Karol Markowicz Show: The New Generation of Jewish Leaders with David Hazony

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Episode: Karol Markowicz Show: The New Generation of Jewish Leaders with David Hazony
Release Date: March 14, 2025

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1. Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, hosted by Premiere Networks, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton delve into a special segment featuring insights from Carol Markowitz of iHeartRadio. Celebrating her 150th episode, Carol introduces her guest, David Hazony, an award-winning editor, translator, author, and director of the Steinhardt Senior Fellow at the Z Institute. The conversation centers around Hazony's latest work, Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out, which compiles essays from emerging Jewish leaders addressing contemporary challenges and redefining Jewish identity.

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2. David Hazony's Background

David Hazony shares his personal and professional journey, highlighting his deep-rooted connection to Jewish heritage and Zionism.

• Early Life and Education:
  "I was born into an Israeli family in the United States at a time when there weren't a lot of Israelis in America." [12:03]

• Academic Pursuits:
  "I finished my degrees at Yeshiva University and then moved to Israel in '94, where I earned a PhD at Hebrew University in Jewish philosophy." [13:29]

• Career in Thought Leadership:
  Hazony discusses his role at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and his observations on how academic works can shape public discourse.
  "I've seen over and over again how a single book can influence the debate and public understanding." [15:00]

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3. The Impact of Recent Events on American Jewry

Hazony addresses the profound effects of recent traumatic events, specifically referencing October 7th, and their impact on American Jewish communities.

• Responding to Trauma:
  "October 7th hits, and every single one of the events that we had planned reached out to us and said, we want to do it anyway." [19:04]

• Differing Experiences:
  He contrasts the collective trauma experienced in Israel with the more private, fragmented reactions among American Jews.
  "American Jews were going through something very different. You walk out, your personal world has collapsed, but everybody else, life is going on." [19:27]

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4. The Emergence of New Jewish Leadership

Hazony emphasizes the rise of young Jewish leaders who are actively responding to anti-Semitism and redefining Jewish identity.

• Young Voices in Action:
  "Young Jews are recognizing this as anti-Semitism and looking for ways to fight back." [25:00]

• Formation of Young Zionist Voices:
  "It's a really fascinating collection that captures a moment and showcases a movement." [24:25]

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5. The Z3 Institute and Future Directions

Discussing the establishment of the Z3 Institute, Hazony outlines its mission to revitalize Jewish communal strategies and education in the diaspora.

• Purpose of Z3 Institute:
  "The core of it is that after October 7th, we have this huge feeling that the rug's been pulled out from under us." [40:00]

• Addressing Institutional Failures:
  "Diaspora institutions, especially American Jewish institutions, they drop the ball." [40:35]

• Goals for the Future:
  "We need to rethink our communal strategies, our alliances, our education." [41:14]

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6. Understanding Zionism: Challenges and Misconceptions

Hazony delves into the historical and contemporary understanding of Zionism, addressing common misconceptions propagated by external narratives.

• Historical Roots of Zionism:
  "Zionism emerged in its current form towards the end of the 19th century as a response to centuries of Jewish exile." [26:52]

• Counter Movements and Mischaracterizations:
  "The Soviet Union embraced Palestinianism as a core cause to attack the West, labeling Zionism as racism." [31:40]

• Redefining Terms:
  "Every time they want to attack us with a word, they redefine it to keep the attack going." [32:00]

• Impact on Global Discourse:
  "Words like apartheid and colonialism lose their original meanings, hindering global efforts against actual injustices." [32:14]

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7. Advice for the Next Generation

Hazony offers guidance for young Jews seeking to strengthen their identity and combat anti-Semitism effectively.

• Personal Responsibility in Learning:
  "Your self-understanding is your own responsibility. You can't blame anybody if you don't know stuff." [41:24]

• Balancing Inquisitiveness and Advocacy:
  "Be loving, be inquisitive, be critical, be aggressive—all of these things—all together because that's the Jewish way." [46:41]

• Encouraging Self-Starter Mentality:
  "We need to build a generation of people who drive themselves, push themselves, and want to deepen their own knowledge and understanding." [45:12]

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8. Conclusion

David Hazony underscores the importance of merging intellectual rigor with spiritual commitment to foster a resilient and thriving Jewish community. His work aims to empower the new generation to lead with informed passion and to redefine Jewish identity in the face of contemporary challenges.

• Final Thoughts on Love and Knowledge:
  "There's no contradiction between research, study, argumentation, getting to the truth on one hand, and the spiritual impulse to embrace our families and communities on the other. They’re the same thing." [46:41]

• Optimism for the Future:
  "You come away with a very powerful optimism about the future of American and global Jewry." [26:43]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "You were always a young Zionist." – David Hazony [12:03]
• "We want the Jewish people to come together and for anything to represent that." – David Hazony [19:04]
• "The war is coming to America and resources especially need to be switched into a kind of global diaspora war footing." – David Hazony [21:40]
• "We have to build a generation of self starters." – David Hazony [43:59]
• "Be loving, be inquisitive, be critical, be aggressive—all of these things—all together because that's the Jewish way." – David Hazony [46:41]

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Key Takeaways

• Reinvigorating Jewish Leadership: The new generation is stepping up to address anti-Semitism and reshape Jewish identity through informed and passionate leadership.
• Importance of Education and Self-Understanding: Personal responsibility in learning about Jewish history, culture, and Zionism is crucial for building resilience against external attacks and misinformation.
• Redefining Institutional Roles: There's an urgent need to reevaluate and strengthen diaspora institutions to effectively support and protect Jewish communities.
• Balancing Intellectual and Spiritual Pursuits: Combining rigorous study with a deep sense of community and spirituality fosters a well-rounded and resilient Jewish identity.

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For those interested in exploring the perspectives shared by David Hazony and other emerging Jewish leaders, Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out provides a comprehensive look into the thoughts and strategies shaping the future of Jewish communal life.

Transcript

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[Carol Markowitz]

Hi and welcome back to the Carol markowitz show on iheartradio. It's actually my 150th episode today and I just want to say thank you to all of my listeners. I really wasn't sure if this kind of show would work. People love their news of the day and the Carol Markowitz show is very much not about that. I record a lot of these episodes several weeks out. I try to get to the bottom of people's personalities and their stories and not what think about, you know, what did Trump say today? So it was a gamble and I love that it's working out. And so many of you are listening. We've been clearing a million downloads every quarter with only two episodes a week. And I just feel so fortunate for you all. Thanks so much for tuning in. So last weekend I was laying by a resort pool, lazy river, when a mom and her approximately four year old swam by me and the child was like kind of playing. And he said to his mom, you're stupid. The mom responded, hey buddy, if you want to talk to me like that, we're going to get out of the water. I of course tweeted about it and it's the sort of thing that went, you know, semi viral. 4000 plus likes, lots of responses and retweets. Most agreed with me, but some were in the vein of, what's your problem? This was handled perfectly. The mom gave the kid a warning, what more do you want? And to me, I don't see the parenting in this exchange. And I say the words, my kids aren't perfect a lot because they're not. Obviously no one is perfect, but they're pretty close. If a kid can call his mom stupid and get to continue about his day. I think back to when my kids were a handful, and believe me, they've been a handful each of them. And we'd have to leave a restaurant or something. They were not calling us stupid or anything close. They were maybe acting up, being loud in a restaurant or like turning around and staring at people. We really did cut down on all kinds of antisocial behavior very early because we thought we want to have these kids out in public with us. We want to travel, we want to go out to eat, and we don't want them to be monsters. One other thing I tweeted about it is parents use this sing songy voice that they learned on the Internet and this fake gentle thing that kids know how to dismantle when they should be lowering their voice to a growl and saying talk to me like that again and you'll wish you hadn't. I just hate that whole trend. It's supposed to be gentle parenting, but it just sounds like acting to me. Buddy. Calling your kid buddy rubs me the wrong way too. It's not that I think you can never call your kid buddy or people say, oh you, you know, you shouldn't be buddy with your kid. That's actually not it for me. I don't mind that so much. But not when they just called you stupid. I also tweeted that I had a friend once ask my husband and I which one of us spanks the kids to get their good behavior? The truth is, we don't spank. We don't have to. I like to say I murder them with my eyes if they misbehave. I'm not bragging here exactly. It started young and my kids know what is expected of them. They know what behavior we won't tolerate. Spanking also is very after the fact to me. It's the kid has done something and now you spank them to not have them do it again in the future. And they're gonna have to remember that for next time. For me, it's more like in the moment. It's my eyes that will make them shape up. And my last point on X was I feel like a lot of parents think their kids will become a different person when they get older. Maybe. But in my experience, if you don't lay down the law when they're four, you'll have a much harder time at 14. They need respect you. And that starts young. And that last point is really everything. There are lots of ways to parent. Maybe mine is wrong, maybe it won't work for you. I can't say. But I can tell you that people don't change all that much unless you make them change. And the way your kid is to you today is largely how they'll be in the future. If they don't respect you now, they're not going to respect you as time goes on. A lot of people seem to think you can just not fix bad behavior at 4 years old because they'll grow out of it. I haven't seen evidence of that, to be honest. If you excuse something today, you will likely excuse it tomorrow. I always love hearing from listeners, but would particularly love to hear from you on this. What do you think? Am I right or wrong? Thanks for listening. Coming up next, an interview with David Hazoni. Join us after the break.

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[Carol Markowitz]

Osbornehomes.com welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on iHeartRadio. My guest today is David Hazoni. David is an award winning editor, translator and author and director and Steinhardt senior fellow at the Z Institute. His newest work, Young Zionist A New Generation Speaks out, brings together the next generation of impassioned Jewish leaders. Hi David. So nice to have you on.

[Oracle Representative]

Hi, Carol. Thank you so much.

[Carol Markowitz]

I feel like I've known you a long time on the old Internet, but I would love to know how you got into this world. Where did you get your start?

[Oracle Representative]

Wow. So you were always a young Zionist. That's right. So I, I, I was born into an Israeli family in the United States at a time when there weren't a lot of Israelis in America. It wasn't like today where you have sort of these big, you know, movements and organizations and whole communities that are of Israeli Americans. The concept Israeli Americans didn't exist as a label. And in fact, when I was a kid, my non Jewish friends didn't know what Israeli was. This is the 1970s. Israel's only been 30 years. And so like, you know, a fourth grader is like, hazoni, what is that? And I said it's Israeli. And they're like, there's no such thing. It's Italian.

[Carol Markowitz]

It sounds kind of Italian, actually.

[Oracle Representative]

Yeah, I mean, I guess my, my grandfather's original name was Kazanovich and that's real Italian. Yeah. And all my, all my grandparents moved to the land of Israel in the 1920s, 1930s. And it was very common, especially going through the 1950s, it was very common for. For people to hebraicize their last names as part of this sort of new resurgent Jewish homeland. Kazanovich became Hazoni. And. And that's what I got.

[Carol Markowitz]

Where did you grow up?

[Oracle Representative]

So I was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and I was there till ninth grade. And then my father was a. Was a professor there, and then he moved to Boston University. So I moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, where I went to. And then I started college at Columbia University in New York, spent a year in Israel studying in Yeshiva, kind of got religion, as they say, then finished my degrees at Yeshiva University. And then after I moved to Israel in 94, I got a PhD at Hebrew University in Jewish philosophy.

[Carol Markowitz]

And so you're committed to this whole Jewish thing? Yeah, you're in.

[Oracle Representative]

I'm on board. And, you know, I look, I'm actually from the tribe of Levi. I'm not even strictly, you know, the word Jew comes from Judea, from the tribe of Judah. And I always like to say, well, I'm kind of Jewish, but I'm really a Levite. That confuses everybody.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. And kids in Princeton don't know what to do with that.

[Oracle Representative]

No, no, they're just like, now you're Italian. So I actually got started while I was doing my graduate degree in Israel. I got started in the think tank world. I was one of the original people at the Shalem center in Jerusalem, and I ended up editing its journal. And I spent a lot of time, a lot of years, kind of watching how books and the ideas in books and, you know, what we call public intellectuals, how they really help shape the debate, how a single book can come. So for just, for example, we had an unknown historian by the name of Michael Oren came to us in 1997 and said, I want to do a book on Israel's war of Independence, 1948. And the think tankers were like, you know, that's the wrong book. It's 1997. It's 30 years after the Six Day War. The archives are all opening up. The bad guys are out there already, the new historians, they call them, saying that Israel deliberately started the war in order to capture territory. What we really need is a definitive history of the Six Day War. And he agreed to do that. And the book became Oxford University Press's first ever bestseller. They didn't know what to do with it. And he became a very famous person. And I've kind of seen over and over again. How, you know, 2008, whenever it was a book comes out called Startup Nation, right. By Dan Sinorin and Saul Singer. Before that, people would talk about Israel like, you know, it's the only democracy in the Middle east and it's David against Goliath and all of these sort of conflict related concepts. Excuse me. Along comes this one book and it creates this whole other lens through which we can understand the country. And now everybody knows the expression Startup Nation. What percentage? I. I do. I like to do this. I just like to ask people in a room, how many of you actually read the book.

[Carol Markowitz]

I read it.

[Oracle Representative]

You know, it's very. Okay, but I read it.

[Carol Markowitz]

But I read it only like in the last five years. And so it's, it's kind of a, it's not, not that it's outdated, but there is a newer, you know, version of it out now. But yeah, it was, it was great and it was eye opening even, Even reading it so late.

[Oracle Representative]

Yeah, so. So I've just been very aware and sensitive to the, the mechanics, the craft of how, you know, an idea. How a book can kind of either capture a moment. Take for example, Dara Horn's People Love Dead Jews. Okay, that was a book that just sprung up out of nowhere. Very well written, very well researched. But the most important thing was the title because the grabbed what so many people were already feeling. And, and you see, you know, and it's not just in our world, it's also in the, in the world in general. All these expressions that people use, Tipping Point and Clash of Civilizations and Long Tail, all of them go back to books. So in 2019, I spent four years in Washington. I moved to Israel in 94, spent four years in Washington during what people in D.C. call Obama Two, meaning 2013 to 2016. And then I came back to Israel and in 2019, I connected with my old friend Adam Bellow, who had just come off of a 30 year stellar career as a commercial book publisher. And he was starting a new publishing house called Wicked Sun Books, which had a sort of Jewish facing market. And, and then he said to me, you know, anthologies are actually really important. And I said, what do you mean important? Like, do they sell? And he said, well, well, yeah, you know. And I said, but who goes into a bookstore and says, show me your anthologies. Because no, no, no, no, no. If you pick the right niche, then you can kind of capture a moment and then everybody has to have the book on their bookshelves. And he said, what's your niche? And I said, well, you know, I've been Orthodox and secular and I've been left and right politically. I've been Israeli and American. I've been young and old. So how about like the whole Jewish people? And he laughed and I laughed. And we ended up producing how about.

[Carol Markowitz]

We leave out the old people, just the young Zionist voice.

[Oracle Representative]

So we started thinking, how could you do like a Talmud for today? Like capturing kind of the entire people in a single volume. And we got to work on something that ended up being called Jewish priorities 65 proposals for the Future of Our People, which contains within it essays where the audience is us as a. As a collective, the totality of the Jewish people. But each person is coming from a very different perspective. And you have ultra orthodox to secular, and you have left and right, and you have young influencers and veteran writers and, and you know, people from the entertainment industry, people from business, people from journalism, literary, just sort of. And of course rabbis and scholars. And. And it just came together as this really kind of amazing, beautiful collection that was scheduled to publish on October 23, 2023. So, yeah, yeah, so October 7. So we had this whole huge launch planned out. It was very festive. It was like, imagine having the whole Jewish people over for dinner. And then all of a sudden October 7th hits. And every single one of the events that we had planned reached out to us and said, we want to do it anyway. We're going to pivot on the vibe, on the marketing. But right now, in the thick of this horrific trauma, the thing we need is for the Jewish people to come together and for anything to kind of represent that. So I came to America. We did a full day festival in Philadelphia at the Weiss Museum. We did a nine speaker event at the Stryker Center, New York, and we did something at the Z3 conference out in Palo Alto. And. And it was my first exposure to how American Jews were experiencing October 7th because it was different. Meaning there was obviously a lot of overlap. A lot of people have a lot of connections back in Israel. But while we were, you know, going through a really collective trauma coupled with a collective mobilization and going off to war and, and really it was the most together moment that Israel had experienced in my lifetime. But American Jews were going through something very different. You know, you walk out, you wake up in the morning, you walk out into the street, and my personal world has collapsed, but everybody else, life is going on. How do the buses keep running? And why are people, you know, having fun in bars? And, and it's just, it became a Much more private, and it was much more scary because of that.

[Carol Markowitz]

So, I mean, the riots and the protests and the insanity on the streets certainly didn't help that feeling.

[Oracle Representative]

Well, it created a sense of paralysis for a lot of people, a sense of. I mean, when I say people, I was in New York, I was talking to very big philanthropists, and they were saying to me, we don't know what to do. And so some of the mobilization did happen for Israel. Right. But it was. It was almost like a deflection. It was like they didn't want to see the crisis that was coming to America. For their perspective, if they could do something, it would be to help Israel, which is great. But. So I wrote an essay right afterwards called the War against the Jews that came out on November 7th that basically said the war is coming to America and resources and especially kind of thinking needs to be switched into a kind of global diaspora war footing. And here's what that would look like. That's. This essay got a lot of traction, especially in philanthropic circles. I got a lot of people reached out to me and. And at the same time, we started to notice that there was another kind of mobilization, there was another kind of pushback, and it was happening almost entirely among young people. So you'd see on campuses as diverse as, like, from Harvard to UCLA to Tulane University, Penn, you'd see students fighting back, Jewish students recognizing this as anti Semitism and not just criticism of Israeli policy and looking for ways to fight back. And we decided at that moment that the next book we would do would try to bring together some of these voices into a single volume. It's called Young Zionist Voices. It just came out In Novemb has 31 essays. All of them are written by people under the age of 30, a lot of them from campuses like Shabbos, Kestenbaum, Della Kochav, people at Columbia University, people at George Washington, Stanford University, Julia Steinberg, but also a lot of young professionals, young rabbis. We have about 10 who live in Israel. Half of them are kind of Israeli Israelis, including one Oz Benoun, who was a fighter in the EGO Special Forces unit that my son also serves in and fought during October 7th. And he's also kind of like a philosopher. So he's writing about the meaning of Judaism and community. But he's doing. But it's through the eyes of somebody who just came back from army duty where he was like, literally at the front lines.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Oracle Representative]

And it's a really, really fascinating collection that really is kind of the snapshot of a moment and Where a whole group of young Jews, all of whom look for different ways to fight back against the anti Semitism. And really, we did it in order to kind of plant a flag in the sand and basically say, listen, everybody. These aren't just isolated students or young people who are looking for ways to fight back. There's actually kind of a movement here. And if we look into the thinking of these young leaders, what we see is a very new approach to Jewish pride, Jewish identity, Jewish connection to the land of Israel, what they understand when they use the word Zionism. It might be very different from what people from my generation think. And. And also to send a signal beyond, you know, to. To older people that, hey, there is a new generation of leaders coming up.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Oracle Representative]

And I. I firmly believe, look, I was in the Soviet Jewry movement in the 80s. I was living, growing up in Boston. I was marching in the streets for Sharansky and for Ida New Dell and for all of these great heroes from the refusing movement. And we were marching. And later on, the people who led the movement in America became important, important leaders in Jewish communal life. And if you think that. And if that happened where Soviet Jewry, for all it's worth became. Only it took a lot of years before the establishment kind of embraced it as a cause. But these now, the trauma that we're going through now and the stepping up, the people who stepped up at this crucial moment, they're going to become the future of American Jewry. And it's important to see who they are and to see what their thinking looks like. And you come away with a very. Well, certainly a very powerful optimism about the future of American and global Jewry. But also you. You learn. You're constantly learning. Okay. You know, these young people have all their own vocabulary and their own set of priorities, and we should hear what they have to say.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. What do the Western kind of intellectuals misunderstand about Zionism? What would you say that they're missing?

[Oracle Representative]

Well, the word missing is so generous. It's not like, oops, we missed that. You know, the Zionism emerged in its current form in the. You know, towards the end of the 19th century. There were Zionist thinkers and Zionist writers who looked at diaspora Jewish life with. At the time, they called it exile Jews in exile and said, okay, centuries and centuries of living in exile have. Have hurt us. Okay. They've hurt us spiritually and psychologically. They've hurt us politically. They've turned us into people who are very dependent, who might be too afraid to. To, you know, always afraid to fight back. It's what happens when you are subjugated for generation after generation after generation. And they looked for ways to rebuild the honor, the dignity, the strength of Jews coming to, is to, to what was then called Palestine. Coming to the land of Israel and building a state was only one piece of their, their answer, but their answer began at the spiritual level. And it said you have to stand tall, you have to fight back, you have to know who you are. And, and so the political side of it, which, which was led by Theodore Herzl, who not only called on people to come to, to the land of Israel, but also created the core institutions for what would become the Jewish state, eventually the Zionist Congress and the banks and the investment, you know, vehicles and the paramilitary side of the militias and all of this stuff was built in order to create a homeland where, where the idea was that it's only through our own homeland, in our homeland that Jews could really reclaim the, the life of dignity and a self respect that had been beaten out of them for so many centuries in diaspora. What happened was that a counter movement emerged already in the 1920s, but really taking full force in the 1960s on the Arab side that basically was a complete rejectionist, complete annihilistic view that said there can't be any Jewish presence, any Jewish political presence in, in, in the land of Israel. So, and this was heavily, heavily backed in the 1960s by the Soviet Union, okay? So the Soviet Union embraces Palestinianism as a core cause in its effort to attack the west as a whole. And that's where you see all of these words like colonialism and apartheid and, and Zionism is racism, all of these. And I have to, to give credit to the scholar Isabella Taborovsky, who's really done tremendous, tremendous work on exposing the connections between what we see today and this Soviet campaign launched especially after the Six Day War in 1967, when the Soviets were so humiliated by the defeat of their client states who were the Arabs. And so the Soviets start injecting these lies into Western discourse through academia, okay? They start publishing books of pseudo scholarship and pamphlets and translating them into English and French and Spanish and all these languages and flooding the campuses with, with these pamphlets. And, and it becomes part of a broader kind of intellectual worldview that basically says the west is the bad guy, okay? And Israel is like this prime example of, of just how bad the west is. And so if you wonder like where does all of this come from that we're seeing on campuses? These professors are just like, it's A direct line. Yeah, it's a direct line to the campaigns. I mean, you know, these are one generation removed from the professors then. And, and you know, the, the students of the 70s are like the senior professors of the, the 2000 and 20s. So you know, it, it's. If you're asking what are they missing, the answer is truth there. And it's, and it's pretty deliberate. If you look at what Zionism is, what Zionism was, what Zionists describe themselves as, you discover that it's all about our own self rebuilding. To build and be built is the classic Zionist expression. We come to the land to build it and to be built by it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Oracle Representative]

And, and there is no, you know, all of these slogans, colonialism and all that stuff. I mean, do you ever notice how like, anytime they want to attack us with a word, they have to first redefine the word in order to keep attacking us? So like, you say no, I've had these conversations where like, like apartheid is like South Africa. I know, because like we were fighting against apartheid in high school. I also was like there, you know, free Nelson Mandela, of course. And, and, and you ask them, but Israel doesn't look like that at all. And they'll say no, but apartheid has involved.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Oracle Representative]

Modern legal definition. I'm like, well, why did it do that? It didn't just evolve, okay. You made you just. Same thing with genocide and the same thing with colonialism. Like, how could this be colonialism? The whole point was to overthrow the, the that controlled us.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. Indigenous, the word indigenous.

[Oracle Representative]

Yeah. We ended up like, literally fighting, you know, against the British in order to have our state. And they're like, no, no, you're, you're colonialists. I'm like, what are you talking. No, but we, if you. So they, they redefine everything. Now this has two, two big effects. The, the most obvious one from a Jewish standpoint is that that they're just making up all sorts of crazy stuff to attack the. What might be even worse is that any time that word used to mean something important, it doesn't mean that anymore. So you can't fight against genocide in the world anymore because now it doesn't. Doesn't mean anything anymore. And you can't fight again again against racism. And, you know, all of these things, they're, they're redefining to attack us with, become completely defanged when it comes to the whole rest of the world. And so the people who suffer most are the Palestinians. The people who suffer most are people victims of actual genocide in Africa. They're the ones who all of a sudden the west has lost its moral bearings and lost the language to use.

[Carol Markowitz]

To describe any of it.

[Oracle Representative]

Yeah, because anytime they have, they had a word, somebody came and hijacked it and said, no, no, it's about the Palestinians.

[Carol Markowitz]

We're going to take a quick break and be right back on the Carol Markowitz show.

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[Carol Markowitz]

What do you worry about?

[Oracle Representative]

I worry about that everything's going to be going to feel like things have calmed down and the world is over and the anti Semites are on their back foot and that we're all going to kind of slide back to old habits. I want to expand on this just a little bit. I've recently started working with an organization called the Z3 project. It's based in Palo Alto out of the Palo Alto JCC and the Ostrom Family JCC of Palo Alto. It started out as a whole series of conferences which I thought were really fascinating about Zionism. And they approached me after Jewish Priorities came out and said, we'd like you to help start a think tank, which we'll call the Z3 Institute. And the core of it is that after October 7th, we have this huge feeling that the rug's been pulled out from under us. And on the one hand, hand it's a horrible tragedy and a horrible trauma, but on the other hand it's also an opportunity because when everything's fine, you let things go and you don't want to rock the boat and you don't want to change things. But. But the truth of the matter is that Diaspora institutions, and especially American Jewish institutions, they drop the ball. Oh yeah, okay. And you know, whereas in Israel everybody knows that it's institutions and leaders and military and that everybody dropped the ball. And there are, there are endless calls for a national commission of inquiry. And a lot of people have, have resigned in the, in the military and security services and intelligence. All of these leaders have either resigned or announced that they're going to be resigning. And in diaspora, you know, despite the fact that for a hundred years they have these institutions, they call them defense organizations that were built to watch out for anti Semitism, to fight it, to prevent it, Holocaust education, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars per year were spent on these things.

[Carol Markowitz]

They were completely unprepared.

[Oracle Representative]

They're completely unprepared and the kids know it. Okay? The young people, they write about it in this book in Young Zionist Voices. They're, they're, they're angry.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Oracle Representative]

And they're frustrated about the failure of the institutions to prepare, prevent, do their jobs. But have any, has anybody resigned?

[Lenovo Representative]

Right.

[Oracle Representative]

Yet?

[Carol Markowitz]

Of course not. No. They're doubling down on it. In a lot of cases, I think that the institutions are not improving.

[Oracle Representative]

Yeah. So, so we, we identify right now an opportunity because the institutions aren't budging. But if you talk to Jewish professionals, if you talk to ordinary Jewish participants in communities and congregations, everybody feels like things have to change. Something went deeply wrong in core understandings of our communal strategies, our alliances, our education. Everything needs to be rethought. And who's going to do that? So, so the purpose of the Z3 institute is to identify scholars, writers, people who are actually coming in with fresh thinking and who can build alternative frameworks for everything from Jewish education to communal strategy to Holocaust to Zionism and Israel, diaspora and all of these big pieces, philanthropy, all these big chunks, monks, where all the underlying assumptions that have been built over literally centuries now need to be challenged and rethought with alternative frameworks to kind of come in and, and perhaps become the beginning of a very new path towards a much more educated, thriving, proud Jewish community in the Diaspora.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love that. I hope it works because we need. What advice would you give your 16 year old self? You have to do this all over again. What does he need to know?

[Oracle Representative]

Number one? Is that your Jewish, what's the word they use now? Journey your Jewish journey, right?

[Carol Markowitz]

As the kids say, as the kids.

[Oracle Representative]

Say, your self understanding is first of all your own responsibility. Okay? You can't blame anybody if you don't know stuff. Okay? It's got to be a fire that comes from within to go and learn, go and study, go and deepen your own understanding. Read, you know, read the Bible, read the Talmud, study. We have 3,000 years of, of history that you, that's yours if you can go and grab it. And when you do that, then you become the arbiter, you become the master. You, you don't, you don't. You know, you'll, you'll automatically have defenses against an endless sea of crazy people trying to tell you that you're the bad guy. That's number one above everything else. I had a student just last week. I was in Austin, Texas for the Z3 Austin conference. And Gil Troy and I were doing this wonderful session with a group of Jewish professionals, including some young people. And one of them asked me, look, you know, I really want to know more about Israel, but I keep getting sucked into this, all this hasbara stuff, and it's all about cherry tomatoes and what to say against other people. And I'm not looking for what to say. I'm trying to learn. And I said, look, you're 100% right. Hasbara, or the fight, as we call it, is a machine and it's a desperately needed machine because we are in a battle. Battle. But that doesn't mean that you can't limit that and bracket that out and learn. Because at the end of the day, learning is, is kind of the opposite of messaging, right? Messaging is. I know the answers. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And, and that's how battles of communication really are conducted and have to be conducted. And it's entirely legitimate that it exists. But if you don't go and deepen your own knowledge at your own under your own energy and go to Israel or learn Hebrew or know, engage with Israeli culture and on through your own drive, then all you're going to be left with is the easy stuff, the machine, the sort of the places where people want you to go. And so, so we have to build a generation of, of what they, what do they call it? Self starters. That's the word.

[Carol Markowitz]

You have all the terminology down.

[Oracle Representative]

I love it. It's great. It's great. Silicon Alley, right, Of, you know, self starting journeys. But, but there's something to that. You really need to build a whole generation of people who are, who drive themselves, who push themselves, who want to deepen their own knowledge and understanding. And there's so many paths to it. You know, when I, when I was a kid, there was no Internet, right? Right. If you wanted to learn about Israel, you need to read history books or go to the library or, you know, maybe see a TV show that was heavily biased in one or another or watch, you know, an old movie or go To Israel, which itself was this, you know, was this huge investment. And you'd have to like, you know, communicate with your parents through aerograms. And today you can learn anything you want. Like, it's an amazing moment. But that means that you, but it doesn't chain. Take away the responsibility and the onus being on you to care and to want to learn and to drive yourself to, to, to go find it. Yeah, to go find it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Oracle Representative]

And I think that, that there's a, a cultural, there's a risk of a cultural laziness in which we have everything. So I don't have to work to learn anything. And it's the exact opposite of the truth. You're flooded with information, but, but becoming a knowledgeable, deep person requires that you be the one to arbitrary, to arbitrate what's important, what's not important, what's reliable, what's not reliable. Who can I learn from? You know, the, the, the ancient rabbis had this expression, make for yourself a rabbi. Like get yourself a rabbi. Yeah, okay. Which is, which is really fascinating when you think about it because you think of religion as this kind of top down, you know, the, your rabbi is kind of a given, right? You're, you're the clergy, like, tell you. And that's what God wants. And the rabbis were like, no, it's the exact opposite. It's got to come from inside of you. You got to go out and find the right teacher for you, and you've got to go and study. And it's all on you, the individual. And I really, really want. Would love to see that part of Judaism be imbued into young people because it's the core of everything. Because once you get that engine going, then everything else follows from.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love that. Well, the last question I ask all of my guests, and I would love to hear what you have to say is a tip that you would offer my listeners for better living, how to have a better life.

[Oracle Representative]

We Jews have inherited a really strange combination of like an intellectual thing combined with a spiritual thing. Okay. And when we, we call it that, that combination, we call it love. But for us, love means something else than it means for a lot of other people.

[Carol Markowitz]

People.

[Oracle Representative]

There's no contradiction between research, study, argumentation, getting to the truth on the one hand, and the spiritual impulse to embrace those, our families and our communities and our people that, that, that need to extend ourselves and, you know, and take care of our world. These don't contradict. They're actually the same thing because you can't really take care of people unless you know what they're going through. What are the methodologies? What are the, the technical aspects of what, you know, what does take care of people? We have all these, you know, political arguments about no, we should, you know, this or that. And it's all like, do outcomes matter? Well, yeah, outcomes are the only thing that matters, right? So, so but to know outcomes means you have to understand how things work. And you can't really take care of your child unless you know what children need and consult with doctors and love your child and give them all the core self confidence in the world. And it's the same thing with so my tip for a better life is be loving, be inquisitive, be critical, be aggressive, be all of these things all together because that's the Jewish way.

[Carol Markowitz]

I love that. He is David Hazoni. Check out his latest anthology, Young Zionist Voices. A New Generation Speaks Out. Thank you so much for coming on, David.

[Oracle Representative]

Thank you, Carol.

[Carol Markowitz]

Thanks so much for joining us on the Carol Markowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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If there was a summer camp for critical thinking, we'd be the chief counselors. Those jelly heads in June would be intellectual warriors by August. Be a lot of fun too. Some Bill and Ted's excellent adventure references thrown in this podcast like a daily dose of that, minus the campfires, archery and pranking the girls. The Bonafide Boot Camp for critical Thinking. You can get in on it for free at the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Just search our names. Clay and Bach Listen and subscribe.