A Senor Moment

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: A Senor Moment

Release Date: May 15, 2025

In this compelling episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, host John Podhoretz engages in a profound discussion with esteemed guests Abe Greenwald, Matthew Continetti, Christine Rosen, and Dan Senor. Titled "A Senor Moment," the episode delves into pressing geopolitical developments, the state of American Jewry, and the critical need for robust Jewish education and community-building efforts.

---

Trump’s Middle East Diplomacy Compared to Obama’s 2009 Tour

[00:55] John Podhoretz opens the conversation by contrasting President Donald Trump's recent Middle East trip with Barack Obama's 2009 apology tour. Unlike Obama's more contentious visit, Trump's journey is characterized by positive optics and successful diplomatic engagements.

Podhoretz observes, “The visuals of Reagan all looking really good. The optics of this trip make it the best foreign trip for a president in I don't know when it all looks good.”

Christine Rosen adds, “[Trump’s] trip is forming a template for future trips...if you want to have a successful Trump visit, get those deals ready.”

The guests laud Trump’s ability to present a confident and amicable image, highlighting successful negotiations and the strategic removal of sanctions on Syria.

---

Navigating the Iran Nuclear Deal

The discussion shifts to the complexities surrounding the Iran nuclear deal. Dan Senor emphasizes skepticism regarding the feasibility of a genuine agreement, stating, “I think there is no such thing as a good deal with Iran because they will never hold to the deal.”

Podhoretz echoes this sentiment, critiquing the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) for its unfavorable terms towards the U.S., noting, “The JCPOA basically envisioned Iran having a bomb by 2030.”

The panel acknowledges the challenges posed by internal administration dynamics and legislative pressures, with Abe Greenwald noting surprising Republican pushback against Trump's policies: “By every Senate Republican except for Rand Paul, it’s unbelievable.”

---

Israeli Politics Amidst U.S. Diplomatic Shifts

A significant portion of the conversation addresses the intricate relationship between the Trump administration and Israeli leadership. Greenwald shares insights from a senior Israeli diplomat, highlighting concerns over Israel's transactional diplomacy: “Israel has not figured out how to do his transaction.”

Podhoretz discusses internal Israeli tensions and the Israeli government's strategic operations in Gaza, balancing Trump's diplomatic overtures with Israel’s ongoing security measures.

---

State of American Jewry Post-October 7

Dan Senor's keynote address, “State of World Jewry,” is a focal point of the episode, exploring the profound impact of the events of October 7th on the American Jewish community. Senor articulates a crucial divide in Jewish consciousness, questioning whether American Jewry is “meeting the moment” amidst rising anti-Semitism and shifting geopolitical landscapes.

Greenwald underscores the resilience of Israel while expressing concern for the American Jewish community's engagement and identity, stating, “I have all these friends whose children are on American college campuses now... they’re just minding their own business.”

---

The Imperative of Jewish Education and Community Investment

A pivotal segment of the podcast emphasizes the urgent need for investing in Jewish educational institutions as a cornerstone for sustaining Jewish identity and combating assimilation.

Senor passionately argues, “The only proven model to do it is highly immersive experiences for young Jews. Jewish day schools, Jewish summer camps, gap years in Israel.”

Rosen reinforces this by highlighting the role of education and community in fostering a strong Jewish identity: “Community, which is part of what Dan is describing... education and community lead to identity and attachment.”

Greenwald further stresses the underfunding of Jewish day schools, noting a mere 5% of non-Orthodox Jewish children attend such institutions, which jeopardizes the future of Jewish engagement and identity.

---

Philanthropy’s Role in Sustaining Jewish Institutions

The conversation transitions to the critical role of philanthropy in supporting Jewish educational and community structures. Greenwald points out that while American Jews are highly philanthropic, the majority of donations often flow to non-Jewish causes. He calls for a strategic redirection of philanthropic efforts to bolster Jewish life.

Greenwald states, “If you are like who are going to be the John Grays who make that kind of bet on American Jewish life and say, you know, no American Jewish family should choose not to send their kids to a Jewish day school or not to...”

Rosen concurs, emphasizing the need for generous philanthropists to invest in Jewish education to ensure a thriving future for the community.

---

Addressing Anti-Semitism and Community Resilience

The panel discusses the persistent challenge of anti-Semitism and the importance of positive Jewish engagement as a countermeasure. Greenwald critiques the community's current focus on defensive activism, lamenting the lack of positive cultural and educational initiatives.

Greenwald reflects, “The theme of the last 18 months for Jewish life in America was we're in the fight, and we're fighting... there's no joy, there's no ritual, there's no communal life.”

Senor and Rosen advocate for a balanced approach that emphasizes both defense against anti-Semitism and the cultivation of a vibrant, positive Jewish identity through education and community activities.

---

Conclusion: A Call to Action for American Jewry

As the episode draws to a close, Podhoretz ties the discussion back to broader themes of identity, resilience, and strategic investment in the future of American Jewry. He highlights the importance of long-term commitment to educational and community-building efforts to ensure the survival and flourishing of Jewish life in America.

Podhoretz concludes, “We're talking about a people that's been around for 3,500 years and could be around for 3,500 more... the real legacy of our time and our era will be if we come out of this horrendous period... better.”

---

This episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast offers an insightful and nuanced exploration of current geopolitical dynamics, the state of American Jewry, and the critical need for strategic investments in education and community-building. Through thoughtful dialogue and expert perspectives, the panel underscores the importance of resilience, positive engagement, and cohesive action in addressing the challenges facing the Jewish community today.

For a deeper dive into these discussions, listeners are encouraged to read Dan Senor’s article, “The Future of American Jewry After October 7: How to Find Clarity and Purpose in Horror’s Wake,” available at Commentary.org.

---

Notable Quotes:

• John Podhoretz [06:02]: “Trump is confident, he's comfortable, the people he is visiting are thrilled to have him visit, and everything is smiles and friendship.”

• Christine Rosen [08:24]: “If you want to have a successful Trump visit, get those deals ready.”

• Dan Senor [25:21]: “There's one little bit of silver lining that I've personally enjoyed is watching them squirm.”

• Abe Greenwald [47:27]: “The only sure way we'll survive is for Jews to be Jewish.”

---

**Listen to the full episode on Ricochet.com and stay informed with The Commentary Magazine Podcast.

Transcript

[Advertisement Speaker]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of Identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply.

[Abe Greenwald]

A.

[John Podhoretz]

Thirst no way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best.

[Matthew Continetti]

Expect the waste of the bed.

[John Podhoretz]

Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today's Thursday, May 15, 2025. I am John Pod Horowitz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.

[Matthew Continetti]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Washington, Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi, Matt.

[Christine Rosen]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

Social commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.

[Dan Senor]

Hi, John.

[John Podhoretz]

And joining us today, Commentary Inc. Board member, Commentary, former Commentary roastee, author of co author of the Genius of Israel and Startup Nation, and the host of the Call Me Back podcast, Dan Senor. Hi, Dan.

[Abe Greenwald]

Hey, John. Good to be with you.

[John Podhoretz]

Dan is the author of the COVID story in the June issue of Commentary, which is available for your [e-mail] it is an adaptation of a speech that Dan gave on Tuesday night at the 92nd Street Y that is called the State of World Jewry. We took it and focused it really on the state of American Jewry. And we're going to talk about your findings, your, your, your vision, your sense of what's going right and what's going wrong in a minute. But first, Donald Trump remains in the Middle east. And we did a lot of arguing yesterday on the podcast about his anti neocon speech and other aspects of the trip and whether it was like Barack Obama's 2009 trip. But here's one way in which I don't think it's like Barack Obama's apology tour in 2009. I watched Morning shows this morning, just before we came on the air, that is, you know, ABC, CBS and NBC's morning shows.

[Abe Greenwald]

You watch those. The people still watch.

[John Podhoretz]

I do not watch those. I was, I happened to be.

[Christine Rosen]

Oh, the people.

[John Podhoretz]

My wife.

[Abe Greenwald]

No, people.

[Dan Senor]

I feel like if you're in the hospital, that's what you're watching.

[Abe Greenwald]

I really don't hear people citing them anymore. Really? Like, like, like it's a thing.

[John Podhoretz]

No one watches them, But I think 9 million people, you know, in aggregate watch them. So.

[Abe Greenwald]

Which is like a third.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

A third of the.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

You know, it's like nobody goes there. It's too crowded, you know. So let's put it this way, nobody watches, you know, Morning Joe. Yeah, except people like us. But yeah. So what I'm saying is like last week was the Pope, was the week of the conclave and the appointment of a new Pope. And that was sort of like the dominating news story on these shows last week and this week it is Trump in the Middle East. And to be honest, however I feel about what Trump is saying and what he might be doing the optics on television, as Michael Deaver would have said of Reagan getting attacked in 1981 and 1982. But the visuals of Reagan all looking really good. The optics of this trip make it the best foreign trip for a president in I don't know when it all looks good. He's cracking jokes, he's got camels accompanying his quartet. His sort of his limousine as it, as it travels to this, you know, stately guttery. I don't know what you call it.

[Abe Greenwald]

He's got all these Marquee named American CEOs there in a parade. They're all as he's signing deals to, you know, constant news in America. Right?

[John Podhoretz]

Constant news. Syrian, you know, this idea of the suspension of the sanctions on Syria, the ask of the new Syrian or Damascus, let's say government that it recognized become part of the Abraham Accords, that it stopped support for terror standing there smiling between Mohammed bin Salman in his what they used to call a burnous and. And the Syrian president eight years ago, you know, like member of ISIS in his western suit with his handsome Syrian president. They have very handsome according to Trump.

[Christine Rosen]

Tough fighter and handsome. The best compliments you can Trump can give anyone.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. Anyway, I just think if you are looking for what it is that you want from a foreign trip as a PR matter for a president, this is pretty much everything you could ever want. Remember Trump's trips in this first term were often very weird. Weird stuff happened in China. Weird stuff happened when he went to negotiate with Putin in. Was that Reykjavik?

[Christine Rosen]

Helsinki.

[John Podhoretz]

Helsinki, right. So there was something was always off, the tone was always off. When he went to the Middle east first time the or was the famous visit to the orb, the mysterious glowing object.

[Christine Rosen]

The orb must be in the same warehouse as the Ark of the Covenant now because we didn't see it has.

[John Podhoretz]

Gotten rid of the org.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah. With John Williams music playing in the background. We don't know where it is, but yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

So Trump's foreign trips were not triumphant. It wasn't just that the Press was out to get him and all of that. They were odd. They did not have the feeling of a. Of the most important person in the world making his way and being paid proper tribute in the sense that he represented the most important country in the world. And that is very much not the tone of that. The tone of this is Trump is confident, he's comfortable, the people he is visiting are thrilled to have him visit, and everything is smiles and friendship.

[Christine Rosen]

Can I make one observation, and I kind of joked about this yesterday, but I want to expand it. Not only is the trip successful, it is forming a template for future trips and for foreign governments about how they should approach a Trump visit, which is if you want to have a successful Trump visit, get those deals ready, right? Get, get him deliverable something. Give the deliverable. It doesn't have to be the palace in the sky. That's been the one, that's been the one kind of nettlesome aspect of this trip is the Qatari offer and the Trump acceptance of the gift of the luxury jet to serve as an interim air Force one. But it has to be some type of economic package, you know, some type of foreign investment into the United States, something about something he can sign, you know, make news. He loves making news. I mean, the reaction in that auditorium when he said he was dropping the sanctions on Syria, that is a jolt for Trump. He loves that type of stuff. And I think foreign governments, which, you know, are always kind of scurrying around looking for guidance about how to deal with MAGA and with Trump, they should look at this trip and they say, okay, if he comes to Europe, give him something if you want to have. This is, by the way, why the United Kingdom is doing so well in Trump too, right? Because he already loves the monarchy. He already has this, you know, that kind of royal bent to him. And, and Keir Starmer came over and it's like, we want it. You're going to come back to Buckingham palace, we're going to put out the Royal Guard for you. And guess what? They're the first country to make a trade deal that seems to satisfy both parties.

[Dan Senor]

The only danger is if, if I think we debated this a little bit last week, but the only danger is if you're dealing with someone like Putin who's happy to pretend to make deals, but actually the thing he wants is the thing about which there is no negotiating.

[Christine Rosen]

All I'll say, though, is I don't think Putin made the right choice by not going to Ankara to meet with we should.

[Dan Senor]

We should we should just send the message about his priorities, which isn't.

[Christine Rosen]

Which isn't known his priorities. But yeah, for Trump, that it's been a rebuke and Zelensky was willing to go, and I think that will help again align Ukraine and the United States.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

I was with a. I was with a. I won't say his name, but let's call him a senior diplomat from the Israeli government the other night who said, you know, watching this trip play out Trump's trip, he says one thing. Israel has not figured out how to do his transaction. Transactional diplomacy.

[Christine Rosen]

Absolutely.

[Abe Greenwald]

And my response is, you can't offer Trump the palace in the sky, but you can offer him an upgrade on El Al, you know, and destined to ruin the US Israel relationship in one flight. But no, I think on the one hand, the Israelis, some of the Israelis I've been in touch with are a little unnerved by all of this. On the other hand, at the same time, this whole trip is going on in the sense that this is, you know, bad news for people like us and our worldview, bad news for Israel. While Trump has been on this trip, Israel, or just before as he was leaving, Israel executed an operation in Gaza to take out Mohammed Sinwar and the spokesman of Hamas. And it's an operation. Yeah, Hamas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And it was an operation that actually has the feel of something Israel has not been doing in Gaza, which is much more what it was doing in the north against Hezbollah, where the systematic taking out, these very targeted operations, taking out leaders, even the, the operation that took out Ye Sinwar was not a targeted operation. Some soldiers, like, stumbled upon him. It wasn't like now there seems to be a very systematic way. So for all this talk that the administration's breaking with, with Israel, there's some tension between the administration, Israel and then Trump is in the Middle east and he's going to be hearing from all these leaders are going to be critical from Israel. I mean, the hysteria before Trump left on this trip, the hysteria in the Israeli press, the Hebrew language is really press, which was quite like overwrought, which was, there's a break and he's going to go there. He's going to be in Riyadh and Mahmoud Abbas is going to be in Riyadh, and Trump is going to acknowledge that a Palestinian state has to be. I mean, you should have seen this Israeli press. It was crazy. And the reality is none of this has happened. I agree with what you guys were saying yesterday and now about the concern about the Trump, the president's policy, President Trump's policy on Syria or new policy on Syria. But on balance, you, Israel's conducting operations in Gaza that are extremely important. He actually signaled that Saudi Arabia should still join the Abraham Accords, even if it's not immediately. And there's not this acknowledgment of the need for a Palestinian state. And the other thing that is not happening, which I think we so easily quickly forget, every time the Biden President Biden or anyone from his administration would be traveling around in foreign policy venues, the Middle east or elsewhere. Blinkens coming off the plane, you always braced for them to say something crazy about Israel. You know, well, we just think Israel needs to be more proportional. And how it there was always this like, well, we're concerned about, we've gotten a report from, you know, UNESCO that, you know, is always this, they would always. And you hear none of that now. You hear, you hear about administration officials, you know, in private settings complaining about Israel. But so what I mean, that's fine. I mean, it's not fine, but I mean that if they're doing that behind closed doors, that's one thing. But the real damage of the Biden years as it relates to Israel, I believe, was that this was constant public excoriation, excoriating of Israel, which then of course gave a green light to a whole host of others to pile on. And you're hearing none of that from this administration.

[Christine Rosen]

Can I just put a, a thumbtack in that, too? Because the Abbas meeting did not take place, am I right?

[Abe Greenwald]

No. And if you would have read the Israeli press Thursday, Friday, Sunday, it was beyond whether or not it was going to happen. It was what a blow this was to Israel.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah, No, I think that's worth pointing out because that even got into the American press too, that he was going to meet the, he was going to meet the ruler of Syria, Jordan and the P.A.

[Abe Greenwald]

Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Lebanon, Syria, Lebanon and the P.A. yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay.

[Christine Rosen]

So it just, it was just Al Sharah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

So I think, though, that we have to acknowledge the hysteria that you're talking about was porn fantasy for the Israeli left.

[Abe Greenwald]

I mean, that they were all about hanging on Netanyahu.

[John Podhoretz]

They want a break with Netanyahu. Haaretz published a piece on Monday in the midst of all of the pre publication release publicity for the Jake Tapper Nick Thompson book on Biden's infirmities about how Bibi is senile and that maybe something happened in the Oval Office between Bibi and Trump that Led Trump to say Bibi is senile. Bibi is many things.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

And he has always been many things. Senile. He ain't. So there's a lot of, as I say, domestic gamesmanship here, including the big leak that Steve Witkoff said to the hostage families in a private meeting that the war was senseless going on in Gaza was senseless and they should just stop and then we could get the hostages out. I'm not sure that that has been fully confirmed. And remember that half of the hostage families forum group is basically an arm, is now the leading opposition in Israel to the government and wants the government to fall and is eager to say or do anything that would or just.

[Abe Greenwald]

A lot of pressure to be put on the government to wind down the war.

[John Podhoretz]

That's some. But you know that there's at least 30 to 40% of people in that forum who have taken it upon themselves in a kind of almost evangelical way to do what they can with what power they have to create regime change in Israel. So. So the Israeli part of this is obviously both panic on the right or by people who support the government that, that Trump may be splitting and that that story was being retailed. But that's the part of a domestic campaign against Netanyahu.

[Matthew Continetti]

But also, I think, I mean, a good deal of the panic and hysteria is also linked to the fact that the American administration doesn't speak with one voice, particularly on this issue.

[Abe Greenwald]

Even.

[Matthew Continetti]

Even when it's one voice speaking.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, that's, that's the oddity.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Christine Rosen]

It doesn't speak in one voice in different forums.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Christine Rosen]

So the administration is pretty good speaking in one voice people publicly. Even if Vance sometimes kind of goes a little bit off the reservation. Right. I mean, Vance gave an interview where he didn't mention non enrichment Period. Right. Of course. Really any deal relating to the Iran nuclear program. But then both Rubio and Trump and even Witkoff came out and said, no, we mean everything. We mean you can't enrich. Okay, so let's just another example. Vance also last week said what? The conflict between Pakistan and India doesn't mean anything to us. And within 72 hours, he and Rubio were sharing in the credit of negotiating this truce between India and Pakistan. The difference I'd say is, so I think they're pretty good on a public level. But then you look to the Washington Post in recent weeks and it's amazing. The anti Israel leaks that are going to the Washington Post from within the administration or the famous New York Times leak about how Trump waved off Bibi from striking the nuclear facilities earlier this year, which included the Israeli war plan. Right. So there, there's a public, I think unity or something approaching it. I mean, this is the Trump administration, but behind the scenes, Abe, you're absolutely right. There are these leaks that are coming from the anti Israel contingent inside the administration to the mainstream media, which by the way, I thought, as Trump said, were, you know, enemies of the people. So why is his administration leaking?

[Unknown Speaker]

Hey, it's John here and you guys know how much I love quints. You know that I wear quint sweaters. I got a Quint winter jacket and now here it is, it's time for summer and I have picked up a few new pieces from Quint. First things I reach for in my closet or in my dresser. Lightweight, comfortable and always on point. The ones I just got are polo shirts, you know, button down, short sleeve, incredibly comfortable, organic cotton, silk. They got European linen beach shorts. They got comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners for the summer. And the best part, as ever, everything with quints is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middleman, Quint gives you luxury pieces without the crazy markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. So elevate your closet with quince. Go to quints.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C e.comc/comply to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quint.com commentary hey, it's John here. I'm happy today to talk to you about our new advertiser Shopify because we have been using Shopify here at Commentary to help distribute, sell and manage our merch for the Commentary podcast for a couple of years now and they are now here and want us to tell you about how you can use them.

[John Podhoretz]

To get right get things the way.

[Unknown Speaker]

You need them to make your business work with your podcast or whatever business you may have. Because Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started. You can get started with your own design studio inside Shopify. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand style, accelerate your content creation. Shopify is packed with helpful AI Tools that write product descriptions, page headlines and even enhance your product photography. You can get your word out like you have a marketing team behind you. Easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping, to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. So turn your big business idea into Kaching. With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling [e-mail] sell commentary. That's shopify.com commentary. Shopify.com commentary.

[John Podhoretz]

We also have a huge leak scandal at the Pentagon. This is not related to this necessarily, but we have, I mean, I don't know, five to 10 officials at the Pentagon who have been frog marched out of the administration. Maga restrainer types.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

For leaking. So we now have the interesting fact of the world of people who think that the press is the enemy of the people, apparently being the, you know, having direct, telephonic, email, whatever, contact, signal, contact with the enemy of the people because they're trying to use it to forward and, and advance this agenda. Why don't we move on quickly to Iran and then we can talk about dance piece. So Trump sounded highly positive about the prospects of a deal with Iran in the next couple of days. We're getting there. We're almost there. We're really there now. He does that. So he always does that. It's like we're going to, you know, it's the, we're going to roll out our plan in two weeks and everything's going to be great. So it's not that we need to take that with anything but a grain of salt. Nonetheless, he is saying it and Witkoff is saying things and there was this leak to. Or not leak. There was an interview with this person very much involved in the Iranian nuclear program to NBC News saying we have agreed, we Iran, we have agreed to suspend enrichment of uranium. Now we don't know what that means. We know, we know nothing. We know nothing. The devil is in the details in all of this. The reason that the jcpoa, the Iran deal that Obama struck was so terrible was the details. Not that, not to, not the overall conception that maybe there was a way to negotiate Iran out of having a nuclear program rather than, you know, hitting Iran's nuclear facilities, but that the details ended up being incredibly favorable toward Iran and not favorable toward the goal of keeping Iran from getting a bomb at least by 2030, like that. The deal itself basically envisioned Iran having a bomb by 2030. So Obama was just kicking the can down the road. So it doesn't matter until we see the deal. But at least people keep saying that the Senate and Republicans aren't offering enough pushback on Trump's bad behavior. Right. There's a lot of talk about how all they do is all Republicans are doing on the Hill is rubber stamping everything Trump wants. And that may be true, but I mean, an important moment occurred yesterday. I think it was yesterday when Senate Republicans led, I assumed by Tom Cotton, sent the administration a letter saying, no deal with Iran can include any form of uranium enrichment. The uranium merchant number needs to be zero. No, no enrichment.

[Abe Greenwald]

And I would say, I would add, I think, I'm pretty sure by every Senate Republican except for Rand Paul.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Unbelievable. Right? So for all this talk that the Republican conference is just completely, you know, just is afraid to whisper anything that challenges the direction of, you know, where the Trump policy is heading directionally. It's. This was kind of amazing. I only could think of one of two things are going on. One, that they were actually challenging the policy, or two, or the direction of the policy. Or two, it was totally coordinated with the White House.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Or with Rubio or with the people.

[Abe Greenwald]

Like, Thune is not going to be talking to Rubio before they send the letter.

[John Podhoretz]

Obviously, they're all friends and they're really friends. And so, yeah, Thune's gonna say, we're sending you a letter. And Trump might say, great, that's helpful to me. I can go.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right. In fact, can you add this paragraph?

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, I'll throw this letter in their face if they really want a deal. I think for most of us, there isn't. There is no such thing as a good deal with Iran because they will never. They will never hold to the deal. And whatever enforcement mechanisms might be in place to prevent them from enriching are unachievable. And that if you actually want them not to get a nuclear bomb, you will greenlight a mission to destroy their nuclear facilities, you know, but nonetheless, it.

[Dan Senor]

Has actually flummoxed Ben Rhodes and the Obamaites who have been asked for comment by media outlets. And they don't know what to do because they actually want to see the compromise, but they hate that it's Trump seeming to make one. And so they're. I mean, that's the one little bit of silver lining that I've personally enjoyed is watching them squirm to.

[Abe Greenwald]

There's an Amazing piece today in Axios, which chronicles, like, all the former Biden and Obama officials trying to explain what's actually happening here. And their heads are exploding.

[John Podhoretz]

I mean, you know, the one thing to be said is that, as I say, I think no deal is better than a deal, because we now have a history of them having a deal, which we thought was a bad deal in the first place. And according to the international monitors of the deal, they never literally. They never, not for a second, held to the terms of the deal. They got our $150 billion. They got those pallets of cash on those, you know, that we saw and that they got what they wanted. And then they. They've been very ginger. I mean, it's not like they've announced that they're enriching to 80% and Israel can go hanging, but they, you know, but they've. They've let. They've built more centrifuges. The centrifuges will spin whenever they want them to spin. That is, says they're not letting us see what's going on in these facilities and all of that. And so they're not. They're not good negotiating partners. And that's one of the reasons that Trump. Trump had actually, under the terms of the deal itself, Trump was right to pull out of the deal, out of the JCPOA when he did in 2018, because the terms were not mutually being fulfilled. And that obviously is, as Tom Cotton said in another letter that he sent, if you remember, the horrifying letter that Tom Cotton sent to the. To the Ayatollah in 2015, where he said, you know, because this isn't a treaty. This is not. I just want to explain to you how America works. This is not a treaty. If there's a government change and a party change, we can kill this deal. So you better understand that, you know, it's not just like, we're off to the races and you remember, oh, my God, it was. He was violating the Logan Act. He was interfering in America. How dare he write such a horrible thing and step on Barack Obama's great achievement and all of that. And this was all because Obama was too chicken to put the JCPOA to an actual treaty vote, understandably, since it would not have. He wouldn't have gotten the 67 votes that made a treaty legal under our Constitution. But, you know, this was a. This was a hilarious moment in American politics where you're not. Apparently, a senator elected, duly elected by one of the 50 states in the country is not allowed to Write a letter to the Ayatollah saying, just in case you didn't know, this has no historical there. This is not binding, this.

[Christine Rosen]

Maybe Fetterman can send a similar letter to the Ayatollah if the Trump administration comes to a deal this time that includes some form of enrichment. But I would just point two different historical precedents to keep in mind as this process unfolds. The first is Trump's negotiations with his one time best friend, Kim Jong Un of North Korea. Remember, Trump met personally with Kim three times during his first term. Two summits, and then of course, that famous trip to the DMZ where they shook hands and I believe Trump stepped into North Korea. I'm not sure. Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

Did he?

[Christine Rosen]

Well, it was right there on the ds. Maybe it wasn't. Yeah, it was a lot like a.

[Dan Senor]

Hokey pokey kind of, you know, it was not very. Yeah.

[Christine Rosen]

But all that time, Trump wanted a deal. He thought his personal diplomacy could get a deal. He thought again, as always, his offer of economic incentives and real estate development would entice Kim Jong Un into making a deal that would involve ending his nuclear program. And of course, in the end, Kim refused and Trump walked away. And the other precedent to keep in mind is the Biden administration. You know, we went through this process in 2021, into 2022, where the Biden team was trying to revive the Obama nuclear deal, and they were much more, let us say, open to giving Iran what it wanted in order to come to some type of agreement. And in that case, the negotiations collapsed not because of American interest in appeasing the Iranians, but because Ayatollah Khamenei was just so tired of dealing with the west and so focused on keeping up his foreign policy, moving toward his alignment with Russia and China, interested in. More interested in putting down the domestic challenges to his regime than in dealing with the Americans, that they went nowhere. So when I think about this, ultimately the decision makers here are the two heads of state, Trump and Khamenei. And my feeling is that unless Khamenei's advisers are successful in scaring him into thinking that if he doesn't sign some agreement, his regime will end, he'll refuse. And then with Trump, we just have to rely on the public statements he has made, even as recently as his visit to Doha, where he said that it has to be full dismantlement of the nuclear program, and if it's not that, then there's no deal. But until either of these men make their choices, we really don't Know what, what's going on or what the prospects are for a deal.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, I would just add the third, the third man who has a vote here is Netanyahu.

[Christine Rosen]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Because as someone, just, someone who just met with him, related to me, who's, you know, he's very, he's following obviously all of this very closely. And he said, he, basically his advice to Netanyahu was, at the end of the day, you were put on this earth for one reason, to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. You, you, you, you, you. Regardless of what critics say about you, regardless of how divided Israeli society is now, regardless of October 7th having happened on your watch, regardless of the blindness of the decade that led to October 7th in terms of the blindness of us, of Israeli policy. The what? You were the one that was screaming from the hilltops about Iran before anyone was ever. I mean, really, I even hear this from not totally hysterical left wing journalist types from Israel who will say Netanyahu is the one who was putting this on people's radar, you know, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, when, no, you know, he was the one running around the country getting state pension funds to divest from Iraq. I mean, he was really like, this was, he did this when he was in government, he did this when he was finance minister, he did this prime minister, he did this when he was in the opposition. This was his thing. It was all. When people say he's this like Churchillian complex, it was on this issue that he had it, actually, if he did have it, and, and here he is, like, we're at a crossroads. Like, this is the moment, like, because this either gets resolved very quickly, the administration is signaling something's going to happen quickly or, or it's going to fall apart or it's just going to drag out. The drag out scenario is the one that worries me the most because the drag out scenario has the potential to kind of freeze Israel in place and frees everyone else's options in place. And I think time is Iran's friend. And I just think that this person that was sharing with me this conversation, the message to Netanyahu was this is like, you don't have time and Israel doesn't have time. And if obviously October 7th happening on your watch was a catastrophic, catastrophic for Israel, but obviously catastrophic for Netanyahu's legacy as well. But if Iran gets a nuclear weapons capability on Netanyahu's watch, given that he's dedicated about two decades of his career to saying that this was the, the existential threat to Israel, that, that Israel must stop. And then it happens. It's, you know, so all I'd add.

[Christine Rosen]

Is that there are two, two of the three paths, I think, block Israel, because if there is an agreement reached between the United States and Iran, I don't, I don't see how Netanyahu could order an, or would even be wanting to order or to go to the Security Council and ask for an order for an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities because of the risk it would pose to the US Israel relationship. So the, the moment of opportunity, it seems to me, for Israel would be if the negotiations kind of collapse, Trump gets tired of them later this year or later this summer. And then there is a moment where Israel could strike. And that would also be the moment in between, by the way, the end of negotiations and a potential Iranian breakout to show that they've been serious all along. So that's the moment, and that's the moment that I was saying yesterday that Israel would have to seize. But the other two ways, I just think it's very hard for, for Israel to intervene.

[John Podhoretz]

So, Dan Cenor, you spoke at the, as I said, at the 92nd Street Y on Tuesday night, delivering the annual State of World Jewry address because you're so fancy.

[Abe Greenwald]

I didn't come up with the title.

[John Podhoretz]

You're such a fancy person.

[Abe Greenwald]

This is, this, this title predates me.

[John Podhoretz]

I am Weitzman, you know, David Ben Gurion and Dan Cenor.

[Abe Greenwald]

Abba Eban.

[John Podhoretz]

Abba Eban. Declaring, declaring the condition of world Jewry. But deservedly, I mean, deservedly so in the sense that you have become and through, partially through the modality of the Call Me Back podcast, you have become one of the foremost, if not the foremost weekly, bi weekly explicator of what is going on in Israel after October 7th. And so interesting, by the way, just to, as I think of it, that you began your podcast as a what's the world going to be like after Covid? Let's try to examine what, what, what life will be like after Covid, little knowing that after, you know, sort of like a year and a half after Covid, the world would change in this very specific way as a result of this very specific event that was perfectly in, in your wheelhouse to be the explicator of. And I, I want to say that what, what is important about this piece is that you say for American Jewry, for world jewelry, but for American Jewry in particular, October 8th is the moment at which there was a crack in Jewish consciousness that there was a world before October 8th or before October 7th and a world after October 7th. And the question is, is American Jewry meeting the moment? Meaning highlighted Jewish consciousness about the, about Israel's fragility, about the dangers to American and world Jewry from rising anti Semitism, from the condition of being a pariah people once again in a way that people were not expecting and that you say there are ways in which the American Jewish community in particular can find renewed purpose and meaning in the wake of this horror and that there are signs that the community is not meeting the moment.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah. So look, I, when I was invited to give this address, I mean, Rabbi David Ingvar, who's the, who runs Jewish Life at the 92nd Street Y, who's the kind of architect of this, of this event, of this address, he just assumed I was going to talk about Israel and geopolitics and what's happening and kind of most of the topics I cover, you know, the kind of stuff I cover on my podcast. And as we were getting closer and closer to the event, I just became increasingly of the view that Israel's going to be okay, Israel's going to be fine. And people find that odd when I say that. But if you just go through the last 18 months in terms of what Israel has accomplished from, from going from October 7th and you know, facing an existential war on multiple fronts and then where it is a year and a half, just as I'm not, it's, you know, domestically, you know, there's, it's a divisive debate inside Israel. You know, the social fabric is sort of fraying to some degree. But, but geopolitically, Israel has never been stronger. I mean, just objectively it is in the strongest position has been geopolitically in the region than at any point since the Six Day War. And I, as you know, John, I went to Andrew Roberts and said, help me out here. Give me a comp. Like, is there a historical comparison for, you know, and, and I asked Neil Ferguson the same question. Neil gave me a similar thing riff. I didn't, I didn't use it figured I didn't need two British historians to back up my point. One was fine. But, but, so, so I, I'm actually not worried about Israel. Israel has challenges. We should support Israel, the Israeli. But Israel's going to be fine. I, I found that as I was getting closer and closer to this, delivering the speech, I'm much more worried about the American Jewish community because while Israel is at war, and Israel has been at war since October 7th, to your point, what we learned on October 8th, we Jews in America, is that we're under attack. And there was this incredible intensity after October 8th that I was quite moved by among American Jews, including many American Jews who have not been engaged in Jewish life before. On October 6, they were not engaged in Jewish life. And then suddenly they were mobilized. They're going to rallies, and they're raising money, and they're. And they're, you know, on social media, and they're very active, and they're. I mean, it was just. It was just. It was. It was moo. I was moved by it. I was energized by it. And then I realized two things were happening as time wore on. One was this was all adrenaline. And adrenaline is great, especially in a crisis when we were facing a crisis, but it's not. Adrenaline is not sustainable. And the adrenaline was expressing itself all in. In negative activism. And I don't say negative activism in a critical way. Meaning it was all about the fight. It was all about, we've got these anti Semites, and they're circling us, and we need to beat back, and we need to. You know, and. And everything was about the fight. The fight, the fight, the fight. You know, yelling and screaming in our WhatsApp groups and, you know, at conferences and, you know, at our dinner tables, just, can you believe this? Can you believe that? Can you believe this one said this? It was just. It was everywhere. And there was virtually no positive Jewish living. I mean, you could find it in, you know, certain places, but it wasn't the theme of the last 18 months. The theme of the last 18 months for Jewish life in America was we're in the fight, and we're fighting. And I just think about young Jews who, you know, who are. Who do you want the first time young Jews are engaging with Judaism and Zionism when they're, like, aware of what's happening around them, that everything about their Jewish life is about the fight. Everything is about, we're in this fight. They're coming after us. We need to fight. And there's nothing positive about it. There's no joy. There's no ritual. There's no communal life. There's no literacy. Jewish literacy. There's no. It's all about this fight against our enemies. And I just think that is a very unattractive way to introduce a set of ideas and a community and a culture and a history to a young person. And so I have all these friends, as I know you do, too, John, who. I have all these friends whose Children are on American college campuses now. They're students and they're so upset because they're like, I, I see what's happening at Northwestern and there's like pogroms, basically. This was last year. And my son doesn't care, right? Like, he's not supportive of the anti Israel, you know, the protests and everything, but he's not in the fight. He doesn't care. He's not engaged. He's just minding his own business. And he's actually having a perfectly pleasant time at college, by the way. He's, he's, you know, he's joined his fraternity. It's not a Jewish fraternity. It's not an anti Jewish fraternity. He's just like living his life. He's just, he's totally. And these parents are so upset. And I listen and listen. At some point I start to say to them, but why do you blame them? That's a totally logical decision your son is making because I'm not being critical, but if you did not raise your son with any of the kind of upside of Judaism, the joy, the feeling part of something, the rootedness, if your child was not raised with any of that, then you suddenly want to throw them into battle to defend something that you've never said is important to you and you've never given them a reason to care about it. And so that is where we are right now. We have. Everyone's angry about anti Semitism, but we've actually seen no reasonable uptick or no or no encouraging uptick in people wanting to invest in Jewish life and developing young Jews who feel that this is something that's worth protecting and worth fighting for beyond. Just like they're attacking us, that it's something that's important to them and the only proven model it's not. You know, I mean, I'm part of all these groups like, and I, and I'm, by the way, I don't want to denigrate these efforts because I'm involved with some of them. So all these efforts to, to improve, you know, the communications and the PR and help Israel, you know, tell its story better. The TikTok, the algorithm is all this stuff. But even if we get all that right, it's still going to be awful, right? Because there's 16 million of us and there's 18, there's 8 billion people in the world. Like, the popularity of anti Semitic ideas is persistent. There's a reason why it's called the oldest hatred. And no matter what we get right, it's still going to be out there and our children are still going to stumble upon, like, offensive reels on TikTok or Instagram about Israel. And, and so our whole existence has to be. Not our whole existence. A big part of our efforts has to be about investing in creating informed, educated, proud, literate Jews. And there's only one proven model to do that. The only proven model to do it. I'm not saying there aren't other. At least the only proven model to do it at scale is highly immersive experiences for young Jews. Jewish day schools, Jewish summer camps, gap years in Israel. I mean, I focus on a couple of other areas too, which we can get into. But if you. Because I have. I deal with, spend a lot of time with a lot of people who want to do something philanthropist in there. And they all want this silver bullet or this, like, science fiction solution that no one's thought of. And I say to them, guys, there's one thing that we know works if you, if you get Jews when they're young and you put them in an immersive environment with their peers, with Jewish peers, and they're. And they're getting educated and being part of this community, whether it's not weird, it's not. It's not considered, like, uncool. It's not. It's just like it's their world. It's a Jewish bubble.

[John Podhoretz]

The odds.

[Abe Greenwald]

When I go speak on campuses, and I've spoken on a lot of campuses over the last year and a half, the people on the front lines are usually products of Jewish day schools, Jewish summer camps, one or the other or both. And many of them did Jewish, did gap years in Israel before they went to Israel. That's what works. And we're not investing in it. These areas of Jewish life are chronically underfunded. So if we want to take October 7th or October 8th and say we just don't want to. We just want to. We don't want to just go back to where we were October 6th. The real legacy of our time and our era will be if we come out of this horrendous period, not like where we were on October 6, but better. So what would better look like better would look like a massive investment in the infrastructure of Jewish life. I don't know if we'll defeat anti Semitism, but the one sure way we'll survive is to. Is for Jews to be Jewish.

[John Podhoretz]

So the central wouldn't say conceit. But you what, what you're talking about here is the idea of providing the next generation of Jewish people and by, by definition, then the generations that follow with a daily sense of the value, the intrinsic value of having this identity that they're going to have anyway. They're going to have it whether they want to or not. That's, of course, the lesson of the oldest hatred is you can assimilate, you can convert to Christianity, you can do whatever you want to do.

[Abe Greenwald]

Anti Semitism has historically been very adaptive.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Whatever solution you got, the anti Semites.

[John Podhoretz]

Can do a workaround. It doesn't matter. It doesn't count.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right?

[John Podhoretz]

You haven't changed. Nothing will change. The problem is in, in, you know, inherent to you. And Jews have often taken this tack of saying, we are, we're not going to threaten. We're going to, we're going to like, crawl into a little ball. We're going to be as inoffensive as possible, or we're going to try to join you and get out of our own bubble, as you describe it. And you're basically saying Jews need to understand the bubble is good, that the bubble is the world's oldest and, you know, one of its most profound civilizational advances. And that it's not just that you, you know, have Seinfeld and a bagel and Fiddler on the Roof, you have the Torah and the Talmud and 3000 years of history and discoveries in Israel of coinage that show continued presence in the holy land from 2,500 years ago. Literal physical evidence of this and that somehow this tiny little people has managed to survive throughout all of recorded, almost all of recorded human history, while thousands of comparable tribes have disappeared from the face of the earth. Why is that?

[Christine Rosen]

Well, you also have. You also have community, which is, I think, part of what Dan is describing. It's education and community that lead to identity and attachment.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Christine Rosen]

And so what you're calling the bubble, John, I mean, that's, that's family observance, that it's education. Right. So today, school experience, you're. You're educated it, but you're also, you know, you're with other Jews for eight to 12 years, depending on how far you do it. And then if you do the gap year in Israel or if you go frequently to Israel, not just one birthright trip, right? You're, you're embedded in a community. And of course, the temptation of assimilation since the 19th century has always been leaving the community in the sea of gentility and joining the larger community, which is so. I mean, as Dan said, it's innumerable compared to the size of the Jewish community. So I think that's an amazing summary of your speech, Daniel. And I think the point cannot be driven home enough that the very generous philanthropists who are doing the God's works on the front lines of the fight against anti Semitism also need to make a serious, serious investment in Jewish education. Because as a parent of day school students, I know that day schools are chronically underfunded and it is a, it is a, it's a terrible, terrible mistake. So, so that Jewish communal leaders are making.

[Abe Greenwald]

So about 5% of non orthodox Jewish kids in America today go to Jewish day schools. That is crazy.

[Christine Rosen]

Yeah, it's crazy. It's losing a generation and a generation.

[Abe Greenwald]

And we looked and work preparing on the speech. I looked at Jewish, you know, the Jewish community is historically the most generous demographic in American Jewish life. Philanthropically. It's not even, it's not even close. And yet when you look closer, Matt, what's upsetting is that the overwhelming majority, and obviously there are notable exceptions, but for many Jewish philanthropists, the overwhelming majority of their donations go to non Jewish causes. Now, I'm not saying they still, they shouldn't still give to the kind of broader civic square. But, but imagine if I mean, just, just last week John Gray, who's the president of Blackstone Group, you know, announced fluid is with his wife Mindy Gray, and they announced they're making $125 million donation to the Tel Aviv University Medical center, which is great, by the way. And I know John Gray and I, you know, celebrated his decision publicly. It's great, I hope encourages other people. But my, my question or challenge, if you are like, who are going to be the John Grays who make that kind of bet on American Jewish life and say, you know what? No, no American Jewish family should choose not to send their kids to a Jewish day school or not to, or to a Jewish camp or a gap year. I mean, the gap years to me, given what American Jews are facing on college campuses, if a college kid graduating high school, whether it's a Jewish day school or not, says, I want to spend a year in Israel studying, getting to know Israelis, getting to know my peers there who are about to start the army, can you think of a better experience for a Jewish student about to go onto American college campus than that? And yet I know too many students who say, you're basically asking me to do a fifth year of student debt, right? And so again, and this stuff is so proven, like, in terms of, like, if we want people engaged and kind of with us and in the fight when we need it, this is the most predictive, you know, success story. And the idea that we're just not doubly, triply, quadruply investing in it, to me is crazy. And I think this is the moment. I do want to say one other thing, which is a theme I really hit in the speech is this idea. I quoted Douglas Murray who said, who has said this thing to me and I think he said it elsewhere since. And it's just like has stuck with me over the last. I think he said it to me on the one year anniversary of October 7. He said his observation about American Jews is that we are prominent but weak. And the more I thought about it, he was completely right. If you look at American Jews, we are on top of every, I mean, you know, it's just every medicine, medical community, academic community, the finance community, Silicon Valley, Hollywood. I mean, just everywhere you turn, American Jews are in very prominent positions. And yet we feel under siege. And yet we feel like, like it's the craziest thing. And he's exactly right.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, so the challenge here of October 8th is that for a very long time, and I've written about this extensively over the last couple of years, for a very long time, Jews did not feel. American Jews did not feel under siege. In fact, they felt like this was all taken care of and that they could dedicate their philanthropy to global warming or to some cause that was nearer and dearer to their heart, universalist cause. And that what happened on October 7 was the idea of that being a Jew was a danger to you now. And that it was like doing something to strengthen the Jewish community and to fight anti Semitism was like putting another lock on your door or moving into a gated community in a world in which anarchy had broken out. That this was a matter of literal safety for Jews who had never felt like there were all kinds of warning signs. You know, visible Jews were being attacked over the last five, six years right in Borough park in Brooklyn. If you had pay us. If you had were wearing tzitzit, if you had a kippah, somebody jumping behind you and punching you in the back of your head, something like that. And somehow secular Jews in particular felt no particular commonality with these attacks on visible Jews. Let's say that this wasn't a threat to them. And suddenly it occurred to them that maybe this was a threat to them.

[Matthew Continetti]

You know, what you're saying is making me think of. It's like there was an American concepcia that blew up wow.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, it's true.

[Abe Greenwald]

That's a great.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah. So the concepcia, of course, being this idea in Israel that Hamas had been basically neutralized as a. As an aggressive threat because of Iron Dome and this and that and that they could. They could handle. You could actually focus on Iran and the threat from Iran a thousand miles away, rather than on your border, because Israel had this in hand, and this was the terrible misunderstanding and that here we have. I'm not at risk. I have other things that I can do with my generosity and that this changed. And there is all this. To be vulgar about it, there is theoretically all this money up for grabs because the billions of dollars, and I mean billions of dollars that Jews, who make up 2% of the population of the United States, the billions of dollars in charitable donations given every year by Jews to major American secular institutions that suddenly became inimical to them, Right. The main ones being obviously Harvard and Penn, where people literally withdrew hundreds of millions of dollars in pledges to them because of their failure to confront antisemitism, that there is this charitable money in play that you can say to people who are doing this, what are you really going to do with your money when your people are. Are at existential risk. It's been 80 years since the Holocaust. No American Jew feels. Who is a part of a survivor's family feels the Holocaust in any real way. Maybe they can through literature or through reading or whatever, but no gut instinct. And suddenly, as I've talked about the school that Dan and I send our kids to, a kid in my daughter's class had it, you know, was at. Was at a protest at Emory and had his nose broken.

[Abe Greenwald]

Tulane, I think.

[John Podhoretz]

No, no, Emery.

[Abe Greenwald]

Oh, it was Emery.

[John Podhoretz]

Was it? Okay, I believe it was. I. I can't remember. Anyway, maybe it was Tulane. I can't remember. Anyway, he. He had his nose broken in. In a very early demonstration the first couple weeks when there was a pro Hamas demonstration and one of his friends was attacked and he ran to help his friend and got, you know, got seriously injured. I mean, it could have been a lot worse, but that's the kind of thing that came home to people that they were at risk.

[Dan Senor]

Can I add that, though, this is also a very deeply American kind of project that Dan is promoting because he's talking about character, forming institutions, building on those and supporting those. And we have a huge young population now that feels, especially particularly with young men, that lacks a sense of purpose or meaning or any sort of structure to what it means to become A healthy man, for example, in this world, what does that look like? And they do. You know, we've talked often about all the negative models that they have that's filling a void. So seeing this is not just a part of a bubble, but as part of a very American project, informing and building and supporting communities that are reflective of American values as much as they are of Jewish values that I think is that forms then a model for other non Jewish institutions to look to. As I know many at the school K through 12 school level, for example, on the stuff I follow very closely in technology, Jewish day schools have been at the forefront of really tackling a lot of these issues of how technology in the classroom might be detrimental, where it's useful, where it's harmful. So as a model for the rest of the world, it's also in the US in particular, very optimistic way of thinking about it.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah, we cite, I cited Jonathan Haidt in the speech because I made this point about the Jewish day schools that Haidt has pointed to the Jewish day schools being on the forefront of this phone free schools movement that they're, you know. So yeah, the other point I would make is that related to what you're saying is that I didn't want to, when I gave this speech, I didn't want to come off as like hectoring or preachy. But I really do feel like when you've discovered something that is that will enrich your life or your children's life or your grandchildren, whatever it may be, you want to share it. I'm not just saying like, you know, it's a good solution for the Jewish people and we need it as a strategy, although it's that too. But it's also like, you won't be disappointed if you do Shabbat every Friday night with your family and your community. I promise you, when you look back, you will not be disappointed.

[John Podhoretz]

I want to interrupt because I want to talk a little bit about my own experience here so that you, I believe, Dan, you went to, you yourself went to day school.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

Okay. I did not. My wife did. My wife is the daughter of a conservative rabbi and she went to Jewish day school. She went to Jewish summer camp. I went to some Jewish summer camps. I didn't like them. I'm obviously from a prominent American Jewish family that very intellectually involved and literate on Jewish matters and all of that. But I did not lead much of a Jewish life until I got married and had kids. And it was my wife's insistence that we send our kids to A day school, which I was in favor of because I thought, okay, we're living in New York. New York is a city where kids are being raised with terrible values. From what I can tell, materialist. Everybody's rich in Manhattan. You know, it's not a good war. It's, you know, they're gonna get the wrong ideas about what's important. So, okay, day school, fine. You know, it's like, not really my preference. I don't really like going to synagogue, whatever. And what I found, and this was 17 years ago when we started. When our. When our oldest started at the Heschel school that Dan and I said our kids do, was it was like opening a door into a new world for me. And I was an older father, so I was already in my mid-40s. That, that there was this world of people that were going to become your friends. And, and, and. I don't know.

[Abe Greenwald]

More than your friends, more than your friends. It's deeper than. I think about that a lot.

[Christine Rosen]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Talk about Shabbat dinner.

[Abe Greenwald]

So they're not. The difference is, John, they're not instrument. They're like, they're truly non instrumental relationships. What you want.

[John Podhoretz]

It's like you're golfing with somebody and he's also your business partner.

[Abe Greenwald]

Like, right.

[John Podhoretz]

That, like, it doesn't matter who the person is. It doesn't matter how prominent they are. It doesn't matter whatever you end up. You go to their houses on Friday night, they come to yours. Your kids hang out together when they're 12 and 13. Every single week they're going to some bar bat mitzvah, going to. Going to synagogue in the morning, going to a party at night. You hang out at that party also while trying to keep your eardrums from going totally and entirely deaf from the incredibly loud music. But that it's an immersive experience. And that there is exactly what Christine is talking about for adults as well as for kids, which is it's not just kids who are having problems with community in the United States. It is adults who don't had this experience. And I suspect Jewish adults worse in some ways than others or secularly raised Jewish adults, because, you know, there's all the trappings of Christianity in America, even secularly, all throughout the year without you even really knowing it. Right. I mean, sort of like six weeks before Christmas stuff around Easter, Santa Claus, even foolishness or silliness or sort of national myths around Santa Claus and movies about Christmas and all this. You're drenched in it. You live in it. And so even if you're a completely secular Christian, you're nonetheless, or you know, from a Christian background, but don't practice. It's nonetheless in the, in the air. And for Jews, you have to enter it, you have to sort of, you have to go through the door that I'm talking about. And it's been a, for me, it's been a transformative experience. And I looked at it before I did this as though it were homework, as though I was being asked to go and you know, do algebra. And I had already gotten out of school, I didn't want to do algebra anymore. And so the, the, the richness in my life just has been extraordinary as a result of this set of experiences.

[Abe Greenwald]

I want to. And by the way, everything you just described, John, what it projects outwardly is extraordinary because I, we, I think many Jews who don't have the experience that you have or didn't have the experience that, that you're describing, they, they think that like the non Jewish world thinks it's like weird or, or like it's not you want to, it's. I actually think it's the opposite. Jonathan Sacks, who I quote in this speech has this great, had this great line Rabbi, former Chief Rabbi of the UK that non Jews respect Jews who are serious about their Judaism. That, that actually it's a sort of counterintuitive because we think, everyone thinks we're like, you know, but the real, not obviously the anti Semites don't respect this. But I'm just saying generally speaking. And when I read that quote, I thought I've taken a lot of trips over to Israel over the last number of decades with non Jews, like a lot, you know, business people, members of Congress, you know, there's, I'm involved, you know, through the Singer foundation, we send a lot of Christian students and Christian leaders to Israel every year. There's. So I've been to Israel many, many, many, many times with non Jews and we do the, and you guys have all been on a version of this trip where you, you see all the security challenges and you do all the, the biblical history touring that you described, John, you do all these things, you know, and then when you ask people on these trips, whether it's in a formal survey or just kind of anecdotal conversation, what was the highlight of the trip? What was the highlight? Without fail, my experience has been for every non Jew that goes to Israel for the first time, the highlight is being in an Israeli family's home for Shabbat on Friday night. That's what they remember. That's what moves them the most when the parents are blessing their children and explaining the prayers and the ritual of what Saul and I called in our most recent book, you know, Thanksgiving every Week. It's what you're describing, John, about what you. This door you walked into. That's what they remember. So I actually think this thing that we have that is, as Christine says, very American. I think it's partly. It's very American, which is why most Americans actually respect it. We're, like, afraid to talk about it.

[John Podhoretz]

Right. Well, as I say, I think a lot of people have the feeling that it's homework, that it's restrictive, that it will prevent them from enjoying the full benefits of an American life. And in some ways, they're right. I mean, to get more complicated, it's a life that confers a certain level of obligation on you, but people are hungry for that.

[Dan Senor]

That's actually.

[Abe Greenwald]

What is that.

[Dan Senor]

That's. That's the.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah, but it's like a diet. It's like people need to go on a diet, but they don't want to, and they think it's a diet, and it's not a diet. It's an alternate way of eating that is richer and better and more fulfilling. But at first, it feels like someone's giving you, like I say, a homework assignment or putting you on a diet or saying, you can't do that for 25 hours a day. You can't do anything, and I can't handle that, or whatever, however you want to slice it, I just think that there is this opportunity that you lay out. You say it's very. It's not that complicated. There are three or four specific areas in which Jews can participate and may need help. Because despite the fact that Jews are extraordinarily affluent, if you're living in, you know, Pittsburgh or Kansas City or somewhere like that, that has a. That has a Jewish day school that is lightly funded. It doesn't have a lot of money, so it doesn't have the same opportunities for sports or, you know, whatever, enrichment in the arts or something like that that other schools might end, that you have to pay for, as opposed to being at a public school doing what could be done to make that as easy as possible for Jewish people to let their kids do. That is of immense importance. And it's. The point is, Dan, you say everyone's looking for a magic bullet. Like, this was a thing after October 7th. There's all this. Oh, my God. The TikTok algorithm shows you 50 times the amount of anti Israel material. Let's do something about the algorithm. You can't.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

As you say in the piece, there are 8 billion people on Earth. 16 million of them are Jews. How do you think the algorithm is gonna go? What you want is, I have these.

[Abe Greenwald]

Friends who say, my kid, she, she sees that real and it's, and it's toxic and we need to make it go away.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

And like we, you know, or, or.

[John Podhoretz]

You can inoculate her. Right, right.

[Abe Greenwald]

Or they'll say we need, we need the, the pro Israel community, the Jewish community. They need to just make sure that my kid has the talking points that everyone wants the talking points. So they know. And I'm like, this is complicated stuff.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

So how about just educating your kid?

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Like it's so that they're not rattled by the tick tock reel.

[John Podhoretz]

And also to bring this around, to bring this around to the, to the first part of the conversation before we conclude the fantastic piece yesterday, investigative journalism piece by in the Free Press.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

About Gutter and what gutter has done to infiltrate its worldview into the United States. This was a generational project. Right. It really started at the beginning of the Iraq war. It's 20 years old. And it came to fruition. It was as though it had all been set. And then October 7th happened and the button was pushed and 20 years of investment really started to pay off. And that's what you're talking about here is it's not going to have an immediate effect to have a four year old go to a gan or a Jewish nursery school and then on to a Jewish day school. Question is what it does in 2045, not what it does in 2026. And we're talking about a people that's been around for 3,500 years and could be around for 3,500 more. And one of the few places in the world that could really see an uptick in all of this is the Jewish community. Now I have Orthodox friends and you don't really talk about these because the Orthodox are not.

[Abe Greenwald]

The Orthodox are already doing this.

[John Podhoretz]

They're already doing this. So this is for the Orthodox Judaism.

[Abe Greenwald]

For the Orthodox. Most of their, the overwhelming majority of their kids go to Jewish day schools and Jewish camps. And philanthropically they're very focused. The Orthodox community doesn't have this problem.

[John Podhoretz]

Right.

[Abe Greenwald]

But they are funding their schools, they're funding their yeshivas, they're funding like they're doing, they're doing their duty. It's the non Orthodox world. And that's why, to me, we're living in a world where only 5% of non orthodox kids are going to Jewish day school. The entirety of the Jewish community in America is on a track to just being Orthodox, which I'm not saying is a bad thing. I'm just saying. But we should just be realistic about where things are heading. And so I, I will say one thing, John. I just want to make a point, obviously, before we wrap up, is I do say in the speech, which people.

[John Podhoretz]

Can, in the article, remember this, because.

[Abe Greenwald]

So you can read it in commentary, or you can listen to the speech.

[John Podhoretz]

On my podcast, so you can read it in commentary.

[Matthew Continetti]

One point. I don't want to close on this. I will if that. Want Dan to be his big point.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah.

[Matthew Continetti]

The funny thing about the. The fantastic piece in the Free press about the Qatari spending is that it turns out that Qataris were doing exactly what everyone has long accused the Jews of doing.

[Abe Greenwald]

Right.

[John Podhoretz]

Buying influence.

[Matthew Continetti]

Yeah, Right. And we need to be doing it.

[John Podhoretz]

A tiny. A nation of 300,000 people that is secretly controlling the ideological framework of the elite American institutions.

[Abe Greenwald]

Yeah. What I was going to say is I have a lot of adult Jewish friends who did not grow up with any of this. They grew up like you did, John. And, and, and they didn't have the benefit of marrying into, you know, marrying a spouse who said, this is important to me. This is what we're doing. And they feel like it's too late. Like, I missed the boat. I talked in the speech openly. He's a close friend, and he was comfortable with Dan Loeb, this friend of mine, who's a. Who's an investment manager in New York. And he didn't have a bar mitzvah. He actually technically had a bar mitzvah when he was like, 60 or something. I mean, he, like, didn't. He never actually. He didn't have a bar mitzvah at 13. Had no. I mean, didn't read a word of Hebrew, nothing. And he got engaged on adult Jewish learning as an adult. And then very intensively after October 7th, and he started this thing called the Simcha Torah challenge after October 7th. We're trying to get people. He set up this online program for just people to spend a few minutes every week studying the weekly Torah portion, either by themselves or with groups. And he's gotten this thing going, and he's been funding it. Within a few months, he had 15,000 people signed up and engaged with it, most of whom were not Orthodox. So my message to adults is it's not too late. And by the way, your kids will notice if you are doing it. If you want to model something like your kids will notice if you're engaged. And the other area that I don't think gets enough attention is I'm cautiously optimistic about what's happening at some universities. We all sit here excoriating, which is it's deserved of what's happening in higher education. But there are some interesting projects right now that were in the works before October 7th, and I think they have the potential to like go on steroids and proliferate since Oct. 7. The Hamilton center at the University of Florida, the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas, there's a similar. One of these programs at developing it at the University of North Carolina, there are. These are programs focused on the study of Western civilization, which is a topic that if studied responsibly and properly, I don't need to tell you guys, especially Christine, is actually a good story for the Jews and that Jewish thought and Jewish ideas are integrated into the curriculum. Especially like at University of Florida. There are other schools where leaders there are taking like making it a point to be very welcoming of Jewish life in a meaningful way, like Daniel Dearmeyer at Vanderbilt, Andrew Martin at Wash U. There's stuff, you know, we sit here bemoaning everything that's going wrong in higher education and like we should, but there, there are interesting pockets of stuff happening that is also encouraging. And all these Jewish philanthropists who want to, who are disappointed that they funded a dining hall or a lecture hall or a library at like Penn or Cornell or wherever. And it's like they realized that they funded these places and then no one returned their calls when they were worried that their students were getting like, you know, attacked in pogroms. If you want to fund higher education, there are places to do it. They may not be the traditional elite institutions that you got all this prestige from by either going to or donating to, but there's stuff happening. And if you want to fund Jewish friendly environments and academic, you know, programs for Jews, there are ways to do it.

[Christine Rosen]

Let's start with the day schools.

[John Podhoretz]

All right, let's start with the day schools.

[Abe Greenwald]

Ok?

[John Podhoretz]

Let's follow the Qatari model. That's what I'm saying today.

[Abe Greenwald]

School schools.

[John Podhoretz]

That's what I'm saying.

[Christine Rosen]

A lot of money goes to those universities.

[John Podhoretz]

Let's start with the. Anyway, so Dan, I'm just saying if.

[Abe Greenwald]

There'S, if so much money starts pouring in because of the commentary podcast conversation if the phones are ringing off the hook, where do I sign, where do I give? I just don't, you know. At some point, we'll have the whole Jewish day school system funded.

[Dr. Rob Williams]

Hello, this is Dr. Rob Williams, executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation. Survivors of the Holocaust have long been the bravest voices speaking out against anti Semitism and all forms of hate around the world. Whether it's European antisemitism of the 1930s and 1940s, or the antisemitism we see on our streets and campuses today. We'll explore it on the USC Shoah Foundation's new podcast, Searching for Never Again. We'll hear stories that are heartbreaking and stories that are inspiring. Every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever fine podcasts can be found.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Hi, I'm Anthony Scaramucci and I'd like to tell you about my new show, Lost Boys. It's a limited edition series. It's hosted by myself and Professor Scott Galloway. We're having honest conversations about a topic no one wants to talk about the crisis that young men are facing nowadays. Our talks discuss why so many young men are struggling to find purpose, connection and identity in today's world. We dig into what's really going on. Politics, culture, loneliness, even rage. And what we can do to help change the narrative. This is a six part series that will challenge your assumptions and encourage you to continue the conversation from the dinner table to the office. Follow and listen to Lost Boys on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also go to Lostboys Men and sign up to get the latest episodes and news.

[Christine Rosen]

I want to make the announcement that I noticed that we have breached this. We've broken the ceiling of 10,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel. And I want to thank all the people who have subscribed and liked our videos on YouTube. Remember, you don't have to watch the show on YouTube. You can just subscribe and like. And encourage even more members of our audience to do so. Because the higher we get up, the more we get into the algorithm, displacing all the nasty anti Semites. And so it would be a mitzvah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Not just for commentary, but while we were sitting here.

[Christine Rosen]

No, it was yesterday. I noticed it.

[John Podhoretz]

Yeah.

[Abe Greenwald]

Okay. I just want to make sure you weren't multitasking.

[John Podhoretz]

Matt, we haven't done this like all week practically. You really wanted to conclude with it.

[Christine Rosen]

But I kind of feel like I should reserve the balance of my time till Monday. No. Okay, that's fine. I do want to end.

[John Podhoretz]

I would recommend this also. So it's both of us.

[Christine Rosen]

Thanks, John. I'd like to recommend the Disney series andor now before you all start throwing spitballs at me and, you know, stuffing me in my locker because I'm a big nerd. It is true, andor is a Star Wars IP intellectual property, but it's also, I fairly say, probably the best prestige television drama, I don't know, since Game of Thrones concluded. In my view, the story is about the individual responsible for ultimately stealing the plans of the Imperial Death Star from the original Star wars movie. But it's much more than that. It's a show about following a man who is recruited into this incipient rebellion against the Empire. And over the show's 24 episodes, two seasons, you have just amazing suspense drama, spy drama, political thriller, because it gets into the beginnings of the poet political rebellion against. Against the Empire. It's a show that you don't have to know anything about Star wars to enjoy. I don't even think you need to like Star wars, honestly, to. To. To watch this show because it's. It's completely separate from all the, you know, kid stuff, mysticism. It's intensely adult. I mean, not to say that, you know, it's not like overly Game of Thrones type of porno, but it's just intelligent. Probably the best written show, I think, since the Wire. I mean, just in terms of the dialogue, the reversals, everything. So it concluded yesterday or on Tuesday with the final batch of three episodes. It's only two seasons long, but I do recommend.

[John Podhoretz]

Andor I recommend it heartily myself. The second season, very innovative because.

[Abe Greenwald]

The.

[John Podhoretz]

First season tells you the story of this kid, Cassian, andor where he came. Where he came from, how he got crosswise of the Empire, ended up in. Ended up getting recruited to be part of this rebellion by this incredibly brilliantly conceived Machiavellian character played by the great actor Stellan Starsgard, and who is running. Who is running the rebellion in many ways, and along with a senator, an imperial senator who is his inside woman. And it's just very like Game of Thrones for a lot of us. What. And Matt wrote a whole piece about this for the Claremont Review many years ago that Game of Thrones is a story, is a political story. It's a. It's a political thriller or, you know, story of the War of the Roses or whatever. This is a story about a society collapsing or sort of world collapsing into totalitarianism and how that might happen and the innovative nature of the second season is that each set of three episodes, there are four sets of three episodes each, each of which takes place on three days in one year and then flashes forward to the next year as the story progresses till we get to the very moment that the movie Rogue One, which is the source material for this, the side story in Star wars commences.

[Christine Rosen]

Anyway, it's essentially when you combine the series with the movie, what Tony Gilroy, the creator of this show, did, created a 27 hour long film. Yeah, but it's a really good one. And you know, you know, it's been told. I mean, I think the movie came out in 2016, so it's been told now for over 10 years. But it's just incredible. Just one minor point about the character that Sellen Skarsgard plays, Luthen Riel, one of the great characters in my view of television drama. And what you see, see in the second season, which is about this, the expanding rebellion, is twofold. You see a very well done portrait of what it's like to live under a totalitarian society. Not just for the victims of totalitarianism, but the people within the system, because there are major characters who are part of the imperial bureaucracy. And that's excellent. And then with Lutheran, you have this idea of a man who is an insurgent, essentially. But over time you begin to see how the politics replace the military insurgents. And so you have this setup where he slowly recedes and the politicians come to the fore. It's a very subtle portrait, I think, of how these types of revolutions work. So he's like the Sam Adams.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Christine Rosen]

And his inside senator, Mon Mothma, is the George Washington.

[John Podhoretz]

So, Dan Seynor, your article, the Future of American Jewry After October 7, how to find Clarity and Purpose in Horror's Wake, right now [e-mail] please, everybody go read it. Subscribe. Thank you so much for being with us. And we'll be back tomorrow. So from that, for Steve and Abe, I'm John Pothor. It's Keep the Candle Burning.