The "Egypt Within Us" Edition

Summary

Podcast Summary: The "Egypt Within Us" Edition

The Promised Podcast – TLV1 Studios
Date: April 1, 2026
Hosts: Noah Ephron, Linda Gratzine, Judah Ari Gross

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Overview

This episode of The Promised Podcast explores the profound contradictions and emotional intensity of life in Israel, focusing on current events, Passover traditions, and the tenuous hope for peace and justice amidst ongoing war. Against the backdrop of escalating violence and the looming Passover holiday, the hosts discuss settler violence in the West Bank, the evolving meaning of the Exodus story, and the everyday resilience required to navigate life in an embattled country.

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Main Segments & Key Insights

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1. Opening & Viral Municipal Video: "Tehran to Tel Aviv 2030"

• [00:18] Noah opens by describing a viral municipality-sourced video imagining direct flights from Tehran to Tel Aviv in 2030.
• The video, entirely in Farsi, depicts an Iranian tourist experiencing Tel Aviv’s food, sea, nightlife, and people; it ends with the message: “You’ve just watched an imaginary reel. For now, everything can still change. Everything must change.”
  • Quote:
    “If we are so similar, how were we ever so far apart? So now there are direct flights from Tehran to Tel Aviv. Don't miss it. Kisses from Tel Aviv 2030.”
• The hosts reflect on the mixture of confident hope for peace and the current harsh reality where Israel and Iran are at war.

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2. Life in Israel: Anxieties and Everyday Humor

• [05:13] Linda narrates her early-morning missile siren, followed by Passover shopping experiences.

• Lighthearted banter about different supermarket chains and kitniyot (legumes) debate within Passover observance.

  • Quote:
    Linda: "Oshar ad, which means happiness forever, is happiness once you actually leave the store. And that you survived."
    [05:33]

• Noah shares a touching story about “Cafe Mi Aleve,” a city hall café staffed by people with special needs.

  • Quote:
    Noah: “The people who work there are so, so nice … they ask, how has your day been? … And I find myself thinking, you know, we don't have all day here… But I think I am capable of pettiness at a level that other people can only dream about.”
    [08:02]

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3. Passover in Wartime – Voices from Across Israel

“Promise Podcast Ponders: Passover Plans Amid Uncertainty”

• [10:14] [Segment led by Miriam] Snapshots from various Israelis about celebrating Seder under the shadow of war:
  • Roxanne Halper: Plans disrupted by canceled flights; silver lining in joining friends.
  • Faye Bittger: Worries about travel safety due to missile alerts.
  • Anita Besdin: Anxiety over being stuck on highways without a shelter.
  • Susan Warchaser: Hopes her son, an officer in Lebanon, will make it home.
  • Linda Gratzine and Varda Lifny: Stories of sons serving in the army/miluim (reserves) and juggling family.
  • Commitment to keep family traditions alive despite heavy spirits.
    • Quote:
      Anita: “If it weren’t for the desire to keep the family traditions and memory making alive for the third generation little kids, we might just forget the Seder this year.” [13:01]
  • Dogs affected by war anxiety, joining families at Seder or being left alone.
  • Seder traditions: singing, unique family menus (including humorous Persian/Iran-themed ones).
  • Heavy mood:
    • Quote:
      Faye: “This year doesn't feel like that's what we want to be doing and it's even a little heavy to broach the freedom, you know, we're not feeling so free this year.” [16:08]
  • Reflections on diaspora and rootedness:
    • Varda tells the story of the Offenbach Haggadah and Jewish families who yearned for “Worms, am Rhein,” yet were exiled by the Holocaust.
  • Universal wishes for peace:
    • Quote:
      Roxanne: “Next year in peace for everyone. Next year in justice for everyone. Also the Gazans, and also the Iranians, and also the Kurds, and also the Syrians, ... and all of us next year in peace.” [18:03]

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4. Discussion 1: "Thug Life" – Settler Violence in the West Bank

[23:25] Discussion Begins

Background & Context (Linda Gratzine):

• Former PM Ehud Olmert calls for ICC intervention against increasing Jewish extremist violence.
• Data shows sharp month-on-month rises in attacks by Jewish “hilltop youth”—with official numbers contested and UN figures possibly twice as high.
• Violence includes severe attacks on people, destruction of property, maiming livestock (“gouged eyes out of sheep”), and is widely called “pogrom.”
• Key essays:
  • Finance Minister Smotrich’s downplays the scope, blaming a “small, marginal group.”
  • Haggai Segal, convicted decades ago for anti-Palestinian violence, now condemns the new generation’s viciousness:
    • Quote:
      Segal: “Hundreds of rebellious young Jews, unburdened by any sense of law or morality, are running wild day after day… If [we] do not come out against them soon … this will be proof that these hooligans have succeeded in instilling fear not only among Arabs, but among Jews as well.” [29:39]

Analysis (Judah Ari Gross):

• Explains legal/structural constraints:
  • Military is the legal authority; soldiers struggle morally to arrest fellow Jews.
  • Civil police are ineffective.
  • Administrative detentions (problematic policy) have been halted for Israelis, making law enforcement harder.
  • Many perpetrators are “at-risk youth,” groomed for violence by radical adults.
    • Quote:
      “Obviously the people doing the violence are responsible… but we as a society also have a degree of responsibility for allowing… these at-risk youth to be lured away by these negative people instead of getting them the help that they need.” [34:50]
  • Calls for welfare interventions are often dismissed but necessary.

Moral & Societal Questions (Noah Ephron, Linda Gratzine):

• Noah:
  • Describes the horror and symbolism (“pogrom,” animal cruelty) and the failure of government, police, and society.
  • Raises haunting question: are these thugs just continuing the tradition from 1948, terrorizing to clear land for Jews?
• Linda:
  • Describes the scope—villages being cleared.
  • Calls it not just a pogrom, but a “hillul hashem” (desecration of God's name).
  • Points out settler (and Diaspora) leaders’ growing condemnation, but demands more action and accountability.
    • Quote:
      Linda: “Except for very recently, there has been no condemnation from the settler leadership. ... But I want to see, you know, widespread condemnation. ... The settler leaders know who these people are in most [cases]. We have to do better. I think we can do better, and we have to do better.” [43:47]
• Judah:
  • Notes over 3,500 Diaspora Jewish leaders have signed letters urging Israeli leaders to act.
  • Acknowledges the provocative claim that violence correlates with a decrease in Palestinian attacks, but insists this isn’t justification.

Conclusion:

• Noah:
  • Moral condemnation must be categorical, not utilitarian:
    • “We do not go and beat innocent people. We don't harm innocent people. It's not a tool that is available to us because it is so morally loathsome to us.” [47:21]
• Judah:
  • Wonders whether only elections and leadership change will bring real accountability.

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5. Discussion 2: "Our Exodus As..." – What Is the Message of Passover This Year?

[53:06] Discussion Begins

Noah frames the Seder as an annual reinvention of the Exodus, with the story always retold in light of present-day realities (drawing on Michael Walzer’s "Exodus and Revolution").

Judah Ari Gross:

• With young children at home, focuses on two themes:
  1. Transformation:
     - The Exodus as the moment of becoming a people, relevant as Israeli/Jewish society undergoes radical change.
  2. Surviving Adversity:
     - V’hi She’Amda (In every generation, they rise up against us, and the Holy One saves us)—now more poignant after Oct. 7. - The story is not how to survive, but “how do we come out of this a better people?”
     • [54:55 – 59:02]

Linda Gratzine:

• Fascinated by the obligation to “tell the story to yourself”—the healing, affirming power of narrative.
  • Emphasizes resilience and warns against the seduction of revenge:
    • “Being an advocate for Jewish survival and fighting for your survival doesn't mean that you have to kind of be sucked into this cycle of revenge, which I think is as bad for the person as for the person that it's perpetrated on.” [59:06–61:16]

Noah Ephron:

• Struggles with the always-beset message of V’hi She’Amda, worries it turns every enemy into an eternal metaphysical foe (“Hamas becomes Haman”).
• Cites Walzer: the real lesson is that we’re still in the wilderness—the reality of Israel is not the Promised Land, but the journey, full of uncertainty and unfinished work.
  • “Where we've gotten is not where so far is not where we've … where we're going. … What you see is the desert. … The Exodus is just the Exodus. It's not the getting there.” [61:16–66:04]

Judah (Response):

• Shares a resilience model: the healthiest communal stories feature “oscillations”—periods of suffering and recovery—which helps process trauma and find hope. - “The most resilient narrative structure is oscillating … there's always going to be some … but we're going to make it through.” [66:04–67:35]

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6. Vada Country: Signs of Israeli Life in Wartime

[70:51] Segment Begins

Judah:

• “Let all who are hungry come and eat” (Ha Lachma Anya) becomes more real as his family opens their Seder to stranded friends and non-Jewish students.

Linda:

• Two vignettes:
  1. Buying a last-minute ticket back to Israel for the war—security only asks why. Her answer, “I need to get back for the war,” is deemed sufficient.
  2. In war-torn Metula, a resilient café owner insists on serving coffee only in disposable cups, ready for the next siren:
     • “If there's a siren, then you can just take the coffee with you and it won't get cold. … That's resilience.” [77:11]

Noah:

• Couldn’t travel due to the war, so attends a hybrid science/religion seminar via Zoom.
• Moved by a story from a Jerusalem physicist whose deep TMS device for depression is named “H coil” for hesed (lovingkindness), connecting scientific healing to spiritual values and the ancient quest for understanding and compassion.
  • “The H, what it stands for is hesed, which is the Hebrew word for, well, what the King James Bible translates as loving kindness. … The maybe too pretty thought how … it is a short distance between what Gabi Pell’s group of physicists and neurologists … are doing … and what Avraham Abulafia, the great rabbi, creator of ecstatic Kabbalah, was doing in Jerusalem 750 years ago.” [77:11–end]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “If we are so similar, how were we ever so far apart?” — Iranian traveler (imaginary), [00:18]
• “Next year in peace for everyone. Also the Gazans, and also the Iranians, and also the Kurds, and also the Syrians, ... and all of us next year in peace.” — Roxanne Halper, [18:03]
• “These people say that they're religious. And except for very recently, there has been no condemnation from the settler leadership... But I want to see widespread condemnation. ... We have to do better.” — Linda Gratzine, [43:47]
• “What we learn is that all of Israel is a society that only values human life if it's Jewish … and any attempt on the part of Israelis to say otherwise is mere apolog[y]. … I don't think that that is what we learn from this.” — Noah Ephron, [39:31]
• “The most resilient … narrative structure is oscillating, is ups and downs … There's a certain depressing aspect … that there's always going to be the people rising up to destroy us. But … we’re going to make it through.” — Judah Ari Gross, [66:04]
• “Being an advocate for Jewish survival … doesn't mean that you have to be sucked into this cycle of revenge.” — Linda Gratzine, [59:06]
• “All we are is in the desert. … We have nothing final. … You shouldn’t be so surprised that everything is so tenuous and so fearful and … unclear, because you’re wandering through the desert.” — Noah Ephron, [61:16–66:04]

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Key Timestamps

• 00:18 – Opening: Viral “Tehran to Tel Aviv” video, hope and irony
• 05:13 – Missile sirens and Passover shopping
• 10:14 – Passover under fire: personal stories from across Israel
• 19:06 – Main topics introduction: Settler violence and retelling the Exodus
• 23:25 – Discussion 1 Begins: West Bank settler violence
• 31:01 – Structural analysis: policing, military, society (Judah)
• 41:51 – The scale and response to violence (Linda)
• 53:06 – Discussion 2 Begins: The meaning of the Exodus this year
• 59:02–66:04 – Multiple interpretations: transformation, resilience, wandering
• 70:51 – What a Country: Seder hospitality and daily resilience stories

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Tone & Style

• Mix of humor, sorrow, and deep reflection: passionate, engaged, sometimes breezy, often emotional.
• Blending of personal anecdotes, current events, and philosophical debate.
• Emphasis on the ongoing tension between existential dread and the hope for transformation, justice, and peace.

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Conclusion

This episode offers an intimate, raw, and thoughtful glimpse into Israeli society on the eve of Passover, under extraordinary stress but striving for meaning, connection, and a future of peace. The hosts examine their responsibilities as citizens, parents, and storytellers—facing both the “Egypt within us” and the transformative hope embodied by the Seder table.

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For Further Engagement

• Listen to referenced podcasts: “Madlik” (on Gaza border kibbutz Haggadot), “Orthodox Conundrum.”
• Read Michael Walzer’s “Exodus and Revolution.”
• Seek out the “V’hi She’Amda” songs by Eden Ben Zaken and Yonatan Razel for modern musical interpretations.

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For full context and emotional nuance, listening to the original episode is highly recommended.

Transcript

[Noah Ephron]

This is TLV1.

[Susan Warchaser]

This episode may contain explicit language.

[Noah Ephron]

Welcome to the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1. The voice of the cityware on these Facebook and institution pages of the municipality was posted the other day. The odd post a video above, which is an airplane emoji, a cocktail emoji and the words in Hebrew, English and Farsi. A Tehran, Tel Aviv line coming soon. And the video. It is entirely in Farsi. And the video shows a 30ish Iranian man in Bermuda shorts and orange sunglasses landing in Israel, taking a taxi to the city, eating shawarma and then lots of fancier foods, drinking in restaurants and bars, playing matkot on the beach, then volleyball, clubbing into the night, standing in a skateboard park as kids whiz all around him, walking through the Shook, biking in Florentine, having coffee with a woman, talking excitedly in case your Farsi is rusty, the text goes Quote There are four things you need to know if you are planning a trip from Tehran to Tel Aviv. First, the food. And everywhere I ate was insanely good. From street food to chefs, restaurants reserve ahead of time to the sea. There wasn't a single day I didn't visit it, whether for a sunset drink or just to relax. And what's with everyone here working out and doing yoga. 3. The nightlife crazy. You really never know how your night is going to end here or where, but shh. Some things are better left untold. That's a reference to sex, I believe. And four, most importantly, the people. All my life I was told they are our enemies. And what did I see? I saw men and women who love to live, create, laugh, ride bikes and dress however they want. I am in love. A girl named Jael told me that people say they just sit in cafes all day, but when it is time to go out into the streets and fight for what matters, they are always there. And I thought to myself, if we are so similar, how were we ever so far apart? So now there are direct flights from Tehran to Tel Aviv. Don't miss it. Kisses from Tel Aviv 2030. End quote. And after that the screen goes white and on it words appear. Quote, you've just watched an imaginary reel. For now, everything can still change. Everything must change. Tel Aviv Yaffo and the municipal logo. End quote. And arguably nothing captures that strange mixture of sure certainty that to know us is to love us and incredulity that anyone, anywhere might not love us. Despite some evidence and an occult may be cosmic confidence, especially for some reason that Persians and Israelis are destined to be besties, destined to be friends, as well as an a priori belief that everything can still change. Nothing captures all of this better than an imaginary travelogue celebrating the simpatico of a people 1900 kilometers away from one from the other, whose cities our leaders are strafing dozens and dozens of times a day, and whose leaders are launching missiles towards us dozens and dozens of times a day, sending us scurrying into shelters which unpleasantness only serves to make us all hope all the more that just a few years from now, in 2030, the missiles will have been beaten into Moscow Mule cups and the sharpest things between us reduced to spiked drinks and spiked volleyballs. With us Today, speaking from TLV1's flagship satellite studio in Jerusalem, which one's gotta figure some of those hip tourists from Tehran will probably wanna see too, is who, as much as anyone you will ever meet, loves to live, create, laugh and presumably ride bikes and dress however she wants. She's a genius at joie de vivre and gusto, a leader in lust for life, a virtuoso of verve, vitality and vivacity, an expert in exuberance. And if you ask me, she is the very best at zest. Obviously, that woman could only be Linda Gratzine. Linda Grazine has long covered Israel, first for NPR and most recently for the Voice of America. Of blessed memory. Linda is also a lecturer in journalism journalism at NYU Tel Aviv and the Hebrew University. And not too long ago at NYU Abu Dhabi, Linda has won an Overseas Press Club Award and an Alfred I. Dupont Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. Linda, I saw your post about how you remembered to move the scotch from the safe room, presumably replacing it with wine, rum, potato vodka, tequila, brandy and other Passover friendly inebriants. God wants what God wants. Am I right? How you doing?

[Linda Gratzine]

I'm doing okay. We had a siren at 5:30 this morning. And then since I was up anyway, I decided to do my big Passover shopping before we recorded this pass.

[Noah Ephron]

Oh, that is so smart. Was it not crowded? Not terribly crowded, actually.

[Linda Gratzine]

It was empty. I went to a different place. I went to the.

[Noah Ephron]

You're an Oshar ad woman, aren't you?

[Linda Gratzine]

No. Well, only when I. Not Eref Pesach. I won't even think about that. I decided, by the way, Oshar ad, which means happiness forever is happiness once you actually leave the store. And that you survived. And I saw a Facebook meme that said I survived Pesach shopping at Oud Sharad, but I went to the Carrefour the heeper carrefour. And they hadn't covered the shelves yet of chamet, so you had to kind of look at each product. And so the Arab workers there were helping me look to see that little teeny, tiny kosher le pesach sign on each thing. It was pretty funny.

[Noah Ephron]

Are you a kitniyot person?

[Linda Gratzine]

Yes. Thank goodness. It took me a while, but because we often go to kibbutz kitura, a place close to your heart, and they eat kitney out. And then I sort of decided that if it's not, it should be the minhag of the country. So it took me a while. I was kind of the last holdout in my family. But being able to eat rice makes such a difference in terms of what you can eat on Pesach.

[Noah Ephron]

Yeah, we're getting there, but it's a journey now. Also with us in the newest in the worldwide network of TLV1 studios, this one in the lovely northernish hamlet of zichron. Yaakov is a man so filled with appreciation for the world around him, given to passion, that it is no surprise that his name anagrams to his ardor jags. Obviously, that fervent, intense, fiery and vehement man could only be Judah Ari Gross. Judah Ari Gross is managing editor of e Jewish philanthropy. Before that, Judah was a correspondent for the Times of Israel, reporting first on the military and then on Israel, diaspora affairs and religion. He has lately been the inaugural Elson fellow at the Jewish federation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, with elson fellows obviously anagraming to elf woolens. And believe me, you have not seen Judah Ari Gross until you have seen him in his elf woollens. Judah, I am so glad that you are carrying forth e Jewish philanthropy as that old analog brick and mortar Jewish philanthropy was getting a little long in the tooth. How are you doing?

[Judah Ari Gross]

I'm doing okay. I just wanted to say you're a little behind the times. Voice of America was brought back to

[Noah Ephron]

life, a judgment, and then it was re killed.

[Linda Gratzine]

And then it was re killed again.

[Judah Ari Gross]

This is the killing.

[Noah Ephron]

It is rasputinous. Yes, yes, yes. So who is behind the times, Jude?

[Judah Ari Gross]

Exactly. Well, evidently I am.

[Noah Ephron]

Yes. Now, as for me, my name is Noah Ephron, and I do not mean to boast, but on the ground floor of city hall, the coffee, sandwich and salad place is called cafe mi aleve, a coffee shop from the heart. It is basically just a counter staffed all by folks with special needs, and it is fantastic. It is beautiful. On Google reviews, it has got a straight up 5.0 rating. And the people writing the reviews write enthusiastic things like tour guide Yossi Khalid, who wrote, quote, I only wish a level of service like this on many restaurants and coffee shops. Exceptional service with the kindest, most personal service. Congratulations to the wondrous, generous staff. End quote. And the fact is, the people who work there are so, so nice. And every single person who comes to get their morning coffee or lunch, they ask, how has your day been? How would you like that pretzel? Would you like it toasted? It's really lovely. It's beautiful, really. And I was there the other day, maybe third in line to get coffee and a pretzel. And the people in front are having this lovely conversation and nobody is moving too fast. Maybe three minutes go by and finally that person pays and the next person orders her thing and the guy serving her says, so, how has your day been? And he smiles and she smiles back and they talk and she says, you know, considering everything that's going on, not bad at all. How was your day? And the fellow stops and he considers the question and he starts answer. And I find myself thinking, you know, we don't have all day here. People have work to do. And please do not believe me when I say that I am not bragging. God knows my parents brought me up better than that. And I know it's not a competition, but there are a lot of pretty petty people out there. But I think I am capable of pettiness at a level that other people can only dream about. Today we have got two topics so deep and so important and so deeply important that you may find yourself thinking, it's like I've been taking the blue pill all my life and I find finally gotten the red pill. Whoa. But first, we have this matter that we are following with alert, interest and great concern as part of an occasional series we are calling the Promise Podcast ponders for momentous and memorable matters and motifs that matter most. Marshaled and mustered by Miriam

[Miriam]

Sometimes poetry pops up in unexpected places. A couple of nights ago, a resident of the very hard hit north of Israel was interviewed on the news and he leaned out of his car window and said, well, you know, war is the kingdom of uncertainty. So here we are in the kingdom of uncertainty, trying to make plans. I wanted to know how some of my friends were doing in the lead up to Passover. And they obliged with generosity and thoughtfulness as usual. Just a little warning, mainly for listeners in Israel. In a couple of minutes you'll hear a snippet of an alarm. It's not real. And I hope it's the only one you hear today or ever for that matter. So how are Seder plans going?

[Roxanne Halper]

Our Seder plans went completely kablooey this year. We were supposed to go to America to be with Noah's family and our kids and our flights were canceled and we are stuck here in Israel. And that being said, this has given us an opportunity to spend the Seder with our dearest and most beloved friends. And so there is some silver lining.

[Faye Bittger]

This has completely upended everything about our Seder logistics. At this point. It's me and my sister and brother in law and I think it's very dependent this year on can we drive places? Is that going to feel safe to drive from place to place?

[Anita Besdin]

One of the biggest problems, of course, is that you don't want to get stuck on the highway on the way to the Seder without a shelter nearby. What if there's a siren, an alert, the missile attack? So you try to find things nearby,

[Susan Warchaser]

Like many Israeli families. And my eyes are really focused on what's going on in Lebanon. And will my son, who is an officer in the Armored Division and currently on a base in southern Lebanon, make it home for the holiday? If he makes it home for the holiday, he'll bring his fiance and we'll be all in focus not only on the holiday of Pesach, but on the final preparations for his wedding in May. And if not, it'll just be myself, my husband and my daughter. And it will be a much sadder holiday.

[Varda Lifny]

My son is also in the army. Right now he's in Miluim and he

[Linda Gratzine]

has three kids and a wife who

[Varda Lifny]

is working and the kids have no school and gone. So he is supposed to be home for Seder. We're counting on that.

[Anita Besdin]

I think that if it weren't for the desire to keep the family traditions and memory making alive for the third generation little kids, we might just forget the Seder this year. I mean, really, who's in the mood for this? But we plow on. As my dad, Zichon Olivracha would say, it's what we do this year.

[Susan Warchaser]

All my conversations with my daughter are about the fact that she's an employee, a municipal employee in Tel Aviv, and she's volunteering in hotels for the evacuees, for the people whose houses have been destroyed, who don't have where to go. And so our conversations, instead of being about what we're going to cook for the holiday, are about how she wants to just come home and sleep and how she feels, feels completely depleted. It's just exhausting already.

[Roxanne Halper]

So we have this nutty, anxious and also delightful and livable dog who has become much more nutty and anxious since the war started. And we have not left her alone, not for even a minute since the war started. There's always been somebody at home or with her. And that's made it very hard to figure out how we are going to get crosstown to a Seder. And in the past it would never, ever, ever have even occurred to me to take my dog with me to anyone's Seder. But she's coming with us and she's going to run with us to whatever bomb shelter is in that neighborhood.

[Anita Besdin]

And my crazy dog, crazy as Susan's, will spend the Seder alone at my house, unless there's a siren, in which case 15 neighbors will come stomping into our mamad, which is my daughter's bedroom and scare the living daylights out of it. What I love about the center is everybody just singing some of the songs together, just enjoying the night. And it's such a family time. It's like really a time where you just hang out together, you talk, you eat, you eat, you eat and you eat and you sing.

[Roxanne Halper]

I love the singing. I particularly love the singing that happens while everybody is cleaning up and washing the dishes at midnight or one or two in the morning, singing songs from sheer hashirim. And that of course makes me miss my daughter, who I'm not going to be with this year for Seder.

[Varda Lifny]

Every year, Jonathan prepares a menu for the Seder which is placed at every place setting. It's in Italian and it's not only in Italian, but it's also filled with jokes, mostly plays on words, which I don't get sadly. But I have been assured that this year's menu is 100% about Iran. With each course given, let's call it a Persian hechter, by a different government minister from the Iranian government.

[Faye Bittger]

Passover is usually a fun time. Usually Seder is a fun thing. We think about serious subjects, we talk about freedom, and yet it's all a little light hearted and we do games and we hit each other with green onions and, and it's all fun. And this year doesn't feel like that's what we want to be doing and it's even a little heavy to broach the freedom, you know, we're not feeling so free this year. And what does that mean for us, breaking out of that?

[Anita Besdin]

It will definitely affect the mood because everybody's on edge. You're waiting for the siren. Is something going to happen? Are we going to get through this without a siren, without running to the shelter?

[Varda Lifny]

Since I do live in Jerusalem, I'm happy to say that I work at the best place in town, which is the National Library of Israel. I want to refer to a Haggadah that can usually be seen in the library gallery. It isn't at the moment because all of the treasures that are usually on display have been moved down to the vaults due to the war. This Haggadah, it's called the Offenbach Haggadah, was commissioned for a family in the city of Worms, Germany. And it's beautifully illustrated. It's really lovely. And it closes with the words Next year in Worms on mine are home, not Next year in Jerusalem. Because the family felt so deeply rooted in Germany and German culture, it was printed in 1927. By 1936, that family had fled their city, where there had been a Jewish community for over 300 years. Barely a dozen survivors returned after the war. So I'm not bringing this as an example. I'm not saying that Jews shouldn't live wherever they choose. But as a Zionist, I am saying that we should always keep the ideal of the return to our own homeland in mind.

[Roxanne Halper]

When we say next year in Jerusalem, I'm pretty sure we're supposed to mean the Yerushalayim Shalmala, the Jerusalem of heaven or heavenly Jerusalem. And that's the place where living in peace and there's justice and tolerance. And so I would say next year in Jerusalem, next year in peace. Next year in peace for everyone. Next year in justice for everyone. Also the Gazans, and also the Iranians, and also the Kurds, and also the Syrians, for that matter, and the Lebanese, and all of us next year in peace.

[Miriam]

That was Susan Warchaser. And we also heard from Roxanne Halper, Linda Lovich, Faye Bittger, Anita Besdin, Varda Lifny and Rachel Nyman. Thanks, you guys. And here's wishing them and all of us the best possible Passover under the circumstances

[Noah Ephron]

today. Two discussions. Our first discussion, thug Life, as we have seen since the start of the year, and all the more so since the start of the war with Iran, a fast rise in the amount and severity of the violence done by young men in the west bank, their faces covered, who beat shepherds and farmers with fists, pipes and fence posts, throw rocks at passerby, smash windows, set cars and homes on fire, ransack, shoot, uproot, olive and fruit trees and destroy crops, fill wells with concrete, making them useless. And there is more. Obviously these are Jews with their faces covered doing this to Palestinians with their faces in shock and fear. We will try to understand as best we can what is happening, why, how it continues, and who needs to do what in order to make it stop. And Discussion to Our Exodus As Just before we sit down at the Seder to recount the story of the Exodus as Jews have pretty much done year in, year out for more than a millennium and a half, we will ask ourselves and each other what story of the Exodus we will be telling this year and why. 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, we will give you another report from far from the front lines about day to day life in this war that could end suddenly at any time, but until it is over is really, really not over. I should add that Linda rightly wrote in an S.O.S. y kind of fashion last night that maybe we ought to be discussing the bill that was passed in the Knesset the night before last as we record to allow for the first time since Eichmann was executed for crimes he committed against humanity, to allow for the execution of of terrorists who deny the existence of the state. This has just happened and we will talk about it sometime in the near future. But before we get to any of that, it is Passover, baby. So listen to this.

[Judah Ari Gross]

Sa. Sam.

[Noah Ephron]

That song is Halach ma Anya by Aharon Razel, A Song of Zman Cherutenu the Season of Our Freedom. We will be listening to songs of Passover over the course of the show and now it is time for our first discussion. So Linda, what is happening over the Green Line?

[Linda Gratzine]

Well, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week called on the International Criminal Court or icc, to intervene to, quote, save the Palestinians and us, meaning Israelis, from settler violence on the West Bank. The former Prime Minister wrote to the Guardian, I have decided not only to not remain silent, but to draw the attention of the ICC in the Hague so that it may take enforcement measures and issue arrest warrants. Olmert's call was surprising and then again it was not surprising because it is the long standing official position of the Israeli government that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israeli citizens on the grounds that it is a biased body and that Israel has its own impressive courts which are the only courts to which Israeli citizens are beholden. A poll a while back found that 84% of Israelis say that the International Criminal Court is a political body and an anti Israel one at that. Not surprising, because Ehud Olmert is probably one of our most acid critics of Benjamin Netanyahu, who in 2009 replaced Olmert as prime minister after Olmert was indicted for fraud, taking bribes, breach of trust, falsifying corporate documents and tax evasion charges for which he was convicted in 2015 and served time. It is Olmert's hope that the ICC will somehow manage to pry Netanyahu from office, if not for war crimes in Gaza than for the fact that the violence on the west bank has been, according to Olmert, assisted, supported and inspired by government circles. Everything about so called settler violence is contested, of course. According to IDF data, in the first quarter of this year there were 231 events of Jewish nationalist violence in Judea and Samaria, the occupied territories, leaving six Palestinians dead and 30 injured. What's more, according to army data, the number of attacks has increased month by month, with 60 in January, 71 in February and 100 in March, meaning that this past month had 41% more violent attacks by Jews on Palestinians in the territories than the prior month and 67% more than in January. It's worth noting that while the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs, or OSHA, has not yet published their 2026 figures for violence against Palestinians in the west bank, judging by their month to month figures, their estimates of incidents of violence are probably about twice as high as the Israeli army's. Most of us, including this podcast, don't really have access to evidence that will confirm this estimate or that estimate. But even the IDF numbers, which are probably low and maybe seriously low, are so great that while it's hard to feel confident that you really know the facts of the matter, it is sickeningly easy to feel days that some Jews are doing awful things to some Palestinians almost every day over the Green Line. Just who these some Jews are is also contested. From eyewitnesses we learn that they are mostly, though not all, young in their teens and twenties. They are also mostly religious. Estimates of the total number of people perpetrating the violence run from as low as less than 50 to upwards of a thousand. They are often described as hilltop youth, which refers to young men who set up camp on a hilltop, typically overlooking a Palestinian town or fields. It is a matter of disagreement whether most or all of them come from Settler families. Some people assert that a good number of them are disaffected dropout youth from within the Green Line. Typically, when they do their perpetrating, the aggressors do so with their faces covered, so it's difficult to keep close track of the them. The precise nature of their violence varies. They have beaten shepherds and farmers with fists, pipes and fence posts. They have thrown rocks at passersby. They have entered villages and towns and smashed windows, set cars and homes aflame. They have ransacked. They have shot at people to intimidate them and shot people to injure or kill them. They have uprooted olive and fruit trees and destroyed crops. They have gouged the eyes out of sheep. They have filled wells with concrete, rendering them useless. Often they have done any number of these things in combination. It is for this reason that the word most often used to describe the violence they bring is pogrom. This week the national religious newspaper Makor Rishon, the paper most read and trusted by settlers, had two essays that mattered about all of this. One was by the head of the religious Zionist Party, Minister of Finance Batsalel Smotrich, who lives with his wife, Rivi Tal, and their seven kids in the settlement of Kadumim. Under the headline the campaign is fake but the responsibility of rooting out the violence is real. In it, he argues that all the terrible press Israel is getting over settler violence and the pressure coming from the White House to Tampa down vastly exaggerates the problem for the purpose of delegitimizing the settlement enterprise in Toto still Smotrism. Sadly, there is a small, marginal group that usually comes from outside the settlements, meaning inside Israel's borders, acting violently and anarchistically against both IDF soldiers and Israeli police officers, and also against Arabs. These few delinquent, Smotrich writes, are giving a bad name to all the good settlers out there. And for this reason plus because beating and terrorizing innocent people is wrong, they need to be stopped. The other essay that mattered was more significant. It was written by Haggai Segel, who until not all that long ago, was the editor in chief of Mokor Rishon and who first became famous 45 years ago as a member of the Jewish terrorist underground that booby trapped the cars of Palestinian mayors of west bank cities and towns, including Karim Khalaf, the mayor of Ramallah, and Ibrahim Taweel, mayor of Elbira. Karim Khalaf lost a leg in the attack. Haggai Segel, who was 20 something then, was convicted of being Part of the terror underground and sentenced to three years in prison, of which he served two. This week, Haggai Segel wrote to condemn the violence against Palestinians being done mostly by kids who could be his grandsons. He'd gotten into a WhatsApp group of these kids and wrote about a post he saw boasting about their accomplishments in the Hebrew month of Adar, which ended, quote, the Number of cars burned, 19. The number of houses set afire, 16. The number of Arabs injured, 37. In addition, hundreds of windshields and windows were smashed, hundreds of olive trees were uprooted and tens of tires were punctured. Sehgal wrote, quote, like most settlers, this writer among them, the settler leadership is torn between our age old instinct to defend ourselves from media libels and government attacks and the sad truth of the matter. Hundreds of rebellious young Jews, unburdened by any sense of law or morality, are running wild day after day in Judea, Binyamin and Samaria. The police under Ben GVIR hardly act against them. The IDF is not equipped to restrain them, and the adult society around them contents itself with stammering. If it does not come out against them soon and full throatedly, this will be proof that these hooligans have succeeded in instilling fear not only among Arabs, but among Jews as well. How should we understand the violence in the territories? Who is responsible for it? Why do you think it isn't being stopped? What needs to be done to stop it? Judah, what do you think?

[Judah Ari Gross]

I think there's a lot to unpack in the issue. You sort of came at four questions of how do we understand the violence? It's terrible, like it's a bad thing. Innocent people are being targeted. I think it's one of the things that's a little frustrating for me is it's very easy for people to sort of stand on their high horse and just condemn. And you know, it's important to condemn horrible violence that's not justified. But I think people just kind of pat themselves on the back and feel good about it without actually getting into the issue and trying to address the problem on its own terms. You know, I think there's very fundamental and sort of foundational issues with why it isn't being stopped, sort of. As a former military correspondent who reported on this, you know, this was years ago, before, you know, post. Post October 7th, this issue has been getting worse and worse. And part of the problem, and it's uncomfortable for certain people to talk about, but part of the problem with it is the it's a military occupation of the West Bank. So you have. The military is ultimately the legal authority operating there. And if you ask your average soldier, what are they doing in the west bank, they're protecting Israelis, like that's what they're there for. And there's an argument that can be made that maintaining calm ultimately helps protect Israeli citizens as well. But that's a little hard for an 18, 19 year old to get into their head that they need to arrest and, you know, potentially harm Israelis and Jews from hurting Palestinians in order to protect Israelis and Jews. Like, there's a, there's a, there's a logical jump that their minds have to be able to make that I don't think they're able to. And I think a lot of people don't see it that way. So the military is going to have a hard time forcing soldiers to crack down on the violence. The Israeli police that operates in the west bank is sort of notoriously terrible and ineffective. And sort of more recently, under the current government and under Israel Katz, who as defense minister is sort of above the military and is therefore in charge of the policy, they've stopped doing what's called administrative detentions, which are a thorny issue that people can be against for very good reasons. But, you know, administrative detentions basically allows the military to detain people without, without a warrant, without having to show. Without having to really show evidence in court. They can sort of just go and detain people for indefinite periods of time. It's used against Palestinians as well. It's used a lot more against Palestinians as well. And under Israel Katz, they stopped using that, which a lot of people in the Israeli defense establishment say is hampering a lot of these efforts because the other legal tools that are available for cracking down are not as effective at the same time. Yeah, it's a hugely undemocratic tool that you can just sort of detain people without having to, you know, prove anything, without having to provide serious evidence. And the argument for why they do it is because it's hard to come by the evidence and they'd have to prove it in court and it would burn their sources and, and all these things. But it's still sort of an undemocratic tool, which is why it was stopped for Israelis, but it hasn't been stopped for, for Palestinians. And so you have all of these sort of structural issues that make it more difficult. And the other part of it, in terms of who's responsible, obviously the people doing the violence are responsible for their actions at the same time, a lot of the people who are doing it, either from within settlements or from within Israel proper, are at risk. Youth are people who are sort of on the fringes of society and they're really being lured into this and, you know, fed propaganda and brainwashed into, into doing these things. And so obviously the people who are doing that, who are, you know, taking advantage of this vulnerable population to go and do violence, are sort of also highly responsible for their actions, if not even more responsible for their actions. And so we as a society also have a degree of responsibility for allowing out, you know, these at risk youth to be there and to be lured away by these negative people instead of getting them the help that they need. I saw in this morning there was a piece that was very sort of dismissive of a government resolution or a government decision that was reached last night to provide additional welfare and social services to at risk youth in order to address this problem. You know, but that's going to have to be a part of the solution. It's. You're going to have to go and treat these at risk youth and get them the help that they need so they don't get lured into violence.

[Noah Ephron]

Yeah, that is very helpful. All that you said, and I think that it is all true in a broader sense. I feel as though most everything we hear and read about this, especially on the side of the condemnation, but not just on the side of the condemnation, most everything is true. It's true, obviously, that the things that we're seeing, the things that are happening there, the things that human beings in the territories are suffering are just disgusting, are horrid. And when people call it a pogrom, say it is like nothing so much as a pogrom, then it's easy to understand what they're trying to get at. That is true, which is that it is this campaign that seems to be aimed at terrorizing people, seems to be aimed at making them leave. Exactly where they're supposed to go is unclear. But making them leave their homes and doing it through this combination of truly terrifying deadly violence on the one hand, but also a lot of also terrifying quasi symbolic violence. I don't know if you saw the pictures of those sheep with their eyes gouged out, which obviously there's something indecent about pointing out the harm to animals when the harm to people is so much more significant. I know that. But when you see that, you see this was something done by someone who was so filled with, with both rage and a certainty that their view of the world is right that they could take these animals and do this horrible torture to them and then leave them as a sign. So there's no words of condemnation that you have heard of this that I think are really taken on their own, exaggerated. It's all just, just disgusting. It's all just terrible. And I think everything that you hear in the analysis has some truth too. I think that when Hagai Segal of all people says that the police is part of the problem and not part of the solution, the police under Ben gvir, then I think that we have to take quite seriously that that is a fact. When people say that the government must be complicit is complicit, because how can you not stop, whether we're talking about 50 people or 950, how is it that this army that is capable of attacking with Such force, Iran, 2000km away, is incapable of stopping these, these teenagers and 20 year olds with clubs and handguns. It's, it's, you know, it's incredible.

[Judah Ari Gross]

I mean, because, because the people in Iran aren't Israeli citizens. They don't have the right to an attorney. They don't have all the other rights that you're allowed to do in, in wartime. Like that's the, that's the issue with it being something that is primarily tasked with by the military, which is, is the military legally allowed to make arrest, you know, to make arrests and make detentions? Yes, 100%. You know, there's no question about that. At the same time, like I said, sort of go tell a 19 year old, arrest that man. You know, arrest that Jewish guy who looks just like you, who speaks the same language as you, instead of the guy over there who hates your guts.

[Noah Ephron]

Exactly. And that leads me to my final point. And then, Linda, I'm eager to hear what you think. I know you have a lot of strong thoughts about this, but my final thought is, while all of those things are, I think, true, and I have gone past, even I have gone past my tendency to be apologetic about this and say, but I just think that those things are true and horrible. The question that seems to me to be very important and very hard to answer is what do we learn from this? In my social media feed and a lot of what I read in the press, both here and especially abroad, is that what we learn is that all of Israel is a society that only values human life if it's Jewish and it feels very, very comfortable with, very, very comfortable with people committing atrocities against other human beings who aren't Jewish and any attempt on the part of Israelis. To say otherwise is mere apolog. And I think that that is not what we learn from this. But at the same time, I don't think that we here's my nightmare. The thing that's rolling around in my mind is that when representatives of these thuggish settlers or not settlers, young people who are doing this terrible things, say, you know what, but if you're honest with yourself, you will recognize that we in some ways are the true continuation of our grandparents and what our grandparents did in 1948, which is to say we're fighting over this land and we're doing it by terrorizing people to leave the land so that Jews will control it in the way that maybe God intended or maybe God didn't intend. But we Jews, this is our land. You can read the Bible, you'll see that it's there. And all we are doing is the same thing that people did in Ramla in 1948. And that is both. That is both, I think an overgeneralization, not entirely true. And I think it also has some truth to it. Linda, what do you think?

[Linda Gratzine]

First of all, this isn't a new phenomenon. It's been going on for years, and I've spent a fair amount of time in the west bank and I speak Arabic and I've seen this for years. I think what is new is the scope of it. First of all, there have been now dozens of small Palestinian villages where they have simply packed up and fled. I was in one a couple months before October 7th, and since, and I think under the COVID since October 7th, these people have just gotten out of control. I see it as even more than a pogrom. It's a hillel hashem. It is a desecration of God's name. These people say that they're religious. And except for very recently, there has been no condemnation from the settler leadership. There's been plenty of condemnation from the left. In fact, I think last week, 1,000 diaspora leaders sent a letter to President Herzog asking him to please do something about this. And there have been letters from the more left wing in Israel, including sort of the left wing religious people. But I think that's why I think Hagai Segal's thing is so important. But I want to see, you know, widespread condemnation. So there's two issues. One is this.

[Noah Ephron]

Can I just say, Linda, one thing. On Sunday night, I attended a demonstration by settler leaders. I attended on Zoom a demonstration by settler leaders. And there were hundreds and hundreds of people, including some of the. The first names that you associate, leading rabbis, you know, army generals who are associated with, who live in the territories. And they were heartbroken, some on the edge of tears about this. And it was remarkable to see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people on Zoom, most of them settlers, who are saying, this is not who we are. This is we. And we are to blame for this, and it's not who we are.

[Linda Gratzine]

Great. I think that's so important, in other words. And those voices have to be amplified. And again, the other is the courts. They can. If you break the law and you're an Israeli, you have to be arrested and tried. And my understanding is that even if they're arrested, which happens very rarely and a lot of times, the army in the area knows who they are, and even if they're arrested, they're let go. So I think we have to have a much broader crackdown on this in terms of. I mean, this is just. It's just so horrible. I think that Palestinians, who I speak to, first of all, in a lot of communities, they have sent the women and children away, and some of the men stay to protect their fields and to protect the sheep and things like that. But I think it's just. And maybe now, because it's getting so much international attention, and I think that it sort of has reached a tipping point. And I think we all have to just, you know, And I've heard people say, oh, well, we shouldn't. You know, it's gonna give Jews a bad name. And Israel's already under so much siege in the international community, we're just making it worse. But I think I wanna hear it, as you said, from the settler leaders. I think it's great, you know, what you said about that Zoom demonstration. But I wanna hear these condemnations, and I wanna hear them doing something. The settler leaders know who these people are in most. We have to do better. I think we can do better, and we have to do better.

[Noah Ephron]

Judah, any last words?

[Judah Ari Gross]

Two points? One.

[Noah Ephron]

Linda?

[Judah Ari Gross]

Yeah, just to little fact check, it's actually 35. It's now up to, like 3,500 diaspora Jewish leaders who have signed. And Herzog responded to it yesterday, sort of agreeing that this is terrible. And he's been speaking with security, kind of agreeing with what they said. So that's just that on that point, and. No, I think to your point, in an area that. Again, again, I think you have to grapple with it, because if you want to affect change, you need to grapple with what the reality is, is that the number of Palestinian terror attacks has decreased during this period in the West Bank. So if people are going to go out and say, we're doing this to protect you, they have numbers to back that up. And that's a provocative and a terrible thing to say. I'm acknowledging it because this is horrible, horrible, unacceptable, vigilante, extra judicial, every kind, you know, every kind of thing that you can say about this violence, and yet you have to argue with it on its own terms. And if we want to say, no, this is bad, well, people are going to say, okay, yeah, it's morally bad, but I'm protecting people. And you need to be able to come to that with clear arguments about how it is. You know, there's an argument that the IDF recently had to divert a battalion from Lebanon to the West bank bank specifically to deal with this issue. And this is sort of detracting from the war effort. And a lot of the settler leaders who came together on Sunday night are talking about how it's bad for the settlement enterprise. The morality of it is sort of secondary to, you know, the immediate selfish issues. And I think that while that's distasteful because we should care about not committing acts of violence for its own sake, maybe we need to argue. Argue the merits of this and not just the moral aspects.

[Noah Ephron]

To me, it seems as though it is sufficient to argue that we do not go and beat innocent people. We don't harm innocent people. It's not a tool that is available to us because it is so morally loathsome to us. And then it seems to, it seems to me that we don't have to be utilitarian about it and say, which many people are saying, look at all the harm you're causing to Israel's image, or look at all the harm you're causing in other ways by drawing soldiers to the west bank when they should be killing people in Lebanon instead. I don't even think that we need to get that far, but maybe.

[Judah Ari Gross]

But is that, is that going to be effective, or is that just going to make us feel better that we're saying that this bad thing is bad, like condemnation matters. But I think, if you want to.

[Noah Ephron]

I think that what. The only thing that's going to be effective is having an election, throwing Ben Vere out, getting, getting Yair Golan to be the. In charge of the army and, and arresting people and throwing them in jail, including throwing them in jail for 20 years if they kill somebody, or 50 years, or four, forever if. Or executing them if that's what we do now for killing people. That's the only thing that I think will really cause change now. But maybe. But maybe I'm just in a bad mood from all the rocket attacks and I'm so tired now. Listen to this. That song is Chad Gad Yah, written by Chav Alberstein, of course, and performed here by Karu Sella and Tamar Afek. More music of our season of freedom. And now it's time for our second discussion, which we are calling and you should say to your kid and here's why the Passover Seder may be the most pondered and rehearsed bit of pedagogy in all of human history. It is essentially a lesson plan that has been pressed into service in evolving form year after year, probably since Yuda Hanasi codified the Mishnah more than 1800 years ago. the heart of the Haggadah we know today can already be found in the Mishnah tractate of Sachim. What's more, there is something recursive in the pedagogical structure of the thing, because one of the important lessons of the Haggadah is that each of us is responsible to teach the lessons of the Haggadah. So you see how it's like a snake eating its own tail in the allegory of the Four Sons. For instance, since it says this of how we should say to the son who does not know how to ask about what the Haggadah is about, we should say, it says, And you should say to your kid on that day, this is why God acted on my behalf when I left Egypt. The fact that you're supposed to tell the story of the Exodus at the Seder may be as important as the story that you tell. This idea that what the Seder is about is retelling to your kids, but not just to your kids what the Seder is about. That may be at the very heart of Passover. Philosopher mensch Michael Walzer makes the nice point in his wonderful book Exodus and Revolution that making the point of the Seder to be narrating the point of the Seder serves a paradoxical purpose. It tells the story of Exodus, sure, and it guarantees that the story of Exodus will continually be changing and updating, made relevant to the times in which it's being told. Because each person needs to tell the story each year their own way, Walzer writes that quote every reading is also a construction, a reinvention of the past for the sake of the present. That, Walzer writes, is what the Seder is an annual reinvention of the past for the sake of the present. And we've seen this over and over again, especially in our very tumultuous last century and a half as like Marxists and Bundists made haggadot that spoke of leaving behind bourgeois capitalism as being their exodus and early Zionists made haggadot that spoke about casting aside the traditional Jewish quietism, the waiting for God to show them to the promised land and instead taking their destinies into their own hands. That was their exodus from Egypt and survivors made creating a in a new place after the camps their new exodus. And Jews of the Soviet Union wrote haggadot that saw the courage to apply for an exit visa as their exodus from Egypt even while they were still saying the Haggadah, reciting the Haggadah in their Egypt, which was the Soviet Union all the way up to today, when for instance the Jewish Voice of Peace quote unquote JVP Lab Anti Zionist Multi Tendency Haggadah for 2020 is titled quote Next Year in Safety and Liberation. Fighting Fascism and Genocide is a Jewish tradition. End quote. And it begins, quote, opening a Seder as a ritual space dedicated to liberation is difficult and perhaps impossible in the context of ongoing genocide in Palestine and a new Israeli US war on Iran. Which you may like or not like as an introduction to a Seder, but you'll have to agree that it's very much in the tradition that Michael Walzer was describing of being a reinvention of the past for the sake of the present. So my question for you people is what story is the story that you will choose to tell your kids tomorrow night when we sit down for Seder as we record what reinvention of the past do you think we need in this year? 5,786 for the sake of the present. Judah, what is your story of Exodus now? And what do you think our story of Exodus should should be?

[Judah Ari Gross]

So before I give my personal answer, I want to give a plug to someone I believe I can call a friend of the podcast, Jeffrey Stern.

[Noah Ephron]

Big time friend of the podcast.

[Judah Ari Gross]

Love Jeffrey Stern, who has a as well everyone should. Among many other things, he is the president of PEF Israel Endowments, which sends a lot of money from the United States to Israeli nonprofits. But he also is the host or co host of a podcast called Madlik, and this week they had a piece on the Haggadot that the kibbutzim in the Gaza border area put out post October 7th.

[Noah Ephron]

So good.

[Judah Ari Gross]

Which it's a Good episode. And it's also talking about a roving exhibition that was created by the SHI team Archive, if I'm not mistaken. And, yeah, it's speaking exactly to this point of how we adopt and adapt the Haggadah to our modern realities, specifically for the communities that were hardest hit in the October 7 attack. So that's on the wider point. For me, personally, I have three small kids, one of whom is, I mean, a little over a year and a half. She's kind of got no idea what's going on. But the older two are four and a half and almost six, and they have a better understanding of what's happening. And I think, for me, the story of our Exodus this year is twofold, or there's two things that I will be thinking about and hoping that my kids talk about or ask questions about. One of them is transformation. Like this. The story of the Exodus is the story of us becoming a people. We were separate families. We were these different groups. And then we came together as a people as we crossed the Red Sea and received the Torah. And that sort of brings us together as we prepare to enter the Promised Land, sort of. That is the story. And I think we are also in a time today of transformation where we've really been going through some things, things as a people, both as a Jewish people and as an Israeli people. And we are in this moment where that can lead in different directions, and it can lead in some negative directions, which I think relates to the previous topic of conversation about the extremist violence in the West Bank. But it can also lead to positive developments for us as a people as we decide our focus going forward and where we put our energy and where we put our resources. And so that's one big part of it is that process of transformation. And the other is the song that we sing every year, and I think has gotten more poignant in the past two and a half, is Vhisha Amda. You know that in every generation, they rise up to destroy us. And the Holy One, blessed is he, delivers us from their hands. And I to sort of shout out another podcast. I was listening to the Orthodox Conundrum the other day. You know, Pesach Cleaning really lends itself to podcast listening. So I was listening to the Orthodox Conundrum the other day, and he was speaking about how in The Seder, after October 7th, the element of, you know, and they rise up to destroy us every generation, which was something that he kind of thought of as a bygone idea, took on more resonance and I think for me, me, it's sort of the second half of that that I want to be thinking about and to be teaching my kids about that we get delivered, we come through this, and we remain. And so to me, the question is not how do we survive, but how do we come out of this? Speaking about the aspect of transformation, how do we come out of the. This a better people? And that's the. Those are the two sort of things that I'm going to be thinking about this year. What about you, Linda?

[Noah Ephron]

Yeah, Linda, what are you going to be telling Judah's children?

[Linda Gratzine]

I've always been fascinated by this idea that even if you're sitting by yourself, you still have to tell yourself the Seder, the Haggadah, you have to tell the story to yourself, that there's something in the actual telling that is inherent or intrinsic to this idea of over and by telling a story, a lot of times, like I'm sure, Judah, your wife, Noah, you too, after you give birth, you want to tell the story over and over of the birth, and by telling a story, it somehow becomes yours. I think the two things I would want my kids or Judah's kids or Noah's kids to know is, first of all, the resilience that we've seen even just in the past month. So we're all in bomb shelters. So there are cafes in bomb shelters and parties and dancing in bomb shelters and this kind of stuff that we're taking this potentially terrifying experience and turning it into something else. And I think then the other thing that I want my kids to know is that it's very easy. And I think since October 7, young people or young adults have turned towards this idea of revenge. And again, it has to do with this. This first topic that we talked about, that being an advocate for Jewish survival and fighting for your survival doesn't mean that you have to kind of be sucked into this cycle of revenge, which I think is as bad for the person as for the person that it's perpetrated on. It has a certain effect on you as a person and how you sort of view the world and on your spirituality. So I think I would like to show them, first of all, how amazingly resilient Israelis and by extension, the Jewish people are, but also what a challenge it is not to be kind of caught up in these calls for revenge.

[Noah Ephron]

Yeah, yeah, that. That. That actually is part of why the song that you mentioned, Vahisha Amda Judah, is probably the most. The. The. The single bit of liturgy or whatever or tradition that I have the greatest problems with like this message that always, ever and always people are going to, to try to destroy us. In fact, when I was picking the songs for this show, which are all Passover related songs, most of the Passover related songs that are performed by indie musicians in a cool way today, most of them are Vahish amda, there's Eden Ben Zaken has a version and Yonatan Razel has a version, and there are a dozen Vahisha AMD does. And you can understand why, because it does feel like we are beset and at this moment feeling like Hamas is rising up and Hezbollah is rising up and Iran is rising up. And in what way is that different than all through Jewish history? But my exodus for this year here is also probably, probably comes from Michael Walzer, who I mentioned before and I'm rereading this book for the, I don't know, 20th time exodus and Revolution. And one of the points that he makes is that. The most fascinating and important and kind of morally rich part of the story of the Exodus is the wilderness. You have this exodus from something terrible, from slavery, and then 40 long years in the wilderness before you get to the place where you're meant to go. And what I'm more aware of now than I think ever before in my life is, though it's clearly a sign that I was really dumb before, is the degree to which where we've gotten is not where so far is not where we've. Where we're going. That it was easy for me to think as a kid, but then I never stopped thinking it, that the creation of Israel was the answer. And I never was so silly as to think that Israel didn't have tons and tons of problems, or that it wouldn't always have tons and tons of problems because it was a real place and not a mythological place. But I did think, well, we've arrived to here. But then what Michael Walzer and what the whole Haggadah kind of invites me to think is that, well, no, where you are is, is precisely as you're in the desert. And that is made obvious by what we were talking about, about the settler violence. And it was made obvious by the death penalty law that was passed last night and a bazillion other things. And the year we spent protesting the judicial reform and then everything about the war, that terrible, horrid, lamentable war in Gaza, which maybe we needed to fight. Everything that came. It's all, you look to the left and you look to the right and what you See is the desert. And I allowed myself to be confused by the fact that there was this miracle of Israel being created, and then it allowed for Hebrew and Hebrew culture to thrive and for. For Jews to become political in a way that they weren't in the past, and to start to ask the questions about power. What do we do with his power? What does it mean to have power? But all we are is in the desert. We have nothing. We have nothing final. We have gotten nowhere compared to where we will end up settling. So that is my Exodus, which is to say, the Exodus is just the Exodus. It's not the getting there. And you shouldn't be so surprised that everything is so tenuous and so fearful and so, you know, and the future is so unclear because you're wandering through the fucking desert. That's what I thought.

[Judah Ari Gross]

I'm a big fan of Anu Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv. And there's something there called the Tisch Center. And they have this idea of. Of resilience that's based off of research by an Emory psychologist named Marshall Duke. There's something a little confusing about his name being Duke, but he's from Emory, but he has this idea about different narratives and the strength that you get from having different narratives. And it's based off of. I think, if I remember correctly, it's based off of research that he did on Holocaust survivors. And the idea is that the most resilient, brilliant narrative structure is oscillating, is ups, ups and downs, that if you have a. Like, the story you tell yourself is that you're getting better, then when bad things happen, you kind of can't handle it. And when you have a story that you tell yourself that, you know, we were perfect and now we're getting worse, it's very depressing. And so the way that we, you know, tell the story of ups and downs is much stronger, because when you have a down, you know that there's an up. And that's why, you know, I disagree with you. There's a certain depressing aspect of it, that there's always going to be downs, you know, that it's. That there's always going to be the people rising up to destroy us. But I think the strength that we get is the second half is that we're going to make it through, and there's something positive and resilience giving in, knowing that we're going to make it through, even though, yeah, there's always going to be some. You know, it's always going to be

[Noah Ephron]

Something that's beautiful and that's true and important, and I completely accept that. I will say that my objection to Vahisha Amda is that it makes metaphysical the enemies of Israel. And so then Hamas becomes, you know, becomes Haman, becomes Amalek, and it makes it forever and it makes it metaphysical. And all there are are are new instantiations of an old hatred that's inevitable. And that's my objection to it. It's not that it's a bummer, which it is, but that seems accurate. But it's that I don't think that Iran is. The Palestinians are the Nazis. I hate when people say, ah, they're the person these people are, you know,

[Judah Ari Gross]

that I certainly agree with. I think that's something that we go, you know, I think the fact that this war started days before Purim, everyone starts going back and trying to. And. And who's a Hashveros and blah. And you know, those things are, you know, comparisons are odious as, as the bard says. But, you know, I think there's ways around that while still grappling with the reality that, you know, there's always going to be something. It doesn't mean that they're all the same. It's just the next one.

[Noah Ephron]

Now listen to this. That song is Dayenu, of course, by the rapper Hasaf Sal. More music of our season of freedom, which brings us to our Vada country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of us describes something that may be surprised or amused, delighted or enchanted, ensorceled or possibly even fluged us as we wended our way through our worlds while we were cleaning our kitchen ahead of Passover. Judah, what is your. What a country.

[Judah Ari Gross]

So, as we heard earlier in the show by Yonatan Razel, and is how, as my guests will hear tomorrow, much more poorly by me. Halachma Anya. This is how we start the Magid section of the Seder. Halachma Anya. Di ahlu ahavatana Be' ara demitzrayim kol de chifin yitay ve' yechal kol ditzrik ytey ve' yech Hashata hacha lashana haba b' arad yisrael Hashata avdei lashana haba b' nei horin. That's a little bit of Aramaic for us. And it means, arguably, this is the bread of oppression. This is the bread of affliction. This is the bread of poverty. Different people translated different ways that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry, come in and eat. Let all who are in need come and join us for the Pesach. Now we are here next year in the land of Israel. Now we are slaves. Next year we shall be free. This year has caused a lot of problems for a lot of people, especially as it relates to travel. And a lot of people who are planning on leaving the country and going to, you know, especially in our Anglo communities, a lot of people who are planning on going out of the country and being with their families in the States or elsewhere are stuck here in Israel. Not stuck here. They should be happy to be in the land of Israel on Passover, but they're here when they plan to be elsewhere. And this year we thought we were having a small seder of just my immediate family, my wife and three kids and my in laws, and that was going to be it. But as it became clear that a lot of our friends were not going to be able to make it out of the country, we, you know, put out the word, hey, if anyone's stuck and needs a place to go, we'd be more than happy to have you. And very quickly, friends of ours whose son is friends with our son, they said they were looking for a place to go. Another friend who thought they were going to come to us, but in the end is going to a different friend of ours was also maybe in the works. There's also a couple of boarding school students, non Jewish boarding school students who are in. They, I will say, are stuck in Israel and unable to get to their families abroad and they're coming to us for the seder and even for a few more days. And so this year, that saying that we say at the top of magid of let all who are hungry come and eat resonates much more clearly as we are really trying to. We are opening our homes and we're also aware of many other families that are opening their homes to, you know, all who are maybe not hungry, but hungry for. Hungry for connection and hungry for relationship in these trying times to come in and eat. And we will also say, you know, this year we are slaves to the current situation, but hopefully next year we shall be free.

[Noah Ephron]

Oh, that's beautiful, Linda, what did you want? A country.

[Linda Gratzine]

So I have two really short ones and the first one, it goes back a couple of weeks. So in the buildup to the war, which is only, I think, what, 32 days. Now we're at. It feels like it's forever, but it's only 32 days. So I had just landed in Hawaii to visit my son. And as the buildup was happening I thought I have have to figure out a way to get back. I had a feeling that it was going to start. And it takes two days to get back from Hawaii and I don't travel on Shabbat. So I landed in Hawaii on Thursday night and I said I have to leave on Tuesday if I want to get back before Shabbat. And I ended up getting stuck overnight in San Francisco. It was a long story. And then I bought a ticket on I bought the last seat on the direct El al flight from LLC which leaves at 2:00 in the afternoon. And I've taken that flight before and gets back at 1:45 on Thursday afternoon. And I bought the ticket at 1am on Tuesday night and for the flight on Wednesday. So when I went to check in, ll security was obviously a little bit suspicious of me traveling alone, having bought the last seat on the flight at 1am the night before. Before. And they said to me when did you buy your ticket? And they knew exactly when I bought my ticket. I said about 1am last night. And they said why? And I said I need to get back for the war. And that was the end of the security conversation. They said if you're Israeli enough to come back for the war, we don't have any more questions. And the other story I want to tell is I was in Metula last week on a trip to first of all to the Galilee Medical center in Nahariya. And about an hour after I was in there a rocket hit and killed this father of four. And then I was in Metula. And Metula is surrounded by Lebanon on three sides and there's sort of constant booms. And there's a cafe that has been open basically since December. And the co owner is a woman named Miri who actually in her 40s, mother of two teenagers served as an officer in Syria in Miluim. And she keeps the cafe open and it's kind of become the hangout in Metula. And everybody knows that this cafe will be open. It's only coffee and pastries and they have this kind of porch in the front where everybody kind of hangs out. Now it's constant booms of Israeli artillery firing on Lebanon. And the first 20 minutes or so I was jumping every minute or so these very, very loud booms. And of course everybody in Israel has now become a military expert. And somebody at the cafe said to me, oh don't worry, those are outgo. You'll hear the difference And I ordered a coffee, and she was about to put it in a disposable cup. And as no one knows, I'm kind of a Feinshmecker. And so I said, can I have a mug, please? And she said, no, I'm only serving coffee in disposable cups. And she's kind of this no nonsense type of person. She has a pistol on her. And I said, okay, but why? And she said, first of all, I don't feel like washing the cups and I'm here by myself. And secondly, if there's a siren, then you can just take the coffee with you and it won't get cold. And I thought, now that's, you know, we talked about. I talked about resilience. That's resilience. You can still get really good coffee in Metula, but only in a disposable cup.

[Noah Ephron]

Wonderful. So I am one of those people that you were talking about, Judah. We were supposed to be in the United States right now for Pesach with my folks and sister and brother and kids and nephews and nieces. But I was also supposed to be at a conference or seminar in New York at Temple Emanuel of a thing called Scientists in Synagogues for people from congregations around the world who won grants to run programs back home about science, technology and religion and Judaism. It's a beautiful thing being among physicists and biologists and chemists and computer sorts and also rabbis and teachers, all trying to figure out our era's great what has Rome to do with Jerusalem? Question, which is is what has the awe that we get from the brilliant discoveries and inventions of science have to do with the awe that we get from, you know, our luminous traditions of spirit and ritual? And, of course, my flights were canceled owing to the war. And it is, you know, very, very hard these days to get from Jerusalem to Rome, or at least from Tel Aviv to New York. So those of us who were attending the thing from here, we were left on zoom, which is sort of a miracle itself. I see I could be both prevented by huge geopolitical events from being at the gathering and still be at the gathering, sort of through zoom. I always think when I'm on zoom, of what Jonathan Richmond once said when we undergrads invited him to play at Swarthmore and he asked if he could play without a microphone on account of, quote, singing to people through a microphone and amplifiers is like making love wearing rubber gloves. But I digress. In the first small group session, our assignment was as an icebreaker, to talk about one moment that we felt our Judaism rubbing against science and or technology in a way that left us changed. And I told about the time in second grade when I came home from yeshiva just having learned how Joseph interpreted the dream of Pharaoh's cupbearer and his baker and then Pharaoh himself. Seven years of great plenty, followed by seven years of famine. And my father, among other things, a psychotherapist with Freudian leanings. He said, you know, I also interpret dreams. And my young mind was blown. At the time, a woman in the group told how she, in her biomedical research into Parkinson's, I think she uses dogs who sometimes have to be killed and autopsied. And one day, she said, she realized all at once that her relationship with these dogs needed to be an I thou sort of relationship and not an I it sort of relationship. And so she entered into a covenant. This is what she said with the dogs, that she would never make her students or lab assistants euthanize them, but she would always do it herself, looking at them in the eyes and thanking them for their sacrifice and accompanying them on their death. And then, and this is what I'm getting to, a physicist from Jerusalem. His name is Gabi Pell. He was representing, or Hadash, a very hip Jerusalem congregation that I think is kind of a satellite or offshoot of Shir Chadash. Gabi Pell told his story, which was this. Gabi Pell works for a company in J. Jerusalem named Brainsway, which makes something called H coils that are built into a helmet that people put on their heads to get treatment, most often for depression, but also for OCD and anxiety. And there is an H coil that helps smokers quit smoking. What the H coil helmet does is something called deep transcranial magnetic stimulation, or deep tms, which makes just the right neurons in your brain fire in ways and in combinations of things. They have stopped firing on their own, which can break through depression or compulsion or anxiety or addiction. What's more, making the right neurons go at the right time in the right combination, the machine forges new pathways in your brain, essentially teaching your brain to be able to do the same thing. Also, after the helmet is taken off, the effect lasts for up to a year. Gabi Pelle said the thing is called a second line treatment, meaning that if you're laid low by depression, a doctor, the doctor will first give you drugs, and only if they don't work, which they often don't, will the doctor prescribe the H coil, meaning that the people who come in for that deep tms are probably frazzled at the end of their rope. And Gabi Pell said the treatment works for four out of five of them, with two out of three of them going into total remission, which, when you think about how much pain and worry and sadness and danger for every one of the people who get to this point where they put on the helmet, it's sort of a miracle. Gabby Pell grew up in London. He did physics with honors at Imperial College London and a master's at LSE and then a PhD in medical physics and bioengineering at University College London. And I'm not made of stone, so obviously I glanced at his dissertation, which is called Perfusion and Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies of Cerebral Ischemia. The epigram on the dedication page is from the Ethics of the Fathers. It says, quote, quote, rabbi Tarfun said, the day is short and the work is great. It is not your duty to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it. And there is a lot that I did not get from the dissertation that just went right over my head on account of me not knowing anything. But what I did get was that for those of us used to thinking about imaging in this sort of static way, like X rays, where you get a picture of a piece of the anatomy, the new kind of imaging, functional, or like physiological imaging, like mri, it opens completely new worlds. It lets you make sense of. Of, like, processes that makes you sense, makes sense of a stroke in the way that we could never understand in the past, making all sorts of new treatments possible and letting us understand how the brain works better. A couple of decades have gone by. Songs of innocence have become songs of experience. And Gabi Pell is making this machine now that does the sorts of good things that he wrote about as a young grad student. Back on the Zoom this week, Gabi Pell is saying how all the science and technology stuff meets all the spiritual stuff, that they all. All these things meet together in that helmet. He says that the H in H coil, if you go to the Brainsway website, you don't see why the thing is called the H coil. He says, we're a bunch of scientists in my group working in Jerusalem, religious and secular. The H, what it stands for is hesed, which is the Hebrew word for, well, what the King James Bible translates as loving kindness. Kindness, but also like compassion and grace. But the greater part of the career of hesed is in the Kabbalah. It's one of the ten sefirot, one of the ten divine emanations. There's chochma wisdom and Binah understanding and vuura, strength and hadar splendor. And it goes on like that. Maybe you've seen pictures of the Kabbalistic Eitz Chaim, the Tree of life, which organizes the 10 SFIROT and HESED is associated with shefa, or abundance. And when Gabi Pel says that the H coil lifting people out of the pits of depression and sadness is a chesed coil, then it all at once came to me. The maybe too pretty thought how for all that, it is huge. It's also just a short distance between what Gabi Pell's group of physicists and neurologists and psychologists and engineers are doing at their corporate headquarters on Har Chutzfim in Jerusalem and what Avraham Abulafia, the great rabbi, creator of ecstatic Kabbalah, was doing in Jerusalem 750 years ago, just two or three or four or five kilometers away. 750 years ago, he too was inquiring into the nature of the human spirit, trying to understand all the unseen forces at play around us, seeking understanding which is what is needed for healing. And that brings us to the end of our show. Huge thanks to Itay Shellam, our station manager, without whom we would have none of this and who has been bringing us these shows over and over again in the most difficult of circumstances. Thanks to Hashibolim, my favorite band from Kibbutz Geva. They give us some music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you Linda. Thank you Natalie. Thank you Judah. We'd also like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. It keeps the show going, it keeps the station going, keeps us moved and grateful and in your debt. And we would like to thank every single one of you out there for taking your valuable time to listen. And we'd like to add to like us on Facebook and drop us a line. We are going to answer. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. How many stars? Five stars. Maybe one that starts with this. This year, around our seder table, we will end the song by singing a new verse, fitting for the times. Had he built for us the holy temple but had not given us the promised podcast Dianal, it would have been enough for us. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that. Two Today, the day this podcast came into your feed, is April Fool's Day, an international day of mischief, misdirection and misprision. The precise origins of which centuries ago remain shrouded in the veil of fog that is history but to which we have this reference in the London paper the public advertiser from April 13, 1789, which refers to the quote Jewish origin of the custom of making fools on the 1st of April. This is said to have begun from the mistake of the Noah in sending the dove out of the ark before the water had abated on the first day of the month among the Hebrews, which ANSWERS to the 1st of April. And to perpetuate the memory of this deliverance, it was thought proper, whoever forgot so remarkable a circumstance, to punish them by sending them upon some sleeveless errand, similar to that ineffectual message upon which the bird was sent by the patriarch. The custom appears to be of great antiquity, antiquity and to have been derived by the Romans from some of the Eastern nations. End quote about which theory Wikipedia, known around the world for its zealous fact checking, writes flatly, the Hebrew calendar is lunar solar, so no specific day always correlates with one April in the Julian or Gregorian calendars. End quote from the same entry we learn that in Armenia, April Fool's Day is celebrated by quote harmless tricks like tying a friend's or coworker's shoes together, hiding plastic spiders in drawers of people in their workplace, and switching sugar for salt in hopes of startling an acquaintance as they sip of their morning coffee. End quote. In Ireland, it is traditional to give the victim a quote unquote important letter to take to someone else. That person would read the letter and then ask the victim to take it to still someone else, and so on. The letter, when finally opened, contains just the words Send the Fool. Further, in Sweden we learn April Fool's jokes are revealed to with the phrase April April din duma still jag kann lura dig werth jag will. Which translates to April, April, you silly herring. I can trick you whenever I want, and obviously I love April Fool's Day. I think that you can probably say that it's my favorite day of the entire year, you silly kippered salmon. You nova, you nouveau nova. When else do you get to tie your colleague's shoelaces together and laugh and laugh and laugh, laugh still, even though April Fools has just gotten here already, I can feel it going by and I still have so many people to trick, trip, lie to and humiliate. Not so the Promise Podcast we will be back for you as soon as the war allows next week, I'm hoping reminding you that while all of us have it within ourselves to be fools for a day. It is a rare and glorious thing to maintain one's foolishness all year round. On this, the Promised podcast,

[Judah Ari Gross]

Sam.