, at least in my experience, to meet anyone who's like, boy, you know what I love? War bombs, drafts, babies getting blown up. You don't meet those people. And yet you look at the movement of things in the world and you see this. What I've always thought of, and I know this is, this used to be the most milquetoast, non political, non controversial thing to say. Now it's political war is failure. It's utter, complete, absolute failure of humanity. And it's a failure that is amplified by the incredible investment into technologies that could have been used for God knows what or used for blowing people up. And it's failure because you know what it does? It brings people together. It really does. When you're like, when. If you ever read, I'm sure you've read Sebastian Junger's War.
- [41:30]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Yes. Oh, my God, I've read parts of it. Yeah.
- [41:33]
Duncan Trussell
And so he talks about when you're a 22 year old and you're like, your brain, your brain, like, there's nothing like that, that you take the ethics away. So you have conditioning, brainwashing. My point is, I feel like that sentiment is not unique, but that in the same way your friend is dragged out, saying, you can't say it, the articulation of it these days gets met with, oh, really? What are you, SJW woke? What are you? And sadly, a lot of the people claiming to be social justice workers are pro war. And that is ridiculous. Pro murder, pro violence. It's never been like that. It was always, no, let's not blow each other up. There has to be a better way to work this out.
- [42:25]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Yeah, no, I agree with you. I mean, that's what I'm trying to say, like, when you see people chanting intifada now, that didn't go well. You know, the intifada did not go. Both of them did not go well. And that's not going to be helpful. So that's what I'm saying. I want to talk to the people on the ground who are doing the work every day, who are saying violence doesn't work, who've lost so much. There's this guy, Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib, and he's from Gaza. He's lost over 35 family members there. He's in D.C. now. He was in California. And I brought him to speak to our community. And he's like, people criticize him that he's pro Zionist. And then people criticize him that he's pro Hamas because he talks about, stop saying that we should kill all the Israelis. Stop it. Just stop it. And he knows, like, he's a guy that he was very much involved. He almost got an airport built in Gaza a number of years ago. So he knows a lot of people, speaks to everybody. Speaks to everybody. And it's not easy. Like, I'm just in my little Santa Cruz place and I've been. People have said I support genocide, that the synagogue, you know, supports genocide. Because we bring, like I said, a diverse view of opinions. We assume. I assume that if you listen, and this is a big assumption right now, Duncan, I think that's what you're pointing out. If you listen to information based on facts, you might be able to change your mind, right? Is that still possible? Is really the question. Take aside the whole question of war, the whole idea of being so sure of your own opinion. I'll give you an example, okay? There's a book called the Wall Between Us. What Jews and Palestinians Don't Want to Know about each Other. Okay, yeah, I had to read that like two or three pages at a time. Just saying, as a rabbi, as a Jew. And one of the things that was brought up was, you know, when Jews talk about the Holocaust and that's why we needed a place, Palestinians say, well, wait a minute, we didn't do that to you. Why did you come take our homes? And if you have suffered like this, why are you invoking suffering upon us? And I was just like, ah, you know, I was in a room, almost all Palestinians at a talk. And there were a couple of Jews, Israelis there. And a woman got up and she was talking after the. During the Q and A, and she said, I live in a very beautiful Home. And she's told the area where she lives, and, you know, it turns out that was a Palestinian home. And when she said that, she didn't think about the fact that her home, where she lives, where she loves, where she is grounded, was someone else's home, could have been even related to people in the room, you know, the Palestinians in the room. So there's just this, like, unconscious kind of binary. Even myself, you know, unconscious bias, whatever you want to call it. But there's this way in which we're convinced that our pain should make us feel a certain way. And I think that also leads to war. I think that also I have to defend myself. I have to defend my people. I have to make sure that we've got enough guns to be able to do what we need to. I mean, it's. How do you come to this place of seeing the other person as a human being and trying to understand their pain? I mean, I know Palestinians who've gone to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, and they go to this place of like, oh, my God, they see this exhibit of what happens. People getting put on trains to go to death camps. So, you know, for Jews to go to see Palestinian villages that have been destroyed and to hear the stories of people who have been killed by the Israeli soldiers. Or I have a friend whose husband. They're Palestinian. Her husband is Palestinian doctor. He works in Jerusalem. He's treating soldiers who have been injured in Gaza. Israeli soldiers. Jesus, how do you. Yeah, Jesus is right. How do you get to that? The rabbi. Jesus is right. You can say Hanuman. You can say. I mean, seriously, there's so many people who are doing things that we don't even. Can't rock in our heads. Like, how do they do that? You know, his wife was stuck in Bethlehem and finally got a permit and got through the checkpoint. As he's driving to the checkpoint to pick her up, one of the Israeli soldiers he treated waves to him and says, hello. It's like our brains would explode if we are in this binary thinking. That's not possible. This woman is a peace worker. She's a peace worker. They went on vacation, which, God bless them, finally they got a few days out of the country, and she had to fly through Jordan because she's from the West Bank. She can't fly out of Tel Aviv airport like her husband. They had to meet each other. I mean, this is the stuff that nobody's tracking. Not nobody. A lot of people are not tracking. And this is the stuff that when she says to me, thank you so much for the work you're doing, I just want to faint because, thank you so much for the work you're doing. Like, everybody needs to understand what's going on there. And it's. We're humans at the. At the. At the core of our beings, we are humans, and we want to protect ourselves. And if we are able to push through the pain that scares us and see each other as human, then maybe we have a chance to move forward. And that's everywhere, right? That's South Africa, what happened? You know, truth and reconciliation. They had to have a process to be able to do that. And things aren't perfect there either. But still, they had a process where they, you know, we're talking reparations in this country, right, for people whose families were slaves, who have that, you know, in their history and impacts what they're able to do or not do now. So this idea. And in Hebrew, there's a word in Jewish understanding called teshuvah, which people say is repentance, but it's really returned. Return to the best of yourself. That's what Yom Kippur is all about, you know, the Day of Atonement. But there's an ongoing system to do that every night, every month, and once a year in a big way, one month out of the year. So this is what we need to understand. And, you know, me and Aziz know that. And when the two of them speak together, and Aziz talks about the dream that he had, and his parents come to him in the dream, and, you know, what they would want of his family is to be peacemakers. They don't want their death to be in vain. Vivian Silver, she was an amazing, amazing woman. She started an organization called Women Wage Peace. She would drive Palestinians from Gaza to medical appointments in Israel. And she was killed. She was killed on October 7th. I mean, you go and you see the exhibit that's going around. I think they're bringing it to Florida now, is in New York and in LA of what happened at the music festival, the Nova Music Festival. And you go and you see that exhibit, and you go, these kids were, you know, they were peacemakers. They were not, you know, they were not, like, horrible, you know, human beings. They were trying to have fun, like Burning man, you know, and they did bring part of the exhibit to Burning man so that people could see it, you know, And I can't believe this is happening, but it's amazing. There's a group called Standing Together. That's the group, my friend, Angela works for the one that was dragged out of the courthouse. So standing together now is putting up. Listen to this. On bus stops. You know how you have all those posters?
- [50:00]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah, sure.
- [50:01]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
They're putting up photographs of children who have been bombed in Gaza so that Israelis will see. Have to see it.
- [50:09]
Duncan Trussell
Wow.
- [50:10]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Because they try not to show that on the news. Right. Just like we didn't look what happened here. We didn't want to see what was going on in Vietnam back in the 60s. And it wasn't until the body bags started coming back and people started filming them at the airports that people started to understand what we were doing and how many people were suffering here. I mean, our people. Right. So. And then to say the hostage families are the ones that have been really shut down over there, like they're still advocating who knows who's alive. I was there when they found Hirsch Goldberg, who was an American, Israeli, and six, five other bodies they found dead because Hamas had killed them. And I was in Jerusalem, and it was like people, just. People just bus drivers, taxi drivers, cafe workers. They were just devastated. And, you know, if we can't understand, these are hostages that. Who knows if they're still alive and how many children have been killed in Gaza and the starvation, then that means that we've lost part of our humanity.
- [51:11]
Duncan Trussell
Well, let me address that and maybe you can help me here. There's a maybe. I hope it's just a ghost story. I hope it's not true. But as a general response to the. And I mean this in a positive sense, the sort of, you know, like anyone, there's a. I'm going to just say hippie perspective. There's a general sense you have when you take the right amount of mushrooms, lsd, or have some religious experience where you realize what you're saying. Humans are good, humanity good. And then a sense of regardless of world conditions, that we're always kind of right next door to real peace, that it's just right there and it's like an itch you can't scratch. And then you sort of present this idea. And usually when I present it, it's. It's a mess. But you present this idea and you get the realist who says, okay, hippie, yeah, sure, let's just put all the guns away and holster our weapons and sit back and just see what happens. Because here's what's going to happen. Somebody, some country, some ideology is going to take advantage of your compassion and use that to conquer you. And there's all that you have to have Defense, war, bombs. And it's an unrealistic, naive opinion that this is possible. Help me get rid of that in my own head. Or people who think that. How do you address that general sense of like, there's. As long as there's people out there who think power is more important than compassion or that the ultimate form of compassion is power? When I think there's people out there believe that there's going to be infinite endless war. How, how is that wrong?
- [53:16]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
So, yeah, a couple of things. A couple of things. So I want to go straight to the question of Israel and weapons, just to put it out there so that you have a sense of where I'm thinking right now.
- [53:41]
Duncan Trussell
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- [56:41]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
And there's been a lot of movement to put pressure and who knows what the hell is going to happen after January, but to put pressure only to provide defensive weapons to Israel, not offensive weapons. So that's a movement that's going on. I just want to address that quickly. And the first rockets that came from Hezbollah, the rockets, the Iron Dome protects everybody. It doesn't distinguish. Now, what's true is Palestinians and Bedouins don't have the kind of safe rooms and bomb shelters. So the person that was hurt in the first launching of weapons from Hezbollah, the big one last spring, was a Bedouin girl from a village that I visited actually in March from Rahat, which is an unrecognized. No. Which is a recognized Bedouin village. And that's a whole nother story. So the idea that there needs to be some kind of protection from weapons is very understandable because like I said, the Iron Dome doesn't choose. Are you Palestinian or Israeli? If the rockets are coming to Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, whatever. So that's number one. Number two in terms of fear and, and the need to protect oneself from evil. That's been around forever, that you know and now. But here's a different way to look at this. I don't know if you've heard stories, but I've definitely heard stories of people who used to be all, like, pro gun, who have had family members killed, like children and teachers in school shootings.
- [58:18]
Duncan Trussell
Yeah.
- [58:18]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
And their point of view around guns has changed because they've been personally impacted. So what I try to do is when people aren't able to see that that side is to bring forth stories, bring forth stories that move people's hearts. And it's really, really hard. It's really, really hard. But bring forth speakers to my community who can say, like, for instance, when we were down in the envelope at the place where Moses parents were murdered, a question came up and said, well, how can Israel afford to make peace when all the Palestinians want to Kill us all the Gazans just want to kill us. Look what just happened. And Aziz answered, did you know there was a demonstration in Gaza against Hamas by Palestinians?
- [59:10]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [59:11]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Just last week, those people took their lives in their hands to demonstrate against Hamas.
- [59:16]
Duncan Trussell
Right.
- [59:16]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
So to share the stories, like you were just saying, we're not hearing about it. To share the stories of the people who are doing the work in the places that are the most dangerous. Right. You know, we all know about the Innocence Project. We all know about families who've had people murdered who then advocate not to give the person who did the murder the death penalty. We know, we know those stories that they come to this place. And I have to say it, I think a lot of it does come from faith. I mean, I'm not just saying that because I'm a rabbi, but when you talk to people who are part of a church, you talk to people who had the church bombings or the shootings that happened, they say, we don't want to take revenge because we know it just continues the cycle of violence. We don't have to take revenge. We elevate those stories so that people can see, oh, this had an impact on that person. You know, I just listened to an interview with Justin Pearson, you know, from North Carolina, and he was like, I wanted to be a musician, I didn't want to be a politician, right? But, but after the shooting that happened, I decided I needed to be a politician. Like, people get transformed, can get transformed if we are able to help navigate that bridge between real life and fear. And fear is not, it's not like fear isn't part of real life. But the question is how you deal with your fear, how you deal with your trauma. We've got a lot of undoing to do. And one of the sessions we did with this Israeli Palestinian educational group called Interact was about trauma. We had a Palestinian woman and an Israeli woman talk about trauma. And the Israeli woman, her best friend had been kidnapped on October 7. She was released months later. But she was trying to explain to her six year old son why she was crying all the time. Right. She's in the middle of this and she's working with Palestinians to try to bring forth education and understanding. And that's really what I think is called for at this time, that we have to be uncomfortable. I mean, this shit's messy. It's not easy. Like I'm going to, I make mistakes. Sometimes I say things that aren't great, right? Some other people will do the same thing. And then there has to be Some kind of way to say, you know what, I didn't realize what I said, or I didn't have all the information or thank you for sharing your pain with me. Now I understand things differently. Right. And I, and I, that's my work in the world is to have to do that. Look, you know, my late husband went down to Bogalusa, Louisiana to do civil rights work right after Czerny and the murder of. I'm always forgetting their names, the Jewish boy and the not Jewish boy. And he went down there and risked his life to be down there. You know, that was dangerous. But the truth is, you know, I went down to Nicaragua during the San Dienista Somoza conflicts, during the Iran Contra affair, to bear witness to what's happening there. I'm going to go back there because I feel a sense of obligation to be part of the solution as opposed to getting stuck in all the problems. And that's what we can do.
- [62:37]
Duncan Trussell
See, this is the thing. If you're out there and you've got some kind of opinion politically regarding this situation or all the wars, and you haven't seen it, I mean, I guess if you were there, if you've gone through it and you have come to the conclusion violence is the answer, who am I to argue with you out here in Austin? Like, who am I to push back? But also, if you're someone out there who is like you, who's seen it or someone who has felt it, who's lost. How many people did you say that person lost? 30 people.
- [63:16]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Over 30 people. Some family members. Yeah. In Gaza.
- [63:19]
Duncan Trussell
And you are saying after that peace, then how can you, any of us who haven't, who only have a philosophical understanding, probably that we've gathered from TikTok or Fox or CNN or whatever, how can we then say anything counter to that? I'm not saying we shouldn't have a voice, but I think because of how you've really got, like, plunged yourself into these very dangerous situations. Not just physically, like dangerous for your job, dangerous for just danger. You're dangerous. I don't think we can be friends after this. I'm just kidding. I'm joking. But. I know, I know, I know, but. And so you're saying, like, I think there's one step back before the fear, which is. And again, maybe this is cynical. I think that a lot of us don't want to be wrong before the trauma, before whatever. I think there's a lot of people invested in a point of view that they became convinced is the point of view, and they hear things like this, that point of view is challenged. And rather than the moment you realize, wait a minute, this means I'm wrong, You're like, they must be. I don't want to say I'm wrong. I don't want to say I fucked up. I don't want to say I got brainwashed propaganda. I don't want to imagine I'm some puppet of the military industrial complex. I want to think I'm rational, logical, and that I'm an adult who knows what's going on. And then you hear things like this and truly, like, man, if we have people walking around from both sides who've lost people, and they're saying, peace, and you're not saying peace, I think you have to take a good, long, hard look at how you came to that conclusion.
- [65:12]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Yeah, And I look, I mean, I guess for me, I've been part of nonviolent, you know, direct action since the 80s. Like, you know, and the way that we did it, honestly, I mean, I've been in the protest movement most of my life. And the way that we did it is we had nonviolence preparations and we made agreements with each other and we showed up in ways that were really trying to de. Escalate, but confront Gandhi, speak truth to power. And that's what I would love to see. If the people that are out screaming in the streets, I'm not saying don't protest what's happening. I'm disgusted by what Israel's doing. And I'm saying this loudly. I want the US to stop giving Israel offensive weapons. I want that to stop so that, you know, that's dangerous to say, as you. As you mentioned. But the point I'm trying to make is this is not helping the cause, even. So what happens is other people see these protests and they go, that's antisemitism. Or, you know, my students not. My kid's not safe at a college campus.
- [66:21]
Duncan Trussell
Right?
- [66:22]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Or, you know, we. In Santa Cruz, we had people blocking the entrance to the university last year, last spring, and an ambulance couldn't get through to a kid who needed medical, emergency medical attention. I get a text from a mother, from the congregation, can't get back to her children. The babysitter needs to leave because the campus is blocked. So if you. I mean, peaceful encampments are one thing. You know, with. If you're trying to interact and trying. There's a group called Atedna. Actually, they started in Austin at University of Texas, and they bring together Israeli and Jewish and Palestinian Arab kids, students, to talk together. So that's way more productive than people not being able to get to their kids or a medical ambulance, not being able to get into a college campus to save a young person's life.
- [67:17]
Duncan Trussell
100%. And I must say, when I see these videos of people going onto a train, who here's a Zionist, who here's a Zionist, or any of this kind of, like, hardcore violent stuff, that is exactly what happened in Germany. Like, no. What's the difference then? All then, because I'm somewhat of an idiot, my point of view is like, I don't want to be on that team, whatever team that is, fuck them. That's horrible. I don't. What if my kid. I'm just imagining, just like if I was on a subway and my kids there and he sees a thing like that. And then I have to explain, like, oh, well, these are people who are trying to intimidate Jewish people and terrify them. So I get pissed. And then I'm like, no, fuck that. And so, yes, I hear what you're saying. It's like, when I was coming up, the idea of, like, speaking truth to power and social justice was not to, like, duplicate methods used by Nazis in World War II. It was like. It was this sort of. Like, it was much more effective and terrible, which is to. In a. In a calm way, and I'm not saying you shouldn't be angry or whatever, but in a calm way, demonstrate peace. It doesn't mean don't say things that are upsetting to people, but also, in your way of being in the world, show that aggression maybe isn't the only way to create change.
- [68:45]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
And it's counterproductive.
- [68:47]
Duncan Trussell
Counterproductive?
- [68:48]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Yeah, it's counterproductive. Well, just like we said earlier, it's counterproductive to wage war. It's counterproductive to protest in such a manner that other people who maybe don't even have a position on what you're protesting about, don't want to support you. Like, protest. Part of protest is, you know, in Jewish tradition, and I do a lot of community organizing, and there's this idea of hot anger and cool anger. Yes, right. Use your anger in such a way that you're able to say something that you really believe is right and say it in such a way that people can hear it. Like, you know, we. We had a situation a few months ago. It may still be going on, but I think we've dealt with it mostly where a particular company was going to be raising the rents on a Low, very low income building in downtown Santa Cruz. And the residents were going to be kicked out. A lot of them would be unhoused. And so our communities got together, churches in our synagogue, and we wrote a letter and we went to the city council and we went with the people who were residents there. And they were. The city council stopped them from raising the rent to a place where they would have to leave. So now, you know, they're suing the city. But my point is, do the organizing in such a way that you can be effective. That's an effective way. And we were like, well, maybe if they won't talk to us, the owners of the building, we were even talking about going to their building and sitting outside and waiting for people to come out. I mean, there's so many ways, you know, people protested against the kind of conditions in immaculate Florida where people who are picking tomatoes, because that's where most of the tomatoes came from. And they managed to get it so that Trader Joe's wouldn't buy tomatoes from those growers who were not treating their workers fairly. So there's success. You have to be calculating how you can be successful. You can't just go out there and scream because that's not going to work.
- [70:51]
Duncan Trussell
So I help me out here. I still feel hopeless. Not in a day to day sense, in a geopolitical sense. I still feel a general, grim sense that regardless, there's nothing that we're going to do to stop this momentum and terrifying.
- [71:17]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
So follow the people who are doing the work. That's what I always tell everybody. Follow the people that are doing the work. And remember, if people in the south before voting rights happened, were hopeless, what would have happened? Hopelessness. I'm sorry, Duncan. Hopelessness. It's a luxury.
- [71:40]
Duncan Trussell
It really is. It's so great. You're done, you've retired from hope. You just sit back.
- [71:47]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Exactly.
- [71:47]
Duncan Trussell
I don't need to do anything. Watch Sean Hannity eat some beef jerky.
- [71:53]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Right, right. Like, I'd do it if it was vegan. But anyway, the point is I'm not eating beef jerky. But the point is, my dog could have some. But the point is, you know, there's so many times in so many places and even right now, like, Palestinians are not hopeless. Right, right. My friend Angela is not hopeless. She is fucking screaming, you know, yelling in the courthouse and driving her car into, you know, I tell her I'm coming in April, she's like, you're staying with me, habibti. You know what I mean? Like, you're We're. We're just going to keep going. We have to keep going and doing this because then we give up and then what the fuck, you know, Then it's all over and. And there's kids. You know what I mean? Like, you have kids, honey. You can't. You cannot. You can't give up hope because you owe it to them not to just saying little Jewish guilt, little Jewish.
- [72:45]
Duncan Trussell
I'll take it.
- [72:46]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
I need.
- [72:46]
Duncan Trussell
No. This is why when we talked and you told me about those two people walking together, I was like, we have to do a podcast. Because it reminded me of something that I realized I had forgotten. Honestly, I don't. I was being a little performative, but I know a lot of people out there do, and I think that it's such a maybe. I mean, just that reminder of, like, come on, like, give me a break. Like, there's so many other examples in history where only a few people have created momentum that made drastic, massive, positive change.
- [73:23]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Yep, yep, yep. There's a rabbi in Israel, Rabbi Arik Asherman, and he was once the director of. Rabbi Sreeman writes. He's not anymore, but he has another organization. And we were there with him in East Jerusalem, seeing the houses that had been eight sahor that had been bulldozed, and there's this tiny little pink sneaker in the pile of rubble. Right. And I stood there and I went, sh. You know what? Not like I had to write about it. And he said to me, you never know when things can change. We keep working. And he's gotten beaten by settlers, he's gotten arrested. He took us out to replant, you know, grape vineyards when I was there one year. And, you know, he. We keep. And this is what I always say, actually, in terms of Israel and Palestine, as long as there are people on the ground doing the work, I will never give up. Right.
- [74:17]
Duncan Trussell
Yes. I love it. Thank you. Thank you for this.
- [74:20]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
You're welcome.
- [74:21]
Duncan Trussell
What a beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Incredible. And I'm sure, Rabbi Paul, people are going to want to connect with you. How can people find you?
- [74:32]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
If they go on the tbeaptos.org they'll find my email. So it's Templebethos. Tbe a p o a p t o s tbe aptos.org they'll find my email and they can reach out to me.
- [74:47]
Duncan Trussell
And, you know, if you have the time, I know you're very busy. If you could send me links to all of those sources. I will. For listening. It'll be in the episode. Description of the show if you want to look deeper. Thank you so much for the work you're doing, for giving me so much time. I really appreciate it.
- [75:05]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
You're welcome. Duncan. Thank you. It's been an honor and I look forward to more more work together.
- [75:10]
Duncan Trussell
Oh, for sure you gotta come back. Thank you.
- [75:14]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
Be well. Okay, bye.
- [75:16]
C
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- [75:46]
Rabbi Paula Marcus
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- [76:18]
Duncan Trussell
All the links you need to find her will be in the episode description. Tremendous. Thank you to our sponsors and thank you all for listening. God bless you, Hare Krishna.
- [76:30]
C
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