← Identity/Crisis
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A
In today's endless news cycle, it's harder than ever to understand what's really happening in Israel. That's why I Recommend Israel Policy Forum's podcast, Israel PolicyPod. Israel PolicyPod goes in depth on what actually matters when it comes to the Israeli Palestinian conflict and US Israel relations, Israeli politics and wider Middle east developments. It's hosted by Tel Aviv based journalist Neri Zilber, who's great at cutting through the noise to explain what's driving events on the ground. Neri breaks down current affairs with people who deal in substance, not top Israeli journalists, former US Diplomats, Palestinian political experts and regional analysts. If you really care about Israel's future as a secure Jewish and democratic state, Israel policypod is a must. Listen, you can find Israel policypod wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone. Welcome to Identity Crisis, a show from the Shalom Hartman Institute, creating better convers about the essential issues facing Jewish life. I'm Yehuda Kurtzer. We're recording on Tuesday, February 24, 2026 progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute, there remains no being to improve and no direction to set for possible improvement. And when experience is not retained as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Most of us have come to know just the last line of that piece of writing comes from a 1905 book called the Life of Reason by the Spanish philosopher George Santayana. It's pulled out often in a framework where it seems as though history is repeating itself. Or, if you prefer Jonathan Sarna's formulation, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And the theory behind the quote is that if we can remember the past, we can recognize patterns in the past in the present, and thus we can prevent the worst ills from our past from recurring in the past several years. The phrase has become vital in American discourse about current events. Think about the journalist M. Gessen and their work on the history of totalitarianism in Russia that informs the present. Or Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works, who left America because of his perception that it was following patterns from the past and descending into fascism. Or the historian Timothy Snyder, who also moved to Canada at the same time, not under the same pretense, whose work on tyranny was about explaining the playbook of authoritarianism from the past to the present in the Jewish community. Of course, this argument's been around for a lot longer. It's a discipline owned by our constant, chronic insistence on preserving the memory of the shoah not just because we think it will be a crime to forget it or a betrayal of our own people. It's because we tend to believe that forgetting will become the pathway for it to happen again. But there's two problems with this line of argument. The first is there is no we that universally agrees upon the pieces of the past that need to be remembered for the present, no universal narrative about the particular warning signs. A few years ago, the anti Zionist journalist Peter Beinart argued in a piece of writing that we should use the metaphor of the escape of Rabbi Yohanna Ben Zakai from Jerusalem at the time of the destruction of the Temple to help us imag the similar failures of Jewish sovereignty in Israel today. I responded publicly not just by contesting the politics of the article, but by contesting his very reading of history. Those that seek to remember history are not merely trying to prevent it from recurring. They're trying to own a version of the past, a narrative of the past. Sometimes they are creating a version of the past for their own purposes in the present. In theory, a real engagement with history and the past could help us think much more richly about the present. Real history is the site of complexity. It's always a multivalent story that requires deep self awareness to see ourselves as seekers of something in the past and not just as opportunistic treasure hunters. A real engagement with history would require of us to slow down, to be shaped ethically not just by what we found, but the careful process of what it means to actually look at the past, to be humbled by it. This was my argument on this podcast last summer about the lightning speed way in which so many historians formed a consensus, declaring that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and they were aided by none of the methodologies that they generally use. So are we actually scared of forgetting the past, or are we just eager to make the past serve the present? But the second, and I think more severe critique about this ubiquitous phrase is that Santayana's hypothesis argues that memory will always help us avoid repeating the past. But what happens when those who want to repeat the horrors of the past use history as their template? The obvious case, as usual, is the Nazis. The Nazis were obsessed with history. They saw themselves as inheritors of ancient Rome and the Holy Roman Empire and the earlier imperial phase of modern Germany. That's why they call themselves the Third Reich. They were eager to remember the past precisely so that they could correct the mistakes of the past in order to relive it, but to fix it closer to our time. Stephen Miller speaks the language of a concern for relitigating American history as a key instrument of his draconian anti immigration policies. He has claimed that his opponents reflect a, quote, loss of faith in the noble history of America. Many authoritarians think this way, and I think we sell them short. We fight them the wrong way. When we argue that they are forgetting the past or that they are ignorant of it, they often know it better than we do and they're trying to bring it back. In other words, we want to believe that the path towards progress involves leveraging the past. The real fight, though, is often not with those who are forgetting it, it's those who are irresponsibly remembering it. I've been interested in the power of history since deciding as a teenager that I wanted to become a historian of ancient Judaism and then obsessed with it throughout the process of becoming one. You kind of have to be obsessed with this question if you want to become a history PhD through the slog. Even now, as I guess a former historian, I'm still convinced that this enterprise has unique importance and resonance for Jews. Yosef Chaim Irishalmi, the great Jewish historian, felt that it was a spiritual burden that had fallen to the historian in our secular age to build a bridge between the present and the past. I feel so much of my own work is about the link between history and memory, trying to make us feel whole in the present by creating a rootedness with the past. I was so excited to find a fellow traveler who I met inadvertently, actually through a different Hartman program, only to discover that not only does she think in similar ways about some of these questions acts as a unique public historian in the world. But most fascinatingly, to discover that we were actually college classmates, that was kind of amazing. Natalia Melman Petrozella is an American historian specializing in the politics and culture of the modern United States. She's a professor of history at the New School. She is also, according to her bio, a history communicator who frequently writes pieces about American history and popular media outlets, is a co host of the Past Present podcast, has created educational videos for the History Channel and for C Span. She's a podcaster. She has research interests on language, education and fitness. The Chippendales most material, perhaps for our purpose, are two things. She's the lead scholar for a new curriculum in the New York City Department of Education. The curriculum is called Hidden Jewish Americans in U.S. history, and she has also emerged over the last couple of years as an outspoken voice within the field of history about Israel and Gaza and the responsibility of historians. So there's a lot to talk about. Natalia, thank you so much for being here today on this podcast.
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B
I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. And I was just jotting down in your introduction all the great points that I hope we pick up on.
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A
Okay, great.
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B
Yeah, glad to be here.
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A
So let's just start with what it means for you to be a public historian. I mean, the majority of your work is like an academic. You're writing research that is meant for your field, for the review of your field. You teach at university, but you've also taken on the second role of being a public historian. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what that is about for you, what that work looks like, and then we can get into some of the big questions that I was raising earlier about what's at stake.
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B
Absolutely. So the question that led me to become a historian was that I found myself constantly walking around the world asking, how did we get here? How did we get here? And then I realized after a couple years after college of trying some different career paths, that there's a whole job where you can think about that question all day. And that is, of course, being a historian. So to me, being a kind of historian in public or a history communicator comes from the strong belief that we should all be asking that question all the time. Like I sometimes, and perhaps it sounds a little snobby, I can't believe how in cue curious people are about just everyday life. You know, oh, when did airports become this way? When did you know? Not even sort of the big geopolitical questions. And so my desire as the conventional sort of traditional historian is of course, to model that sensibility and impart it to my students, very few of whom will become professional historians. But the reason I'm writing for Ms. Now and out there and on the History Channel is I want to kind of show the world that we understand ourselves and each other in the world better when we have that backwards looking sensibility to understand the processes that brought us here today. So that's basically it.
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A
Yeah. So tell me, like what you've discovered about your own curiosity in that process. I agree with you. I'm constantly Googling random things to understand things. Like what? That's so weird. Or why is that the case? But you start to learn about yourself. Certainly when you do it not just by Googling random things, but when you actually take on the project of being a communicator, you start to have some Self awareness of what are the kinds of questions that interest you? What are the areas, where are the problems that you're kind of trying to solve? So what have you learned about yourself in that process?
- [10:10]
B
Well, one thing I've really learned about myself and also about the doing of history, that sometimes I think some of the richest inquiries and kind of conversations, both in the classroom and beyond, come from when we ask questions or look at issues that are not a mis immediately kind of sorted into our usual culture wars or political categories. And so they're kind of two big buckets for my work. One is really like the history of education and American politics, and that's sort of legible to a lot of scholars. And the other one is, like, all this, like, cultural history stuff. I wrote this whole book about fitness culture, made this big podcast about the Chippendales as a lens on American pop culture. A lot of the History Channel stuff is more pop culture. And I'll say that some people look at that and they're like, oh, that's cute, or that's fun. And I say, okay, yeah, all right, fine, I'll. I'll. I won't be offended. But what I have actually found is that when we use some of those sort of, like, fun topics to get into an inquiry about the past, the conversations can be actually much richer because people are not so on guard about, well, how am I. I'm supposed to think this or I'm supposed to use that language. For example, this Chippendale story founded Chippendale's, the male strippers. Listeners, I know a little more low brow than a lot of your conversations on here, but that was a cultural phenomenon in the 80s. It's founded by an Indian immigrant. He's really trying to market a very particular version of, like, a white American boy next door. And there's so much to learn from that. And we are removed from a lot of the traditional kind of commonplaces, or I almost think them as grooves or trenches. When we talk about gender, when we talk about capitalism, we talk about feminism, people know what they're supposed to think. Well, when you bring an issue like this, not only is it kind of fun and sexy to, like, just think about, but it also interrupts all of those assumptions. So I would say that one thing I've learned about myself is how much I value and don't feel the need anymore to kind of apologize for doing that kind of cultural work as a lens on the most serious and pressing questions, which should preoccupy all of us.
- [12:13]
A
Yeah, that Reminds me a little bit of an interview we did a couple years ago with Rachel Gross, who's a professor at San Francisco State, who wrote a book about Jewish nostalgia as religious practice. It's a fascinating hypothesis, but a lot of what it came across in that discussion was you get to the same depth in questions of identity and meaning and gender and all of the categories that are the big categories through the investigation of the Delhi. Totally as you do. If you kind of came at it just from what are the big questions of identity and politics that are taking place here? I'm curious what you're hoping from your learners in public context. Maybe we've been. I don't know, use the Chippendales example, and then we'll come to more kind of Jewishly relevant topics. Although I'm sure there's a Jewish angle. What are you hoping that the learner does besides feel more informed? Because especially if it does touch.
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B
Right.
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A
Issues that are really seismic and significant, what happens in the process of that kind of public learning?
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B
This is about a sensibility or a disposition more than kind of content acquisition. And so to me, it is about always looking around and one, asking that question, how did we get here? And two, knowing it's not just the gym or the supermarket or the nightclub, that all of these experiences that we have are conditioned by all of these interesting processes about identity, about power, about all these other things. And nothing is kind of neutral or nothing's off the table for that kind of inquiry and analysis. I mean, that's what I hope. That kind of disposition of curiosity, I think, is a big one, and that's much bigger than history. But as a historian, I just see that it's sort of in my lane to be a champion of that kind of thinking.
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A
Yeah. So curiosity is a different result than some of what I was arguing at the outset of the podcast, which is a lot of public historians seem far more invested not in getting people curious, but getting people angry, I would say, or motivated or activated. Right. And the Santayana quote is rooted in that. Like, look, you recognize this pattern now what are you going to do about it? And by the way, historians are themselves never the people who are going to be on the front lines of this. They are kind of like modern prophets of listen, I recognize that this is what happens. This is the Reichstag fire now. Now you have to go out to the street and do it. So how do you think about that business in general?
- [14:43]
B
Yeah. You know, it might sound hypocritical because I'm very much out there, as we have talked about writing, et cetera, and opining in public. But I really think that the scholar and the activist are two different roles. And I see myself much less as. Let me give you all the historical bullet points to arrive at the correct political position that you must now go take action for. But I think rather my point is, let me help you understand how we got here. And I try to do that in a way that I think is sometimes frustrating to my readers because it's more measured and it's more nuanced. But that's our job, right? I get really nervous and sort of. I get the ick, as my kids would say, when people just want like, do you have any talking points? And I'm like, yeah, I could give those to you, but that's not what we do. To your point at the outset, this sort of selective use of history in order to advance a particular political project I think is really problematic. And I want to kind of to the same question that you asked. Something else that I think is troublesome is that it's rare that there's a perfect parallel for what we're experiencing in any given moment. Right. And I am much more interested in looking at process than. Than I am at parallels. Precedent, I like a little bit more. But precedent is a more complex term than a lot of people give it credit for. A lot of people, oh, this is 1933, right? Or this is exactly that. It's rarely exactly that. And I think that the role of the historian is not to show us that straight line. I'm always saying to students, be skeptical if there's a straight progress narrative or a straight declension narrative. The role of the historian in public, I think, as well as in scholarship, is to show us those winding paths, is to make us aware of contingencies and paths not taken. I mean, I'll take an example of a piece that I wrote last week, which is. I don't know if you saw that RFK Jr made this public service announcement with Kid Rock about exercise. And it was a very viral thing. It was so weird and so gross. And so I have this sort of on again, off again column and Ms. Now, and they asked me to write about it. And, you know, people got kind of angry at me on both sides of that because I both was saying this is kind of grotesque, and this embodies a sort of like, alienated version of antisocial masculinity, which is just so depressing. But part of the argument that I made was actually you know, presidential administrations up until today, not all of them, but many of them on both sides of the aisle and including RFK Jr. At the outset of this Maha thing, represented a kind of idealistic self actualization through preventative health that is actually worth if not believing wholeheartedly, but embracing as a sense of possibility. It is inspiring. All of that inspiration is gone now. And so you can imagine I got hit from the right for like criticizing this wonderful man and anything in this administration. But then people from the left too were like, oh, how dare you say there's anything good about this Vax denier. But I think that's actually the role. Not to be annoying and while here and here, here in both sides, but to give us the full picture of the past as best we can, which is complicated and often defies political lines. And a lot of people don't like that.
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A
Yeah, I mean, you get the critique, right? There's an old Onion headline which is one of my favorites ever, which is like, professor sees parallels between things, comma, other things. And you're like, yeah, okay. And there's a little bit of the role of the scholar, the historian of like. Well, actually. And that always is like a yes, you're turning the lens somewhere else. But people are like, but I'm worried about this. But I get what you're saying. I think the other piece that feels important to me, anytime a historian is doing the work of whether it's parallels or precedent, to use your language, what is the business of self awareness of like. The reason I see these precedents is not just because I'm a historian of this period of time and once I have that, I'm going to see it everywhere, but also what is it that I'm constantly looking for?
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B
Right.
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A
Like, and it's a tricky business to get into people's identities. So I don't want to say that. But like, even just the fact, like, great, if you spend all of your time studying something from the 14th century, then anytime anything pops up that looks like the 14th century, you're going to be like, look, there it is again.
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B
Well, this is. I don't even know if you meant it this way, but this is very much a segue towards this question of Jewish American hidden voices. So I'm the first one to say, and we can talk about this later, I am not a scholar of Jewish studies. And so I was actually hesitant to take that on. But setting that project aside for a second, you know, to your point, I came up really, my primary secondary field was very Much feminist studies. And my incredible mentor, Estelle Friedman, kind of taught me to always ask, like, well, which women? And always to see things through the lens of gender and sexuality. And that has been very, very fruitful for me as a scholar and I think just as a human being, a mom, et cetera. I really realized when I was working on this Jewish American hidden voices curriculum, which I came to as a social studies educator and to kind of bring these stories and work with Jewish studies scholars into the scope of US History. How absent that lens was from my own experience as a scholar, as a. I mean, I am Jewish. Right. I am really. I can talk more about that. But I had never in my sort of standard issue K through 12 history education and not in college either, because I didn't take Jewish studies classes. That lens of how does Judaism, how does Jewish experience shape whatever story I'm trying to tell had not been part of my worldview, which was humbling and embarrassing. And I actually even looked back. I mean, I teach a lot about education, so. So, I mean, come on, like the labor movement, there I am talking about the important role of Jews. But this fitness culture book that I wrote, I mean, actually, I didn't.
- [20:37]
A
It's very Jewish.
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B
It's so Jewish. So many.
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A
Isn't Charles Atlas Jewish?
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B
Charles Atlas, Joe Gold, Lucille Roberts, like Gilda Marx, who invented the leotard. It's a failure of that book in some ways. I think the book is still pretty good. But I've done some work after. But I didn't use that lens. And actually that would have taught me and my readers so much about why in this very immature industry, which was seen as sort of seedy, so many Jews were able to, you know, absolutely make major contributions there. And I think it's also interesting because it pushes back so much on the stereotype of kind of Jewish physical frailty. Super interesting talk about humility and identity. And this identity that I occupy was so little a part of my intellectual formation that it created a blind spot. So I'm always trying to get out of my own.
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A
Yeah.
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B
More than get out of my own identity. But just think about what I'm missing.
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A
Sure. Actually, if you do write a sequel, I mean, there is also a huge story of Zionism was the reclamation of the physical body.
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B
Yeah.
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A
The muscular Judaism. Physical fitness. Well, that would be a whole other side of the story.
- [21:46]
B
Actually, I do have a really interesting guy who you've probably heard of, Zeesha Breitbart. Do you know who he was? He was one of these early 20s 20th century strongman. And he would have a big Star of David. And apparently this. He was so well known that these Jewish mothers would be like, you should be more like Zisha Breitbart, because he equated this kind of muscular Zionism with being Jewish. So, yeah. And then there were these other strong men who hid the fact that they were Jewish because they thought that was sort of. That's a little bit more predictable. But yeah. So you never know what comes next for that. But that was my failure, you know, as a failure, I would say, of my education, one of the things that we're trying to remedy right now, but also of myself.
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A
So tell me more about the curriculum. It's interesting effort and it feels a particularly sensitive and time sensitive concern in New York City to engage in building out a new kind of curriculum on Jews and Jewish New Yorkers. Where did it come from and what are they trying to do with it?
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B
Right. So briefly, 2018, there was a new kind of curricular initiative founded in New York City called Hidden Voices. And the idea was to create social studies supplementary materials that social studies and history teachers could integrate into their existing courses. And that emphasized minoritized groups who had been hidden. And then within that not just being a sort of most famous who's who, but people who you might not expect as well, but who shed light on American history in some way and on this group. And so the way Hidden Voices works as a format is, look, I have the Muslim American ones right here. The Jewish one is in my office. But basically there are these books and inside there are profiles of individuals. And then with them come primary sources, guiding questions. There's all kinds of different activities for elementary, middle and high school students. So that's what Hidden voices is. So 2018, several of them come out. There is a African diaspora one, There's a New Yorker's one, there's a disability one, Asian American, Pacific Islander. However, despite New York City being a rather important metropolis for China shoes around the world. No Jewish one. Okay, so the Jewish one was prompted by.
- [23:54]
A
Can I just pause you and ask you why? Oversight.
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B
My sense is at least two things. One, that by 2018, Jews are considered by a lot of people a sort of special flavor of white people. And so why would you have a separate book about this group of white people? And then also the Jews are considered to be very successful minority group, although so are Asian and Mayor Aapi people. So my sense is that I also think. I don't know, but my sense from studying this kind of Thing in a lot of different districts is I don't think there was a Jewish parent pressure group who was pushing for this either at that.
- [24:36]
A
That's super interesting.
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B
That's something that I think and that's a pattern I see, you know, history of curriculum as part of my thing. But, you know, there are a lot of, I think maybe liberal Jews who think, well, we don't need this. There are other groups who are more oppressed and need to be focused on. And also we have this robust Jewish education world of both Hebrew schools, supplementary education, and Jewish day schools. So my sense, and this is not proven anywhere, but my sense in studying a lot of these is that a lot of Jewish parents are like, well, there's another place for doing this kind of work.
- [25:05]
A
So I would imagine there's also theory three, which is a lot of the transformation of education around these kind of issues around the country has come from a kind of ethnic studies orientation which is either intentionally does include Jews or is a blind spot for Jews. So I'm sure that that's part of the story.
- [25:24]
B
Absolutely. And I think part of that ethnic studies orientation, or even people who wouldn't align themselves with that movement is very much a sense that any identity based curriculum is only for that group. Right. That like, oh, the Jewish kids need to see themselves in the curriculum. I think that is valuable. But because Jews are such a tiny minority, including in the New York City schools, by the way, that argument sort of vanishes. Right. Like, if it's only for the Jewish kids, you're not actually serving a very big population. So I think that's kind of part of that as well. 20, 23, after 10, seven, you know, there's this upsurge in antisemitism, especially in educational environments. And then the specific thing which precipitates this is that there was essentially what I would call a pogrom at Hillcrest High School in Queens, which I'm sure some of your listeners know about, where this teacher, Karen Martyr, some students found a social media picture of her at a bring them home rally and basically like took over the school. Like, they were like ripping water fountains out of the walls, trapped her in a classroom. I mean, it was a really horrifying incident. That is something that came up at the congressional antisemitism hearings. And one of the things that Chancellor Banks said is, oh, well, we have this Hidden Voices curriculum that we're going to do for Jews. It was already in the works by then, but I think that really accelerated things. So that's kind of the background. Do you want me to pause for a moment?
- [26:41]
A
Well, I have a lot of questions about why this is an answer to that problem. Oh ye, I mean that's the big one, right?
- [26:49]
B
Why is this an answer to that problem? Well, I am the first one to say it is not the only answer or nor will it solve this. One of the reasons I agreed to do it is that there is an unfortunate reality that the only time that many kids in secular schools will encounter Jews is either in a lesson about the Holocaust, very important of course, or in some kind of anti Semitism, anti bias training after an incident happens, also very important, or these days in some ill informed conversation about the Israel Hamas war. And those to me are completely insufficient to kind of understand the importance of Jewish stories in U.S. history. So I do think that the way this curriculum works is it goes back before the colonial founding and it features Jews throughout American history who, who contribute to all matters of things, whether it's, you know, the labor movement, the finance industry, the fashion, I mean it arts, sports, like everything. But we did and this is important, this is made up of the work of serious historians. None of this is hero worship. And that was really, really important to me. I mean I think on balance every profile should sort of leave you with like there's some sort of positive contribution here. But because it's a curriculum that nobody is going to be using wholesale, we have to be really careful about the fact that someone might just encounter one of these profiles right in the course of their education. So the example I often use is Judah Benjamin, Vice President of the Confederacy, not in Hidden Voices because to me like, yeah, it's, he's an interesting story. But for this, if you're just going to encounter that one, I don't really think that's the best you can run
- [28:32]
A
around with any of these. If it was like, you know, somebody who's connected to the finance industry, great. So that's The Jew and Dr. Ruth, who I love, who is a member of our synagogue. Right. Oh well look, Jews are obsessed with sex. I mean that is a trap in any of these kind of plug and play pieces of a curriculum.
- [28:47]
B
Totally it's a trap. But I'm hoping that the plug and play dimension of it allows the flexibility that more people will actually use this. I mean I think it would be dead on arrival if it was like you have to get district approval to adopt this year long course. And then of course then people would just self select in the same way. I never took a Jewish studies class Even at Columbia as a history major, I want this stuff to be integrated into the main of social studies and history education. And this is, I think, the only way you can really do that.
- [29:18]
A
I have a quote that you gave about this, actually. I think maybe it was about the curriculum. Maybe it was more general from a different podcast where you said, jewish stories are something that can save us, invigorate us, and inspire us as a people and make us less hated. Although you say it's not really up to Jews to solve the antisemitism problem, I want to dig into that a little bit further. That's a big claim that these stories can save us, invigorate us and inspire us. If this does work, this is a much larger play than kind of patching a hole in the curriculum. It is a big argument that when we tell these stories, something happens in the world vis a vis ourselves and vis a vis others. Can you unpack that further?
- [29:59]
B
Absolutely. Well, it was a grand claim. It was certainly the exuberance of an interview and saying that. But I will say that I wouldn't have spent all of this time and energy on this if I didn't have really big ambitions for it. And in some ways, I think that the possibility of these Jewish stories having that big impact comes from the fact that the bar is so low right now. I mean, this. To put in the most simplistic terms, I talked to some pretty educated college students, high school students. They think of Jews as rich, white colonialists who run the music and the finance and the media industry and, you know, are doing horrible things in the Middle east. And that's sort of the full picture of who they are. No understanding of this concept of whiteness being a very recent, you know, application to Jews in the United States and not even being totalizing at this point. And so I really think that these stories, any one of these profiles that any teacher deems to use in good faith will interrupt those assumptions which are so prevalent today. And that in itself, I think, is something. And I should say I've found. I mean, this is a K through 12 curriculum. I teach college, but I have found that even in the courses that I teach, which, again, are not centrally about Jewish history, I have made a much bigger point of integrating things sort of like this, different Jewish figures and kind of showing the complexity of their experience. And people are surprised and they don't know this. And I think that that's the beginning. It's not going to solve our problems, trust me. And it's not only our job as Jews to do that. But I do think that is the beginning of a sort of, I don't know, epistemic opening. Right. To kind of think differently about a group which, sadly, is very simplistically maligned. It's so simplistic that.
- [31:46]
A
Yeah, yeah. And in theory, it operates on both ends. It's both for Jewish kids to be able to say, actually, I. Not that I'm Lenders bagels. Right. That's one of your. One of your examples. A bagel have not eaten in decades. Thank God we lived outside the New York area. What else are we going to eat? It's for Jewish kids. But in theory, it's also for non Jewish kids to say, okay, so these people are actually just a people.
- [32:07]
B
Yeah.
- [32:07]
A
And that's ultimately what the conclusion is. Part of this is also rooted in a critique, which you've said publicly, but I think is also implicit, which is this is not two things. It's not Holocaust education and it's not antisemitism education. And there is kind of really good data out these days about how not only is Holocaust education not working to prevent antisemitism, in some cases, it actually accelerates it. Right. Because it starts getting people to ask the question of why did people hate the Jews? And then coming up with legitimate answers for why they might have. So I'm curious for your thoughts on that, of how that fits into this agenda for you as an educator.
- [32:43]
B
Yeah, I mean, we absolutely don't shy away from the holocaust. I mean, Dr. Ruth is actually one of our profiles. So where there are plenty of people in here who are Holocaust survivors. And of course, the Holocaust so much shaped the experience of American Jews that it is here. But to us, that is one traumatic, terrible event in the broader history of American Jewry. And I think that part of that unintended and awful consequence of Holocaust education actually accelerating antisemitism is sort of the fact that it's always sort of set apart as this unique and standalone thing that, like, we all have to be sort of, like, reverent about and quiet about, and it's kind of almost disconnected from the rest of history. And so kids who are, I hope, sort of contrarian and want to ask questions and push boundaries, are pushing back on some of that, which can lead to, well, why did they hate the Jews anyway? Hidden voices, I think, really, as you said, it comes from this different perspective. Jews are people like any other, you know, with our own stories and our own unique experiences, of course, but who are people who are part of this complex American tapestry. And we should understand our stories in that way as well. And I really do think that is both important for Jewish kids, but actually almost it's even more important for kids who might never know a Jewish person. And actually, I've been shocked. There have been some anecdotal stories about, like, people who live in New York City who are in the public schools and have never met a Jewish person, or think they haven't. Or think they haven't because we have very segregated, of course, neighborhoods and schools.
- [34:12]
A
I'm wondering if you've had any interface with any of the newly activated parents in the New York public school system. I've had a little bit of exchange with them. I've met with parent groups in New York and in San Francisco and other places who have woken up basically to the epistemic anti Semitism and certainly anti Israel sentiment in the school system and are trying to figure out, do they stay, do they leave, how do they organize, how do they support their kids around their dignity or simply advocating for their kids. And I'm curious what the receptivity is to curricular efforts which are less sexy than we're going to organize and we're going to mobilize, we're going to get this person fired, but may have a longer kind of shelf life and staying power. So I'm curious what your interface has been with those folks.
- [34:59]
B
Oh, yeah, a lot of interface. I mean, full disclosure, I am one of those parents, too. I mean, I'm the one who went to curriculum day and my dad, sixth grader, then shows me the map of the Middle east and there's no Israel on the map, just the occupied Palestinian territories. Right. So I am one of those parents who's horrified at what I've been seeing in schools. I have interfaced with a lot of parent groups that I'm directly part of and not part of. And I found a range of reactions. I think for the most part, people are really happy that these efforts are being taken. They're a little surprised, some of the people that the DOE is doing this because it's. That doesn't have the best track record in recent history on addressing questions of anti Semitism or Jewishness. I'll say that people who I would consider probably to my right, there's a little bit of like, oh, this is just like DEI ideology and we don't want a part of this. But if they actually take the time to look at it, which many of them have, and I've had wonderful, wonderful, productive conversations with People who I don't share the same politics necessarily with on these issues. And they say, oh, actually this is really, really helpful. Like, it's not the perfect silver bullet which we'll sol solve everything, but making Jewish histories and stories just a default part of the curriculum. This is actually something we should be fighting for. And so that's been really, really heartening. Of course, there's some people who, on actually both sides, left and right, who have really come at me for this, but, you know, you can't satisfy everybody.
- [36:23]
A
Yeah. Seriously, I want to shift the lines a little personal if I can.
- [36:26]
B
Sure.
- [36:27]
A
Another thing that you recorded as saying in a different podcast was it's not until October 7th that I felt my Jewish identity is one of the most salient things in my life. And then you added, it's been a privilege not to feel that. Can you talk a little bit about that, about that shift and both what happened to you on October 7th and even unpacking that privilege language?
- [36:48]
B
Absolutely. So I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, Very Jewish suburb. Both my parents are Ashkenazi Jews. Went to Hebrew school, had a bat mitzvah.
- [36:56]
A
North or South?
- [36:58]
B
South. Newton South. Most of my friends were Jewish. Went to Columbia with you. Then I worked one year in finance, one year in education. Okay. And as New York, as a DOE teacher, I kind of would joke that, like, I never had to join any Jewish organizations because my whole life was a Jewish affinity group. But so unremarked, if anything, sort of marked me identity wise. My whole life it was one. My mom is from Argentina and so very thick accent, very educated, but very thick accent. We spoke Spanish at home. My grandmother lived with us, didn't speak any English. That being Latin American was absolutely like my number one sort of identity marker. I am so Jewish in many ways. But I have to say, people have always told me, oh, you don't look Jewish or full when they see me. So I've always, yeah, full. I. Yeah, that was at Columbia, by the way. So that is something I never had to think about that much. Even though the shadow of the Holocaust. I think for our parents generation, this is something that we were talking about all the time at home. But I have to say I'm a little bit embarrassed about it. It never felt like that could happen here. I was always like, oh, come on. You know, being Jewish is going to bat mitzvahs and complaining about Hebrew school, et cetera. And that was sort of how I grew up. When I went off to graduate school at Stanford on the West Coast, I Remember that I was tutoring kids to make money. There's this Jewish family who I tutored, and they said, oh my gosh, you're Jewish. Do you want to come over for the high holidays? And it was the first time that they weren't strangers, but like, someone I wasn't really friends with had like, opened their to me in this way that assumed rightly, in that case that I might not have somewhere to go as someone who was far away from home. And I remember thinking, oh, that's so nice and that's so friendly and that's so warm. And that's so much the attitude of a kind of minority group of people who need to find each other. And so that was early 2000s, but that was kind of early in my thinking about this. And then the next sort of big thing that happened to me is I was invited to this retreat of the reboot organization. Do you know Reboot, which kind of, you know, big tent Jewish creative organization. And my friend, the writer Adam Mansbach, also went to high school with me and went to Columbia as well, who invited me? My first comment was, this was 2021 or 2022. I said, well, I don't think I'm like, Jewy enough for a Jewish group. And he's like, no, no, no, you're perfect. I went to this weekend and it sort of threw open this whole new sense of possibility of what it could mean to. To be Jewish. I left there, Adam and I started doing Daf Yomi. We read Talmud together every day for like a year and a half. And I really just sort of had this different lens meanwhile, and it was a little long winded, but my daughter, who went off to a kind of Jewish camp again, a sort of default Jewish space, started doing Shabbat and wanted to do it at home. And then, you know, said, I want to study for a Bat Mitzvah and why don't I go to Hebrew school? So that kind of shifted too. So I was already like, like in this spiritual discovery.
- [39:51]
A
Yeah.
- [39:52]
B
And then 10, seven happened. And I hate to be so naive to say I was shocked because I've been very aware of certainly the anti Israel animus in academia for years, but I could not believe what was going on on campus. I could not believe how these smart, kind of humane, universalist people were so hateful, were so quick to have a sort of Jewish exception to their identity politics. And I was hurt first, and then disgusted and then angry. And then I realized, you know, I have tenure. Like, if not me, who, like I should be the one who was trying to kind of take a stand, to push back on this. And it's part of why I said yes to Hidden Voices. I think that's in some ways a part of that work. But it's also why I've really been taking a lot of time on these issues in the last couple of years, and I don't regret it at all.
- [40:48]
A
Yeah, no, I'm. I'm grateful for it. I'm curious, I know about the case with the American Historical association where you were one of the outspoken opponents of the resolution that the AHA passed condemning Israel post 10 7. And I know you got heat from that. You were one of the most visible voices on it. I think you were quoted in the Times twice. Yeah. So I'm curious both about the fallout for you with your peers in that system and to describe a little bit of the inside of that I think will be really interesting to our listeners. But I'm curious about other spaces where you've been able to say, listen, I have tenure. Here's where I'm going to be able to try to push on behalf of Juice in some way.
- [41:25]
B
No, absolutely. So, okay. Before the AHA thing, the first thing that sort of put me on the map in this way a little bit is, as I mentioned, I was writing for then MSNBC and I wrote a piece of really early, it was November 2023, of where are all the feminists when we know about these or we have very credible evidence about these Hamas rapes. No, you know, American feminist organizations were saying anything. And when I wrote that piece, I got some heat for it online and I heard a lot of kind of grumbling through the grapevine at work of like, oh, she's a Zionist. Like, you know, what's going on? Like, I, you know, and I. My answer to that is yes and also, like, come say it to my face, basically. Right. So that was sort of the first thing that kind of put me on the map in that way with the American Historical Association. So this is the biggest organization of historians in the world. I don't know, are you still a member or no?
- [42:14]
A
Oh, no, no.
- [42:15]
B
We need you at the business meeting to vote down these resolutions. I, like, recruit people hand by hand. But anyway, over the years, there's been a kind of radical group called hpat, Historians for Peace and Democracy, who bring these anti Israel resolutions, or BDS resolutions, sometimes to the business meeting to be voted on and adopted by the whole organization. Over the years, I've always kind of shown up at the business meeting because it's only the in person vote to vote against them. I'd never spoken out about them, in part because I was junior, but also I wasn't so activated on these issues after 10, seven, I guess this was the January 2025 meeting. They were bringing a resolution to condemn what they called Scholasticide in Gaza. And they're really good online. They mobilize a lot of of people. The meeting was going to be in New York. And at that point I was approached, I had tenure, I was full professor. I was approached by some of the folks who have been active in this movement for years and said, you know, I know it's a big ask because it's going to be ugly, but will you speak against the resolution at the business meeting? And I said, sure, and I don't regret it, but I didn't really know what I was signing up for. I will say that as well. And so basically what happened is I do think the details might be interesting to your listeners. They published the program for the event and this was going to happen like was January 5th. It was a Sunday, like the first Sunday of the year. And it says business meeting agenda, speakers in favor, speakers against this genocide resolution. So I actually hadn't even seen it published, but I start getting all these notifications on social media of like, oh, pro scholasticide, pro genocide Scholar Natalia Petrozella is going to defend genocide before the biggest organization of historians. I'm seeing all this. I'm like, what is going on? Meanwhile, I hadn't even, I knew what I was going to say, but I hadn't written my remarks. The content of my argument was not published anywhere because it didn't exist yet. Like, what's going on? So the people who were doing this were some of your typical online bullies, but they included colleagues who I know, people who I work with directly on various things. And then, and this became a huge issue, the New School, which is where I teach, Faculty for Justice in Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, a few other Palestine groups made this Instagram post like a permanent pose. It was a picture of the agenda. And it said the New School must denounce Natalia Petrozela, prominent defender of genocide, who is going to argue for genocide at this big organizational thing. Okay, this, you can imagine the onslaught that I got. I'm used to getting hate for being out there, but this kind of hurt too, because this is the calls coming from inside the house, right? These are my colleagues. So I go to give the speech, right? Two minutes. My argument was effectively that, you know, this is a really bad idea for the AHA to adopt any resolution like this, because we know we're really divided on it. Plus, this whole scholasticide charge ignores the fact that Hamas uses civilian, you know, sites for military sites. It didn't mention the hostages who were not at all home at that point. Didn't mention 10, 7 at all. And I said, also, why would we want to tether ourselves as an organization to this particular, deeply divisive cause at a moment when there's a massive target on the back of all kinds of academic and professional associations, we should be coming together to fight for something I think we all believe in, which is the kind of dispassionate study of history that should unite us. Oh, my God. So I said this. This was in a conference room at the Hilton in midtown Manhattan. They were like. Like 600 people there. When I tell you I was hissed at. I was booed when I mentioned antisemitism. People did this performative eye roll. People I knew wouldn't even talk to me or make eye contact with me, like, at the conference. It was crazy. They had to actually hire security for my panel on podcasting, which had nothing to do with that because the online threats were so intense. So that happened. It was really ugly. And then with the Instagram post, I'll just say this because I complained to the New School's powers that be about this, and no one would do anything. Oh, it's free speech. Oh, you know, this is protected speech. It's not our Instagram account. It's not an official. And the thing that I said, which is a bit provocative, but what I think is true. And there was a little bit of thoughts and prayers, but I said, are you joking? Like, if there was a New School branded account that but targeted a Muslim professor with no basis, saying she's about to defend terrorism in front of some scholarly organization, you would let that stay up there? Absolutely not. And so, months and months later, it came down. But it was really, really, really disturbing, really disappointing. And, you know, we soldier on. But I'm really disappointed at the behavior of some of my academic colleagues in this moment. And inspired by others, new communities have formed throughout this. But this was really gutting and really demoralizing. And there are a million other little small versions of this that happen on campus. Sure, yeah, sure.
- [47:15]
A
I mean, there's so many pieces of that that are problematic. But even going back to what we were talking about earlier, you know, certainly we can unpack the eye roll about antisemitism and the lack of permission that's granted to Jews to narrate their own experience. I mean, that's part of what's going on here. You actually are not seeking to be an activist. You were very clear about that. And in fact, the very position of we should not be weighing in on this is a kind of anti activist position totally. But the encoding that's been used in these circles has been you are making a pro genocide activist argument. And that's been one of the weirdest things that screws up your own head of like, I actually think I'm trying to do my job. And because I'm not being activist the way that the activists are operating, I'm now being treated as a counteractivist.
- [47:58]
B
Right.
- [47:58]
A
And that's like a really screwed up thing.
- [48:00]
B
Well, it's a little bit the like silence is violence kind of thing. Right. And I'm not being silent, of course. But yeah, I do think that's incredibly screwed up. And I also think there's this sort of group think, of course, which is at work as well. And one of the things that I have really, really tried to do, whether it's in this curriculum or any statement I'm making on these things, is to really stay in the lane of my expertise. I actually don't get up there and say, this is genocide, this isn't genocide. I am not a scholar of genocide. I am trying to read all these things. My argument for the AHA was I am a scholar of educational politics and polarization. And let me tell you, I know how this will go down. So I think that. And essentially I think I was right in that regard. I think it's really important that yes, we speak up or we are silent or we explain our rationale, but also that we're doing it within the scope of our experiment, expertise. Otherwise the whole idea of expertise is completely undermined. And that's happening all over the place right now.
- [48:59]
A
So you've been really generous with your time and this has been super interesting. I guess I have one last question which is somewhere between a question and a request.
- [49:07]
B
Okay.
- [49:07]
A
Which is, what's your next big Jewish project?
- [49:10]
B
Oh, that's a good question.
- [49:12]
A
I mean, all of it is like steering towards this. Right. You had like this big kind of life changing awakening and a searching and then you're doing this project. But it's all, it's like, what's the next big thing? And is it gonna be for the Jews?
- [49:25]
B
It's all for the Jews, right?
- [49:26]
A
Yeah.
- [49:26]
B
Yeah, you know, that's interesting. I'm working on two books right now, and neither of them have Jewish frames, but they both have big Jewish stories in them. So I don't know if that counts, but. And one of them, just briefly, one of them is kind of a brief history of the school culture wars in the United states since the 19th century. And I've been writing about. Yeah, very Jewish.
- [49:45]
A
Very Jewish.
- [49:46]
B
So that one counts. And the other one, which I'm co authoring with a historian of religion and politics, Neil J. Young is a history of the Hamptons from kind of the 1600s to today, also very Jewish. I'm learning all about the different congregations out there and there's a specific kind of whiteness story which happens, I think, in this world, which is super, super interesting. So Jewish stories will never be absent from any of my work, whether they're the direct frame of it.
- [50:13]
A
Amazing. Well, thanks for doing this today. I'm excited for the Jewish community that listens to this to know your voice better and to pay attention to what you're doing. Thanks for being on our show.
- [50:21]
B
Thank you. Such a pleasure. I'm glad to be here.
- [50:31]
C
Here are some other things that are happening at the Schellum Hartman Institute. This past weekend, the Hartman Institute was honored to partner with Taglit Birthright Israel for a weekend seminar preparing over 250 madre and Route 1 leaders of Teen trips to Israel for their upcoming immersive trips for thousands of young adults. This week on Thursday, March 12, we will host a virtual day of learning entitled in the Face of Jewish Responsibilities to Neighbors and Strangers. Join us for five sessions with Hartman scholars, including a live Identity Crisis recording and sessions with Aaron Dorkman and Dalia Lithwick to illuminate how our tradition motivates our responses to this moment of profound moral urgency. Find out more about the Day of Learning at the link in the show notes. As we follow the news of the escalating war with Iran, many of us are trying to make sense of what's unfolding and what's to come. If you're in Miami, Florida on Sunday, March 22nd, join President of the Shalom Hartman Institute, Danielle Hartman and Tal Becker, veteran Israeli peace negotiator, as well as other leading Hartman thinkers for the first ever Florida Leadership Conference entitled Israel at a Moral Leadership in a Time of Crisis. Space is limited. Secure your spot today@shalomhartman.org Florida Leadership.
- [51:45]
D
Thanks for listening to our show and special thanks to our guest Natalia Petruzella. Identity Crisis is produced by me, Tessa Zitter, and our executive producer is Maital Friedman. This episode episode was researched by Gabrielle Feinstone and edited by Josh Allen with music provided by so called transcripts of our show are now available on our website. Typically, a week after an episode airs, we're always looking for ideas for what we should cover in future episodes. So if you have a topic you'd like to hear about, or if you have comments about this episode, please write to us@identitycrisisalomhartman.org for more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute about what's unfolding right now. Sign up for our newsletter in the show Notes and subscribe to this podcast everywhere Podcasts are available. See you next time and thanks for listening.