The "Basketball Courts & the Other Kind" Edition

Summary

The Promised Podcast: “Basketball Courts & the Other Kind” Edition
TLV1 Studios | July 9, 2026

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Overview:

This episode dives into the sharp intersection where love of Israel meets frustration with its politics, courts, and culture. The hosts, Noah Efron, Miriam Herschlag, and Tehila Wenger, unpack two major headlines:

1. A brewing constitutional crisis between Israel’s government and Supreme Court
2. The Maccabiah Games—what they mean now, especially after October 7th

Layered with personal anecdotes, witty asides, and deep historical context, the conversation captures the heart and heat of current Israeli debates.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. In Memoriam: Justice Edna Arbel — A Life of Principle

[Start – 32:15]

• Noah opens the show with a tribute to retired Supreme Court Justice Edna Arbel, who recently passed away.
• Arbel’s journey from defense attorney to prosecutor is recounted, notably shaped by being wounded in a courtroom shooting at age 27 ([11:20]).
• Her commitment to abstract judicial principles is traced back to witnessing her father's courtroom advocacy against the backdrop of the 1959 Wadi Salib riots ([14:30]).
• A central legacy: Arbel’s rulings consistently protected individual civil liberties—even when they clashed with government, Knesset, or religious bodies.
• Notable case decisions:
  • Striking down detentions of illegal immigrants (Adam v. The Knesset).
  • Affirming publication rights about judge performance (State of Israel’s Court Administration v. The Marker).
  • Allowing a woman’s right to a female divorce arbitrator in a Sharia court.
  • Dissenting in cases opposing government restriction on family unifications and IVF rights for lesbian couples.
• Memorable Quote:
  • Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit: “She was a woman of iron in silk gloves.” ([08:20])
• Final Reflection:
  • Noah muses on the limits—and the necessity—of principled law, noting Arbel’s strength was also her limitation: “We might all today be better off if she had found a way to make more room for the angers and emotions…”

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2. Discussion 1: “The Last Nail?” — Government vs. Supreme Court

[32:15 – 55:25]

Background

• Israel’s Cabinet passes a scathing resolution denouncing a Supreme Court decision that allowed the existing media regulatory council to keep operating without a legal quorum ([32:15]).
• Cabinet hints it may ignore the Court; former Supreme Court presidents warn of "the last nail in the coffin of democracy." ([36:21])

Key Moments

• Haaretz Editorial: “On July 5, 2026, the Government of Israel declared the end of rule of law in the state of Israel.” ([32:34])
• Miriam: Lays out the regulatory and political stakes—government vs. Supreme Court over TV station ownership and the risk to press freedom.
• Tehila’s Critique:
  • “Everything has become the last nail in every coffin…there’s a gap between the rhetoric and reality.” ([37:29])
  • Points out polls showing more trust in the judiciary than in the government ([39:35]).
  • Reminds that the issue is both symbolic (“the end of democracy”) and substantive (government power over the press, erosion of minority protections).
• Noah’s View:
  • “I’m among the extremists…in believing that the authority of the Supreme Court is completely total…But I think this ruling is outrageously terrible.” ([41:20])
  • Emphasizes that while the government's rhetoric is alarming, he doubts they will ultimately defy the Court in action ([45:27]).
• Miriam:
  • Defends the tradition of creative/contrarian jurisprudence: “We have a long, important and venerable tradition of rulings that contravene the written law. I wouldn’t trade that for anything…” ([50:42])
• Noah’s Counterpoint:
  • Stresses the need for court legitimacy across all sectors, noting its historical Ashkenazi, secular, and insular character: “It’s not different enough—the claim…the Supreme Court is out to advance an agenda stems from the fact they have reasons to believe so.” ([53:05])
• Tehila:
  • Points out that politicians exploit old grievances for their own gain, even while some of those grievances are sincerely felt ([53:27-54:07]).

Notable Quotes

• Ex-Supreme Court presidents: “Refusing to obey a court decision is the last nail in the coffin of democracy.” ([36:26])
• Tehila: “…as the government continues to chip away at judicial oversight…protection for minorities, freedom of the press…that laughter has turned into very real fear now.” ([41:19])
• Miriam: “I want to make an argument for bad rulings. We live on those kinds of rulings.” ([50:42])

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3. Discussion 2: Serious Games — The 22nd Maccabiah and Jewish Identity After October 7

[55:25 – 77:40]

Context

• The Maccabiah Games (the “Jewish Olympics”) are underway with 8,000 athletes from 55 countries, persevering despite wars and the difficulties of travel ([55:25]).
• Noah explores the complex historical roots of the Games: pride, exclusion, Zionism, and nationalism.

Key Questions

• What do the Maccabiah Games mean today?
• Do they still make sense in a 21st-century global Jewish context, especially after October 7?

Host Perspectives

• Miriam:
  • Sees new urgency for the Games after October 7: “If you could have argued before October 7th that maybe the time had come for these [games] to wane, I think you can make a really great case that that is not true…” ([64:21])
  • Highlights the importance of “belonging” for world Jewry in times of adversity.
• Tehila:
  • Sceptical of the original “nebbish” assumption that Jews can only compete among themselves but concedes the Games offer a “productive way of channeling group identities into healthy competition.” ([67:31-69:24])
• Noah:
  • Defends the beauty and necessity of sports—and the Maccabiah—as expressions of a “fellow feeling…connecting Jews who may share little else.”
  • “The Maccabiah bravely makes that claim when it frankly no longer makes sense in the world we live in…It suggests an alternative world.” ([71:49])
• Debate on “Leftists and Sports”:
  Noah provocatively suggests that disinterest in sports is a weakness among Israeli leftists. Tehila and Miriam push back, defending left-wing engagement with sports. ([70:53-77:40])

Notable Quotes

• Noah: “It is incomprehensible to me how someone could not see what is beautiful and powerful about sports.” ([70:53])
• Miriam: “…so much to be said for driving home this message of belonging, of Jewish belonging, and of Israeli belonging.” ([64:43])
• Tehila: “It doesn’t matter. Israeli, Palestinian, it doesn’t matter.” —“No, it matters.” ([80:43])

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4. Voda Country Segment — Heartfelt Anecdotes

[77:40 – End]

Tehila:

• Shares a moving moment from an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue seminar: “The ability to come out of that space…to point to somebody from the other side and say: This is my sister. And we are Israeli and Palestinian, and that matters.” ([80:43])

Miriam:

• Describes her upcoming move to Nachalat Yitzhak, uncovering the rich history in the new neighborhood, from historic water towers to the origins of street names, and the links between Tel Aviv’s founding and wireless radio broadcasts. ([82:21])

Noah:

• Recounts his Odyssean journey back to Israel (flight delays, cross-company coordination, and arriving home to the signature exuberance, chaos, and community of Israeli travel), sealing his sense of belonging: “Because of the exuberance of everything all around me…I felt like, oh my, I am home.” ([87:12])

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [00:00] – Tribute to Asi Moshe, Israeli WSOP champion
• [08:20] – In Memoriam: Edna Arbel
• [32:15] – Discussion 1: Government-Supreme Court constitutional clash
• [55:25] – Discussion 2: The Maccabiah Games and Jewish identity
• [77:40] – Voda Country: Anecdotes of “What a Country”

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Memorable Moments & Tone

• Satire, warmth, and candor: The show balances humor (“I think you see the problem”—on Fry Day puns) with erudite, sometimes biting, political analysis.
• Quote – On sports & identity (Tehila, [80:43]):
  • Woman at seminar: “That’s so beautiful. It doesn’t matter. Israeli, Palestinian, it doesn’t matter.”
  • Tehila & Mohammed, together: “No, it matters.”
• Quote – On Supreme Court authority (Noah, [41:20]):
  • “I’m among the extremists…that the authority of the Supreme Court is completely total…”
• Quote – On tradition of ‘bad’ rulings (Miriam, [50:42]):
  • “…we have a long, important and venerable tradition of rulings that contravene the written law. I wouldn’t trade that for anything…”

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Conclusion

This episode explores the tension between universal principles and passionate identity—whether in law, sports, or daily Israeli life. The hosts model thoughtful disagreement and affectionate critique, ending with vignettes of Jewish belonging, literal journeys home, and the daily beauty (and craziness) of life in Israel.

Transcript

[A]

This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language. Welcome to the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1, the voice of the city that is home to Asi Moshe, who on this pass Shabbat in Las Vegas, Nevada, won his fifth count them fifth World World Series of Poker or WSOP bracelet, a success that I think anyone would consider Pikuach nefesh, if only on account of the $683,830 purse that came with the victory with which money a lot of good can and surely will be done. If you're like me, and I'm pretty sure that you are, you have many questions. The answer to the first of which is because Becky Benham, the daughter of Benny Binion, beaucoup de bees right there. Benny Binion being the founder of the World Series of Poker, his girl Becky, way back in 1976, 50 years ago, said that the silver cup that her dad had been giving to the winners of the series was a quote unquote corny trophy. And father and daughter put their heads together and decided that if football gives a ring and the Olympics give a medallion necklace you hang around your neck, why couldn't poker give a bracelet? And the thing was done. And since then, the World Series of Poker bracelet has become the unit by which poker greatness is measured. How many bracelets you got is what you ask Poker champions. And Asi Moshe's fifth bracelet elevates him to a tie as the 33rd all time greatest poker player of all time. American Phil Hellmuth wears the most WSOP bracelets. He has 33 of them. He thinks he's so big, but he's not the boss of me. But I digress. But still, five bracelets is pretty damn good, especially when you factor in that Asi Moshe does not even play poker full time. As his profession, he works in high tech back home. Home being as I Tel Aviv Yato. The answer to your second question is 1,792 competitors. That's the number of people that Asi Moshe beat out. The answer to your third question is no limit holdout freeze out. That was Asi Moshe's game at the end when there were only two players left. Mano Amano Asi Moshe faced head up China's Xiu Du, who wears no WSOP bracelets but tries real hard, which is super. On the final hand of the match, Due went all in with Queen 10 of hearts. Moving quickly, Asi Moshe called with ace king. The board ran out 82-553-which as I'm sure I do not need to tell you, gave Asi Moshe the title and caused pandemonium in the gallery. After his victory, Asi Moshe told reporters, quote, I used to come here every summer for the whole series. So I got to know a lot of friends in the Israeli poker community. They are my best friends and I am happy that they. I love my wife and daughter. They let me fly to Vegas and it paid off. I will be back soon, said Asi Moshe Schwarzeneggerianly. End quote. Asi Moshe is known in the poker community for playing the game aggressively. Fans say fearlessly, detractors say heedlessly. And Asi Moshe said that he was just glad that the stars lined up in a way that matched his style. He said, quote, I played hand after hand and put pressure on the short stacks, end quote. Which I think speaks for itself, being things you want to put pressure on, I suppose. And arguably nothing captures the improvisational aggression and the aggressive improvisation of this city we love so well, Tel Aviv. Yaffo. And also it's profound. It takes a villageism better than a favorite son finding success in the flesh pots of our age's Sodom Las Vegas, only to modestly attribute his success to his community and to his family. Because to him, as to so many of us here in the city that he and we call home, friends and family are the real. With us in the great underground vault that is the Serenity studio here at number 12 lesser horry street is a woman who in her warmth, kindness, wisdom, humor, menschlichkeit, humanity, brilliance, irony, sincerity, and with her royal straight flush, karma is for me, as for so many others, simply aces. I mean, in spades. It's that she's so full of hearts. And if you adore her as I do, and as do so many others, well, join the clubs. I think you know that this most well suited of our hosts, the queen of our hearts, could only be Miriam Herzlag. Miriam Herzlag is the OPS and blogs editor of the Times of Israel, creating and presiding over the biggest and most profound forum of Jewish discourse and debate since the Talmud was codified. Miriam was in the past the anchor of the Israel Broadcast Authority English Language Television News and an editor and anchor for the Israel Broadcast Authority English Language Radio News. Miriam, how are you doing?

[B]

I'm doing great. I don't know how to handle all of those adjectives, but I do want to say to you that my house is never too full for you or anybody else to come on by.

[A]

Thank you. Now Also with us today in her sophomore appearance here in the Serenity Studio, then we are so thrilled and delighted is Tihila Wenger. In fact, as I do not need to tell you, Tehila Wenger anagrams to lengthier awe. A clear reference to the true fact that every time you converse with her, you appreciate her more. Her name also anagrams to a genteel whir. This being the description of the calm civility with which he conveys the cascade of brilliant ideas that issue forth from her. You see that we have done our due diligence here on the Promise Podcast. Tehila Wenger is Deputy Director of the Israeli Branch of the Geneva Initiative and Israeli Palestinian Undertaking to raise support among Palestinians and Israelis for a two state solution and especially to encourage worthwhile and deep dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians about matters of policy and other such things. Tehila is rising into the anthropology PhD program at Ben Gurion. She is also a writer of grace and passion. And if you haven't, you have got to read her moving recent essay in the Times of Israel called the Palestinians and Israelis who Believe in Peace. That essay, I would imagine, having been edited by Miriam Hershlag. So it's all here in the family. Tila, how you doing?

[C]

Coming off of deep and meaningful dialogue. So excited to expand that within this particular circle.

[A]

That's you being you, I understand. Yes, well, I hope that we do manage to do that. As for me, my name is Noah Ephron and I do not mean to boast, but I found myself in one of those situations that everyone has been in at one time or another in this dark age of air travel. My flight from Washington to Boston to make my late night connection to Tel Aviv was delayed by 16 minutes. And I was like, no problem because I've got plenty of time on my long layover in Boston. And then after 15 minutes had passed, my phone pinged and it told me that the delay was now 56 minutes. And I thought, that's fine, that's fine, there's still plenty of time in Boston. And 56 minutes passed and then my phone pinged and told me that the delay was now one hour and 56 minutes. And I thought, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, I can still make it if I don't have to go through security again. And Logan. And when an hour and 56 minutes had passed, there was an announcement over the loudspeaker that said, the plane scheduled to take you from Washington to Boston has not yet taken off from Boston to Washington. We're hoping that it will Take off soon, though. When it does, the crew will have timed out, so we are looking for a new crew. Fifteen minutes after that, my phone pinged again that the flight was flat out cancelled. I had been rescheduled on a flight to Tel Aviv via JFK in just two days. And please believe me when I say I'm not bragging. Gosh, I think my parents raised me better than that. But I have got a real talent for credulity. Every single time they gave me a new takeoff time, I flat out believed them. It's partly the fiendish specificity of a 16 minute delay and then a 56 minute delay. Anyway, I believed them with all my heart, not realizing until it was way too late that the folks at Delta are Lucy, saying, I will absolutely hold this football for you to kick me. Inevitably, irrevocably, I am Charlie Brown. Good grief. Today we got two discussions involving the courts. The one about basketball courts, tennis courts, badminton courts, volleyball courts and pickleball courts. And the other about the other kind of courts, the ones with the bailiffs. But first, we have this matter in memoriam. Retired Supreme Court Justice Edna Arbell was buried last Thursday, the 18th of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, July 2nd, at Cypress Gate of the Ste. Yoshua Cemetery in Haifa. Everyone in law came and many, many others. Supreme Court Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit started his eulogy of Edna Arbel, saying, quote, it is sad to die in the middle of Tammuz, quoting Naomi Shemer, who wrote those words in 1979 before an operation. She worried that she would not make it through alive. Though it was 25 years later, again in the middle of Tammuz, that Naomi Shemer, like Edna Arbell, sadly died. Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit said at the Cypress Gate of Edna Arbell, quote, she worked every day until late at night and ruled decisively in challenging and difficult cases. Yet she never raised her voice and she never forgot the birthday of a member of her chamber staff. She was a woman of iron in silk gloves, end quote. Chief Justice Amit told how Edna Arbell had started her career as a defense attorney, but then she abruptly became a prosecutor, taking a job at the State Attorney's office. Her, quote, sharp transition from defense to prosecution. Amit said it was born in a specific moment with, quote, a bullet fired in the Tel Aviv District Court that caused the death of a defendant and wounded Edna Arbel and others, end quote. What Yitzhak Amit was recounting happened on March 16, 1971, in the middle of the month of Adar, when Edna Arbel was 27 years old, a new lawyer defending a from Tira named Tufik Najib Abdul Khay and his 19 year old son Mazen Tufik Abdul Khai, all at once in the gallery, a 20 year old kid named Bassem Abdul Khai, from the same big family drew a gun and fired 12 shots, killing the father, badly wounding the son and injuring Edna Arbel as well. Edna Arbell talked about this event in the speech she gave when she retired from the Supreme Court 12 years ago in June 1914. She said, between my days in defense practice and the beginning of my journey in the State Attorney's office, there lies the flight path of a bullet that was fired in the Tel Aviv District Court courtroom where I was appearing. It caused the death of the defendant and wounded me and another person on my own flesh. I learned how witnesses form impressions of an event they experienced and how a crime victim feels when questioned on the witness stand. In one moment, one formative event, the focus of Edna Arbell's concern had shifted from safeguarding the rights of the accused to fighting for justice for the victims. This by bringing to account the people who had hurt them. This was a moment that made Edna Arbell into Edna Arbell. There was another, earlier moment 12 years before she was shot as a young defense attorney, that also set Edna Arbell on the path that she followed for the rest of her life. She talked at length the speech she gave on her retirement from the Supreme Court. But I rely here on the version she told her granddaughter, Yael Arbel Avramson, the daughter of Karen Arbel Avramson, who herself became a lawyer of great reputation, now the chief counsel of the credit card company Kal. In sixth or seventh grade, every school child in Israel does what's called a roots project, an Avodat Shorashim, for which the child picks an older relative to interview and write about. My girl, who is now an anthropologist of education, interviewed my mother, who is a teacher of extraordinary talent. And Karen Arbell Avramson chose as the subject of her 2017 Roots report, quote, my Savta judge, Edna Arbel, end quote. And one passage in the report starts, savta says and then includes this quote, My father, Yael's great grandfather studied law in Jerusalem. He was an attorney. And from the time we arrived in the land, he served in the police. At some point he was appointed to head the litigation department of the police Haifa. He appeared among all his other cases in the Vadi Salib trial against scaflahs who were trying to raise attention about their difficult economic circumstances and the hardship that was their lives. Rather like the Black Panthers, their struggle was just, but the way they fought it was wrong. The trial was followed closely by the press and there was a great deal of public agitation in the hall of the Haifa District Court before the woman judge who was also the president of the court. I sat in the hall and listened to the arguments of the sides. I was moved to hear my father argue in the court. And I made up my mind to become a judge when I grow up. End quote. What had happened in Wadi Salib was this. On July 8, 1959, in the swelter of summer, Haifa police were called to a Moroccan coffee spot named the Rosalio Cafe in the poor Vadi Salib neighborhood on the south side of the city. A down on his luck porter named Yaakov Akiva El Karif, drunk on Iraq, had taken to cursing and threatening. When the police arrived, Al Kharif shattered his bottle on the windshield of the patrol car. A police sergeant named Asher Goldenberg fired five warning shots in Al Kharif's direction. At inquest, Goldenberg testified that the shots were aimed at Al Kharif's feet. But one bullet penetrated his gallbladder and spine. Al Kharif was rushed to the hospital. His condition was critical. He would walk again. But word spread that Al Kharif was dead, shot in cold blood by a policeman. An eyewitness described what happened next. The blood was there. People began to talk. This cannot be possible. We've had enough. We went down to the square. There crowds had gathered and there was noise. A policeman stood up with a Sten machine gun and said, whoever comes near me, I will shoot him. There was blood on the ground and the crowd and police both expected to see more blood by night's end. David Ben Harouche, the 35 year old owner of the Rosalio Cafe and head of the Union of North African Emigrants, Likud Joseph on Africa, tried to guide the angry energies of the crowd. He called for people in the street to follow him to the neighborhood synagogue to plan their next steps. And 200 women, men and kids came there. He administered to them an oath. I said, swear by the name of this synagogue that you will not raise your hand to anyone and that you will go quietly as a humble people and not as a powerful group. We will appear at the police and they will receive a delegation and tell us if this man who shot a man from our community in cold blood. Will you do justice to him? Everyone said, what you say, we will do. End quote. As they marched from the synagogue to the police station, protesters made black flags from what they could find at hand. One such banner, made from cloth collected from a small slaughterhouse along the way, was splattered with chicken blood. At the station, an officer came out and assured the crowd that Al Kharif was alive, and in time, people dispersed, but the next day, the streets filled again with protesters. By then, news of the shooting was known throughout the country, and violent protests erupted in Tiberias, Kiryat Shmona, Beersheva, Kiryat Ghat and other development towns. Police cars were pelted with stones. A bank manager's car was set on fire. Labour Party clubs were vandalized. Tistadroot offices were defaced with angry graffiti, shop windows were smashed, and the streets filled with crowds chanting bread and work. Protesters were bloodied by police nightsticks, and hundreds were arrested. David Ben Harush among them. He would be sentenced to two years for instigation, of which he served six months in jail. The papers wrote about the Vadi Salib rebellion, and for a short while, it seemed possible that a poor minority in the country was rising up against the majority. Within days, police launched an investigation run by a committee headed by a judge named Moshe Etzioni to determine who was behind the protests and whether the police had acted properly. As the committee heard witnesses, the government's cabinet met to discuss the protests. What they concluded matched what they knew going in. Golda Meir, then foreign minister, said flatly that the cause of the demonstrations was not poverty or social need. It was rabble rousing. Education Minister Zalman Aran agreed. I don't have an apartment like the new Empire immigrants do in Beit she an. These are people who don't save their salaries but spend it. Finance Minister Levi Eshkol said, but with the protesters, quote, no small part of their salary they spend on Iraq. I read in the paper that one of the protesters was angry because things reached the point where he had to pimp prostitutes. Does someone force him to do this? End quote. Former mayor of Tel Aviv and Labor Minister Mordechai Namir said, quote, all this happened in a season like there's never been before from the point of view of work and employment. Employment, one of almost full employment. I have to assume that there is some backing, some shelter for the organizers of the demonstrations. The only thing there is in the Vadi Salib affair is that a policeman with an Ashkenazi Name shot inappropriately, end quote. The real instigator of the riots, Leveshkol said, was the revisionist leader, Menachem Begin. Just a few weeks ago, I heard Begin say that he's never met a rebellious situation like what exists today in the country. We can count on him. I think that this is Begin's work. End quote. Edna arbell was just 15 years old when she sat in court and watched her father, another policeman with an Ashkenazi name, in his case, Yitzhak Englander, an immigrant from Czechoslovakia. And even 58 years after the event, talking to her granddaughter, it was clear that Edna Arbell's sympathies did not lie with the violent scaff. There was a right way and a wrong way to do things, Edna Arbell knew, and they had picked the wrong way. Although, unlike the ministers at the time, Edna Arbel did see that there was something to the complaints of the poor immigrants of Wadi Salib. Still, she saw this as if from a distance, weighing it against abstract principles of propriety, of how the rule of law and the rules of law are the foundation of everything. A first principle that matters more than the particular pain of particular people, which I guess is part of what we expect from our judges. Abstract principles remained a kind of North Star for Edna Arbel. Edna Arbel was, quote, a leader with inner integrity and moral backbone, end quote. That was how Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit put it in his eulogy. And this integrity and backbone is what explains how Edna Arabell was picked to be in some of the most sensitive investigations in the country's history. When a commission of inquiry, the Kahan Commission, was appointed in 1983 to investigate the who was responsible how for the Christian Falangists massacre of Muslim refugees in the Sabra and Chatila camps outside of Beirut. As IDF soldiers remained positioned just outside the camps, doing nothing to stop the killings, Edna Arbel was appointed to gather evidence, sifting through grisly photographs, screening movies of the grisly slaughter, collecting grisly testimonies, creating a grisly timeline. It was working for the commission that Edna Bell grew close to Aharon Barak, then the youngest of Israel's Supreme Court justices who would ascend to be chief justice and the architect of a judicial civil revolution, arguing that the courts ought to ensure that citizens have a wide range of rights, rights implicit, as Aharon Barak said, in the very notion of substantive democracy. And Aharon Barak went out to set the foundation of a civil rights and law revolution that has been much contested over the past years by Juri and politicians on the right who almost four years ago proposed judicial reforms to undo what Aharon Barak did in his long and influential career in matters of law and state. Aharon Barak remained Edna Arbel's mentor and model until the day she died, not long after she was picked to work for the Kahan Commission. Edna Arbel was involved in investigating what was known as the Bus 300 affair when two Palestinians who hijacked an EGED bus in April 1984, killing one of the passengers and injuring eight, were captured by IDF soldiers and then executed on the spot by Shin Bet Chief of Operations Ehud Yatom. Edna Arbel's report said that people acting in the service of the state cannot kill an unarmed person who has surrendered. Though the Shin Bet men involved were quickly pardoned by then President Chaim Herzog, the father of our president today, Yitzhak Herzog. Years later, after Ehud Yatom was appointed to head Israel's counterterrorism unit, Edna Arbel wrote a minority Supreme Court opinion that the the government should not defend the appointment once it was challenged. The Supreme Court did eventually disqualify Ehud Yatom's appointment. In her time on the Supreme Court, Edna Arbel always seemed to be arguing from principle and from an expansive view of individual rights. In the decision she wrote in the case of Adam v. The Knesset, she struck down a law stipulating that illegal immigrants, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, could be jailed for up to three years. In a decision she wrote in State of Israel's Court Administration v. The Marker newspaper, she set out that the paper had the right to publish embarrassing information about judges and how big they let their dockets grow, producing long delays in the courts. In a decision she wrote in the case of Adala v. The Ministry of Social affairs, she confirmed the government's right to cut child allowances for families who would not vaccinate their kids. There was a right way and a wrong way to do things, and not vaccinating your kids was the wrong way. In the decision she wrote in DO v. The Supreme Sharia Court, she validated a woman's right to insist on a female divorce arbitrator in a Muslim religious court, even though this was incompatible with Quranic tradition. In Galon v. The Attorney General Arbel wrote a dissent to the majority opinion that it is lawful for the government to prevent the reunification in Israel of West bank and Gaza residents married to Israeli citizens. She wrote a dissent in Moshe v. The Board of Approvals of Embryo implantment, arguing that a lesbian couple did have the right to implant one partner's egg after fertilization into the other partner. The record Edna Arbel built over years in the Supreme Court was one of ceaseless defense of individual civil rights, very much in the model of Ahron Barak. Like Aharon Barak, she believed that if individual civic rights conflict with the claims of the rabbis, imams or priests, or with the wishes of the Knesset, then so much worse for religion or for government. There could be a harshness to all of this, of a sort, I think one already feels in a teenaged Ed nar Bell's reaction to Vadi Salib, where her sympathies were with her father arguing for the police and not with the people who had watched as one of their drunk neighbors, someone everyone knew, was shot and crippled by a policeman who didn't seem to know that what you do with drunk neighbors, if you are mensch, is you talk to them, not shoot at them. Still, it would be unfair, and on this last day of her Shiva, unforgivably unfair, to make it seem like Edna Arbel cared only about abstract principles and about abstract rights and not about people who came before her in court. In his eulogy, Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit said of Edna Bell, quote, her humanity and warmth of heart are woven into her judicial wisdom work. A beautiful example of this was her practice of not signing difficult decisions on the eve of the Shabbat, such as decisions ordering a person to begin serving a prison sentence. She could not bear the thought that the news would accompany the litigants into Shabbat and disturb the peace of their home. This is how she ruled and this is how she shaped the law with professionalism and sensitivity. End quote. In recent years, Edna Arbell, like basically all her serving and retired Supreme Court colleagues, spoke out against the judicial reform, signing statements saying that the plan threatened to destroy Israeli democracy and to do away with the rights that she had championed her entire career. Like she had of the protesters in Vadi Salib, she said that critics of the court may have had a point point, but that the means that they picked to make that point were violent and destructive and inappropriate. Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit ended his eulogy of Edna Arbel with this quote. Edna had a custom of opening and closing every event with Hebrew poetry. I started this eulogy with Naomi Shemer, and to conclude, I will bring a few lines from a poet by Lea Goldberg, whom Edna herself quoted at her retirement ceremony from the Supreme Court. For we knew long ago that everything ends like poetry and will cease and dissolve like song. Only the evening smoke will preserve memories. The song of Edna's life has ended, yitrak Amit went on, and her rich, warm and unique voice will be heard no more. We are left with the memories and also with the distinct imprint she left on the annals of Israeli law, and with the judgment she left wrote, which will continue to resonate and to be studied in the halls of law and academia for generations to come. End Quote as much as anyone, I think, save for her mentor Aharon Barak, Edna Arabel represented with integrity, grace, consistency and great intelligence a today much embattled view of what Israel should be and of the big role the courts have in making the state into what it should be. It is my belief, though who am I? That we might all today be better off if she had found a way to make more room for the angers and emotions, emotions and passions and commitments and atavistic affinities of those who did not think that rights are the foundation of everything, a single pillar upon which all the rest rests, but rather rights and identity and traditions and beliefs are always and forever in messy negotiation, one with the other. Maybe that is too fancy a thought, or maybe I'm just plain wrong. What I know to be right is that there was something beautiful to the life of principle that Edna Arbel lived and to the energy and wisdom with which he fulfill that dictum from Deuteronomy. Tzedek Tzedek Tir Dov Justice Justice Pursue Yehi Zikhra Baruch Today two discussions. Our first discussion, which we are calling the last nail question mark, as all the living former Chief Justices of the Supreme Court put out a joint statement the other day saying, among other things, that Prime Minister Netanyahu's cabinet had just hammered, quote, the last nail in the coffin of democracy, end quote in the country. This in response to a Cabinet decision that expresses great ire. I would even say pique, and I don't use that word lightly at a Supreme Court decision about who makes decisions about TV and radio and the ministers of justice and communication tweeted things that seem to say that the government plans to ignore that same Supreme Court decision, which would put us in a straight up constitutional crisis and we will try to figure out what it all means and when we get right down to it, how very attached are we democracy Anyway? And discussion two serious games as the 22nd Maccabiya Games are on this week and most of next. They are probably my favorite quadrennial sporting event and absolutely my favorite Jewish quadrennial sporting event. And this year they bring 8,000 athletes at a cost of hundreds of millions of shekels to compete at all the sports from A to Z, from archery to Zwiming or softball. And we will wonder, what is this thing we call the Maccabiya? Why does it still exist in the 21st century? And how? How, if at all, has it changed after October 7th? And for our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters in our extra special, special extra discussion, the link to which you can find in our show Notes on your podcast app or at patreon.com promisepodcast on the world Wide Web following welcome recent reports that Tel Avivo is planning to break ground on a new Olle center. And in light of the astonishing statistic, we lately learned that There are over 10,000 people between the ages of 20 and 30 in the city who come from Eng countries. Your Yanks, your Brits, your Aussies, your Kiwis, your Canucks. And we will try to understand who these young Anglos are and what have they done with the Saxons and what they are like in comparison to the no longer young Anglos in the city who are fewer in number but represent a majority of the people speaking on this particular episode of the podcast, which is at least something. Ultimately, we will try to determine which are better classic anglos or Anglos 2.0. And I am pretty sure that arm wrestling will be involved and possibly a spelling. But before we get to any of that, please listen to this. That song is Lu Rakyakholti by Goldie Fush. More new music of these anxious days. And now it's time for first discussion. So Miriam, did the Cabinet just hit the nail on the head?

[B]

Well, let's figure that out. The headline of Monday's editorial in Haaretz didn't hold back. Listen to what it said. It said on July 5, 2026, the Government of Israel declared the end of rule of law in the state of Israel. The editorial, coming a day after a Cabinet decision regarding a Supreme Court ruling, called the decision shameful and a dangerous to democracy. In his op ed on Tuesday, the Times of Israel's chief editor, David Horowitz, was not much more restrained. He described Israel as being on the brink of a constitutional crisis and urged Netanyahu not to take the country over that edge. The government's course, he warned, quote, would place Israel beyond the bounds of democracy. The government was addressing a ruling by the High Court of Justice concerning the regulatory body for commercial broadcast media media, the body, which is called the Council for the Second Authority for Television and Radio, sets the policy and creates regulation that privately owned TV and radio stations have to follow. It also approves the sale and purchase of licensed broadcasters, making sure that control of the country's media does not become too centralized and is not given over to advocates of one or another political ideology to the exclusion of competing voices. The council should have 15 members who are appointed by the government on the Communication Minister's recommendation for a four year term. The present council was appointed four and a half years ago. This past March, Minister of Communications Shlomo Kari tried to appoint a new council as the law provides. But Kari's appointments were challenged in the courts on the grounds that they were ideologically biased and that some of the candidates had conflicts of interest and prior commitments to Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Supreme Court ruled that the old council would continue to rule until the matter could be adjudicated. Allegedly under pressure from the government, some members of the old council resigned so that it could no longer convene a quorum of two thirds, meaning that it no longer had the capacity to do its job. In a second ruling, the Supreme Court said that until the foundational issue of the new appointments was ironed out, the old Council was empowered to act even without the requisite quantity quorum. Basically, the court said, the government can't benefit from choreographing the very legal obstacle it was then relying on. What's driving all this is that a consortium of mostly high tech VC sorts who are known to be unsympathetic to the present government have bid to buy channel 13. The council appointed by the last government is expected to approve the purchase. The Council members nominated by the present government were expected to reject the purchase. Indeed, some people suspect they were picked in order to reject the deal. It was against this background that the Cabinet drafted and approved the resolution criticizing the Supreme Court that many see as the end of the separation of powers in Israel. The Cabinet's resolution begins with a civics lesson, declaring that no branch of government is above the law. It argues that when a court orders the government or one of its ministers to act contrary to the explicit language of a statute, that isn't the rule of law at all. It's a violation. From there, the resolution turns to this particular case, asserting that the High Court's decision allowing the Second Authority Council to continue operating without a quorum directly contradicts the law governing the council. It says the government will use every lawful means at its disposal to overturn the ruling and concludes that this isn't an ordinary disagreement over legal interpretation, but an exceptional case in which the Court has flatly contradicted clear statutory language. The rhetoric then gets considerably sharper. You have no authority to trample the law, the resolution declares. Rulings contrary to the law will not be recognized and decisions made under its authority are null and void. The Cabinet approved the resolution unanimously. Following the decision, both the Minister of Justice, Yariv Levine and the Minister of Communication, Shlomo Cary, conveyed their sense of what it meant. Levine said the government has a duty to insist that the law, and only the law be the source of governmental authority. We will continue to act through all lawful tools to restore the rule of law to its proper place. And Shlomo Carry said, two thirds is a legal requirement, not a recommendation, and a council that does not meet the threshold condition set by the legislature does not exist for these purposes and its decisions are worth nothing. These statements by ministers seem to make clear that the government plans to ignore the ruling of the Supreme Court. They caused a lot of people to worry that we were facing a full on constitutional crisis. All the living former presidents of the Supreme Court, Barak Baenish, Grunis, Hayut and Vogelman, which is quite a law firm name I guess, issued a statement saying that refusing to obey a court decision is the last nail in the coffin of democracy. So Tehila, are they right about the nail and the coffin?

[C]

I don't know if I'm more glad or frustrated that we are framing the conversation around that particular quote because it is one of by far the most popular, one of my personal least favorite slogans in Israeli political discourse today. It feels like everything has become the last nail in every coffin. Whatever the issue is. If it's mildly controversial, then that is the language we're using. And I understand why the Netanyahu block uses it because when you think about what the phrase really means, they're essentially claiming complete victory that we have. Their policies have been so successful that we have reached a point of no return where what they have instituted cannot in any way be reversed. We're sort of an Orban hunt Hungary that will never elect anyone else. So I do expect Yari Levine and co to go around saying yes, this is the last nail in the coffin of what they are framing as anti democratic judicial tyranny over the people, et cetera, et cetera. But what's less clear to me is why past justices and those who oppose judicial overhaul in its current form at least, would concede the victory and imply that if this goes through and I think think there is a reasonable chance that something like this could. We would say, yeah, we're all going to prepare now for absolute dictatorship, which I think is quite self evident to most Israelis. That's not actually going to be the immediate consequence of this step. And even if the Israeli public doesn't understand all of the ins and outs of what you just explained, Miriam, we do understand that there's a gap between the rhetoric and the reality. The justices could have said this is a massive blow to freedom of speech. This will give the government power over the press. I think Israelis do understand and many of us care deeply about that. And you can also assert that this is the most significant confrontation to date between our branches of power, which leads me to what I think is particularly disingenuous among people like Levine and Rotman and the way they're framing the issue. There's this claim that they represent the true will of the people, unlike the unelected courts. Cbs, the Israeli Bureau of Statistics published a poll last week about Israeli societal trust in our institutions. And the finding was, and this is actually consistent with other recent polls on the issue, that 48% of Israelis trusts our judicial system. It's slightly less than a majority, but it's around 50%. So one in two Israelis have trust in the system. It's actually much higher than the equivalent statistic in the US at the moment. And it's also significantly higher than Israeli trust in our government, which stands according to this survey, at 36%. So when Levine comes along and says we're returning power to the people, habibi, you've lost the trust of two out of three Israelis. What people exactly are you talking about? And the last thing I'll say, because I think I just spent a lot of time kind of undermining the power of this move. And I think that's potentially as dangerous as I see it's overstating, right? I think it's self defeating to exaggerate, but at the same time, I don't want to turn it into nothing. At the start of this whole judicial overhaul process before the war, Smotrich was asked in an interview, if the courts are no longer the primary authority defending human rights in Israel because of the so called reforms that you want to make, who will protect them? Who will protect us? And he answered without pausing, blinking or thinking, I will. And at the time, many Israelis found that statement actually quite funny, knowing Smltrich and his record on various issues. But at this point, as the government continues to chip away at the judicial oversight that provides protection for minorities in Israel, freedom of press, to some extent, even legal redress for Palestinians. Basically everything that contributes to the liberal democratic character of the state of Israel. Israel. It's becoming easier and easier to understand both why so many Israelis laughed then and why that laughter has turned into a very real fear now.

[A]

I think that we. This issue is in many ways a kind of perfect storm, especially coming at the moment when it comes just before we go into a campaign for election of a new government. And I think that there's some value in dividing two broad issues. One is the ultimate and complete authority of the Supreme Court in these matters, which is embattled. Some people think that the Supreme Court's word has to go just without question, has to be accepted, even if one disagrees with its ruling. And other people think that the Supreme Court can be. Can be pressured, can be questioned, can be fought against, can be ignored. That's the position that you were just describing of our Minister of Justice, for instance, Yariv Levine. So there's that issue, what is the authority of the Supreme Court? And then there's the other issue, is the substance of this particular thing now about the issue of the authority of the Supreme Court. I'm among the extremists in this, in believing that the authority of the Supreme Court is completely total. The fact that they say make a ruling means that the ruling must be followed, though it can be criticized, it can be debated, it can be disparaged, it can be brought up when considering new candidates for the next Supreme Court, that they have different views, all that is legitimate. But ultimately we have to do what the Supreme Court says. And it is terrifying to hear government coming very close to the line, or according to many people, not me, but many people going beyond the line of saying we no longer need to follow the Supreme Court. And there was a good, a really good article in the Times of Israel, Miriam, maybe you can remind me who wrote it, saying, the big problem with this issue that we're talking about, this event that we're talking about, is that it makes kosher in the future saying we are not gonna follow the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled X and we're simply not gonna do it by e either saying that now or getting so close to saying it now. And I think that that's true, and I think that it's scary. And all the people who have criticism for the government for that reason, I am with you. Although I disagree with the interpretation of what I don't think the Government said we will ignore it. And I don't think the government will in the end ignore it. But we will have to wait and see over the next weeks and months whether what happens there. The other issue, the substantive issue, I just want to say, because I think it's important. I think that the supreme ruling is outrageously terrible. I think that if you go and you read the law, it is clear that the reason why people are members of this committee are appointed by a sitting government for a four year term, which is ostensibly the term of the government itself, is so that each government will have the power to create a committee that more or less reflects the values and the positions and the policies for which they were elected. And this has not happened with this government. So this government is living with a committee that was chosen by the government that it replaced. And it has been stymied in its efforts to rejuvenate, to recreate the committee, much in line with the letter of the law. But beyond that, the Supreme Court now coming and seeing, saying the law that says that without a minimum quorum this committee cannot act is null and void is a little bit.

[B]

No, it didn't say that that law was null and void. It said that in this case we're going to take competing values and we're going to say that we can.

[A]

We're going to say that we nullify and void the law in this one case.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So just as the government decision says, it was just about this case, by the way, which bolsters your side.

[C]

So

[A]

I think that the frustration of the government, especially because all of this is against the backdrop of a whole bunch of very rich people with a very clearly stated political view, want to buy a radio station, a TV station, excuse me. And they are a highly politicized group of people and it's very, very clear that this government's appointees, had they been able to appoint their people, would never approve this sale. For what I think to be good reasons we've discussed here on the podcast and in every coffee shop in Tel Aviv, we've discussed the opposite thing. When right wing oligarchs and fabulously rich Russian billionaires want to buy station here in order to prop up the government, then we criticize that I'm critical of this sale and the fact that this ruling comes in some way explicitly to make this sale go through just weeks before a new election seems to me to just be an absolute robbing this democratically elected government of its democratically elected rights and power powers. And I think that I Share in the outrage of all the people that sat in the cabinet and voted for this resolution, which I think explains the outrage, explains why it's so strongly stated. And so I think that that is important to understand. This isn't just some people who decided they wanna say fuck you to the Supreme Court or decided they wanna take over the TV and radio. It is people who look at the law, understand that they ought to have, almost a year ago or nine months ago, appoint, appointed a new commission. They were prevented by the courts from doing that. And now they're seeing a TV station being sold off to their political opponents. And they believe that the court is simply part of the process that is allowing this to happen. Because the court is.

[B]

How do you really feel about this?

[A]

It's just immediately framing it as, oh, this is just another issue of the government taking over the course.

[C]

Quick clarifying question. When you say a highly politicized group of people, what makes them highly politicized? Maybe I have different standards for what I consider to be extreme, but just the fact that they have one clear stance, which is kind of the anti BB block.

[A]

Because among the leadership of this group were people who were highly prominent in that year of demonstrations just before October 7th. They were highly politically affiliated, big donors to the Kaplan protests. And I don't think that that necessarily means that in the end they shouldn't own a TV station. I think it's a complicated issue. But I do think that I understand why somebody's saying the Supreme Court is saying we will not follow the laws that are written in the books that have always been followed until now in order to let these guys buy this television station. I understand.

[B]

I think it's super bifurcated here, this question about following a Supreme Court rule and this specific issue of the tv. And I think the government. You know, the analysis that I've heard that I've that sound about right to me is the government's been chipping away at the Supreme Court's power. You know, been trying to in all kinds of ways. It's just tried all. It's certainly the rhetoric has been, you know, about this being the enemy, about the court being an enemy of democratic governance. That's their position. And one sort of scenario here or one take on this is simply that it is indeed not the Supreme Court's greatest moment. It is not their strongest ruling. And they found a weak chink. And this was a good time to sort of show where, you know, to flex the muscles of the government and say, we're gonna do this thing which goes beyond rhetoric, and that's what I think is important to me. This is a little bit of a Rubicon. I don't know if there's such thing as a little bit of a Rubicon. To make a government decision is very different from government, even from the prime minister coming out and speaking out against the courts. I think it holds a very, very different place in sort of the.

[A]

Importantly, this was not a decision, it was a statement. A decision will come if they say we are going to use the police to block these people from convening or whatever might happen, which I believe will not happen in any instance. This was a statement saying fuck you. And it's bad to have the government say to the Supreme Court, fuck you. But it's different than them not following the ruling of a Supreme Court.

[B]

I wanna make an argument for bad rulings or, or for counterintuitive rulings. We live on those kinds of rulings. We eat vegetables on every seven years because of a ruling that entirely contravenes the Torah. We do not kill our disrespectful children, even though the Torah says that we should. The Ben Sora more. And that in contravention to this supposedly implacable law. We have a very, very long, important and venerable tradition of rulings that contravene the written law. And I wouldn't trade that in for anything because I think of all of the systems, all of them flawed. That idea that we have a ruling body of multiple voices is sitting and given even to the point of saying what God said and what the absolute law, black on white, says. We're going to change, we're not going to follow it, we're going to find this other thing. And that's, I think, more important to me than the, than the injured ego of people who want to continue to have a Channel 14 driven media landscape, which is also part of the context.

[A]

I agree with you, of course, but then it just makes it all the more important that that body be a body that has the trust of every side of the political map. And the Supreme Court, by the way, with its long history of being almost entirely Ashkenazi, almost entirely like liberal until 20, entirely coming from a single law school in the country, every single justice coming from this hothouse in the Hebrew University, almost all being secular, I think that when people say, and today, today it's quite different.

[B]

Okay, so why are you going into the history of this? We only can go forward and we live in today.

[A]

Because it's not. Because it is not different enough. Because the claim of the feeling of the people who believe that the Supreme Court is out to advance an agenda stems from the fact that they have a lot of reasons to believe that the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court represents a very.

[C]

But it's also rooted in grievances that you yourself just said are essentially 20 years old without saying that the Supreme Court is perfect and that they've fixed all of their own problems.

[B]

And it's also inflamed by people who are making the little hay out of those 20 year old grievances.

[A]

But the 20 year old grievances, you're not wrong.

[B]

I'm just saying that they're very useful to a government that wants to override the court.

[A]

I'm saying that they're heartfelt and that they're real and that it means that one can't have. Remember you just described the Supreme Court as God and.

[B]

No, no, no, I describe the law as God. I describe the Court as the rabbis,

[A]

interpreters of the law, as the rabbis interpreting God. And for people who come and say, arguing with God, say these are not our rabbis, rabbis, I think that that voice has to be understood. I think that it comes from. I think that it's sincere. What you're saying about how it is exploited by politicians is completely true, obviously. But I also think that it has a foundation that is sincere. Even those politicians exploiting it, almost all of them, I think deeply, deeply, deeply believe it. But certainly the people for whom it resonates to say, we no longer. We do not trust the students of Aharon Barak. We do not trust them to take into account. And so what Smotrich meant when he said me is he meant elected officials. He meant. What Smotrich meant is I trust the people to elect the Knesset that will represent them. And I see the problem with that too.

[C]

If you actually look at his follow up quotes, and he's asked repeatedly about it afterwards. He met him personally, actually, and his party, which is quite ironic.

[A]

Though he meant elected officials, he did not mean I want to be the philosopher king and all you need to do do is to trust me.

[C]

I know we're out of time, but I could argue with you on that one.

[A]

Now listen to this and you'd win. That song is by Lihi Desnet. And now it's time for our second discussion, which we are calling serious games. And here's why. The 22nd Maccabiah Games are on. And they've got all the things that make sports what they are. The thrum of beautifully formed people doing Things you wouldn't have thought that people can do with grace and power. When Jojo Ifergin scored a clutch basket to tie the game at the buzzer in the under 17 girls basketball competition, sending Israel into overtime against the USA, the joy in her face it was beautiful to see when the Americans finally beat the Israelis 61 to 57. It was hard even for people like me, rooting for the home team to feel disappointed. Eliana Taft scored 22 points for the USA and man, she deserved to win for a long time, owing to the wars and all the uncertainty that came with them, it seemed unlikely that these Maccabi ah Games would take place at all. They were supposed to be last year, but they were put off owing to the first round of war with Iran. And it must have taken a great amount of hope and courage for the organizers to not postpone or cancel the games this time a lot was at stake. The financial paper Globes reported that the cost of the thing was over 270 million shekels, or $90 million. For the games to be happening, they must have mattered a lot to a lot of people. In fact, according to the Maccabia organization, more than 8,000 athletes have come to take part in the Games, representing 55 countries and participating in 45 different sports. These numbers are smaller than those produced by the 2022 Maccabia Games, which were also delayed by a year owing to Covid 4, 10,000 competitors came from 80 countries. But given the danger and the uncertainty, and given how hard it is even just to get a plane ticket to Israel these days, 8,000 people coming to play these games is a very big number. Which raises a big question, why? Why have a Maccabia at all? What is it? What is it for? This question is all the more pointed because, like cotillions or high table at Oxford in full medieval regalia or Scottish weddings in kilts, the Maccabia Games seem somehow to belong to an earlier era. Maccabiya arose from what some scholars call the Jewish sports movement, which started in the 1880s in Central Europe. Equally a product of Jewish pride and a product of Jewish self loathing, young Jews were excluded from Volkish sports clubs, especially on university campuses. An exclusion that owed to antisemitism, sure, but many young Jews found it hard to deny that the Christians, refusing to let them join their games, were right in wondering whether Jews had the stuff of the athlete, whether they had the physical and the fortitude. So the Jews resolved to set up their own sports clubs that would toughen up Jewish youth enough to show the goyim that they deserve a place on the parquet or on the ice, or on the pitch or on the canvas or on the track. From almost the beginning, the Jewish sports movement was all mixed up with Zionism in very complicated ways. Sports was viewed everywhere at the time as an expression of nationalism and a vehicle to promote national fellow feeling. One reason why Jews were excluded from German clubs was because they were considered in the to be somehow foreign, not quite German enough to be on the German field. Jews too saw in Jewish sports an expression of their own national identity. Max Nordau famously said in his speech to the second Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 that, quote, our duty is to create again a muscular Judaism, a muscul Judentums. Jewish sports clubs popped up throughout Central and Eastern Europe at the start of the 20th century, and they spread quickly to the United States, South Africa, Palestine and basically everywhere where there were Jews. The idea of a Jewish Olympics was first raised in 1911. The first modern Olympics in the world were held in 1896, just a year before Nordau said what he said at that Zionist convention. Organizing began in earnest in 1928, and the first games were held in Tel Aviv in 1932. A stadium that could hold 20,000 people, 5,000 of them sitting and 15,000 standing, was built where the Yarkon river meets the sea, right across from the Reading power station. And Ben Yehuda street was paved all the way north, almost to the river, so that city residents could go and see the Games. Which is why, you know, my street basically was made for the Maccabiya Games. The second Maccabiya was held in 1935, and the third was supposed to take place in 1938. But the Nazis put the kibosh on that. When the third Maccabiah Games were held in Rehovot, Ramatgan, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel, it was already 1950, and their meaning had already been transformed by the tragedy of the Holocaust and the miracle of Israel's establishment. But just what the Maccabia Games had become was no longer quite clear. Before Israel was established, the Games were an expression of a strange internationalist, or maybe diasporic nationalism. The Jewish people was sending its most physically talented daughters and sons to meet and compete with one another, linking together Jews from Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Berlin and Beersheva. But Israel changed this centerless internationalist nationalism. Jews would go to the Maccabiya in Israel. It, from then on was held only in Israel to compete against other Jews from other places. This was an act of Jewish unity, but also a reflection of the multiplicity of national identities among Jews. In the 1952 Maccabiyah, South African Jews dominated Israeli Jews and Jews from everywhere else. Their identity was importantly South African. It was kind of confusing what this all was, and it remains confusing. Almost a decade ago, two Maccabees ago, Haareta's famously dyspeptic columnist and TV reviewer Rogel Alfer wrote an essay headlined Boycott the Maccabiyah Games with the sub headline the Maccabiyah Games is a racist event. That makes the 1936 Berlin Olympics seem liberal. Rogelaufer wrote, quote, is there any difference between an Olympics only for Aryans and an Olympics only for Jew? A difference between an Olympics for all races with the exception of Jews, and an Olympics only for the members of the Jewish race? No, there is no difference. Racism is racism. To this, an American sports writer named Ron Kaplan, who himself wrote a history of the Maccabiya, wrote a reply in which he pointed out that, quote, if a black American sprinter were Jewish, he would certainly be welcome. The same holds if an athlete from China or Mexico or any other nation. In fact, strictly speaking, one does not even have to be Jewish if he or she is a citizen, citizen of Israel. Arab Israelis enjoy the same opportunity to represent, end quote. Rogel Alfer's complaint is obviously overstated in his charming fashion, but it is still easy to understand his confusion about what the Maccabiyah Games are for, what they mean and whether they still make any sense in our age, and whether they ought to go on also whether their meaning has somehow changed after October. Miriam, what do you think about these games? What do they mean to you, if anything? And what, as far as you can tell, do they mean to anyone and what should they mean?

[B]

I kind of feel like it is important to see them in the light of post October 7th, where if you could have argued before October 7th that maybe the time had come for these to wane, I think you can make a really great case that that is not true and that more sort of more attention, more resources, or at least you can justify the resources that are putting into this.

[A]

Because why?

[B]

Well, I should say because I think the notion that the universalism, that universalism in sports makes any sense, or that this notion that it's the world and it should be everyone is kind of broken up by the experience right now of Jews in the Diaspora. And I think part of such a big part of the Maccabiyah is about, rather than about competition, it is in many ways more about Jewish union, which is, I think, extremely, you know, alive right now. I just want to say that as you know, I may not be the right person, you know, the best person anyway, to talk about sports of any kind. I don't have the. It just wasn't raised with the impulse of, why did I forget? Whenever I do watch a basketball game or get dragged out to a baseball game, it's the best thing I've ever done or seen. I can't imagine why we don't do it, you know, why I'm not there, you know, at live sporting events. Oh, my goodness, it's just great. And then I forget about it. It's like I forget to read poetry. I just didn't. It wasn't part of my culture or my cultural upbringing, and I blame everybody else except myself, for that. And second, I've just been really busy at work, and so I haven't really, like, had the bandwidth to watch it. I do, you know, always enjoy the glimpses I get of the parade with everybody walking. I like parades. I like spectacle. And I'm sure that there are also. I was chatting with some people who are staying in a hotel that's filled with these athletes, and they said, like, getting into the elevator with these people is just, wow, you know? Cause just imagine, like, an elevator full of Jewish, Mexican athletes, their absolute best, you know, and they're all very polite and lovely. And so I'm sort of missing out on the excitement of that, and that's on me. But as an event, as something that says something about where we're at right now. Going back to what I was saying, I think that there's just so much to be said for driving home this message of belonging, of Jewish belonging, and of Israeli belonging. I once made the mistake and said it was all Jewish. As the respondent to Rogel Alpert pointed out, it is Israeli and Jewish, and there are star athletes who are not Jewish. Gold medal lists through the years. And I just. I think it's kind of terrific. It's. If you come from Argentina or Australia or South Africa and you don't have to speak a word of Hebrew, but you feel like you belong. And I can imagine going to other sporting events today in international settings and not having that experience.

[C]

I mean, I'm like Miriam, with the caveat that I would never allow myself to get dragged to a live sports game.

[B]

I'm gonna take you to a basketball game.

[C]

Good luck. A lie.

[B]

A lie.

[C]

Okay. It's interesting what you say about belonging, because the way I think about sports, especially when I'm stuck in a conversation with someone who really wants to talk about that topic is that it's kind of a productive way of channeling aggressive group emotions and identities and affiliation into a healthy, healthy competition. And I think there is something beautiful and valuable about that. If the choice is between going to war and competing in the World cup, let's do the World Cup. By the way, tonight is the Morocco versus France game. And the only reason I know that is because it's one of the only games where Israelis and Palestinians will be rooting for the same side, largely. Yeah. But besides that, I couldn't tell you literally anything else. And the way I think about every an all Jewish Israeli competition event is, and this might be extremely offensive, to be honest, to both of the things that I'm about to use in this comparison. It's kind of like women's Talmud learning groups of creating a space for strengthening skills where women feel comfortable. But the assumption there, right, is that we're doing this in this specific limited format, either because the women don't have access to something beyond which I think is really problematic, or we assume that the women's skills are somehow lower so they need to be in their own separate group. And the Maccabeeh games, I, I think my, my baseline assumption, and feel free to attack me on this, is that it's kind of set up as this Nebuch, you know, well, Jews aren't as good as sports. Everybody knows that. So let's create a place where they can compete without feeling, feeling the pressure of a real competition.

[A]

There was ambivalence threaded through this thing from the very beginning. And some of it was certainly that what you just said, that Jews aren't as good and we need a place to develop ourselves. But some of it was also the opposite. And you could find both these threads in a situation single person. The opposite being that no, we are every bit as good. Let us bring ourselves to a place where we do not feel the pressure of us needing to prove ourselves as Jews, and you will see how we flourish. I guess I'm one of those people that annoy you by wanting to talk about sports, because it does seem to, to me, it's incomprehensible to me how someone could not see what is like beautiful and powerful about sports. And beyond that I will say I think that this is a footnote, but I think it's a big problem on the left in Israel that leftists are anti sports. And in general, not everyone, you can find people, but in general people tisk and kind of roll their eyes when you talk about sports, leaving the Idea of fellow feeling and of celebrating the astonishing achievements of.

[B]

Is that true what you're saying?

[C]

I've never had my political identity linked to this part of my political identity.

[B]

Oh, it left this circle.

[A]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I don't think. I don't have anything statistically to support it, but I do know for years and that if you take seriously, try to take seriously sports in. When you're at an Omdin B Yachad meeting or when you're at. Then people look at you like, ugh. And then also, I mean, we heard in what Tila said that it's some way of. That there's this analysis of sports as being this way of getting out. Of getting out your like awful nationalist chauvinism and aggression on the sports field, which is better than killing people. And that analysis is a left wing analysis.

[B]

Are you saying it's not better than killing people? Is that your.

[C]

I know, but conversation takes a turn.

[A]

I think that like sort of knee jerk I was gonna say, but that's not really the word that I'm looking for. This sort of like deep suspicion of fellow feelings that come simply from sharing an ethnic or national background with people is really foundational in a lot of leftist thought. We're not supposed to think that way. Which gets to my point about the Maccabiya. My major point, which is too fancy a point, but I believe it like my Zionism. The reason why I am so enthralled by Zionism is I think that it is broadly an attempt to offer an alternative modernity to the world, I mean to ourselves and to everyone. To say that the way that modernity went with the enlightenment of going to a place of wealth, of treating people like the basic unit of political analysis is the individual. And you're supposed to relate to everyone as an individual with their own individual honor and individual rights, and not treat people as though group identity really matters, including politically, including philosophically, certainly emotionally, in a way that's positive, not something to be stamped out. So what Zionism says is imagine a modern world in which we take seriously that our ethnic, religious, national commitments are really important and really valuable and they have weight in. They should have weight in law and they should have weight in politics as well. I think that if we had the language to take that seriously, then we would be living in a different world. By the way, the world is pushing back now all around the world against the enlightenment version of modernity. Like, that's clearly on its way out, that's clearly not working anywhere. And I think that what the Maccabia was is a way of saying, yeah, there is. It makes sense for someone from Mexico who doesn't share a common language and probably doesn't share very many, you know, values or customs with someone from, you know, from Leningrad or now St. Petersburg and someone from Beersheva, to get together and to feel as though they are part of a single people. And the Maccabia, like, bravely makes that claim when it frankly no longer makes sense in the world we live in. Like, the world isn't that world, but it suggests an alternative world.

[B]

I think it plays on this, like, really interesting tension between, I think the Enlightenment problem is a problem of colonialism. And in some ways, this response says, we recognize a form of tribalism, a positive form of tribalism among people, and we also recognize that people can function in multiple dimensions and say, go, you know, my team. And aren't we all? You know, the Olympics is very much about that. You know, we're a country, but it's really about the universal, you know, usually they say of man, you know, the brotherhood of man is usually used to be the phrase. And it sort of always sort of goes back and forth. It's like a spinning coin between the, you know, that part of our identity and the other parts. And these are very, very powerful things that we shouldn't expect to suppress. But we can also, like, they do not have to be all defining, and sometimes we can play with them. We can not take them entirely seriously. We can put on our, you know, our hats and wave our flags, even if at home, back in whatever country we're from, we're, you know, not in supporting the government. It's. We sort of move around these things, and I, I like that. And what I would also say is there is something ideal about the broadness with which people are accepted. People are not checking your rabbinic certification to admit you into the Maccabiya. You don't need President Trump to call and say, this player is really an American, as happened over the last few days in the World cup, to no avail for the team, but you instead, it's just, it's this fellow feeling or this connected feeling to get away from the gender term. And, you know, you just wish that that was what, the way Israel looked at the wider world. And, you know, it's just a very, like, open, much more porous sense of identity, because that's much more accurate.

[C]

Yeah, I'm still sitting with the accusation that leftists aren't interested in sports.

[B]

I'm taking it to a basketball game.

[C]

There's nothing like it. Let's do it. First of all, I will say that in the Israeli Palestinian seminar that I participated in this weekend, I was definitely in the minority in terms of people who were not following very closely everything that was happening on the World Cup. And I think there's a tendency in general too, and I think there's certainly an element of truth to this, to accuse left leaning people of being much more interested in universalist framings. And anything that smacks of group identity is, is something that they're quite suspicious of. And yes, that is the, the natural tendency I think specifically Israeli leftists, with the exception maybe of, of the far left extreme left, which is a tiny proportion of what is already maybe a small group of left in Israel. I, I don't think that's the case here. I think it's quite different and I know a lot of Israel Israeli leftists who, unfortunately for me, love talking about sports. So I'm just putting that on the table to defend the political affiliation.

[A]

Now listen to this. That song is overrated by Amalia Yana. You can find all the songs you heard on the show today in all the usual places. And now it's time for our Veta country segment. This is part of the show in which each of us describes something that might have surprised or amused, maybe delighted, enchanted and source old or sometimes, you know, possibly even fluged us as we wend our way through our world. Tila, what is your. What a country.

[C]

So I'll take a moment from the seminar, the dialogue seminar that I was on this weekend when I was trying to think of which. Which part I would take out of that. It was quite difficult because, because everything felt complicated, loaded. This is supposed to be sort of the light breezy segment and Israeli Palestinian dialogue at the moment is not that. But there was this moment at the end of the seminar, things had formally closed and I was sitting around a table with two Palestinians and someone who worked at the hotel that we were staying at who we had sort of picked up randomly. And she was this young German, Persian, one of these people with four ethnicities and 00 political opinions, kind of is living her best life as a citizen of the world. And she asked us how we all knew each other. And I pointed to my Palestinian colleague who works with me at the Initiative from her side. And I said, we've been working together for seven years. This is my sister. And the other Palestinian, I can use his name because his name is Mohammed. So I'm not giving anything away there. Mohammed says he leans forward and he says in a very excited voice to this poor German Persian who doesn't know what conversation she's gotten herself into. Just so you know, just so you know, when she says that she's her sister, she is Israeli and she is Palestinian, and. And this poor innocent woman goes, her eyes light up a little bit and she goes, you know, that's so beautiful. And it doesn't matter. Israeli, Palestinian, it doesn't matter. And Mohammed and I both say at the same time, no matters. And I think that moment for me was. I mean, you know, it was cute and we laughed, but there was also this feeling of that we're doing dialogue right. And I think there are so many ways to do it wrong. But the ability to come out of that space in those complicated situations and to point to somebody from the other side and say, this is my sister, and we are Israeli and Palestinian, and that matters. We're holding that complexity and we're holding those differences, and it doesn't mean that there is not a lot of love in this space. So I ended on a very high note.

[A]

Hear, hear. That is beautiful. Miriam, what is your Voda country?

[B]

Whenever I don't have a good Voda country topic, I just move house. So I don't know if it's because we like the peripatetic life, or it's because they finally sewed up a deal to replace our bucolic old block building in Bitzarone with some sort of real estate arrangement or other, but we have found a great new place, and it's not too far away. Just a five minute bike R. You go north up Moshe Dayan Road, where I live now, which turns into Aliyata Noar, and then you hang a left on Emek Bracha, and you're in what will be our new neighborhood of Nachalat Yitzhak. So, yeah, it's just up the road, and by up, I mean up a pretty steep hill. So I don't know if elevation has to do with it, but it just so happens that a famous historical feature of where I live now on Moshedayan street is a water cistern. And a defining historical feature of our future neighborhood is a water tower. The cistern across the street was built in the late 19th century by the Templars, a Protestant movement that broke away from the Lutheran church. They're the ones that lived in Sirona, which we know well today as a restored historic district with restaurants, shops, public gardens across from the Kyria military headquarters. But they farmed across the Island river they were great at farming with modern scientific methods, but lousy at ideology. In the 1930s, as German nationals, and to assist significant extent, as Nazi party members and sympathizers, they exited Palestine stage right. The Haganah pre state military underground turned the cistern and the building above it into a radio transmission station disguised as a pasta factory. So, Noah, the western side, your side of the Ayalon river, over there in your fancy, Rothschild Boulevard. That's where the State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948. And as anyone who listens to your fantastic accounts of Tel Aviv history knows, the very first announcement of Call Yisrael, the Voice of Israel with David Ben Gurion reading the Declaration of Independence came from an improvised studio over there on your side of the Aya alone. But Ben Gurion's voice went by telephone over the river to the transmitters on my side. And that's actually how the announcement got broadcast to the nascent citizens of the nascent State of Israel. So today this station has been beautifully restored. It's called Beit Hashidor Harishon, the First Broadcast House, and they run programs for kids to learn to make podcasts, and they offer hours for folks to come use the space to work in. And after the last round of fighting with Iran, they invited neighborhood residents to come record their war experiences. So it's pretty lovely. Now, when we move up the hill in a few weeks, we'll live in spitting distance from the historic water tower, actually a pair of towers of Nachalat Yitzhak. And what I know about them so far is what I could see yesterday walking along Chafetz Chaim street near our new favorite cafe, which is that the towers are nestled amidst a complex of elementary and preschool buildings. I know that the lower portions were used as classrooms and a synagogue. And I also know that my soon to be neighbors have successfully fought development plans that would erase those towers. But I will be going to look inside and will report back to you on what I see. And here's another thing I learned, and I've been passing by and through Nachalat Yitzhak for many years. But I was today years old when I learned that Yitzhak in the name is for Rabbi Yitzhak Elhanan Specter. The Lithuanian Jews who settled it in 1925 gave it that name. If you're a non religious or non Orthodox Jew, Yitzchak Elhanan Specter may not ring a bell, but if you grew up in the Orthodox world, you'll recognize the name of the Preeminent halachic authority of the Russian empire in the late 19th century and one of the leading rabbis in the world of Ashkenazi Jewry. In fact, Reits, the rabbinical seminary of Yeshiva University, stands for Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Theological Seminary. So I'll be living on the corner of Emek Bracha street, named for the biblical Blessed Valley where an army gathered after a military victory, and Binyamini street, named for a famous doctor whose best feature was treating poor people who couldn'. Behind us is Peat Hashulchan street, honoring the 19th century guide to the agricultural laws of Eretz Yisrael by Rabbi Yisrael Shklov. And in the middle there's a little park with swings, exercise equipment, a free take a book leave a book library and a community clothing rack. All that and the best bakery on either side of the Ayalon is very promising. So you may be hearing more about the new place and if history is any guide, by the time I reach run out of neighborhood stories, I'll probably be moving again.

[A]

Oh, hear, hear. It sounds wonderful. I look forward to seeing it. So mine is this. You'll recognize some continuity in the things that I've been talking about. I guess it's on my mind. I just got back yesterday from my, I don't know, 40 or 50 hour trip back from visiting my folks. A bit in a daze, a bit in a mood. And I had that experience that we've all had. I think though because of the days and because of the mood, I had it maybe more than usual this time. It started before I got back. I was flying El Al. But when my connecting flights were canceled in dc, Delta, like I said, took over my case. I guess that's protocol. And they rebooked me through JFK two days later, as I said. So then I got on the phone with Elal, who said at first that there's nothing we can do. Delta's got your file. But after I explained to Ellie, who was the supervisor working my no longer case as far as Elal was concerned, after I said to her that I really, really, really, really wanted to get home and sooner than Delta had arranged, she said, okay, I am here for you. We were talking in English, but that's what she said. Hineni. It was biblical and people. She stayed on the phone with me for more than three and a half hours trying to find a solution. She found one better flight later that night, but then she couldn't get a connection. So she found another better flight leaving the next morning. But when she tried to book it. The system just would not let her do it. So she said, we need Delta. Call them and I will stay on the phone with you and tell you what to say to them. By now I'd taken a lift back to my folks place from the airport all the time I was on the line with Ellie while I was making the trip and I called Delta on my folks landline and the person there couldn't relinquish control back to El Al. So she put on her supervisor whose name was Jeremy. And all the while Ellie was sereno de bergeracking me, telling me what to tell the Delta people. And finally she said, ask if I can speak to Jeremy directly, supervisor to supervisor, I suppose shit was getting real. And Jeremy said he would be happy to speak with Ellie, but there was just no way to do it technically. And Ellie said, just put both phones on speaker and we'll talk. And I did, holding the two phones together like a kid holds a Barbie and a Ken doll real close, making them kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss. And Jeremy said, look, I'm sorry, there's no way to let El Al book the ticket. And they at Delta could not make the booking for some reason that Ellie could. So Ellie said, but you can do better than what you're offering in two days I see that you have a flight back via Paris tomorrow. And Jeremy said, oh yes, I didn't see that. And he booked me national to De Gaulle and then De Gaulle to Ben Gurion. And that's how the trip only took 40 something hours instead of 60 something hours. And that's how I got on a plane from D.C. to Paris filled with fashionable Parisiennes and normie American tourists. And then after that I got on a plane from Paris to Tel Aviv filled with Israelis. And the first flight was the very picture of civility. When we landed, no one stood up. Everyone waited until everyone ahead of them had already filed out. And then one by one we calmly stood up, gathered the bags from above and then walked up the clear aisle. And the second flight, I don't need to tell you, was pandemonium with people sitting in seats that weren't their own and arguing with the people who tried to get them to move. And the Haridi guys who had settled in seat 26C. I was in 26D, across the aisle from him, that Haridi guy, telling the guy who tried to get him up from the seat, which was not his, that he, his wife and his daughter were all supposed to sit in the three seats that they had Bought that Haridi guy. Said back to the guy. Look, life is too short for getting heated about such things. Your heart is more important than sitting together on a short trip, he said, the French flight attendant. He fixed that little misunderstanding. Anyway, when we landed, the applause were really, really strong. It was like a standing ovation. More than I have heard since the 1980s, I think. And then there was the push and jostle of getting off the plane, everyone doing everything all at once. And the ramp that leads down to the old passport control place, if you've been there, you know it. And leads down to the baggage claim. As I was walking down that ramp, a haredi guy, maybe 35 years or 40 years old, he whizzed by. He was sitting on top of his four wheel roller suitcase and just whizzed down the smooth polished stone floor at really great speed. I tried to get out my phone and take a video, but he was gone. And the image of him speeding by, his hand on the top of his head to keep his hat from flying off in the wind and his payas trailing behind him and the look of joy on his face, I was sure that he was fall over or run into a wall. But he made it to the bottom just fine. And once it again, I was so happy to be where I was because of the exuberance of everything all around me, the energy, the energy of everything going on around me. The we are here of it. It was just beautiful and I felt like, oh my, I am home. And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to Itay Shellam, our station manager, without whom we would have none of this. Thanks to Achibo Lim, my favorite band from Kibbutz Geba. They give us the music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you Tila. Thank you Natalie. Thank you Miriam. We'd like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. It keeps the show going and the station going and it keeps us moved and grateful and in your debt. And we'd like to thank all of you out there for taking your valuable time to listen and actually like us on Facebook and then drop us a line through Patreon. That's the best way to do it. And we are going to answer. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe, maybe one that starts with this. Among poker aficionados, it is an article of faith that if you can't spot the schmuck at the table, it is you. Suffice it to say that the Promise Podcast never spots the schmuck at the table. Da da da. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that tomorrow, as we record on the second Friday of July, we celebrate International Fry Day. French Friday. Get it? Fri Day on Friday. It works on so many levels. So stipulated way back in 2022, at the height of the corona by the American fast food chain Checkers and Rallies, who launched the campaign with the tagline from Fry Day to Friday. The first Friday spelled F R Y space D A Y, the second spelled F R I D A Y. See, before that, there was an annual International Fry Day to celebrate delicious slivers of potatoes cooked in boiling oil. It was celebrated each year on July 13, no matter what day of the week that fell on. And it was the genius of the people at Checkers and Ral that they realized that a day in honor of the fry really ought to be well on Friday. And all the rest is history, save for the perhaps curious fact that International Fry Day is now celebrated on the second Friday of July, even in cultures where the Friday Friday pun does not really work. In India, for instance, they celebrate International Fries Day in the plural. In the Netherlands, they celebrate International Nationale Dag Wander Friet. In Belgium, they've got Journey Internationale de la Frite Belge, which is pretty far from Friday, which anyway in French is Vandra Die. Here in Israel, the second Friday of July is stipulated to be Yom Hatchips. And I think you see the problem. Still, despite or maybe because of our little babble of names for Friday, International Friday remains probably my favorite day of the entire year. Because French fries are delicious and because it's amusing to think of all the people in all the places solemnly marking the second Friday of July without understanding or even being aware of the pun of the thing. Still, even though International Fry Day has not yet started, it's tomorrow already. I feel like just like the fries that are on that one plate that you ordered for the whole table, sure that it'd be enough until it came and everyone attacked it like a pack of wild, filthy animals and it was clear that it would not be enough at all. Just like those fries already in my mind's eye, the day is fading away, not to return for a long, long time. Not so the Promise Podcast we will be back for you next week and most every week, reminding you that while when it comes to fried potatoes, a pun can be the reason a day becomes a holiday that is then celebrated with gusto in places where the pun does not work at all, even as the holiday somehow does. It remains true that there are things that do not need a pun in the first place in order to fail to work, causing you to scratch your head and think what were they thinking on this? The Promised podcast.