← For Heaven's Sake
Loading summary
Transcript48 lines
- [00:01]
A
This episode of For Heaven's Sake has been sponsored by the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization. The organization represents more than 1200 families that have lost sons, husbands, fathers who fell defending Israel and the Jewish people. In Jewish tradition, we're commanded to stand with the widows and orphans as a sacred trust, not as charity, but in solidarity. And how much more so with the widows and orphans of the idf. Thank you friends for the sacred work that you do for the bereaved families. Thank you for being a partner with us at the Sholem Hartman Institute in our work. Those of you who would like to help support the work of the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization, please visit them at idfwo. Thanks very much.
- [01:06]
B
You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [01:12]
A
Holocaust Memorial Day is when we mourn the consequences of Jewish powerlessness. The memorial day for the fallen soldiers is when we mourn the consequences of Jewish power. The next day we celebrate Independence Day.
- [01:28]
C
The whole idea of a holiday cycle is to work as a speed bump to stop you from your regular flow of life. It's time for you to readjust and to reconnect to another dimension.
- [01:41]
A
Spiritual, intellectual, moral, emotionally. Since October 7th, we feel in some way that we're back in a raw relationship to the Holocaust. The experience of radical helplessness has not been undone.
- [02:00]
B
Foreign.
- [02:08]
C
Hi friends, this is Daniil Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi from the Shalom Hartman Institute. And this is our podcast, For Heaven's Sake, in collaboration with ARC Media. Today is Tuesday, April 14, Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel. And our podcast is about Israel's 10 days of awe. You know, the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In Israel, we have 10 days of awe from Holocaust Day to Independence Day and what these 10 days mean and feel like this year. You know, as we discussed on this podcast in the past, the whole idea of, of a holiday cycle, holidays, special days, days of remembrance, is to work as a speed bump to stop you from your regular flow of life. A holiday descends on you and demands of you something. It demands of you to think about, something. It demands of you to remember. It demands of you to concentrate on a certain value or idea. That's the way all the holidays work. Very similar to the way Heschel when he responded to a student who said to Heschel, I can't pray because the spirit's not moving me. And Heschel responds, well, it's time for you to move the spirit. The holiday comes to you and says, whether you're ready or not, it's time for you to readjust and to reconnect to another dimension, spiritual, intellectual, moral. And your year then, is painted through the prism of these holidays, which make you into something more, because you experience them and think about them. And these 10 days, Holocaust memorial Day and Independence Day, are the most intense days in our Israeli secular calendar. Even though they're not really secular, they're Jewish, they're part of our identity in the full sense of the term. But the nature of life is that we can't always transcend who we are. We can't always move the spirit and go to another place completely. And this year in particular, you'll see it's been such. Forget not this year. These last three years have been such dense years of feelings and emotions and of survival and of balancing and of figuring things out so that when we come to a holiday, we can't just transcend. We experience them in the midst of where we are. And that's what we want to talk about. How are these 10 days meeting us? Sometimes they could ask us to move outside, but for me in particular, and we'll hear shortly from you, how are these days meeting you? And it was so interesting last night in the beginning of Holocaust Memorial Day, in the national ceremony, both the President and the Prime Minister of Israel speak. And the President of Israel in the context, thinking about destruction, thinking about danger, warns the Jewish people of the dangers of divisiveness. And so for him, the cross that he bears is how does he keep the nonpartisan spirit of Israel alive? And that's what he's working on. And the Prime Minister of Israel came from his place, came from his mindset, and he compared the Holocaust to the war in Iran. That was his association. And he calls Natanz and the other nuclear enrichment facilities. He says, what are they? He compares them to Auschwitz and Treblinka. His world of association is, we are now fighting the new Holocaust at this moment. And then he goes on, and unfortunately, we'll get back to this maybe later. He then drafts, in many ways, Holocaust Memorial Day to his political enterprise right now. And he says, you know, in the Holocaust, and I'll read this translating from Hebrew, in the Holocaust, we were like a beaten animal who let loose cries and screams of suffering. And now, as distinct from then, now we are like lions who are letting forth roars of power. And the reference to Shaagat Aryeh, the roaring of the lion, which is the name Israel gave to this round of fighting with Iran. And so here it is, he says, look at the Holocaust. We are now Roaring. See me roar. That's his Holocaust. The nothing could be further than mine. But fair enough. Each one of us comes from a place, and so y. Hi.
- [06:54]
A
Hi, Daniel.
- [06:56]
C
In these days we meet you. You're now in Vancouver. You're expecting the birth of a new grandchild, God willing, soon. But you just came from Israel, and both of us are engulfed by this reality. Let's start. How does the Holocaust Memorial Day meet you this year? Is it different this year, or is it where you were on every other year?
- [07:20]
A
So, first, I just want to respond to two points. One is just simply to express my appreciation for the metaphor that you invoked of comparing a holiday to a speed bump. I thought that was really lovely and deserved to just be acknowledged. And that metaphor in itself deserves a little bit of a speed bump. And just sit with it for a moment. The other thing is, it struck me when you were talking about how these 10 secular days that commemorate the modern Jewish experience, the transition from destruction to renewal, are in principle officially secular days. But of course, they're not really secular days. And it's so interesting because we've just come through Pesach Passover, which is an explicitly religious day. And yet for many Israelis and many Jews around the world, Passover has become a kind of a secularized day. And so it's just interesting to step back and to see what an expression it is of how much we are in transition spiritually as a people. Our religious holidays are no longer explicitly religious for many Jews. Our secular holidays are not necessarily explicitly secular holidays. And I find in this blurring a very interesting and creative tension, and that who we're struggling to be and how we're struggling to reinterpret our modern Jewish experience somehow falls between the spaces in which our religious holidays are being secularized, that our secular holidays are open to religious interpretation. So that's a whole discussion in itself. It's hard for me to answer your question about where I am in relation to Yom Hasho Atu, Holocaust Memorial Day, independently of the general flow of these three dates. First we have Holocaust Memorial Day, then we have Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers, then we have Independence Day. And if you think about it historically, just in terms of the historic progression, it's a little bit off, because first is Holocaust Memorial Day, then comes Independence Day, then comes the wars for preserving our independence. And yet it doesn't play that way on the calendar, and it doesn't quite play that way emotionally either. And I think that there's a beautiful logic, an inner logic to this Unnatural progression. Holocaust Memorial Day is when we mourn the consequences of Jewish powerlessness. The Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers is when we mourn the consequences of Jewish power. The next day, that evening, we celebrate Independence Day. And for one day a year, we suspend our grief, our debate, our agony. Where are we going? The price we've paid. And we're simply in the happy ending. As if there's a suspension of reality here. But it's a suspension of reality that I think Israelis desperately need. And maybe this year more than ever, one day a year, we stop worrying, we stop arguing. And that's the beauty of Independence Day. So there is a kind of an emotional progression in which we work out the meaning and the consequences of the modern Jewish transition from complete powerlessness, from the abyss to what previous generations of Jews, if they could have seen this time, would have recognized as the culmination of the Jewish story. So that's where this helps me. And I can't separate the strands. You know, it's a hole.
- [11:47]
C
It's a hole. But can I ask you, you know, if you mentioned Passover, where we start the Seder by asking, how is this night different from every other night of the whole year? How is this, whether combined or strand, is it hitting you differently in light of what we've been experiencing and feeling?
- [12:06]
A
Yeah. You're asking about specifically. Yes, this year it's different in two ways. One is the realization that emotionally, the Jewish people is experiencing a kind of a Holocaust recidivism, where emotionally, since October 7th, we feel in some way that we're back in a raw relationship to the Holocaust in two ways. One is that we experienced October 7th as a return to complete helplessness. And even though October 7th was followed by a series of stunning Israeli military victories, emotionally, the experience of radical helplessness has not been undone. And so the Holocaust is back in Jewish consciousness in a way that it hasn't been since the Holocaust itself. The fact that it happened in Israel, the fact that this throwback to complete helplessness happened here, well, not in Vancouver, but I'm still here in Israel. And that, I think, is something that our generation is going to carry and we're going to need to struggle against, because the other side of it is the vulgarity that Netanyahu expressed in his speech. If we're back in Holocaust consciousness, if October 7th was, as we like to put it, the single worst day, the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, which I think is a very unfortunate formulation, I would not place October 7th in the context of the Holocaust, October 7th. For me, and I've said this before in our conversations here, October 7 was the single worst massacre of Israelis in a hundred years of conflict. That's the framing. And by the way, I'm saying Israelis are not just Jews because two dozen Arab Israelis were also massacred on October 7th. So I deeply fear the anchoring of October 7th in a Holocaust consciousness precisely because it leads to. To the kind of speech that Netanyahu delivered last night. And if Nathan's is Auschwitz, then you're opening the door to the vulgarization of the memory of the Holocaust. And if we can use it for our purposes, then our enemies can and are using it for their purposes. So I feel this desperate need to this year, any ha Shoah, to reclaim the sanctity. And I use that word with awe and hesitation, but nevertheless, sanctity in the sense of separatism. When you sanctify something, you are separating it from an ordinary experience. And in that sense, the Holocaust memory of the Holocaust is sanctified, must be sanctified. And if you start trivializing it, then you're opening the door to really the vulgarization of the Holocaust, you know, precisely
- [15:28]
C
because, as I've mentioned, I had no family members, friends, nobody who our family spoke about as having died in the Holocaust. My family moved to Israel in, on my father's side in 1830 and my mother's side at the beginning of the 20th century. My grandmother was born in Massachusetts. I always felt that I had to treat the Holocaust as sacred, as something that I have to honor. It wasn't mine in the full sense. It was my people's. But you don't play with it. You don't play with it. It's like, you know, when you're in an experience, you could create in it, when you have a degree of separation, your primary responsibility is to respect. And you mentioned the word holy. And for me, that's what has defined for most of my life, Holocaust Memorial Day. Holy in the Jewish tradition means separate, means completely disconnected. And I always refrained from associating anything either to the evil of Nazis or to the suffering of the Jews. I felt I couldn't belittle. It wasn't mine to play with and to, you know, to say, oh, this is, you know, the Holocaust. Of this I had to be quiet and listen to the testimony. And Holocaust Memorial Day is a day of silence where I listen, I remember. I mourn the pain of our people. I mourn their suffering. And at the same time, I also acknowledge the remarkable heroism of those who survived. So that whole story, it was just this day that I didn't play with. I didn't use the Holocaust as a way for us to teach that we should not repeat that evil. I just let it be. Let it be. And one of the things that's different for me this year is that the Holocaust doesn't feel as alien and as other. I didn't associate October 7th with a holocaust. I listened to you and how can you. And it's not that there's now antisemitism, terrorism existed before October 7, and we had terrible terrorist attacks on Jews beforehand. But the thing that is shaking me and you and I have spoken to you about this, and I don't know what to do with it because it doesn't fit into my narrative of life. I never understood the idea of an anti Semitic blood libel. I never understood, like, how somebody could believe that Jews were killing Christian youth and taking their blood and baking it into matzah. Like, I looked and I said, that's insane. And in the modern world, we are free from these type of blood libels where history and facts are merged together to fester hatred and evil directed against Jews. It. For me, it was like it was incredulous because for me, it was a memory. And then today I go on social media, not on the fringes of social media. And I hear blood libels regularly from Tucker Carlson, from Candace Owen, from others. It's not just that we tolerate Holocaust deniers or we have these debates and arguments, who is the enemy, or whatever that is. It's just I hear absolute lies, distortions, growing and motivated out of no place other than absolute evil and hatred for Jews. And I never thought I'd experience it. And now that's part of my experience. So I'm not associated. I'm not living in a Holocaust environment. But Holocaust Memorial Day is not just a past for me. It has for the first time in my life, an entry point which is not solved by the victory of Israel's sovereignty, because this is happening parallel. It's part of our universe. So it's a very different environment for me, and I'm aware of it.
- [19:37]
A
It's so interesting, Daniya, because you and I are coming from completely opposite backgrounds and yet are ending up in a not dissimilar place. Let me unpack that for a moment. My starting point in terms of my relationship to the Holocaust is my name. I carry the names not just of my grandfather who was murdered in Auschwitz, but also my grandmother. I was the firstborn. And so I was named Joseph after my father's father. And by the way, I never called him my grandfather. He was always my father's father because it was too abstract. And my grandmother, who was also killed in Auschwitz, her. Her name was Hannah. Hannah. And because I was the firstborn and my parents didn't know if they would have a girl, they named me Joseph H. In memory of my grandmother, so that my name is a tombstone for my grandparents who had no burial place. And my name was to carry this. Now, I grew up overwhelmingly where that I am intended. My purpose is to somehow fill the place, to compensate for these absent grandparents. And every child of survivors will tell you the same thing. Our purpose in life was to compensate. To compensate for our parents unhappiness. We were supposed to bring them nachos, to bring them joy, which is always the. That's the built in relationship of Jewish children to their parents. But in the case of the second generation, it is magnified exponentially because you have to compensate for all of the loss that happened just before you were born. So I grew up not just aware of the Holocaust on the most personal level, but also taking for granted that what happened once, if the impossible happened once, it can happen again, and in all likelihood will happen again. And so where I am at now is my childhood nightmares are happening to one extent or another. They're happening now in my old age. And it's completely disorienting because I spent most of my life trying to break away from that consciousness. I grew up as a boy. The center point of my Jewish identity was living after. What does it mean to be a Jew after? And by that I meant living after the fulfillment of the greatest nightmare in Jewish history. My maturation process was beginning to realize that living after was much more complicated than that because I was also living after the fulfillment of the greatest dreams in Jewish history. The return to the land of Israel, the emergence of the most powerful and free diaspora communities in Jewish history. That was my actual lived experience. The nightmares belonged to my father's generation. The fulfillment of the dreams belonged to my generation. Now the nightmares are starting to creep back. They're creeping back.
- [23:08]
C
Interesting.
- [23:09]
A
And my fear, Daniil, just my fear is that my childhood consciousness is now becoming the consciousness of the Jewish people. And that terrifies me.
- [23:21]
C
Wow. You know, if we could transition, you know, there's no way to compare, but the Memorial Day is the price. That's the heavy day. That's the nightmare. The nightmare of sovereignty is, you know, as the poet Alterman says, that our children are the silver platter on which the homeland of the Jewish people is built. We don't get sovereignty for free. We're going to have to pay. And our price is going to be our children, our spouses, our parents, our kids. And so we come this year to Memorial Day. You didn't mention it before. And is this Memorial Day for you different this year than other years? You know, in Israel, once Holocaust Memorial Day is over, you get into preparation mode. Not for Independence Day, you get into preparation mode for Memorial Day for our fallen. And we sort of. It's like a seven day preparation. And then you fall into Independence Day. So how does that transition? And what are you thinking about this year?
- [24:26]
A
One of the ways in which an immigrant becomes an Israeli is absorbing the centrality of Memorial Day. Because in Diaspora communities, we all grew up with Holocaust Memorial Day. And in the Zionist community, in the religious Zionist community in which you and I grew up in, there was also Independence Day. Diaspora Jews don't know what to do with Memorial Day because that's the day that separates Israelis from Diaspora Jews. That's the day that belongs to Israelis. What you learn in becoming an Israeli is that Memorial Day is a much more raw, emotionally raw day than Holocaust Day, which is not, of course, true in the Diaspora because it's an ongoing wound. The Holocaust happened. It's over. But what I sense happening this year, and it hadn't occurred to me till I was listening to you a moment ago, is that the balance between Holocaust Day and Memorial Day for Israelis is shifting a little bit. Memorial Day is still the most raw event, but the Holocaust is no longer receding into history. And I felt all these years, you know, the nearly 45 years that I'm living in Israel, I was watching Holocaust Day slowly recede into history, transitioning from trauma to memory. And I celebrated this transition as part of our homecoming, part of the triumph of Zionism. With the rise of global antisemitism in the last few years, the Holocaust is now central again, and not only for the Asperger's. And I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with the return of the emotional intensity of the Holocaust to Israeli consciousness.
- [26:38]
C
You know, it's interesting, as I'm hearing you talk, one way of framing it is that Memorial Day is just a continuation of the price we pay for being Jews in that narrative. In other words, as Holocaust Memorial Day takes over, our children suffering, dying is not a symptom of sovereignty and power. But it's especially post October 7, it gets shifted into the Jewish victimhood at
- [27:04]
A
such a great insight. And you've put your finger on what troubles me about that transition because it's taking the Zionist achievement away from us, away from.
- [27:14]
C
You know, it's interesting for me, Memorial Day and for many Israelis, it's not a national day, it's a very personal family day. You know, my family, my brother in law who was killed in the first war in Lebanon, most Israeli families have a family member, a friend, a neighbor whose grave they go to on Memorial Day. And it's very personal. So I look at the national ceremonies, but they don't speak to me. I don't even see them because I'm also at the cemetery. And the national commemoration at the cemetery feels completely ludicrous because it's a family day and the cemeteries are getting fuller and fuller as the families get bigger and families come and show up. And so when my brother in law was first killed, it was him, his parents, his sister, us, you know, and two little babies. Today there's a tribe, there's tens of people who've had never even met him. But we come to remember, honor and mourn our family member. It's a very personal day, very personal. And when the siren goes off, it's the country accompanying people in their individual personal mourning. For me, it's never the country mourning, but this year, after two and a half years of war, I'm feeling the national tragedy associated with this day, not connecting it to Holocaust, which I understand your fear, but the price that we're paying these last two and a half years. You know, the cemeteries are also getting fuller because there's new graves, more people are being buried. Hundreds and hundreds of people have died over the last two and a half years. But this Memorial Day, I'm aware of the price of our sovereignty, not in a Holocaust context, but that this country demands of you heroism and demands of you a willingness to sacrifice. You know, I'm thinking of the grandparents who buried their kids and parents and the speeches and all that we've experienced these last two and a half years. I'm thinking about the people who were wounded. I'm thinking even of the people who came back whole. But their businesses are lost, their marriages are under tension, their relationships with their spouses and their kids. And I'm thinking of Memorial Day for me is to connect to the difficulty of these last two and a half years with all the victories and with all the achievements. They haven't come without a price. Memorial Day was always the price of our Independence. And we don't celebrate the victory without connecting to the price. This year it's not just personal. I'm looking at my country and I'm looking at all the people who I walk with and the wounded and the broken and the not so broken and the partially broken and the punched and the hardships. It's just for me, there's a national dimension to Memorial Day. The unbelievable valor of this country and strength that we showed, unbelievable strength, showing up over and over and over again in every way. But I'm getting tired of celebrating just the strength. I want to connect to the price. And that's for me, Memorial Day this year, I feel it.
- [30:51]
A
I very much appreciate that, Daniil. And I think that if we look at how Memorial Day has been commemorated all these years, what I learned in becoming part of Israel was that we mourn our fallen soldiers as children. When a soldier is killed, they don't become martyrs. They don't become national martyrs. This is a major difference between Israeli society and who we're fighting. Our fallen soldiers revert to the status of children.
- [31:31]
C
Yossi, I have to stop you because the most alienating experience of Memorial Day is every time I meet my brother in law's classmates who are getting older. And you're right, he's a child. And like, how do you even associate these old 70something men with their bellies? Like he's a kid, he reverted back to another space.
- [31:53]
A
Exactly. And we consciously speak of the fallen in that way. And what do we do? How do we memorialize them? These unbearably painful and beautiful short films that are screened one after another on Israeli TV on Memorial Day.
- [32:11]
C
Explain to the audience what you're talking
- [32:13]
A
about on Memorial Day. You have one short documentary after another
- [32:20]
C
focusing on every single Israeli television channel.
- [32:23]
A
Right? The radio plays the beautiful song songs of the Hebrew canon and TV gives us these heartbreaking short films of these beautiful young people who fell in all the wars. And these documentaries can focus on someone who fell in 1948 and someone who fell last year. And what do they do? They go back to their classmates. They go back to what were they like in high school. We rediscover them in their pre army lives and we rediscover them as children. And not only is their childhood restored, but we all speak of them. They're our children. Hayel Adim Shalanu and this is the beauty of the personalization what you were talking about, how it's not a national glorification. Now, we certainly note the heroism and the devotion and there are many of these films are about heroes. But the heroism is not the only or even the main focus. The main focus is their humanity.
- [33:33]
C
So this, Yossi, leads us to the challenging transition, and that is we connect to their humanity. And then we're supposed to transition to the national celebration of independence. And how do you transition this year?
- [33:49]
A
See, I think that you're right to emphasize the centrality of the personal in Memorial Day, but the national is there too. It's in the background, it's implicit. But we all carry it. And we all know that the sacrifices of our young people connect us even more deeply to this land. And very often we'll phrase it as a challenge. Their deaths command us to do better. We need to create a better Israel because of all the sacrifices that went into it. When I'm at a military cemetery, what I feel is that we replanted ourselves. We re indigenized ourselves in this land in different ways. We literally planted forests, fields. We fought for this country, we built a beautiful country, but we also re indigenized ourselves through our cemeteries.
- [35:01]
C
And so what is Independence Day, Yossi? What are you celebrating?
- [35:05]
A
I'm celebrating personally the return of my optimism about Israel. And I would express that in two ways. And I know that that's counterintuitive to the mood in the country. This is a very somber Independence Day we're going into. I'm feeling a deep, if quiet, sense of restored hope in Israel in two ways. There were two challenges that you referred to at the beginning of our conversation, two existential challenges that Israel faces. One was addressed by our president, Boujee Herzog, and that was the internal schism. The second was addressed by our prime minister, and that is the Iranian threat. The existential threat that we've confronted in that really blew up in our faces on October 7th. Where we are in relation to where we were with the internal schism and the external threat is potentially, potentially in a very different place. The year leading up to October 7th was the worst year of schism in Israel's history. And we've spoken about this before, how Israeli society literally overnight pivoted from that lowest point of disunity to one of the peak points of unity. Now, it didn't last. And those kinds of experiences of national solidarity never last. They can't last. It's not a natural condition. But the fact is we prove that we have the ability to still reclaim a basic common purpose. And I was not at all sure in the year leading up to October 7th that we still had it in us. And so we are carrying two memories. There's the memory of complete disintegration and the memory of this instant transition to solidarity. And that's our choice, especially as we're coming up to an election. But the fact is that we. We have reclaimed our ability to counter. It doesn't mean that we necessarily will. In terms of the external threat, where we were on October 7, we lost the army. The army was in complete disarray. We had been overrun by our weakest enemy. And where we are today, and we've discussed this endlessly the last couple years, there's no knockout blow, there's no decisive victory. But where we were on October 8 compared to where we are now, Iran had succeeded in an historic achievement surrounding virtually all our borders.
- [38:12]
C
Right. And that's worthy of celebration.
- [38:15]
A
Yes. And so, rather than hearing my prime minister talk about the impending Auschwitz, I'm celebrating this Independence Day, our ability to still maintain our sovereignty, to still defend ourselves as a people in ways that have stunned the world in the last year. Now, we're certainly a pariah in many ways, but if you look at the military achievements, I am celebrating our sovereignty.
- [38:42]
C
That's worthy of celebration. I'm with you. I hear you. You know, and you said this earlier on, and I want to quote Tal Becker, who really referenced this, your point at the beginning when he said, independence Day is the one day that I don't want to be a troubled Zionist. I'm a troubled Zionist 364 days a year. I'm an aspirational Zionist. I have my, you know, who you are is never who you ought to be. One day I want to leave all my thoughts alone, and I just want to celebrate. And I think you gave a very powerful example of what we have to celebrate. But this year, I just have to be honest. I would like to feel what you're feeling. And in my mind, I do think about what you're saying, but I don't feel it this year. This year it's a pensive Independence Day for me. I'm not mourning. I'm not. It's a celebration, but it's a reflective one. I feel in a very reflective mood this year. Reflective about what does Jewish independence mean? So on the one hand, it means what you said. You know, we have our country and we have our army, and we were able to create tremendous successes and advances in our security and in overcoming our enemies. But in Israel, I believe one of our challenges is that independence is not just about the ability to marshal power. I think a Place where Israelis are, and I think our political leadership have a very important part in leading this, is that independence also creates the myth that not only do you have the right to exercise power, but yet you have an inalienable right to victory, that power is the solution to your problems. And that's the conversation, you know, puts it again, without any of the dilemmas. We are now the roaring lion, you know, as distinct from the whimpering, crying animal. We're the roaring lion now. And, you know, hear me roar. I'm like, you know, hear me roar. I'm gonna roar now. And it's just I'm thinking about how this Independence Day was. We have to rethink. How do we celebrate power and our right to use it? But to think that because we have that right, we have a right that our power will give us victory. That association is creating a lot of reflectiveness because I think it also is undermining some of our independence. And independence is never, you know, for most countries, or at least certainly not in the Middle East. You know, I haven't promised you a rose garden. I haven't promised you a happy ending. So in our story, you even called it. There's Holocaust Day, Memorial Day. Independence Day is the happy ending to the story. And I'm this year feeling that Independence Day is not the end of the story. Not that I think Israel's going to be destroyed, but it's the difficulties of those power. And as we think about whether there's going to be another round in Islamabad and what it's going to end up with, and Hezbollah having more weapons than we thought and Hamas coming back, it's just we're not marching to victory. We're in the midst of an ongoing struggle to be free. And independence is about being free, but not about that messianism which I've spoken about so often here. And so for me, this is a very, very reflective, sobering Independence Day. I want to give you, Yossi, just some last thoughts that might bring this together.
- [42:31]
A
Yossi. So in the early years of the state, we would commemorate Independence Day with a military parade every year. And each year, the military parade would be more and more impressive. More tanks, more planes. The culmination was 1968, right after the Six Day War, when we had a military parade through East Jerusalem past the old city walls. And subsequently, every year, there would be another military parade. The last time we celebrated Independence Day with a flaunting of our military might was Independence Day, May 1973, which was six months before the Yom Kippur War, after the Yom Kippur War, that moment of shattering when we came face to face with the mortality of the country, the complete failure to defend our borders in those first days. Very much a kind of a premonition of October 7th. Israeli society was not in a mood to revel in its military power. There has never been a military parade since then. And that tells me something about the gradual maturation of the Israeli Sankhya. We don't always give ourselves credit for maturing, but when you think of where we were in those early years of the state and why did we have military parades then?
- [44:12]
C
By the way, I was at. You weren't here. I made aliyah in 71, May 72. I was at that parade.
- [44:20]
A
Oh really?
- [44:21]
C
And I saw the tanks. They actually were tearing up the streets. It was unbelievable as a little kid, I remember that. But we have now independence days, though in the midst of wars.
- [44:34]
A
There's a great metaphor there. But we needed that reassurance after the Shoah that the Jewish people is capable of defending itself. And part of our maturation is realizing that there are certain things we can take for granted. And one of the things we can take for granted is that the Jewish people has learned, has relearned, how to defend itself. And so that's what I celebrate on Independence Day. And I want to go back to your metaphor of the speed bump. Every holiday has a specific purpose and a specific speed bump. And the speed bump for Independence Day, and maybe especially for this year, is to force us to one day a year embrace without ambivalence, this sense of gratitude for what we've achieved. Simple gratitude. The relationship between the Holocaust and the creation of Israel is a very complicated story. Israel doesn't exist because of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, for the post Holocaust generation to be that generation of Jews to have, have experienced the reclamation of sovereignty and power requires one day a year. We can call it Jewish Thanksgiving, one day a year where we celebrate really without squeamishness, without equivocation, the return of the Jewish people to the condition of self defense. And that for me is, you know, it's very simple.
- [46:17]
C
That's a great place to end. And you know, it's a challenge for me this year, but I'll take your words as a challenge. It's such a pleasure being with you, talking with you, very mutual. And thinking about these 10 days, how we're going to live them and how our people will live them. And maybe I will just end, you know, if these are the days of awe of Israel, you know, just to bless and to wish all of us a happy Omatzmaut. And hopefully the difficult times will be behind us, making the celebration ever more meaningful. Yossi, thank you and be well.
- [46:51]
D
What if prayer doesn't work? This question strikes us as a distinctly modern one, an outgrowth of the slow disenchantment of the world. But in truth, the question is an old one and one given space to
- [47:05]
B
breathe Here from the Shalom Hartman Institute, Thoughts and Prayers is a new podcast that explores what Jewish prayer means and why it still matters Jewish. Join host Rabbi Jessica Fisher as she weaves together stories, classic texts and conversations with leading rabbis and thinkers like Yossi
- [47:21]
A
Klein Halevi Judaism is about the democratization of the spiritual of revelation.
- [47:26]
B
Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt I was representing Second Gentleman Emhoff as his rabbi on that stage. What you had in that moment was the pluralism of America and Rabbi Josh
- [47:37]
C
Warshavsky Prayer helps me be the best version of myself. It helps me figure out what do I need in my spiritual backpack.
- [47:44]
B
Thoughts and prayers inspiring new connections to Jewish prayer in a changing world. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [47:53]
D
For Heaven's Sake is a product of the Shalom Hartman Institute and ARC Media. It is produced by me, Daniel Goodman, with help from Miriam Jacobs, Adar Taylor Schechter and Aviva Kat Manore and Studio Sopan from Go Live Media. Our episode was edited by Seth Stein, Natal Friedman is our executive producer and our music was composed by Yuval Samo. Past episodes can be found@arcmedia.org where you can explore more of Arc Media's podcasts. You can watch the video versions of our episodes on our YouTube channel. Follow the YouTube link in the show Notes. Also, to receive updates on new episodes, please follow the link to arcmedia.org and subscribe to Arc Media's weekly newsletter. For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute, visit our website@shalomhartman.org.