How to Save the Jewish People

Summary

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: "How to Save the Jewish People" (July 2, 2026) – Summary

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Episode Overview

This special episode of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, hosted by John Podhoretz, features renowned Yiddishist, scholar, and longtime Commentary contributor Ruth Weiss. They discuss the reissue of Weiss’s influential 1992 book If I Am Not For Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, using recent political events as a lens to examine the current and historical challenges facing Jews in America and the West. The discussion centers on the rise of anti-Zionism, the instrumentalization of anti-Jewish sentiment in political movements, the evolution and limits of liberalism, and how both Jews and America must respond to existential threats.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Relevance of If I Am Not For Myself (00:18 – 05:15)

• Recent Context: The episode opens with the result of a New York City congressional race between two Jews, one openly anti-Zionist (Brad Lander) defeating another (Daniel Goldman), used as a real-world example of the book’s thesis.
• Weiss’s Motivation: Ruth Weiss reflects on diagnosing the persistent problem of anti-Semitism and the frustration of accurately identifying threats but lacking the means to correct them.
  • Quote (Ruth Weiss, 02:53): “The pain of the special pain of knowing that you diagnose something accurately...you realize that you do not have the means of correcting it.”
• Limits of Diagnosis: Misdiagnosis of antisemitism worsens the problem, but even correct diagnosis doesn’t guarantee resolution.

2. Anti-Semitism as an Assault on Liberal Civilization (05:15 – 13:02)

• Expanded Threat: John Podhoretz reads from Weiss’s new introduction, emphasizing “doubled loyalty” and the threat to traditions of freedom in the US and West.
  • Quote (Ruth Weiss, 07:02): “Antiism is about those who organize against the Jews and the Jews figure in a particular way...What the Jews represent politically is the principle of coexistence.”
• Antiism’s Function: Weiss introduces “antiism”–the organization of politics against Jews as a tool for consolidating grievance coalitions, not just a movement targeting Jews.
• Historical Roots: Modern anti-Jewish sentiment is traced back to shifts in global politics, especially post-1970s and 1980s, as a strategy for uniting diverse discontented groups.

3. The Inversion of Liberal Institutions (19:14 – 26:39)

• UN’s Role: Weiss identifies the UN’s 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution as a critical turning point, shifting Israel criticism from a right-wing/fascist to a left-wing/Marxist framework.
  • Quote (Weiss, 19:14): “1975, the coalition...joined together to pass this resolution that Zionism is racism...This is probably for me the tipping point.”
  • She credits this as an example of how liberal institutions, meant for coexistence, can be inverted and wielded for ill if not defended.
  • Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s speech is highlighted as recognizing this threat: “...if there were no general assembly, this could never have happened.” (Moynihan, cited by Weiss, 19:14)
• Ideological Reversal: Liberals once fighting for Jewish rights now tar Jews and Israel as oppressors, placing them in a “catch-all” for grievance politics.

4. The Coalition-Building Power of Anti-Jewish Sentiment (26:39 – 34:44)

• Intersectionality & the Left: The dynamic where Jews, due to Israel’s existence, are classified as oppressors within intersectional frameworks (shaped by ideas like Kimberly Crenshaw’s in 1989), facilitating broad anti-Jewish coalitions between left and right.
  • Quote (Weiss, 30:13): “Being against the Jews is, has been traditionally it is a great coalition builder...it is even a coalition builder between left and right, which it never was before.”
• Radicalization of Politics: Weiss notes that performative anti-Zionism (what she urges to call “jihad”) is now necessary for electoral success among certain leftist candidates, a reversal from the Obama era.
• Energy of Grievance: The energy and dynamism of negative politics far surpass those of positive or constructive movements.

5. Jewish Power, Self-Defense, and the Limits of Influence (36:18 – 54:49)

• Shift in Jewish Strategy: Podhoretz confesses a personal change in perspective, now accepting Weiss’s earlier argument (from her book Jews in Power) that Jews must actively use their resources to self-defend, not just ask to be “left alone.”
  • Quote (Podhoretz, 36:18): “I have come completely to reject that idea...We can't anymore because we are being encroached upon and we are being threatened and assaulted.”
• Commentary & Neoconservatism: Weiss credits Commentary magazine and the neoconservative movement for helping Jews develop the necessary ideological tools to resist liberal decay without abandoning their core values.
  • Quote (Weiss, 40:17): “Nothing has been quite as important, it seems to me, as that turn to what is called neoconserve...liberalism that will not defend itself against its enemies. That's what you need the power for.”
• Jewish Uniqueness: Jews maintain global relevance not out of parochialism but due to their central role in world politics, making self-isolation impossible.

6. Strategies for Jewish and Liberal Survival (47:37 – 54:49)

• Practical Power: Podhoretz and Weiss discuss wealthy Jewish donors leveraging their influence (e.g. withdrawing support from universities post-October 7) as a deterrent to growing anti-Jewish sentiment.
• Limits and Necessity of Power: Weiss cautions there are limits to Jewish power—being a small minority, strategic alliances (especially with the US) are indispensable. Nonetheless, active defense and confrontation (even if only ideological) are now required.
  • Quote (Weiss, 50:01): “If you are not willing to attack...if you are not willing to name your enemy and to say, I am going to bring you down...these people have brought bad ideas to drive out good ideas...we have to fight for [America].”
• Universities’ Failure: Weiss criticizes universities for failing to transmit America’s founding values, creating a vacuum for destructive ideas.

7. The Jewish Survival Instinct and Hope (45:25 – 55:54)

• Jewish Adaptability: Citing Gershom Sholem, the hosts recall that Jews have always developed necessary skills for survival, going from passivity to, when needed, asserting military or intellectual might.
  • Quote (Podhoretz quoting Sholem, 47:37): “The Jews are a talented people and when they are of need to preserve what we are, they develop the skills almost instantly.”
• Broader Challenge: The episode closes by connecting the imperative of Jewish self-defense to the broader American condition.
  • Quote (Podhoretz, 54:49): “If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us?...This challenge is not only to the Jewish people, it is to us as Americans.”

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Diagnosing without means to fix:
  Ruth Weiss (02:53): "The pain of the special pain of knowing that you diagnose something accurately...you realize that you do not have the means of correcting it."
• The political role of Jews:
  Ruth Weiss (07:02): "What the Jews represent politically is the principle of coexistence...we are a self-accusatory people, self-restraining people, a small people with an increasingly large and negatively inflated image in history."
• Instrumentality of anti-Jewish sentiment:
  Ruth Weiss (07:02): "Antiism is about those who organize against the Jews and the Jews figure in a particular way."
• Turning of the liberal institutions:
  Ruth Weiss (19:14): “1975, the coalition...joined together to pass this resolution that Zionism is racism...This is probably for me the tipping point.”
• On coalition-building through grievance:
  Ruth Weiss (30:13): “Being against the Jews is, has been traditionally it is a great coalition builder...it is even a coalition builder between left and right, which it never was before.”
• On Jewish advocacy:
  John Podhoretz (36:18): "We can't anymore because we are being encroached upon and we are being threatened and assaulted physically, ideologically..."
• Legacy of neoconservatism:
  Ruth Weiss (40:17): “Nothing has been quite as important, it seems to me, as that turn to what is called neoconserve...liberalism that will not defend itself against its enemies. That's what you need the power for."
• Limits of Jewish power & necessity for alliances:
  Ruth Weiss (50:01): "We cannot overpower others...We are too small. And so we need allies...If you are not willing to attack, even verbally, even politically, if you are not willing to name your enemy and to say, I am going to bring you down...we have to fight for [America]."
• Hillel’s Maxim and the American-Jewish Challenge:
  John Podhoretz (54:49): "If we are not for ourselves...who will be for us? So this challenge is not only to the Jewish people, it is to us as Americans..."

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Conclusion

Weiss and Podhoretz’s conversation is both a lament and a battle plan. They mourn the failures of liberal institutions to withstand ideological inversion and the dangerous coalition-building potential of anti-Jewish sentiment. Yet, they ultimately call for Jewish assertiveness—political, financial, and intellectual—and the rekindling and defense of America’s founding values as intertwined struggles. The warning is clear: the fate of the Jewish people and the future of American liberal civilization are inseparably linked, and defense of one is defense of the other.

Recommended Action:
Read the new edition of If I Am Not For Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (Wicked Sun Press) for a deeper diagnosis of the crisis—one that, as Podhoretz suggests, is increasingly urgent for Jews and Americans alike.

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Transcript

[Announcer]

Foreign. Expect the worst Some breach and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for

[John Podhoretz]

the best Expect the worst Hope for the best. Welcome to this special edition of the Commentary magazine daily podcast. I am Jon Podhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine, and I am delighted to welcome today Commentary's five decade long contributor, one of the foremost Yiddishists in the United States, the Western world professor, longtime professor at McGill and at Harvard, and author of numerous books on the subject of Jewry, Zionism, America and power. I'm talking about Ruth Weiss, who is here in large measure to discuss the reissue of her 1992 book, if I Am not for the Liberal Betrayal of the Jews. And we begin this conversation at a very interesting moment because we are in the wake of a race here in New York City, where you and I both live, between two Jewish antagonists for a seat in Congress, Brad Lander and Daniel Goldman. A race won by Brad Lander, an American Jew, against Daniel Goldman, an American Jew, with its issue largely being the purported evil or wrongdoing of Daniel Goldman in not being as Brad Lander is, an anti Zionist Jew. Your book, published in 1992, I don't think could have foreseen it, did not foresee specifically anything as confrontationally obvious as a means of proving your thesis that there is a liberal betrayal of the Jews in which the Jews themselves might well be considered active participants. But given this result, and given what we have seen, this I guess provides us with the explanation for why the reissue of your book is so important at this moment.

[Ruth Weiss]

Thanks, John. Well, that's exactly it. When you write a book like the Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, which was my complete title for it at the time, it was the publisher's idea to add if I am not for myself, which makes the point, you know, the reason for issuing a book like that is basically so that the situation we face today should not have come about. In other words, there is something about defining a problem as you see it, and thinking that you have defined it accurately leads you to expect that perhaps that is the solution to the problem. And you know, what I have learned in the intervening years that I knew probably before, but that has been impressed upon me more and more is the pain of the special pain of knowing that you diagnose something accurately. And because you diagnose it accurately, you realize that you do not have the means of correcting it. So the dilemma is this, that if you don't diagnose a problem accurately, you have no hope of correcting it and the misdiagnosis of some of these problems, like antisemitism, really sometimes makes things worse. But supposing you think that you have diagnosed it properly and. Then you realize that things do take their course in a way. And whatever you do, and it's not as if either you or I are not invested in making changes, in alleviating this situation, in improving America and improving the Jewish possibilities within America and Israel. Nevertheless, you see the limits of what you are able to do, and you see forces arising that are so great that it's going to take tremendous energy to mobilize against much, much greater energies than it would have taken back in 1992 or in the 1980s when I was writing most of these. Most of this book, you know, I

[John Podhoretz]

want to quote from your new introduction to the book, newly reissued. You refer to yourself here for good reason, for. For rhetorical reasons here, just so it doesn't sound vain, glorious in the third person. The woman, meaning you, is also a devoted American citizen. There is no question of dual loyalty. Hers is doubled loyalty suffused with gratitude. Habits of accountability, desire to contribute to public good and welfare, all important attentiveness to threat. These are the mainstays of our democratic culture. Though I am no longer confident that the worst is behind us, I want to shore up the moral confidence that is the basis of our strength. Those of us blessed to live in freedom with inherited traditions of freedom are responsible for their perpetuation. We cannot do enough. So in talking about, as you call it, the organization of politics against the Jews, you are not only talking about antisemitism as a virulent force against a tiny group of people. You are talking about an assault on the culture and traditions of freedom as understood in the United States and in the west that are being given expression by the very specific assault against the Jewish people that we have seen accelerate to an unholy, astonishing and entirely unprecedented way in the nearly three years since the October 7th attack in Israel.

[Ruth Weiss]

Yes, well, that's quite so, John. And you take us right to the heart of the problem. You know, I've been thinking about antisemitism, anti Zionism, what I now want to call anti ism, pure and simple, the organization of politics against the Jews, but what the Jews represent, therefore, antiism. I want to. I want to make it clear somehow, and I don't know how often one can say the same thing over and over again, that it has really very little to do with the Jews, that antiism is about those who organize against the Jews and the Jews figure in a particular way. And I wrote another book, actually Jews in Power, to try to explain in the first part of that book why the Jews have come to play that particular role in world politics. But I would suggest and propose that what the Jews represent politically is the principle of coexistence. They represent many things. And Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips have spoken about the civilizational context within, you know, within which the Jews operate and what they, how they figure in world thought and world politics. But quite specifically what we represent is the possibility and the principle of coexistence. I think it's important to know that Jews figure politically differently from almost, I think, from every other people in the world. We are self accusatory people, self restraining people, a small people with an increasingly large and negatively inflated image in history. And because we do not actually threaten anyone, because all the Jews have ever claimed in terms of land is that very small but precious land, that is the land of Israel. And Jews are known not to want anything beyond that. What they would just like to be able to do is to pursue their way of life among the nations. And here's where the difficulty comes in. If you think of Jews standing at Sinai, you see, or you see the Americans standing in front of their constitution and saying, hey, it's our 250th year, we are perfectly fine. You know, we can do it, we make mistakes, we have civil wars, we have all kinds of things internally, but nothing really threatens us. However, the rest of the world does not function that way. And when you become a no fail target, when you make it easy for other people to assault you, then eventually this escalates. And in modern times, just when we thought that the problem might be dissolving itself, what happened is that I think that antiism began to play a very important role in democratic politics. It's precisely when even tyranny sometimes now has to win the ascent of the people. When you have to really do much more to sell ideas, when you have to do much more to promote a political ideology, a political idea in order to draw people aboard. We had never been able to imagine how important antiism can be. And so one of the things that I've done in my mind is to just figure out the practical functions of antiism, why it works so well. And once you get it going, let's say in America, it's not aimed at the Jews. And Hitler did not aim it against the Jews specifically, it was his tool of conquering the rest of Europe. And think of it, Hitler knew that if he came to many other countries, even France, but certainly countries like Romania and Hungary and Poland and Ukraine and Russia, and he said to them, okay, you don't want to be conquered, but here's what I have for you. You can go after your Jews. That was a point of consolidation, an automatic point of coming aboard with almost all the nations of Europe and in the same way in America. Now, the organization of politics against the Jews has become a catch all for really the largest grievance movements. And there are many grievance movements, and it organizes all the grievance movements somehow. And that's what October 7th, October 8th basically revealed so horrifically. How could that have happened? Well, it did not happen all at once. It was happening from, you know, as I say, the 1970s and 1980s. And we can talk about step by step, how some of these things develop. But your point is precisely right. This is not about the Jews. It is about America. I mean, these people who are agitating against Israel or against, you know, whatever they think Israel represents to them, it's absurd. It's absurd. Even for the forces in the Middle east, it was always absurd. It is just a tool of organizing the largest coalition of people who are against people who have grievances, people who need an object to blame. So it is really important to see the instrumentality of this.

[John Podhoretz]

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[Advertisement Voice]

a

[John Podhoretz]

cancer that is being introduced into our bloodstream.

[Ruth Weiss]

Well, you know, I come from the academy, John, and that's one of the places where you really see this emerging. It doesn't come out of nowhere. So let's just say for example, the great liberal institution outside the United States, but for which the United States States is largely responsible and that is the United Nations. Now the United nations is the great liberal construct and I think it's fair to say that, right. If you read the charter of the United nations, it's like a bill of rights for nations. And its premise is coexistence, that everyone belongs in this family of nations. Now how can that most liberal of institutions have come in 1975? And to me, I must say that this is probably for me the tipping point, if you will, and I'm prepared to go back there to explain why it was so important. 1975, the coalition, the red green coalition, that is to say the coalition of the Soviet camps and the Arab Islamist camps and all the other anti Western countries, really not all third world countries, but all anti American third world countries joined together to pass this resolution that Zionism is racism. Now what in the world was that? I mean, going back, it's of course the Arabs who refused to accept the Jewish state that was racist. They should not have been allowed to continue as members in good standing of the United nations if they were not ready to accept the basic premise of coexistence on which that was founded. But everyone sort of sloughed it aside, oh, you know, as if it didn't make any difference, never referred to again. And so that war against the Jews within the United nations began very early on. And instead of being on the defensive for not having accepted the partition of Palestine and the, you know, the Building of Israel and all the Arab states that came into being afterwards, they really began to agitate, to use that as a bound of agitation. Okay, now what happened in 1975? What's the great genius? I think it was genius, the resolution that Zionism is racism. Why? Because it changed the war against Israel from the right to the left. Until then, it had been, we are going to drive the Jews into the sea. So that was a kind of a fascist concept. Might is going to destroy this little nation and we're just going to wipe you out. Well, that couldn't go very far, and it certainly couldn't go very far in America because this country had gone to war against fascism, against that notion that might is right and against the war against the Jews. So it could never but turn it around and say, it's not that at all. It's that the Jews, you see, are really wiping out the Palestinians is to say the Jews are really wiping out the Arabs. That is the left. And that is really. And saying they are the occupiers. They. And they took the whole language of anti Zionism that had been developed in the Soviet Union. Now actually, American, Jew, Americans who come from the Soviet Union, they have been writing about this, they know this very well, that anti Zionism is a feature of Soviet propaganda and Soviet thinking because it's against internationalism. And communism is supposed to be internationalist. So the Jews are the great enemies of internationalism. And on that basis, this anti Zionism began to grow as an ideology. And it really made its way very quickly into the universities and into the culture, putting the Jews and putting Israel on the defensive and with it, really everything that it stood for. And it was also a very strong anti American thrust. Now here, you know, what I would always refer people to, is to read the speech that Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave when that resolution was passed. It's an extraordinary speech, by the way, we may say, because I think it's written in public every, that Norman Podhoritz wrote much of that speech and is responsible for much of that speech. But it is really amazing. And one of the things that, that he writes in it, if I may say so here, is that he says that evil enough in itself, this resolution, evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realization that now presses upon us. The realization that if there were no general assembly, this could never have happened. Now that has struck me so forcibly since then, you see how horrible that is. He not only called it a day of infamy because he realized how awful this inversion of reality was, this inversion of truth and this inversion of political morality was. He realized how terrifying it was. But what he saw in addition to this is that if there were no liberal institutions set up, if there were, in other words, no Human Rights Institute, if there were no pretense to this great liberal structure that was not living by its liberal, then you could never have had it inverted to that extent. So you see that it's not only the danger of what happens, it's that liberal institutions, the best of them, that are dedicated to those principles, if they do not know how to withstand the evil that comes against them, those who are trying to undermine it, if they're not ready to fight against it, then they are overtaken by it. It's just very simple. And it's not a standoff, it's an inversion. So America goes on the defensive, the Jews go on the defensive instead of saying, look, we are the greatest political experiment in history. This is progress, the United States of America, John, this is progress. It represents progress. Everything that goes away from it is regress. You see, America has to claim the word progress for itself. And as do the Jews. I think the Jews are a great hope.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, the Jews are not only a great hope, but they are witness and they are, as you might say, the canary in the coal mine. Which is, I think, the point I'm trying to get at, which is that if it starts with the Jews, it will end with the United States. If the United States turns on the Jewish people, the United States will turn on itself effectively over time, in part because of the challenge posed by the particularism of American Jewry or Jewry itself. This tiny population, 0.1% of the population on the planet Earth, 2% of the population of the United States. It asks. We ask for nothing. We ask for almost nothing. We came to this country, we were given equal rights under the Constitution. For the first time in world history, we, the Jewish citizens of the United States, had the same rights as Christian citizens or Arabes or any other kind of citizen. This was a historical, unprecedented historical moment for which Jews have been enduringly grateful. But where? So here we are. And we really do ask for nothing. So then the question, except to be left alone. Ways in which Jews are not left alone. In Europe, for example, what, what do we need to do to be Jews with. In one fundamental sense, we need to be allowed to circumcise our sons. That is the Britney law, that is the, the. That is the covenant between Abraham and God. And in Europe, country that does not respect equal rights or have this kind of idea. Countries are passing anti circumcision laws. They are passing laws to make it illegal to slaughter animals in accord with the rules of kashrut. None of that would happen in the United States. No one. All we ask is to be let alone to do what it is that we do, to practice our faith. We are not even proselytizers. And yet with this liberal turn that you describe in this book, the Jewish people who ask only to be let alone are instead become a target of assault. And now it's becoming physical assault. But before it was a different, you know, there was this kind of ideological assault that you say in some ways started not only at the UN but on college campuses. Like I, I started college in 1978 and it was bubbling up then. And then I think the big moment there was the creation of the idea of intersection Nationality in 1989 by Kimberly Crenshaw, who said that all oppressed people, there's oppression is a, is a, is a single thing that happens on earth and that they're oppressed and that there are the oppressors and that Jew is Israel. And the Jews fall into the category of the oppressor rather than the oppressed and are therefore those that they oppress are now in solidarity with everybody else in on the planet who is, who considers themselves oppressed.

[Ruth Weiss]

Well, that, that exactly speaks to the point of this is the greatest coalition builder. In other words, being against the Jews is, has been traditionally it is a great coalition builder. And as you see today, it is even a coalition builder between left and right, which it never was before. And still, I don't want to exaggerate that because it's so much larger on the left than it is on the right at the moment. But potentially, you see, there is a branch of, we could say radical Christianity that will also, you know, join into this delicious kind of fun of being against the Jews. But, but on the practical level, John, because we live in New York City quite practically, look at what this does. You see from the radical left's point of view, the worse it is, the better it is. And that's what they're working on at the moment. See, that's why the lid has come off anti American language. That's why the lid has come off violence. That's why everything is being ginned up because they're ready to go another step now. Now it's not just the election of people who are going to speak sweetly or for example, if we look back at Barack Obama, you see When Barack Obama ran for president, I don't think, again, Barack Obama is amazing in this respect. I mean, let me just say this doesn't say who he is, but where he comes from and how he was formed. And he is the only individual, I think, in the world who was formed by four intersecting branches of anti Jewish, anti Zionist, anti Semitism, and those are Islamist anti Semitism, which made him so much at home in the church of Reverend Wright. And of course, in Chicago, being on the radical left with organizers and then at Columbia with Said and with the anti Israelism that was really, really growing very quickly in the Middle east departments and so on. I mean, four branches of. Okay, but when he ran for president, one of the first things he did is to separate himself from Reverend Wright. He understood that he was not electable on that platform today. You see, what these new candidates are doing is exactly the opposite. They are saying, you are only electable if you take this line and we are going to press that home. You're only electable. The violence, what they have added to this anti Americanism, to this language of extremism, to this anti Jewish or anti Zionist language, which we should always say is jihad. I would say to everybody, let's strike the words antisemitism and anti Zionism from the vocabulary. And every time you want to say it, say jihad. And that will get us a little farther. And when Bernie Sanders, for example, and when some of these Democrats are very happy to jump on the jihad train because they think that the worse it is, the better it is, if we have a grievance movement going, we can harness that grievance movement for socialist or communist purposes. Well, you see, this is a great boon to certain segments of the population. Small segments of the population, always small segments, but they organize and they are very dynamic. And in my experience, there seems to be much more energy in a negative politics than there is in positive politics.

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[Ruth Weiss]

Pat a cake. Pat a cake. Baker's mayor.

[John Podhoretz]

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[John Podhoretz]

so I want to talk, I want to, I want to jump in on that point because I think this is a good way to sum up the conversation and to bring in your book that you mentioned, Jews in Power, which I think you published in 2009. Now, I will confess to you that when I read Jews in Power, I thought you were nuts. I've never thought you were nuts. I've known you for 35 years or longer than that. And I, and I have always had immense respect for you. But I thought that your prescription in this book was a little bit nuts. Like you essentially were saying Jews need to harness power to protect themselves against the encroaching threat that the world poses. And I thought, look, look, we're living here in America. We have the Constitution to protect us. We have laws to protect us. There are bad politicians and all of that. But, you know, it's better that we be left alone, that we throw our weight around. It's not safe for us to throw a weight around. Let's leave us alone. And I have come completely to reject that idea that was in my head in 2009, 2010, when actually at a, at a forum at our our mutual friend and commentary contributor Mayor Soloveitchik's synagogue, the oldest synagogue in the United States, in a panel discussion about the, the commonalities between Judaism and the and Mormonism, I said basically that all that the Jewish goal in life or the Jewish goal in the United States was to be let alone. And not to try to impose our ideas on everybody else, just to be given our, you know, given our, our pile, given our, given ourselves space and, and let, and we're, and we can't anymore because we are being encroached upon and we are being threatened and we are being assaulted physically, ideologically, in terms of what books are now being published, that Jewish books are not being published, that movies are not being made on Jewish topics, that, that I have to worry about my son walking around, walking to the Jewish day school that he goes to and that your granddaughter goes to wearing a kippah in New York City for the first time in my life. And I say Jews have America's blessed the Jews with unique, the unique ability to survive and thrive, to make, to be incredibly prosperous and to spread their generosity throughout the country. Hospitals, cultural institutions. Jews make up 2% of the population is estimated that they make up 25% of the charitable giving in the United States. That is no joke. 10 times we punch above our weight. We have not deployed this fact in our own self defense. Except if you think that supporting Israel through AIPAC and others is a form of that kind of self defense. But I'm now actually talking about domestic self defense against the liberal betrayal of the Jews. So I'm apologizing to you, well, for having thought that you were nuts in 2009. You were just, as is the case with your book here, if I'm not for myself, the liberal butcher. You were simply a, you know, you were, you were a pro, a prophet before your time with, you know, that who's. Whose prophecy, as is often the case, is not honored at the moment that it is being delivered.

[Ruth Weiss]

Well, look, there's so much to, there's so much to weigh in on in what you're saying. But I don't want to get, I do want to get something said that that should be said. You see, I could not have written, I would not have written if I'm not for myself, the liberal betrayal of the Jews. I would not have written it if it were not for commentary of those years. And may I say, if it were not for the commentary that had already developed from what it had been in the 60s. And Norman Potharts has written a lot about that. But that's what we call the neoconservative shift. And I think that that's one of the great idea, ideological contributions that Jews have made to America. As great as Irving Berlin, as great as the philanthropy that you talk about. No, seriously. And all that we do contribute, nothing has been quite as important, it seems to me, as that turn to what is called neoconserve. Now. Nobody wanted to accept that term. You see, it's Irving Kristol who said, okay, if it's being used against us.

[Announcer]

We.

[Ruth Weiss]

We might as well use it because the term conservative was something that was always suspicious. If we are a liberal people and if we believe so much in all the values of liberalism, which we sort of associated with being good, with being open and tolerant and all that goes with it. The word conservative, you know, brought up something that was restrictive and reactionary, you see. So what the New York conservatives did was to say, wait a minute, they're saying what you say now. It's not that it was all about power, but what they saw is that liberalism that will not defend itself against its enemies. That's what you need the power for war. It's not the power to conquer others. It's not even the power to persuade others to be more like you, but it's just simply the power to really make sure that others do not change you, infringe upon you and put you on the defensive and make you unable to raise your children in your own image and in your own values. So that is what Commentary began to do in the 1970s. And it's then when I began to write for Commentary, I had, you know, I had read it since I was in my teens. But it's in that atmosphere that, you see, I started to write the essays that became part of that book. And I think it was very much in keeping, you see. Yes, maybe you think a little bit ahead of its time, but not ahead of Milton Himelfarb or Lucy Dwidowitz and some of the thinkers who began. And certainly when Irving Kristol and when the pot horizons, Midge Dector, your mother and all, when they began to get on this thing and to understand what was actually happening, that was already the movement that, that this book is a part of. It's just that for me, you know, seeing it from the Jewish angle and how the Jews fit into this was very, very important. Because if people think that to be a Jew is parochial, to be a Jewish Jew is parochial, you see, it's exactly the opposite. The Jewish Jew cannot afford to ignore anything that is happening in the world. The most far away country, Colombia. Now suddenly Colombia has a new government that may be friendly to Israel and therefore friendly to what Israel stands for in the Middle east and in the Western world. World. Suddenly he's. We're on. You see, we're connected with that. Not. Not just because the Jews who live in the country or anything like that. It's because of the pl. The place that we occupy in world politics makes us really central, whether we want to be or not. And, and, and, and, and that's, you see, psychologically, or how shall I put it? Spirit, that is a problem for some of our children and for some of us. We were not cut out for soldiering innately, you know, this is the one thing we never did. But look at Israel when it's had to soldier. No country has been doing it more bravely. Maybe Ukraine, you know, but bravely, ingeniously, to a point of. I mean, I think that this is a, this is a moral level that I'm not sure that we have seen before. Historians.

[John Podhoretz]

You know what I'm saying?

[Ruth Weiss]

That.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes.

[Ruth Weiss]

Oh yeah.

[John Podhoretz]

I was just gonna say one story that I can, I can tell you that you probably heard at the time or around that time or later from, from my father or from Neil Kazadoy, our mutual friend who was my predecessor as Commentary's editor, involves a conversation at my dinner table at home when I was 9, 10, 11 years old with the great man many people think was the greatest Jewish scholar of the 20th century. Gershom Sholem. The great Kabbalistic scholar lived in Israel lived. And somehow the conversation came around to the, to the remarkable victory of that Israel scored in the Six Day War in 1967, when Jews for 2,000 years had been a powerless people who could not organize themselves in militias, in war forming because what they needed to be was as passive as possible in order to order not to attract the attention

[Ruth Weiss]

of the larger, contribute in other ways,

[John Podhoretz]

to contribute in other ways or, or to be, or to be as quiet as possible. And so this was a culture that elevated the scholar over the strong man. Like that was not. There's almost no other place on earth, maybe ancient China, but you know, you did not have, you had a world in which the most, the person of the greatest stature was the person who knew more from the books and not the one who could, you know best you in Mortal Kombat. And then Israel Jews begin to settle in Palestine and Israel comes along and in 20 years scores this extraordinary victory. And I think my dad, somebody said to Sholem, how do you explain this? How do you explain. He said, the Jews are a talented people and when they are of need to preserve what we are, they develop the skills almost instantly.

[Ruth Weiss]

Talent goes where it's.

[John Podhoretz]

Yes, talent goes where it's needed. And, and it. This is a, this is a salvation skill. This is a survival skill of a people that in all of recorded history probably should not under. Under conventional understanding of how history works. We shouldn't be here at all. Yes, we should not be here at all. We are a tiny Middle Eastern tribe. Every single tribe that existed when we started has been long since vanished from the face of the earth, and we are still here. Which gets to my PowerPoint because you are mentioning the ideological and intellectual power that was expressed by the. By the neoconservatives and the idea of marshaling these arguments and saying, no, you are wrong to characterize the west this way, America this way, culture this way. We're not gonna. We're not gonna leave the. This to you. I'm saying now that power may be more practical. And I don't have the answer to this. The. The nascent beginning of the answer was when wealthy donors to universities after October 7, decided to withdraw their support from Penn, from Columbia, from Harvard, from a couple of these other places. Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars suddenly vanishing from their. From their annual giving in protest of their refusal to crack down on or deal with the anti Semitism on their campuses. And I'm just wondering whether, as the author of Jews and Power, and asked, as you will inevitably be asked when you're asked about this book, to say, well, what do we do? What do we do about this problem? How do we address this problem? It's fine to diagnose it. I accept your diagnosis. What do we do? My diagnosis has been that it is time for those people who gave opera houses and hospitals to figure out a way, and I don't know how else to put this, to punish those who are coming after us and to create. Establish a deterrent effect so that they go back to leaving us alone. Is that something you agree with?

[Ruth Weiss]

Well, absolutely, in a way. Of course I do. Of course I do. But I would say this, that, you see, we cannot overpower others and power. It depends. It does not take only one form. So I would say that to be powerful in the world of ideas and to be powerful politically, you see the small group of people that is, you know, pushing this agenda of the democratic socialists. Democratic only is till you impose socialism. You understand? That's what it means. Right, but they're very small group of people. But to capture the ideas, that's one of the things that we must do, and that's where we can. But you see, there is a limit to that idea. And unfortunately, John, like it or not, we have to accept it. We cannot live by power alone. We are too small. And so we need allies. And that's what they see. You see, they know that we need the allegiance and the alliance of The United States of America. I think in a way one can say the United States of America at this point needs Israel as its trusty ally in the Middle east, maybe almost as much, but that's a stretch. But that Israel certainly needs a strong ally in the United States. That is so obvious. It's so obvious that there are people in the United States think they can just flick it away because you can't do without us. So what are you going to do? If we punish you today, if we use you as a whipping boy today, if we blame you today, if we play with you today, we know that you're not going anywhere, you know. So you see, there is a limit. And I think that's a lot. That's why a lot of people leave the Jewish people, because it's a limit they don't want to live with. They would rather live with a majority. They would rather live with a majority that can feel as if it can impose its power one way or the other. So that's one thing. But I would agree entirely that if you are not willing to attack, even verbally, even politically, if you are not willing to name your enemy and to say, I am going to bring you down, it doesn't have to do with guns, it doesn't have to do with arms. It has to do with really the will. You have to say that these people have brought bad ideas to drive out good ideas. That the United States of America's system of government is the highest form of system of government that any country has ever really attained in terms of, I think, you know, not necessarily the way it works on a day to day basis, but really for a country this size and for what it represents in the world and has been able to do the good it has been able to do in the world, this is something that we have to fight for. So conservatism is now the most important thing because conservatism is the conservation of those liberal values. So in that sense, one has to say, of course, everyone who cares about liberalism has to become a conservative to really sustain that, to teach it. I mean, you, I mean one of the. It's a vacuum has been created. And I would say that's the worst thing about the universities, John, is that my colleagues did not seem to understand that their first mission was to transmit the greatness of what they had inherited. And if they did not transmit the value of America and how it works and how that Constitution is so subtle and why you have to teach it at every level, especially at the highest levels who is going to do that work? And of course, you leave the door open to all the maniacal ideas that come in and undermine it. And they have, under the guise of free speech, bad ideas have driven out the good. So, yes, I would say that that idea of strength of resistance and finding a way of deterrence of those bad ideas and actually defeat of those, the faster you could do it, the better off you are. But we've left it for a very long time.

[John Podhoretz]

The title of your book, the nominal title of your book, if I'm Not For Myself, of course, comes from the sage Hillel. His deathless pronouncement, if I'm not for myself, who will be for me? And that extends from the Jewish people to themselves. That's what that, that is your call here. But it does extend to the United States and the people of the United States. If we are not for ourselves, if we are not here in this 250th year year to celebrate and advance the ideas that emerged from that document on July 4, 1776, the most important political document ever produced on the face of this earth, document that changed the world forever in, you know, whatever, however 1200 words or however many words it is,

[Ruth Weiss]

I would put the Hebrew Bible there, too, somewhere.

[John Podhoretz]

Well, no, no, but I'm talking about as a polite, as a, as an operative, functional political document, nothing that incepted the most successful country that the world has ever seen. But that country is at risk. That country is at threat because precisely of the, the fact that it is no longer, or at least its elites are no longer for themselves. They are not. And if they're, if we, if we are not for ourselves, who will be for, for us? So this challenge is not only to the Jewish people, it is to the, it is to us as, as Americans on, on this July 4th. Well, I hope everyone who has heard this conversation will immediately procure yourself a copy of if I Am Not For Myself, the Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, issued by Wicked Sun Press, available on your Kindle, available in your books, available for order your bookstore or on Amazon. One of the most important books of our time. And I am thrilled to have had this time with you, with our, with our audience to celebrate it and to, and to try to make sure that rather than being a, an unheeded prophet, you are a heated prophet.

[Ruth Weiss]

Thank you, John. I'm very grateful to you. Thanks.

[John Podhoretz]

This is. And so, John Pod. Horiz. Keep the count.

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It.