Yehuda Kurtzer (3:02)

I'm doing. Okay. How did you know? How many years are we together already?

Daniil Hartman (3:07)

15. 15.

Yehuda Kurtzer (3:08)

15 years. That's not bad. I'm doing okay because I don't believe that I have a luxury to feel anything else. It's a decision. And I was raised in Israel in which men were trained to do that, boys were trained, and men and soldiers, we were trained that you have to be okay when you have to be okay. And what you're feeling or not feeling is just not that important. Just doesn't matter that much. Sometimes I don't hold myself in particular high regard. The future of Israel is not on my shoulders. But I feel a huge responsibility to talk about Israel and Judaism in ways that a lot of people aren't talking about. And I can't not be okay. I just can't. So there are times where my work output goes down a little bit. You are punched, you're punched. You don't sleep, you are punched. But I'm okay. And I am so wired to teaching, to talking. That's what we do. We believe that ideas matter. We believe that ideas in the world are critical for the way the Jewish people could relate to Judaism, to Israel. And I feel in our space, you and I and people in the Hartman Institute, we have a holy task. And it turns out that we're talking differently than other people. And that's what we're getting from people, that the way we're talking is not the way other people are talking. And so I just don't have a choice.

Daniil Hartman (5:05)

But I wonder about it because I wonder whether that has to be true. Because some of what you even suggested was I was raised in an Israel where. And we kind of know it's not great, it's not great psychologically to embed in young men and young women that they bear this burden that requires of them to posture a sense of being okay when it's not. And in fact, we've seen in this war, the IDF has created groundbreaking work around trauma therapy that no army has really ever done. They acknowledge that pretending that we're okay is not okay. But I also wonder, even from the perspective of what it means to be an educator, whether you need to create that sense of detachment. And here this is not just a personal question. We're in a room, literally and virtually with a lot of rabbis who have the same job that we do. And I wonder what it means when we kind of insist. Actually, I'll contest what it means that we would insist that we need to be the ones who are okay in order to hold pastorally those in our communities that are really struggling and struggling on so many different fronts, Sometimes because they or their families are caught in climates of fear, sometimes because they're far away and can't control a lot. What space do we have and be the kinds of leaders where it's imo Anochi Betzara. I'm actually in the suffering together with the people I care for.

Yehuda Kurtzer (6:34)

I'm not saying it's necessarily healthy.

Daniil Hartman (6:37)

You're just saying not, come on.

Yehuda Kurtzer (6:39)

Making a virtue of it. I just know who I am.

Daniil Hartman (6:41)

Yeah.

Yehuda Kurtzer (6:42)

It's just who I am. I've always been that way. I was raised that way from, like, it's just. But by the way, it's not. Which rabbi here doesn't do that all the time? You know, the first time I did a funeral, I officiated funeral. Scariest thing of my life. Right. Could you all remember when you did it the first time? What are you going to. Because always when you go to a shiver, you're like, what are you supposed to say? And how do you. Sometimes you just have to do. And I know because it's not that I'm not feeling. I'm feeling a huge amount of things. So it's not that I can't resonate to what people are feeling and that I don't feel it too. I feel it. I just don't let it make me not okay. Like, at some point it just. It needs to stop. And you pay a price. Of course you do. You pay a price. But also, like all of you, we have an institution. We have hundreds of workers. We have thousands of people who are coming here. There's things we have to do. That's why very often a rabbi where it's some of the loneliest jobs in the world. Because what you're feeling is really not that important. All the time there's somebody else. And it's. That's what it means to be a shalia tzibor a little bit. But I couldn't teach what I'm teaching if I wasn't feeling. But if I allowed my feelings, I can allow myself to be depressed. I can't allow myself to be pessimistic. I can't allow myself to be negative. And so I decide there's places I'm not going to go. And you pay a price for it, of course you do, but there's some value to it.

Daniil Hartman (8:22)

You said something earlier today when we were talking with our senior leadership met for a few hours today. And one of the things that you said, which I think is a really important idea, is that part of being an educator and acknowledging that your fundamental role is being an educator involves the necessity and the courage in some ways to let go of thinking that you're actually a short term change agent, that you can fix things. This is a really complicated trap for anybody in a position of influence, especially in the challenges that we all face now. We're watching immense moral challenges here in Israel. We're watching immense moral challenges in America, political climates and challenges and a widespread moral narrative actually that those who are on any of these issues, those who are silent are complicit, those who are not screaming out in very particular ways, organizing politically in very particular ways, are inherently contributing to this, so to say. Basically, I'm willing to say that my role in the world is fundamentally to be an educator is to acknowledge I'm not going to actually fix things, not.

Yehuda Kurtzer (9:40)

Going to fix things tomorrow, now, right in the short run, I'm not in the ambulance, I'm not stopping somebody from bleeding. It's like there's a different level. It's a larger arc of. It doesn't mean that it has to be generational, but you need to give yourself a little larger arc. It's not the arc of an academic. There are some academics who are educators. The arc of an academic is generational. I'm going to write a book and I'm going to believe that my book, once it gets into the library of the Jewish people, it's going to somehow shape, Even though only 116 people read it. 100 what?

Daniil Hartman (10:22)

A lot of people. That depends what field you're in.

Yehuda Kurtzer (10:24)

But that's a lot of 116 people are going to read it. I will sell 400 copies primarily to libraries, but it's going to somehow connect to a chain of spiritual and intellectual growth. And you want to know something? It's true. It is actually true. When you look at the arc of history, these things, they do become part of a larger story for us here as educators. I don't think of the Hartman Institute or myself as generation. Like what's going to be in 200 years. I don't think of the. But I do think about what's going to be in from two years, five years, 10 years. I don't think more than 10 years. That's because you can't even imagine that. But how are you going to be part of a solution? And know fully well that as an educator you're only one small part of that solution. You're not going to vote in the Knesset. You're not raising your hand, you're not pushing the button. You're not giving the decision. That's not your job. You can't even decide should we bring the hostages back? It's not on you. But it is on you to flood the public discourse to the best of your ability with ideas and values. You know, and as you're asking, I remember, I hope you don't mind. I remember 15 years ago, when you had just finished your position at Harvard. Bernice, it was Brandeis, okay? That's right.

Daniil Hartman (12:01)

It's the Harvard of Walfam.

Yehuda Kurtzer (12:03)

It's the Harvard. It's the Harvard of wal. And I remember. What was the award that you got from Bronfman?

Daniil Hartman (12:11)

It was the professorship at Brandeis. It was the strangest contest in.

Yehuda Kurtzer (12:14)

I know, very strange.

Daniil Hartman (12:16)

It was. The prize was a two year position as the visiting chair in Jewish communal innovation.

Yehuda Kurtzer (12:23)

But you had to have like thousands. The best big idea in the world or something, right?

Daniil Hartman (12:28)

Yeah, basically it was like.

Yehuda Kurtzer (12:29)

No. And it was. And it was built on your book. It was like the best big idea. Like, it was like you were the new cream cheese of the Jewish world. It was like there was something that you remember.

Daniil Hartman (12:38)

I remember, listen, it landed me a really good job afterwards.

Yehuda Kurtzer (12:42)

No, no. And I remember. No, but I remember when I interviewed you, like, could you have imagined, like you went from one place and you entered into another world. And these 15 years, I have to tell you, have been insane from 2010 till now. In Jewish life, in Jewish life, in Israeli politics, in American politics, in worlds like. And I remember you saying, I don't want that world. I didn't want academia. You actually wanted to beware what you wish for. But that's the world that you chose to be a part of. But it wasn't to become a surgeon, or it wasn't to become an emergency responder, but it was a shift out of that professorship and award world to fighting for something. And so, you know, I think though.

Daniil Hartman (13:33)

What this attest to is there is a complicated place for religious and spiritual leadership in the world right now. I think that's what I'm trying to tease out. And it does live somewhere between, as you describe, you know, an academic contribution to Jewish history, which is generational or civil, I think use the term civilizational. Right. It informs what we think as the Jewish people about what these ideas mean, you know, over time of Jewish history. And it's not quite the same as the work of being an active social change agent who measures the work that they do based on who wins the next election or whether this piece of legislation right now gets passed. And at the same time, we live in an environment where the pressures on religious leaders are mounting to do far more of that second kind of work. And it takes a certain, I don't know what the word would be fortitude, to stand back of that culture of participating in rapid political change in the United States. By the way, the president changing the rules around endorsements in political office. This has just happened, what, a week ago? That now you no longer risk your tax exempt status if you make endorsements. Which actually, I think the wise readers of this realize that this is a terrible bind for religious leaders because now there's going to be a whole quid pro quo with public officials about, oh, you'll get what you need based on who you endorse. But it also just comes from a climate of if you are not directly engaging with these issues in a particular way, you're a quietist to this political period of time. So. And I hear it even in my own articulation of this, I know that my own instinct, like, I'm not a big protest person. I know you aren't either. And we've talked about this before. We like long form things. It doesn't fit as well. Right. On a bumper sticker, on a placard.

Yehuda Kurtzer (15:30)

We actually love podcasts.

Daniil Hartman (15:32)

Yeah, podcasts are long. It's work.

Yehuda Kurtzer (15:33)

Yeah.

Daniil Hartman (15:33)

Actually, nobody can interrupt you on a podcast. Right. But it does put religious leadership in a very different kind of bind today to find that space of how do I do the real work of educating, of spiritual guidance, of mentorship, of resilience, to be able to stay with ourselves or one another, our commitments through a period of this time. Not to argue that our religious and our moral convictions should not be applied to the moral challenges of our time, but also not to let it become so slippery that we're just papering over our political commitments with our religious commitments. It's. I, I think that we're dealing with something that's very hard and very deep. I agree.

Yehuda Kurtzer (16:17)

And we're trying to find It.

Daniil Hartman (16:19)

Yeah.

Yehuda Kurtzer (16:20)

That's why we have to be okay, because we have to find that the world needs a certain voice and needs people to talk in a certain way.

Daniil Hartman (16:29)

I want to talk a little bit about North American Jews and what it is to live through the last couple of years. I know the term you used this morning was warrior nation and what it means to be a warrior nation. I've been playing with a whole list now.

Yehuda Kurtzer (16:41)

I know there's warrior nation, trauma nation, peaceful nation, fetching nation. There's a whole bunch of them.

Daniil Hartman (16:48)

Yeah. By the way, I think the Golden State warriors refer to themselves as a warrior nation. And they're really so. You know, when we started talking about this in our I Engage seminar, when you said warrior nation, I said, well, what I think North American Jews are in is warrior nation.

Yehuda Kurtzer (17:02)

Did you understand what he said? They're not worrier to worry the worrying nation.

Daniil Hartman (17:09)

Right. In some ways, what you have here is the capacity, and I don't mean this as like you would, I'm sure, relinquish it. The capacity to vote to make change the folks in your families. When there is a war, fight in that war. You are part of a tradition which we call Zionism, which was fundamentally rooted in the decision by the Jewish people to have agency and control over your own destiny. I think one of the things that's so hard for Israelis right now is they feel so angry at their government, and they feel a loss of a sense of agency in controlling where the society is going. But you're much closer to that. And for those of us North American Jews who identify deeply in our relationship to the state of Israel, who are not among the small but vocal minority who stand in opposition to the state of Israel, we don't quite. And I say this as well, I don't quite know where that agency comes from. What is the agency that we are meant to express? I went earlier today on an Israeli television news program, and they were asking about this Mandy Patinkin interview that I don't really need to go into, but a very, very trenchant New York Times interview with Mandy Patinkin. I had to. Before we got on the air, I had to tell the anchor how to pronounce Mandy Patinkin. That could have been a great set of memes, but you could hear from the anchor that he couldn't kind of make sense of North American Jews who say, as Patinkin said, I care about the state of Israel. I care about its people. I believe in the existence of the state of Israel, and I feel so basically embarrassed. And I feel. And I think this was the weakest part of Patinkin's argument that the state of Israel is causing antisemitism in the world. And the whole thing, as he burst into tears, where I felt I identified with it was, I have no ability to control this. And therefore the only thing that's left is to scream and yell at the same time. We are living within an environment where screaming and yelling about the moral failures of the state of Israel takes place within an environment of plenty of people who have believed that well before October 7th and puts us in very, very strange places. So there's this moral squeeze that I think we're facing as North American Jews and a lot of confusion about what it looks like to express those viewpoints. And when I tried to explain this to the anchor, because he said, is this a majority of American Jews? And I said, increasingly, it is the majority of American Jews not who feel that Israel has no legitimacy to have fought this war, but who feel like it's enough and you can't do it anymore. And he said to me, this is so famously Israeli, he says, okay, you have better ideas. And I said, we're not having a policy discussion. I said, there's a difference between a policy discussion and a moral discussion. But I don't know if that's enough. I guess I'm curious both in an Israeli as an educator, like, what really do you want American Jews to do, and how do we do that in a way that enables us to kind of thrive within this place of moral squeeze?

Yehuda Kurtzer (20:27)

We don't know anymore, do we? We really don't know anymore. We want American Jews to be liberal Zionists. We want Canadian Jews. We want Jews around the world to be liberal Zionists. We want you to love Israel. We want you to feel that something beautiful and powerful is happening here that's an integral part of your Jewish life. And that to be a Jew has never been defined simply by the particular community in which you live. There's always been a worldwide Jewish community to which you feel connected and that Israel is not just one other community, and it's not just a community, the largest now Jewish community. That there's something deeply important happening in this experiment that's an excuse, in this project of Jewish sovereignty. There's something very powerful about Judaism working itself out in the public sphere and about creating here a Jewish state which is a light. And we want world Jewry to be invested in that process. We want them to be even, in many ways, partners in thinking about what it means because our lives are on the line or the decisions we make affect us first. Even though I don't believe that what society.

Daniil Hartman (22:03)

Patinkin.

Yehuda Kurtzer (22:04)

Patinkin. He was the one in Homeland, right? Yeah, yeah. That's where he was empowered. Yeah. I do believe that the recent dramatic increase in antisemitism around the world is a direct result of Israel. That's the only factor that's really changed. So I don't think he's completely wrong there. I think there is a, like, what has changed? War in Gaza. I think there's a manipulation of it, but I think it's part of the story. But it affects Israelis in one. But that really what we're supposed to do here. What does it mean to be a model, to be a great people? I don't think we're the only ones who are part of that conversation. I don't think Kimitzion, Tetzei, Torah. I think Zion has a lot to Torah, and I think there's a lot of Torah we have to learn. There's a real lot of Torah to figure this out. We need you as chavrutas, we need you as thinkers, we need you as critics, we need you as all this stuff. But the problem is, is that it's getting harder and harder to ask you to play that role. Doesn't mean the role's not worthwhile. Just we know how hard it is. The fact that Israelis, by and large, stole after everything, after judicial reform, after October 7th and 8th, and the feeling of power and support that you give us when all is said and done, they still, by and large, it's not just that they don't understand what you're experiencing. They don't even feel that acquiring knowledge to understand it is of value. And I know it's very hard. It's like I'm praying that you'll stick around long enough. Like, what is the foundation for it? How much could I ask of you? Because it's true, you don't have a voice. Maybe you're like the same thing, like an educator in that sense. Maybe, you know, I'm going to connect the first part to the second. Maybe you have to help flood the public discourse with your ideas and your feelings and your aspirations. And just like someone who's a teacher or an educator, you're not going to decide. But by the way, even the soldier, you could have turned back to that person who interviewed you and said what? You don't feel the same thing. What are you talking about? You feel the same sense of tiredness, but just to be part of that conversation. And I know the one thing you don't have that we have is you don't get to vote. And I don't want you to vote. I don't want you to vote. But the individual citizen in Israel is not more empowered or less empowered than you are. If you think about it. You just don't get to vote. You get to actually, even though you don't vote, you get to contribute because you have more money than most Israelis do. And so you could, through finances, somehow affect. But you're just part of a people who has to flood a conversation and not give up. Just not give up. But it's hard. Listen, we have lived in a exceptional period of time where most of the last 15 or 20 years has been a period in which Israel doesn't represent or reflect many of the key values and Judaisms that most of world Jewry care about. It's almost a generation. It's almost a generation where the gap between the Israel that we're supposed to talk about and the Israel that it is is significant. And it's just getting harder and harder. It's. You know, this is like you can look at a continuum. I know my father used to say, israel's not a nachos machine. That was one of his famous lines. It's not a nachos machine. If you want nachos, that's this word real, but you need a little nachos. It's like, it doesn't have to be a nachos machine, but it could have, like, you know, could there be a moment of a simcha, you know, like, is there something like. And I know you struggle with this all the time. So we want to define ourselves in North America as a leading institution for liberal Zionism. Even in your own career, you know how people, they either hate you or love you, depending on which article you write and whether it represents the. Their notion of loyalty. Right, Loyalty. What does it mean? This is the great word. The great test of somebody is owning the loyalty medal. Like, they're sitting out, they're dispensing the loyalty medals. And that makes it very hard. But just be part of a chain of people who for 3,000 years have been struggling to create decency in our lives. And now that is a part of a new experiment and a new project called Israel, and continue to be a part of that conversation and make your voices heard and your voices can be heard. And Israelis will want to silence it and don't listen. But the Gap. Just don't give up. Maybe it's demanding. Maybe liberal Zionists really have to exit the political activist mode and be more in the educational mode. Could that work?

Daniil Hartman (27:30)

Yeah. You know, Haaretz had a very contentious, controversial piece. What was it a week and a half ago saying, 100,000 dead in Gaza. I remember where that number came from. Today I saw a different number that said, you know, death toll hits 58,000. Right. And it was like, it is worse 100,000 deaths than 58,000 deaths. But the argument about the number of deaths is completely morally obtuse. It's a lot of people. It's absolute carnage. And I felt this way increasingly, even about the genocide debate. Do you call it a genocide? Do you not call it a genocide? And how much distraction that actually is creating from the sense of moral urgency about a lot of killing and a lot of starving and a lot of bad policies that are being thrown around that are definitionally ethnic cleansing. Moving people into a humanitarian area, as it's being called, a humanitarian enclave in the south of Gaza, and not permitting them to return to their homes follows the international law definition of ethnic cleansing. And so these terms wind up having very little meaning compared to the moral weight. And I want to say, apropos your comments, I'm in this forever. This is just who I am. It's who I am personally and Jewishly and obviously institutionally. And I felt more of a tinge in the last couple of months of, like, what would it be like to just change the channel for American Juice? Just change the channel, focus on something else. Right. Even America could use our help and responsibility. That may be worse and more intractable. Or Judaism. What about that? Could we just do Judaism? And I think part of that comes from the fact that. And this is something, an insight I got from years ago from Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, anger enables people to stay in relationship. Shame is a distancer. The minute you get to a place of real shame, you don't want to be a part of something. You don't want to see it. You want to get it out of your life. It's such a bad, horrible feeling. And that feeling of shame. And you can argue whether it's deserved or not. Right. Well, maybe I should be proud of what Israel succeeded at doing at these fronts of the war and proud of its accomplishments, because it could have been worse. And it's not worse. And you could play that game. But to be the kind of liberal Zionist we're talking about, you don't play games around Let me use this language to make me feel better about my commitments. You feel burdened by that story of aspiration. What you want the Jewish people to be, what you want the state of Israel to be, the obligations of holding ourselves to a more powerful moral threshold and then up into that brick wall of a sense of not just powerlessness, but a sense of shame and being implicated by that story. And it's very, very deeply worrying to me. I think it's the better way of understanding what's happening with younger Jews in America. The easy way to have dismissed them was they are ignorant, malignant, malicious. They don't understand things. Let me post a meme of students.

Yehuda Kurtzer (30:40)

The first one was ignorant. Yeah. You got ignorant. Yeah.

Daniil Hartman (30:43)

Let me post a meme of students who are being asked, you're claiming from the river to the sea. And look, they don't really know which is the river or it's the sea. They're just fools. That's actually not the thing that worries me. There are going to be people who are ignorant. The far more worrying phenomenon is maybe I just don't want to have anything to do with this. I don't want to be associated with it. I don't want to be called on it. I'm going to distance myself from Jewish symbols because I don't remember who I was talking about. A college student who just said, I just. I don't want the first thing that people to know about me is that I'm Jewish, because if that's the first thing I know about me now they have a whole set of loaded assumptions about Israel and Zionism and the reputation of the Jewish people and so forth. What we have here are two different challenges, actually, because one of them is here and figuring out what we think about and what we want to say about here. And the second is whether we are capable of formulating a language of Jewish meaning and pride and significance that will enable American Jews to continue to feel a sense of something and a sense of agency that is strong enough to withstand that sense of shame. It feels. You know what I mean? It feels like two different projects. One is, what's the repair work here? And what's the space that is available for American Jews to participate in that repair. Repair work? And the other is like, what's the assay, not just the lotus, for the future of Jewish life.

Yehuda Kurtzer (32:12)

Even that division aggravates me a little bit. And I understand where it's coming from. Because if one part of your Jewishness is activating shame, and by the way, anger After a long time doesn't work either. Anger leads to divorce. Right?

Daniil Hartman (32:31)

That's.

Yehuda Kurtzer (32:32)

It's just, you know, who needs it? As if I have two Judaisms. I have my conversation about Israel and I have Jewish life and ritual and values, et cetera. I have two separate conversations. One is aggravating me and embarrassing me. So could I go back to sukkos? Like let's talk about Sukkos. You know, let's re examine Shabbos, even the articulation, as if there's two Judaisms. I think the minute we start talking that way, I think we've lost. I think we've lost. As a Zionist, I feel we've lost. Maybe this new non Zionist group are trying to advocate for some diasporic Judaism free from that shame. I think there is no Jewishness without Jewish peoplehood. There is no Jewishness without engaging in this current sovereign project. If I lived in another era, could there be a Judaism without it? Sure. But now this is Judaism. So there's going to be something so pariv. Poor, bifurcated. It's like almost ghettoing.

Daniil Hartman (33:57)

Yeah.

Yehuda Kurtzer (33:57)

So like it's like this. How could I teach justice and not be concerned about justice in Israel? It just has to be part of. Listen, you can divorce yourself from this place. It's possible. I could understand that. But to present it as if you're retreating into Judaism as distinct from Israel, that dichotomy, I think we shouldn't buy that language 100%.

Daniil Hartman (34:26)

And whether to describe it as that these are inherently intertwined or to suggest to take one out is to impoverish your Judaism. It reminds me of something, of what you taught around one of the God seminars maybe a decade ago. I think the question was, do you have to believe in God to be a good Jewish? And I think your answer was no. But let me talk to you about the ways in which believing in God, having a relationship with God can be a source of greatness, of building out a serious Judaism. So that's, you know, the first argument is these are fundamentally intertwined. The second is you can cut this off, but you just have basically a weaker Judaism.

Yehuda Kurtzer (35:06)

Right. And like you felt it very much.

Daniil Hartman (35:08)

This is, I mean, this is as deep as it is to my Torah. It's like.

Yehuda Kurtzer (35:11)

And you feel it all the time also, like when you want to. How much of American and Canadian North American Jews jewelry. Let's not talk about world jewelry, which we don't. I can't speak about it.

Daniil Hartman (35:20)

Right.

Yehuda Kurtzer (35:21)

How much of North American jewelry has cut itself off from Certain aspects of our tradition in which Israel is hero. Israel. Israel is the, you know, Shema Israel.

Daniil Hartman (35:34)

Israel is just a metaphor.

Yehuda Kurtzer (35:36)

It's. It's just. Israel is. Israel is Israel. And so it's. You can't do either. But. Yeah, but I think just to present as if there's. You can do one.

Daniil Hartman (35:45)

Yes. And here, you know, I've offered this critique before in the field of Jewish education, and I'll make it again. A good example of how we are already failing at this, at this hybrid integration is that in Jewish day schools, it is not obvious what department the study of Israel lives in. Right. It's somewhere between the history department, it is in the Hebrew language department, and it's in the cafeteria. Those are the three places. Sometimes you have your own discipline, a class about Israel, but in theory, it should be in Judaism, Jewish philosophy, Jewish law. Anytime you're asking essential moral questions about what does it mean to live Judaism in the world, one of the sites that that plays out is your backyard and your neighborhood. And another site that it plays out is the largest stage that the Jewish people have ever had to play out the questions of our values, which is in the state of Israel. So we are already behind the eight ball on it. But it somehow feels as though, even with a vision of integrating these, the balance is still a little off. Sure, that Israel takes up so much of the emotional energy of what it means to be a Jew in America.

Yehuda Kurtzer (36:54)

But we don't do it as Judaism.

Daniil Hartman (36:56)

But we don't do it as Judaism.

Yehuda Kurtzer (36:57)

Yeah, we don't do it as Judaism. If we did it as Judaism would be an integral part of everything that we do. And as we talk about all questions, we do it as something else.

Daniil Hartman (37:07)

So there's more to talk about it there. And to be continued. Thank you, everybody. La lingo. Cheers.