Loading summary
Transcript46 lines
- [00:00]
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 where over in Kiryat Sefer Part park off Yuda Levi street, just up from Lincoln street, famously named for great American President Abraham Lincoln. You can as of this week get yourself a very good cup of coffee and a very good croissant or if you prefer, a delicious sandwich at the just now opened Graziani House Coffee Trailer Kiosk food truck operation. If you are a Kiryat Seifer park aficionado, you may be wondering now how can this be as Kiryat Sefer has for years been a commerce free zone, a place where you go to hang out with friends or to listen to the water burble from the fountain on the southwest corner of the park through specially designed channels into the wetlands ish water and rushes at the northeast corner of the park or to watch people go by. It is a lovely place. Every year my department from the university we hold our end of the year bash there with lots of wine and beer and speeches given from a top picnic tables. But it is not a place where you go to buy coffee or croissants or sandwiches until as I said this week when the Graziani House people towed their food trailer to near the tool shed and set up shop. This because on the very first day of the recent war with Iran, the last day of February, in the event a Persian missile evaded missile defense landing on Yuda Levi street, destroying entirely and entirely beyond repair the beloved Graziani house Cafe at 123 Yuda Levi St. Leading Yaniv Graziani, the owner and chief baker at the Graziani House Cafe. And I know what you're thinking. What are the chances that Graziani Cafe would be owned and baked for by someone named Yaniv, who by the way owns two other Grazianis, the one at King George and the other at Sterode Haskala over toward where you live Miriam and they are all great. But the one at Jura Levi it was the greatest. Until it wasn't. In the event though, that night Yaniv Graziani wrote on Instagram classily that the only quote important thing is that all our staff are safe end quote Writing too that quote graziani is much more than a place, it is a community, it is people. It is a home. End quote. Which as someone who has logged hours there drinking coffee after coffee tap tap tapping on my MacBook I can vouch is true. And it was sad that the place was gone and wouldn't be reopening very soon, at least not there. So Yaniv Graziani talked to the folks at City hall, who bent some rules and planned some plans and modified some park infrastructure, while Yaniv Graziani tricked out a food trailer and this week the mayor and a couple of deputy mayors and the folks from the Authority for the Promotion and Development of Small businesses, they all showed up and speeches were speechified, maybe faster than usual, because prodigious amounts of coffee were consumed. All this while, as the press noticed, the geese squealed in the nearby artificial wetlands in the northeast corner of the park. Which geese, in the event, were the same Egyptian geese, Allopachen Aegyptiaca, if you want to get to the technical Latin name of the things who, as I mentioned on the podcast a month or so ago, who got discombobulated after the missile fell and for long days after, took to nearby streets dodging cars, almost getting hit, causing the veterinary service to try to lure them 2km up north to Haryarkon Park. But the discombobulated geese were reticent, snapping at the veterinarians who tried to capture them, and lots of people were worried for the safety of the Egyptian geese, until finally the geese found their way back to the park, now able to enjoy the smell of coffee wafting toward them from the Grazianis, and the whole thing felt like a sign that life was finding a way, things were going back, if not now, to how they were. Well, at least life was returning to the living. And in the Tel Aviv sun on a Sunday morning, good coffee in your hand. It was possible to feel like what is crooked can be made straight, what is broken can be mended, and we will once again have geese in our parks and caffeine in our blood. And arguably nothing captures the indomitable choose lifeitude of this city we love so well, better than a beloved coffee place raised to the ground, rising from splinters and ash and transmogrifying into a trailer in the park among the geese, keeping us caffeinated, keeping us in touch, recombobulating us, and letting us know that it is always possible to rebuild revenue. Rebuilding is what the humans do with us today in TLV1's newest satellite studio in the Bitsaron neighborhood. Not all that far, as I said from the other other Grazianis is a woman who brings life to every room that she enters and for all that she is alive to, to those bleaker registers of the human experience, somehow manages to be the very embodiment of hope. It's quite a balance to keep, obviously. And I think you know this that most hope is the thing with feathers. And sometimes hope is a go. Dodging cars on a busy Tel Aviv street woman could only be Miriam Hershlag. Miriam Hershlag 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 she was an editor and anchor for the Israel Broadcast Authority English Language Radio News. Miriam, how you doing?
- [06:06]
B
I'm great. And I have to say Graziani, which is a five minute walk from my house, is a very worthy competitor to La Chmanina, also about five minutes walks. It is the place for the absolute perfect kosher cake if you need to go somewhere and bring something incredibly delicious. It's unbelievably good baked stuff there. So.
- [06:30]
A
Wow.
- [06:30]
B
You know, they're on either side of Enlightenment park and you just can stand right between, in the midpoint between those two cafes and feel like you're in the center of the world.
- [06:39]
A
And is Yuval Lachmanina just as charming as Yuval Graziani?
- [06:47]
B
They're charming in a different way. They have Nelson bread. Nechem Nelson. And everyone always goes there for that. And they sell it at half price at the end of the day. And there's a sign because they wanted to sell their other breads that says man does not live by Nelson bread alone. There's other breads here, people, so I like them too.
- [07:07]
A
Who is Nelson Bread named after Admiral Nelson?
- [07:12]
B
No, someone named you known I think I see. What would. What would be the chances of Nelson bread being called after someone named.
- [07:20]
A
I know what you mean. I've been there. Now, as for me, my name is no Efron and I do not mean to boast, really I don't. But I am taking a GLP1 and not losing weight at all. And I don't want to get all grandiose about it, but I gather I am the only one, the single person who's taking one of these things and not losing weight. My secret. You don't have to be hungry to eat, it turns out. And if you're worried enough about stuff, you can eat even when you're not hungry. Yes. And you can eat even if you're not hungry. And you know that it's going to make you sick. See, less committed people just don't push themselves through the nausea and the stomach upset. I think the key might be just the right amount of self loathing what the French call, or ought to call the de goo juste. And please do not take me to be bragging. God knows my parents taught me better than that. But no stupid drug is the boss of me. Today we got two topics so profoundly important and importantly profound that if you were Donald Trump you would call them highly respected high IQ topics. But first we got this matter that we are following with alert, interest and great concern is part of an occasional series we like to call the Promise Podcast ponders the people who believe in bereavement and grief in the achievement of
- [08:34]
B
peace,
- [08:37]
A
by the looks of it, and I only saw it streamed from far away. Every seat in the big auditorium in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art was taken, and a friend of mine who knows stuff like this said that if there were a thousand places instead of the 500 seats that the Reconnati auditorium in the museum holds, they would have all been filled. And maybe if there were 5,000 seats, they also would have all been filled. The auditorium carries special meaning for me. It was almost 40 years ago, when I was a first year grad student, that I went there for the first time on December 17th and then again on December 18th in 1986 for a symposium called after the Shoah. The heart of the Sympodium was a screening of the movie Shoah four and a half hours after lunch on the first day and four and a half hours after lunch on the second day, after which on each day there were learned lectures and discussions into the night. Claude Lanzman, who made the movie over 11 years of wheedling, funding, ignoring death threats, following lead after lead to find the people that he ultimately interviewed. The movie uses no film from archives. It's all new footage made in the 1970s and 1980s of Jews and Poles and Germans who were there on both sides of the barbed wire and on all sides of the barbarism. The audience in the Reconnati auditorium those days was old, ancient they seemed to me then. I had just had my 26th birthday the day before. Lots of the people around me had pale blue numbers on their arms when discussion was open to questions. No matter what lecture had just been given, the people, they hectored and lectured Lanzman about what he had gotten wrong, where he put too much emphasis and where he put too little. The rage that was unleashed in the beautiful museum auditorium. I had never seen anything like it, and one semester in I had already seen how brutal Israelis could be in a lecture hall. But this was something Altogether different. Lanzmann had opened a floodgate of some sort. And as he was a foreigner speaking through simultaneous translation, he seemed easy to attack. He seemed right to attack and attack is what the crowd did, finding some fault with this or that interview, some saying that he made too much of one point and too little of another. And a lot of people, I think most of the people angry that in his film, Poles come off as human beings, some of them sometimes anyway, instead of as the monsters that in the eyes of the people with the pale numbers on their arms. In the auditorium they were between the attacks, there were those who said that Lanzmann should get credit for making the Holocaust something that people were talking about around the world, including in Israel. One man stood up and said in a museum auditorium where most parts of Western culture had already been analyzed to the smallest detail, this was probably the first real talk ever in Israel about the Holocaust, a statement that was not quite true, but something close enough to the truth that the exaggeration can be forgiven. This past Monday, Yom Hazikaron Memorial Day, the people in the auditorium were there for reckoning with a different history. They were there for the joint Israeli Palestinian memorial ceremony put on by two groups, something called the Parents Circle Bereaved Families Forum, and a group called Combatants for Peace. The ceremony at the museum had a satellite. Dozens of people gathered in a hall somewhere in Ramallah, and it was shown on big screens to crowds at 30 places around the country. In Tel Aviv, you could see it on a big screen at Beit Radical Radical House, a kind of think tank community center for the left. And you could also see it at Cafe Shapira, under the big tree in the park in Shapira. And you could probably see it elsewhere, too, in the city. Places were cagey about putting the word out that they were hosting a viewing, worried that protesters might come, which in the event, they did. There is a format that most all memorial services use to one degree or another. People talk about the loved ones they lost, and in between people talking about the loved ones they lost, there is mostly mournful music. If the people who died died for a cause, then someone says something about how they did not die for nothing, how their death meant something, bringing us to where we are today, or better, pointing us in the direction of the better place we're bound to reach tomorrow. The joint Israeli Palestinian memorial ceremony on Monday was in that format any school kid past the second grade could see. It was a memorial ceremony, though, because of the nature of the thing and because of, well, what now is like, it also came out different. Ibrahim Abu Ahmad, a peace activist whose great grandfather was killed in the 1948 war in the Nakba. He was one of the two hosts of the service. The other was Sivan Tahel, a Jewish peace activist. Ibrahim Abu Ahmad said at the beginning of the evening, This year we gather as the war continues to claim many victims in Israel and Palestine. Again this year we stop to remember and to experience the pain over those we have lost. This is not something to be taken for granted. Gathering together in these of all times to recognize one another's pain and to hold on to shared hopes from the wreckage we choose to dare to imagine how we will go on from here. How will the day after look? And you feel as you watch the thing, how strange a thing this joint memorial service is, and how unlikely you feel this in the stories that people tell the Jews from the stage and the Palestinians who did not get permits to cross the Green Line and come to Tel Aviv. They were in videos on the screen. Leora Alon, she was the first to speak, and she said that she is 73 years old, a survivor of the attack on kfar Aza on October 7, and her son Tal. He and 65 other people from the community did not survive. And she talks about how much Tal there was in Tal, he was a son, a brother, father, sailor, teacher, worker, a man who would have you in stitches, but also a serious man, deep. And it was all gone. All the different Tals, they were all gone at once. And the next woman to speak is Nahil Jamal Jahoon, a photographer in Gaza who used to take pictures of family celebrations. And she tells how her brother Rami and his wife Islam were killed along with 25 other people when their building in north Gaza was bombed the day they planned to flee to the south. And it was just a few days after that that another brother, Ramez, was killed with his wife and kids, also in a bombing. And she says, quote, the only thing I have left of their memory is this bracelet my niece Maria gave me one day before I headed south. She told me, aunt, this is from me to you. Do not take it off, keep it with you. Even the little girl knew that something was about to happen. End quote. After that, Hulud Hussia from Jenin talked about her boy Muhammad, quote, the one closest to my heart, my lifelong companion and soulmate, who was shot in the heart, taking pictures on his phone of an army action in a town called Kaferdan. This was 10 months before October 7, and she said how after that the army came to her house and turned it upside down, arresting another of her boys. And then the same thing happened again. And after that there was a movie with four people. Yael from Kibbutz Be', Eri, Hitham from Ras El Ayin, Dafna from Kfar Aza and Fakri from Silwan in Jerusalem, all talking about men with guns coming and wrecking their homes. Dafna said, I had a parrot, Jojo, in my house who died on October 7th. And for everyone, what they lost had no replacement family albums, a watch given by a grandmother, a 50 year old picture with your mother when you were just a baby. After that, Ayala Metzger told how her mother and her father in law, Tommy and Yoram Metzger, who were 80 years old when they were taken from their home in near Oz to Gaza. And Tommy Metzger came home in that first hostage release after 50 odd days. And Yoram Metzger, he was murdered in the tunnels three months after that. And it went on like that. And it confused me because the two things that I felt watching it, the two important things I felt very deeply while watching it, they seemed to be exact opposites. One of them was how elemental a thing grief is, just how plain human it is. You love a person and they are part of your life and you are part of theirs to such a degree that you don't exist fully without them. And then one day, all at once, they are gone, ripped away, and you are not who you were anymore. And they should have had more time and you should have had more time together. But it was taken from you all at once, stripped down. It is that they were here, they should still be here. They are not here. And for forever they are not here. And so the first important thing you feel watching the joint memorial ceremony is how all these stories in two languages from two sides of a dividing line, a fence, a border, a front line, all these people are just the same. But the other important thing that you feel is how different they are, how incommensurable they are. Chaviv Retik Gour talked this week on his thing about Israel's memorial days of this season. Yom Hazikaron Lashoah Velagvrab Remembrance Day for the Holocaust and heroism, and Yom Hazikaron Le Cholelei Marechotis or El Memorial Day for those killed in Israel's war and victims of terrorism. Chaviv Retegur talks about it in an episode called How Personal Grief Built a Nation. And he says that what makes our memorial days what they are is the intimacy of them, how much those who died are us and not them.
- [20:01]
C
Every Israeli knew somebody, a sibling or a friend or a neighbor who had survived the genocide. Or put another way, every Israeli knew somebody specific who had not survived the genocide. We Israelis know our dead personally, and we know our sacrifices. And we see our enemies for what they are. We respect them enough to see them for what they are. And these are immense strengths that give us the solidarity and the competence and the steadfastness to see these enemies felled. These are the strengths of my people in this ark of holidays in which we remember where we come from, how we became strong and safe and always, always remembering that real people gave us this gift, real people gave us these strengths.
- [21:06]
A
And that is what makes the joint memorial such a complicated thing. Because Chaviv is right that the day is not about abstractions. It is about people, specific people, a lot of them who died specifically for us, for the collective that we share. And they did not just die, they were killed by a them, by people doing what violence they do for their people. So the IDF soldier shot by a Hamas fighter and the Gazan shot by an IDF soldier, however much they were both loved with the same passion by their mother or by their sister, and in that way they are the same. They are at the same time in some way opposites too. This is why the joint memorial ceremony makes people so mad. Some people, anyway. A dozen protesters, maybe a few more than that, came to Cafe Shapira in South Tel Aviv to shout down and to sing Am Yisrael Chai over the broadcast of the ceremony on a screen in the pocket park there. Sheffy Paz, a coarse, very nationalist activist, organized the thing and she posted a video of the disruption that she engineered, writing above it on social media. Quote, for days we asked the organizers to move this screening to somewhere closed off, not in the public square, in order not to cause distress for the people who live in this neighborhood that has been taken over by a union of illegal aliens and radical leftists. But they insisted on having this harmful event in the heart of Shapira because they wanted the headlines and because to us it felt like we were being raped under the open sky. They got their headlines PS Why didn't they invite the Sudanese and Eritrean illegals to the screening? They have bereaved families too, end quote. The PS says a lot about what bothered the protesters, whose point was everybody has tragedy. Some people who aren't us have a great deal of tragedy. But this day is not about everyone's tragedies. It is about our tragedies. And a dozen protesters is just a dozen protesters, though in the papers and on social media, lots was made of them. But something like what bothered Chef y Paz bothers a lot of people, bothers a lot of us. And there is something true and important to it. Like Khaviv Rettegor said, there is something so intimate about the grief of people who have lost people to bombs and bullets, so small G. And on this day of all days, the last thing that someone who lost someone they love, which is a lot of us and more now than maybe ever before, the last thing someone who has lost someone they love wants is for their very specific grief. The very specific smile that they miss, the specific smell that they miss, the voice, those eyes that curl. For all these things to be replaced by capital G. Isn't it terrible the things that people do to each other? Grief? This is why, one of the reasons, anyway, the joint memorial can feel bad to people who have lost someone. It's not because they think only their suffering matters. It's because they think that their grief is their grief. And when you try to make it bigger, more general, you make it something less than they need it to be. And for many people that is just true. That is true for them, and hence it is true. The organizers of the joint memorial, though, they have something more radical in mind than just remembering together Jews and Palestinians and how much we have all suffered at each other's hands. Maybe the most startling moments in the ceremony were two songs. The first was sung by Noor Darweesh, a 31 year old Palestinian Israeli singer. For the Israeli opera. She was Papagena in the Magic Flute and Susanna in the Marriage of Figaro and Zerlina in Don Giovanni and Rosina in the Barber of Seville. And she's also sung for the Israel Philharmonic under Zuba Mehta. And at the joint memorial she sang in Arabic and Hebrew, one of the most intimate poems written by Chaim Nachman Bialik. Hekhnasini tachat knafech Bring me under your wing, a poem scholars think he wrote for a great secret, but not so secret love of his life, Ira Jan, the great painter who met Bialik in Kishinev just after the pogrom, after which she left her husband for him. And the poem goes, part of it anyway. The stars deceived me, there was a dream, but it too has passed. Now I have nothing in this world, I have nothing at all. Bring Me under your wing and be for me a mother and a sister. Let your bosom be a shelter for my head, a nest for my banished prayers. Sa. The other song is from a poem by Mahmoud Darvish. It is called the Butterflies Trail, and its refrain goes, the butterfly's trail is invisible the butterfly's trail cannot be erased the butterfly knows no boundaries. Oh, oh. And on Monday, the woman who sang the song was Rabbi Dalia Shacham, the rabbi of Or Hadash and Haifa, and also, I think somehow of Kedem in Melbourne. And she sings with Samekh Zakut, the Palestinian rapper who goes by the name Zaz. And to Mahmoud Darwish's words, Samukh Zakut softly raps the words of a conversation he had with his cousin Khisam Zakut, who lives in Gaza. And the song, it sounds like this. He is like poetry, trying to say, but settles for quoting from the shadow and doesn't say, I am from Gaza, from a neighborhood where every stone is a witness, not just scenery. Here if a butterfly flutters it might make a small difference, might have an impact but the sound of bombs shatters fate. My wife bakes bread she's worried the kids will starve but me, I am strong like a rock I am not allowed to cry I am not breaking news, not a number on a chiron I am a dream that wished to grow but was bombed on its way. They say the butterfly's trail is invisible But I can see it with my eyes how hard it is to wait for the bathroom there are still 500 people ahead of me. I thank God every day that I am alive Even if just barely. I forgot the taste of meat the simplest food is out of reach. I am sure we will come back and build our home hand in hand, stone by stone, wall by wall A child stays a child, a baby, a baby A father gives safety and the butterfly keeps on flying as my friend Mahmud. Yeah. Sa. And Chaim Nachman Bialik was long said to be Israel's national poet. And Mahmoud Darvish was long said to be Palestine's national poet, each famous first and maybe most of all, for putting into words a great catastrophe of his people. And a Palestinian woman singing Chaim Nachman Bialik in Hebrew and Arabic. And a Jewish woman, a rabbi, singing Darwish in Arabic and Hebrew. It was saying something that for all that there is in us and them, there is also something beyond us and them, and that these categories, they matter, but they are not absolute. Bialik translates. He has meaning that matters in Jenin and Gaza City. And Darwish translates, he has meaning that matters in Tel Aviv and Beersheva. And this is why it can happen, that the national suffering of each people can maybe translate and matter each to the other people. The name the people behind the thing gave to the joint memorial was we are the day after the day after when what Chaim Nachman Bialik wrote about Kishinev moves more people, not fewer Palestinians as well as Jews. And the day after when what Mahmoud Darweesh wrote say in his poem a lover of Palestine I love in the cafes, in the streets, in the fields, I love you in prison, in the hospitals, in the harbor, in the refugee camps, I love you as one loves a homeland. That what Mahmoud Darweesh wrote in this poem moves more people, not fewer Jews as Palestinians. I do not know if this is the day after. I do not know if I want this to be the day after, although I think that I do. But I do know that, like those old people with the faded blue numbers on their arms I saw screaming at Claude Lanzmann 40 years ago, what I saw this week in the auditorium of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art was something complicated and important, a shaky bridge cast forth to a future that is different from our present and maybe also better. Today. Two discussions Discussion the first pax parallax as we find ourselves in three uneasy ceasefires at the same time, one with Hamas in Gaza, one with the ayatollahs in Iran, and one with Hezbollah in Lebanon. None of which three ceasefires we would have chosen for ourselves, at least not when and how they came to pass. In its Independence Day editorial, Haaretz suggests that these imposed from without ceasefires may be a sign that we ain't as independent as we used to be, or as we like to tell ourselves we are, and that Prime Minister Netanyahu has maneuvered us into a state of vassal statehood. The editors of Haaretz do not say it outright, but their implication seem to have something to do with the prime ministerial penis size. Has our national package diminished under a Pax Americana? We will wonder and discussion 2 Jesus wept as a photo ripped from a video goes viral showing an IDF soldier in a village in Lebanon taking a sledgehammer to an icon of Jesus, leaving a lot of us to wonder with Lazar Berman of Miriam's Times of Israel. If it isn't time for a quote unquote moral wake up call, we will ask how does a thing like this happen? What does it say about us 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 talk about a new essay by peace activist, friend of the podcast and one time young Judea mentor of both Miriam and me. In a way, in an affair after a fashion, Gershom Baskin. What the essay is called Donald Trump is the best chance Israelis Palestinians have for peace since 1993. And we will ask with our most searing perspicacity, for our most generous supporters deserve nothing less than our most searing perspicacity. We will ask really. But before we get to any of that, listen to this Sam. Boy, That song is mit Hab Kim Hab Melachim By Noah Karsenti off her new debut EP when the record came out last week, Noah Carcenti sent a WhatsApp to the graduates of Noam, her youth movement, also the youth movement of Miriam's kids and my own, saying hi Graduate Noamistes. I finally put out my first ep. I worked on it a lot and just before Memorial Day I have the honor of sharing it with you. The album is dedicated to the memory of my father, Major David Karsenti. May his memory be for a blessing, end quote. And we are not made of stone, so we will listen to the music of Noah Karcenti over the course of the show. And now it is time for our first discussion. So Miriam, are ceasefires the grease fires of Israeli independence or a blessed invitation to join the peace choir? And I'll just add, like so many times in the past, who writes this shit?
- [39:18]
B
In Haaretz Holiday Edition, there was a lead editorial with the headline in order to celebrate Independence. And it started with this after two Independence Days marked by war, the 78th Independence Day falls in the midst of a ceasefire. But this is not the product of an Israeli initiative that expresses a wish to end the war and advance diplomacy. Ceasefire was forced on Israel on every front by US President Donald Trump, who effectively wrested from the government of Israel and its head of state the reins of its sovereignty. Haaretz editorials don't often line up with what most Israelis are feeling, but these lines reflected a consensus. Being suddenly pushed to abruptly end the war in Lebanon was unseemly humiliating. Before the ceasefire, 69% of Israelis told pollsters they favored continuing to strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Prime Minister Netanyahu sounded much the same note, saying Israel would keep striking Hezbollah and would not stop until northern residents security was restored, while calling this a historic opportunity to disarm Hezbollah and pursue peace with Lebanon. Until, that is, he accepted Trump's demand for a ceasefire in Lebanon, after which he pivoted to presenting the halt as a strategic opening. Israel, he argued, had already changed the balance of power and could now pursue disarmament of Hezbollah through diplomacy backed by force. In coalition circles, the sudden imposed end of fighting appeared to cause visible discomfort. Ministers were reported to be angry that they learned of the ceasefire from the media and were denied a cabinet vote. And of course, the opposition had a field day. Yair Lapid said, there has never been such a diplomatic disaster in all our history. Israel wasn't even at the table when decisions were being made concerning the core of our national security. It seems that for many Israelis there was something deeply diminishing about having no obvious say in whether and when to stop fighting our enemies. The editors of Haaretz know all this, of course. Their essay goes on tragically, the damage to Israel's sovereignty is preferable to continuing to leave our fate in the hands of irresponsible leaders who press to continue the wars, galloping towards destruction without a diplomatic vision, all the while deepening the sociopolitical divides in the country and promoting the crushing of the foundations of its democratic rule. Noah Israel is Now constrained by three Trump driven diplomatic frameworks, a 20 point Gaza plan, a U S Iran ceasefire built around talks over an Iranian 10 point proposal, and a U S brokered 10 day Israel Lebanon ceasefire. What should we make of being so comprehensively Pax Americanaed to the south, the east and the north on Independence Day 2026? How independent are we really? And were the editors of Aret's right to say that given the tragic and monstrous things that Prime Minister Netanyahu's government has done with our independence, we should be relieved that Trump is running the show.
- [42:45]
A
I think that the the way that this is framed in a lot of public discourse, as though we were forced kicking and screaming into this and it is somehow embarrassing and diminishing and emasculating that we are not the full masters of our fate. The way that this is framed I think isn't quite right while at the same time it's not entirely wrong either. There is something disturbing about Israel not being the master of our own fate, about things that are so existentially important and so much of our self image and so much of the ideology that drives this place is about about us, about Jews more generally taking control of Our own fate. That is probably the most foundational idea in all of Zionism. So there's something unnerving about seeing that, in fact, at this particular moment, the American President and this particular American President who is so quixotic and so unreliable is calling the shots and that we really have no choice but to do what he says. At the same time, I think that, you know, grow up. When was Israel really ever entirely independent? And when were we not dependent on the United States and often the goodwill of other people? And also, is it really an ideal for us to be entirely independent and heedless of everyone else? Even if it were possible, do we want to be Sparta? And the answer is obviously we don't. And so it's hard to tease apart what I think is, is right about the disappointment that many Israelis feel, including the governing coalition, about the pressure from the United States and the fact that we do need to listen and do pretty much what the American President tells us at this particular moment to tease apart the understandable and justified disappointment that people feel about that from the, I think, unfortunate and illegitimate framing of this as somehow a lack of will on the Prime Minister's part. The Prime Minister did what he really had to do. And if you take a half step back and get a half step's worth of perspective, you see that really he managed to persuade the American President and others to give us more latitude than any Israeli government has ever had before to act against Lebanon and to act against Iran and to act against Gaza. I think I agree with Haaretz that the results of that have in many ways been tragic. And I don't think that the Prime Minister has used that power well. But the knock that one ought to have with the for the Prime Minister is not that he wasn't man enough to somehow stand up to the Americans. I just don't think that that's right. What do you think?
- [46:16]
B
I think also just if we're talking about that emotional level, when we were driving to Jerusalem a few days ago on Highway 1, you have the flags. There's lots of flags around the national holidays. And there were three flags being flown, obviously the Israeli flag. And there was the flag of the Transportation Ministry's highway bureau. It was a weirdly like it's this bureaucrat. They have a flag for the highway
- [46:45]
A
fills me with pride.
- [46:47]
B
It's very weird. And they have an American flag. Every five flags was an American flag. And you know, the flags, the American flags went up all over the place. You know, during the war when Israel was, you know, hand in glove with the US Huge pictures, you know, Netanyahu standing next to Trump. That's actually been a calling card that we have this close relationship. So it can really go both ways. It's like a dangerous game to play that if you're going to say, my big gift to Israel and the Jewish people is that I am besties with Donald Trump. You also have to be prepared for when you're having a falling out with your bestie. That's sort of on the emotional and political level. But I want to also say, of course, this is so precedented, it's ridiculous you've mentioned this, but we pulled out of all kinds of situations under duress and under threat from the United States. We've also pushed back. I mean, we bombed Osi Rock in Iraq, much against the U.S. that's a huge move against us sort of desires. And we've expanded settlements, obviously against, you know, historically against us. But there have been plenty of times when we acquiesced against what we thought were our immediate goals. I want to sort of of represent here the residents of the northern part of Israel. And so when we talk about how there's a narrative here and how there's, how it's going to play politically at a time when we're heading towards national elections in October, a few days before midterms in the U.S. by the way, it's easy to get into a conversation about the framing and the narrative and the feelings. But if you're living up north and you have to basically live your days and nights in a shelter because there's zero warning and you are under barrage or you've evacuated and left everything you love and own up there, then you wanted, you desperately wanted this to be finally the last time we have to do this and we would finally get rid of this mortal threat over the border of people shooting into our houses, looking into our houses and shooting into our houses as the residents experience. And so the disappointment there is really very, very tacless. It's very substantive and not about just the feelings. And it's kind of shocking because, okay, so you have kibbutzim there who don't vote for this government, but you have plenty. I mean, the entire Kiryat Shmona was a Likud bastion, and they've been utterly, you know, abandoned. I mean, Kiryat Shmona's in terrible, terrible shape. So I think that's an important element in this conversation that we shouldn't lose sight of.
- [50:09]
A
Now. Listen to this. Sam. Le. That song is Har Gaash by Noah Kar and now it is time for our second discussion, which we are calling Jesus Wept. And here is why. People are dying in southern Lebanon and homes are being wrecked, so it might seem somehow indecent to pay attention, especially to a statue, an icon erected by one person in his own backyard in a village called Debel. But still, the statue brings up disturbing questions all of its own. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. There is a photograph taken from a video that was uploaded to social media earlier this week that you've probably seen, as it has by now appeared, well, just everywhere. In it you see Jesus cast down from the cross and lying at the foot of it, arms still spread wide, legs resting on the stipes, the vertical beam of the cross. Back against the crudely poured cement base of the statue, a soldier in full combat gear, wearing an ammunition vest and a Kevlar helmet covered in camouflage gauze, stands over the likeness of Jesus. In his hand is the handle of a 10 kilogram sledgehammer, the head of which he has lowered onto the face of the icon below him. Him. Needless to say, the soldier is Israeli. He is a Jew. I should say right away that the act in the picture and the video was immediately condemned by really everyone here. Most everyone here, Prime Minister Netanyahu tweeted, quote, as the Jewish state, Israel cherishes and upholds the Jewish values of tolerance, a mutual respect between Jews and worshipers of all faiths. Faiths, all religions flourish in our land and we view members of all faiths as equals in building our society and region. Yesterday, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon. I condemn the act in the strongest terms. Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe of the matter and will take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender. Quote Foreign Minister Giron Sar tweeted, among other things, quote, this shameful action is completely contrary to our values. Israel is a country that respects the different religions and their shared symbols and upholds tolerance and respect among faiths. We apologize for this incident and to every Christian whose feelings were hurt, end quote. What Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote about how the overwhelming majority of Israelis were stunned and saddened by the actual of that IDF soldier who has since then been identified and arrested, but whose identity has not been made public. That seems to be true. Condemnations did come from all directions and on social media and in the coffee shops. A lot of people were upset about this and I was one of them. And though lots of people were quick to say, which is surely true, that the action of one person remains the action of. Of just one person, an n of 1. Still, for me, and maybe for a lot of us, it's hard to shake the feeling that the actions of this one soldier do reflect something bigger and something really terrible. Laser Berman, who covers diplomacy for your paper, Miriam, the Times of Israel wrote an essay that got the headline, quote, destruction of Jesus statues should serve as his moral wake up call for IDF, Israel, end quote. Leser Berman writes that symbolically and politically, the image of an Israeli soldier smashing with a sledgehammer the face of Jesus provides a sort of illustration or proof for the worst calumnies about Israel and the Jews, new calumnies about Zionism being violent, heartless, and driven by a sense of a, quote, unquote, Jewish supremacy, and about Israel persecuting Christians. They are all somehow verified by this image. And of course, old calumnies about Jews plotting to murder Jesus 20, 26 years ago also seems to just be demonstrated by this image. All this is worrying enough on its own, and it's upsetting, but what worries and upsets me even more is what, if anything, this thing says about us. Leser Berman writes that lots of people here have been, tsk, tsking, saying how terrible the violent destruction of the statue was. But I've also been quick to add all that I said about how one bad soldier is just that, only one bad soldier. Still, Laser Berman adds, quote, but Israel and its leaders can't be let off the hook by dismissing it as an isolated incident, end quote. This because, well, well, first of all, it wasn't just one soldier. Someone took the picture. That person, by the way, has also been arrested. There must have been a whole unit there in the Belle. Why didn't anyone stop the guy with the sledgehammer? What's more, there have been other things over the past years that are kind of of a piece with this. There was a video not long after October 7th of a soldier in Gaza burning a Quran that he found a terrible video, in truth, I mean, terrible to watch. In truth, there have been dozens of cases of soldiers showing scorn for Islam and Christianity. And one suspects that for each of those dozens, there are dozens more that we just never hear about. Leser Berman writes, quote, the soldier didn't smash the Jesus statue accidentally, and his actions did not take place in a vacuum, end quote. And I think he must be right about this, just as Leser Berman is right that this is a moment for, well, probably all sorts of moral wake up calls. Among them a moral wake up call about the unbearable lightness of our disrespect for other religious traditions. In the event, the army, as I said, the army worked faster than usual. Within the week, the IDF investigated what happened, found the soldier who did it and the soldier who videotaped dismissed them from combat duty and sent them to jail for 30 days, which is something, but it does not diminish how much this thing troubles me. So Miriam, what I want to know from you is if this event did not take place in a vacuum, what are the contexts that I need to see in order to understand how something like this happens?
- [58:23]
B
Well, first of all, the image itself and the act are appalling. The destruction, the disrespect and the stupidity of it. And the army does seem to have done most of what it needs to do, including, we should add, that it replaced the crucifix with a silver statue in coordination with the people of the village and quite apparently an elaborate and valuable statue replace the one that was destroyed and the court martialing and whatever else they did to those soldiers. What I don't know if it has done is turn this into a required training update for all of the soldiers. And I don't think a lot of thought and energy is being put into reminding soldiers or perhaps telling them for the first time what you do when you are moving in civilian areas and you know all kinds of ethical decisions that soldiers are made. So if you ask sort of what the context is, I would say the narrowest text, which is what is the army experience? Is that there's a tremendous drain on the resources of the army. We are really, really frayed at the edges, and maybe even not so much the edges in terms of the energy the soldiers are. I don't know anything about these soldiers in particular, but they are being thrown into situations and they're exhausted and their commanders are exhausted and everybody is distracted. And I think that that's that perhaps can add to a decline in attention to ethical behavior and how it's handled and how it's then used as an opportunity for training. And I think that we also know that bad, horrible behavior by soldiers is not a new thing. One new element of course, historically is the ability to document it and get it out into the world. And we know, as you mentioned, that lots and lots of terrible things have been done in the middle of these wars in Gaza and elsewhere, looting, vandalism. And I think it's important to look at this in the context of what's going on in the west bank, where we're frankly seeing far more serious things than this, which is violence against civilians, destruction of property, murder, frequent murders of civilians, sometimes with soldiers standing by, sometimes even assisting. And that's the key point here, that the army is at best not addressing this.
- [61:26]
A
All of that is true for sure, and we've talked about it, or we talked about it just last week. And it's also obviously true that that's more important. I just want to talk specifically about this thing, though, because I think that there is something specific and important about this. And I understand why, about the religious
- [61:53]
B
nature of this, right?
- [61:55]
A
I understand why people immediately roll their eyes and say, look, there are worse things happening. Obviously that's true. And obviously you. Human life is more important than a statue could ever be. But the reason why this troubles me so much is there is a really broad claim, I think, made haphazardly and carelessly and heartlessly, that there is something called Jewish supremacy that has taken, that has taken hold in Israel. And there's. That is. That is personified by Ben Vere in particular, but is much broader than that. And the claim is that. I think the claim is that Jews in Israel or Zionists or Israelis, rather like Nazis did with German culture, have fetishized Jewish culture and believe hold in their hearts that it is better than the other religions out there and that this has become an engine of their behavior. And I've always been resistant to this claim, partly because it is made, I think, typically so carelessly and with, with so, so little attention to what is really the fact. And I'm resistant to the idea, I mean, I think that. That Jews and Israelis are more burdened by a broad sense of inferiority than. Than superiority in general, though obviously both things are there and they have an interesting dialectical relationship with each other. But I do think that when a soldier in Gaza posts a video of himself tossing a Quran into the fire, and when a soldier in Lebanon posts a video of himself smashing with a sledgehammer the face of an icon, the face of Jesus, they are acting on something. And I'm glad to be talking about this with you because you're so allergic to my grandiosity. But I think that I wonder if the way that we, among other things, the way that we educate our kids, where Jewish history here is largely, not entirely, but largely a history of persecution, mostly at the hands of Christians until, you know, a certain point in the 19th century when it becomes persecution also very much at the hands of Muslims. And when the overriding educational message that we have about for our children, about our history is that we have been oppressed by these other two monotheistic religions until we manage somehow to free ourselves sometimes in the 20th century with Zionism. I wonder if just that having that be so prominent a theme in education doesn't lead when you have an 18 year old suddenly free of their teachers and free of their parents and with weapons of destruction and £10 and sledgehammers and the freedom to do whatever the hell they want to do at any given moment and not firm moral judgment. Whether those educational messages don't translate into tossing the Quran into the fire and smashing the face of Jesus on an icon in a backyard in Lebanon, I don't know.
- [66:06]
B
I don't see a lot of, of signs that Israelis carry a sense of Jewish inferiority. I mean the victimhood is very much there, but certainly not inferiority. I've never felt that. And not even because of the demonstrable xenophobia that we have rising in Israel, demonstrably rising in the easily measured form of support for people who are proudly sort of racist and have a sort of a superior. A philosophy that Jews are superior. And they say it unabashedly and that's in the form of Ben gvir, but others as well. And I also think probably it's not that useful to talk about Israelis in the general sense because most of us tend to, or we, you and I rather tend to imagine Israelis that we know Israel, you know, our kids. But I think Israeli society is very divided and that I do not know the identity, thank goodness. I don't know the identity of these soldiers. I don't, you know, for their, for everyone's sake, I don't think that would be a good idea. But it's uncomfortable to say this. I'm gonna guess that these guys were raised in the religious milieu. And I think it's probably worth taking a look at what kind of education is going on in the yeshiva world. And I don't mean, you know, that the heavy duty hezda yeshivas, although maybe, but you know, just, you know, growing up in a national religious environment and the kind of messages that are going. And I would also say smashing idols is a Jewish thing. This actually we are like the first iconoclasts, right? So it's not this crazy vision of something, an un Jewish thing to do. We raised our children on the story that Abraham smashed the idols. Why this soldier thought that was the thing you do in a Christian in A village full of allies of Israel in front of cameras at a time when everybody, people kind of hate the Jews is another question. So it's, it's part of our DNA is actually smashing idols and oh, but
- [68:27]
A
I think, but part of, part of what, you know, one would have, would hope for from Zionism is to, is to, to free yourself of that and to, to be able to treat the world with, with, with respect. The, the issue of superiority inferiority is, you know, it's something that we can talk about at some, some other time. I would just add that the, that probably the most often uttered phrase here in Israel is bechol, Medina, Mitukenet. In any normal proper society, they would not do X, Y or Z about practically everything. Which I think is a, a sign that there's something about this Jewish state that is inferior, I don't think to Algeria or to Morocco. But, but in any instance, but in any instance one, the, the question is, how have we. I'll put it this way. There was, there was a big discussion beginning in the, the 1920s and when it was the earliest that I noticed it in, you know, circles surrounding Martin Buber, these European circles that were on their way to Israel, about how one of the dangers of Zionism is that if there's not a period of 40 years in the desert to change us, going straight from the experience of being this minority that has for generations been persecuted in particular by Christians, to being in a place where we control our own fate, there is a chance that we will be monsters. There is a chance that we will simply not have developed the civility that we need to deal properly with the power that we sought and in time managed to get for ourselves. And to me this seems like an example of us acting monstrously by virtue of the way that we have taught our history to ourselves.
- [70:42]
B
I think it's worth looking at it through your lens, but I don't think you need to go as far as that. I go back to the fact that if you're being raised in a framework where religiousness is how you parse the world, you could easily, easily misunderstand the message and think it is your job to have to get rid of these icons whenever you can. It is your job to be utterly horrified and offended when you see such a thing or to belittle it if that was what happened. And I'm sorry to say it, because I don't think that is the way Judaism should exist. But I do think that for fair numbers of people in this country being raised now that's the way that they're experiencing Jewishness. That it is actually about superiority or that it is actually about some sort of mission to cleanse the land of those who, who don't align with the rules that you learn about Kibusha Aretz. This is something that's very live for people, just like it's the same people who are thinking, hey, we're supposed to be working on rebuilding the temple. That's our job. Why aren't we just going up there with this sheep and slaughtering them? And they try to do is exactly this thing that we, those in our generation older understand that these are metaphors and these are symbols and this is not what we're supposed to be doing. And you have these young people raised in the world and in an environment that says, no, our job is to be the new biblical Jews and to, you know, pursue this kind of thinking and why it was extended to beyond, you know, Lebanon. I don't know if the thinking was quite as deep or informed, but I think that that's the vibe that many, many soldiers are getting. And by the way, if you look at what their mifakdim, their commanders are saying when they go in, a lot of them are parsing this through very, very, you know, sort of biblical imagery of the strong Jew going to do these things. They're not talking about the ethical standards of the most moral army in the world. They're talking about the Jewish right to go. And they're feeding into people's need for their rage and their need to respond in these ways that are anathema to what we want to say about the Israel Defense Forces. There has been a terrible slippage in the army and outside the army of what we think a Jewish and democratic state needs to be.
- [73:39]
A
I think that it's broader than what you're saying. I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying, though. I guess I don't know well enough. But I think that it's. In some ways, I think that it's worse than what you're saying in that I think that among secular Israelis too. Look, there are two. There are. I mean, there are. There's a, an enormous continuum of an infinite number of, of attitudes towards, towards religion. But broadly there. There's the religious people who, who may, for the reasons that you're saying, think that Christianity and Islam both ought best be wiped from the face of at least this little piece of, of earth that might be. Be true among secular Israelis there. There is also, I think, a great deal of disdain for religion pace the, the discourse about Iran and Iran under the Ayatollahs, where very, very frequently and certainly in my social media feeds, the, the ayatollahs are compared to, to the rabbis of B' Nai Brak and Meesha Arim. And I think that they're that, that, that we have not developed the broadly some of us have, but broadly the, the like appreciation and deep respect for religion in general and including the religion, you know, the, for. For most of us, including Judaism, but for all of us, the religion of everyone else. Harav Malkior. Rabbi Malkior, who was a member of Knesset and is now for the last 20 years, has been very, very deeply involved in inter religious dialogue, is very persuaded that peace, when it comes, which he believes it will, will come through people who are deeply, deeply religious in this way. I think he thinks that we're getting closer to peace rather than further from peace by virtue of Israelis increasing interest in Judaism, Jewish Israelis increasing interest in Judaism. And he thinks that when you become quite serious about Judaism, it is very easy for you to see the, the richness, the spiritual richness of these other traditions. And maybe he's mistaken about that toot court, but when we see something like this, to me, I mean to me it does seem like this is a particular kind of monstrousness that has something to do with, with us having told ourselves the wrong stories. Maybe like what you're saying about what our religion ought to mean to us, or maybe what I'm saying about what our history ought to mean to us, or maybe both things. But I find it deeply, deeply troubling.
- [77:06]
B
Yeah, it definitely is. And look, I think talking in these very general terms is we need to look at trends and see where things are going. But as I said, you've just described a very important stream of Jewish thought, Jewish religious thinking that obviously comports very well with my sense of what Judaism should be. The idea that through religion, not in spite of religion, peace can be made. But it's a very uphill battle and with some of the most brilliant people. And Melchior, but also the late Rav Froman was, you know, that was exactly what he did. He spoke to Hamas leaders, he studied theology with them in order to try and bridge. And there are other very beautiful souls who are doing this and I wouldn't say that they are mainstream. Their voices are interesting and compelling and I think they're working against the tide of a lot of what's going on in the national religious world. Having said that, I do not know who those soldiers were and what they came from.
- [78:14]
A
Now listen to this.
- [79:25]
D
La.
- [79:51]
A
That song is Kol Me by Noah Karsenti, the prodigiously talented and just lovely Noamistit, whose first EP is just out now in all the usual places. And now it is time for a country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of us describes something that may have surprised or amused, delighted or enchanted and sourceful, possibly even fluked us as we wended our way through our worlds over the last little while. Miriam what is Jervetta country on Erev
- [80:18]
B
Yom Hatzmaut, the Eve of Independence Day, after we went to the secret beach that's the official name, Hakhofa Sodi, which is level with the Reading Power station just north of the northern port. And after we hung out around the campfire with friends from our congregation Chavarat Tel Aviv and complained about, you know, the situation and heard the wild travel stories of those who made it out abroad for Pesky and made it back. And after we ate sabih and toasted marshmallows and sang all the old Israeli classics and then sang a plaintive round of Hatikvah. After all that, my guy and I walked to Dizingov street to catch the bus home. Our Move it app told us to take the 39. It was due sooner than the 36 and would get us home by 11:21, a solid 15 minutes before the 36 was. The first sign that things were off was that a 36 roared right by and the 39 only came 10 minutes later. Sign number two. The number on the bus was six, but the driver leaned out and yelled in Arabic, accented Hebrew, this is a 39 bus. 39. Was the number stuck? Did the driver not know how to change the bus number? We hopped on. We were cheerful. He was cheerful. Do you go to Hashalom? Someone asks the driver. I don't know, do I? He answered. This is the first time I've driven this line. No, I yell. From where we're sitting in the back, you don't stop At Hachalom. We chugged south along Dizzingoff, with The driver screaming 39. 39. At every stop and revelers jumping aboard. And then off. Somewhere around Dizengoff Square, things went full wacky as the bus made an unexpected and difficult turn onto a tiny side street, a street clearly not meant for buses and clearly not on the 39 route. Here's where I'm starting to ponder who this guy is and where he's taking us. Mostly I'm thinking there was maybe a personnel shortage at the Don Bus company and a lot of the usual drivers, especially maybe the Jewish ones, had the night off. There were three party girls up front, hanging with the driver, one right next to him, practically up to the windshield and holding her phone in front of her. The other two were dangling off the first row seats so they could lean toward their friend. It turns out this trio was the navigational team. Their friend in the front was using a map app to tell the driver how to go, and while it was very sweet, as far as I could tell, it was all wrong. Instead of going east towards Habima, we had made an elaborate multi turn pivot and were heading back north on Rynas street, all the way to Ben Gurion Boulevard. After a while, I go up front to see what the heck is going on, and one of the young women explains that lots of streets in the city are blocked due to the crowds pouring into the streets. Evidently, there hadn't been a chance to plan very well for the impromptu festivities permitted at the last minute after so many of the official events were canceled. So they're not steering the driver to the route, they're helping him find a way around the obstacles. By then, it's just the driver and the five of us passengers. I join the fray up front and start to use my own travel apps to try and help. But I soon realize that every turn I think we should take is exactly the wrong turn and that these young women are doing a great job and I just need to sit back for the ride. The women are trying to get to a party in South Tel Aviv. They are golden. They're happy and helpful and smart. There's just a lovely rapport, especially between the driver and the one right next to him, prompting him to turn left and then right. Occasionally, he makes a call on his phone to consult a supervisor. Their conversation is in Arabic, peppered with Hebrew street names. But mostly he's very happy to accept guidance from the young woman. We go really far off the route, so it takes quite a while. And when we finally get past the blocked streets and rejoin the real route on Hakashmonaim, there is a joyful yelp from all six of us on the bus. The rest of the way is smooth and we make it home half an hour later than we expected. And I'm thinking, well, what is a metaphor for if a metaphor ain't for this? Because here we all are and we've been blown off course and we don't exactly know the way, and there's unreliable technology and unexpected obstacles. But smart, confident, kind young people are just gonna go right up to the front and respectfully guide us back on track. And it may take longer than promised, but God willing, insha' Allah im yir TZ hashem, we will make it home before midnight.
- [85:02]
A
See? See what I said about Miriam and Hope? See you people out there, it's right there when you least expect it. So I just got home a few hours ago, another of those wartime 30 hour trips with a 13 hour delay in the middle. And this is something that every single one of you has felt probably lots of times. So much so that it may be strange even to mention it, but then these are overwrought times. So it's just like always, but even more so. And what I'm talking about is just what it is like now to come back home. I noticed at first when we landed, and there is always these past few years anyway, a drizzle of people clapping when its wheels down. But this time, and it was 2:30 in the morning instead of the one in the afternoon the day before it was supposed to be, and there was this really loud round of applause and it went on for a long time, like we were calling for the pilot to give us an encore. And I remember time was that it was like that just landing in Tel Aviv was a big thing and people clapped and clapped, but it hasn't been like that in a while. And then last night, for whatever reason, the war, how hard and unreliable it's been to go away and to come back. We clapped and we clapped and that feeling of just the joy of being here, it did not go away. There is that scene that we all know at the end of It's a Wonderful Life, when George Bailey begs Clarence to send him back to his real life, which is messed up. There's still the money missing from the savings and loan and Potter's gonna see that he goes to jail for it. But when he's back, he's so happy for all of it.
- [86:47]
D
Well, hello, Mr. Bank Examiner. How are you? Mr. Bailey, there's a deficit.
- [86:51]
A
I know.
- [86:52]
D
$8,000.
- [86:53]
A
I've got a little paper.
- [86:54]
D
I'll bet it's a warrant for my arrest. Isn't it wonderful? I'm going to jail. Merry Christmas. Reporters are. Where's Mary? Mary. Oh, look at this wonderful old drafty house. Mary. Mary.
- [87:06]
A
Kids.
- [87:07]
D
Pete.
- [87:08]
B
Kids.
- [87:09]
D
Janie. Jenny. Tommy.
- [87:11]
A
Tommy.
- [87:13]
B
Let me look at you. Oh, I could eat you up. Daddy.
- [87:17]
D
Zozo. Zozo, my little ginger snap. How do you feel? Fine. Not a smidge of temperature, Not a smidge of hallelujah.
- [87:26]
A
And at 2:30 in the morning in the airport, that is just exactly what it's like. I hear the choir in the background on the jet bridge getting off the plane. A couple of people are just standing there chatting, but blocking the whole thing. And it's 2:30 in the morning, like I said, and no one can get by them. And there's this whole plane of people waiting to get home to catch what sleep there's time to catch. And these two people, they're just laughing and joking and I think, well, hello, people. People who don't have a clue about how much space you take up in public. Hello. And after a time I squeeze by and you will think that I dreamed this up, but it really happened. At the end of that long radial hallway leading back to the center of the airport, the place where you find the passport control machines, there's a bunch of ultra Orthodox Jews that have just started to daven in a minyan. And again, they're like taking up the whole width of the thing. You cannot get by them. You have to, like squeeze through. And I had two rolly bags and, oh, no, I only had one then. I hadn't got picked up the other one. But you have to squeeze by. And I squeeze by them with the bags and I think, well, hello, Haredim who will pray anywhere. And down at the baggage claim, everyone is clumped at the very edge of the carousel, right beneath the chute where the bags slide down and they're like nudging each other aside, sort of jostling each other aside. It's like survival of the fittest there. But when a bag comes down and an older man, he like, claws for it, but it goes past him, he can't get it. Seven people fight to get it off the belt and they stand it up in front of the man. And one person telescopes the handle up for him and says, here you are. And I think, well, hello, people who would knock you down in a second without even noticing it. But if you fell, they would pick you up and sit with you and offer you water to put on it. And in the cab. And I knew that this was gonna come. I just knew that it would come. And then it did. The driver said, so, what's the weather like these days in New York? And I say, well, actually I came from Washington, but it's nice, you know, springtime. And he said, well, I lived for A year in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and then for seven years in Columbus, Ohio. And I said, oh, why? And he said, you know, to make money. I had a business there. Everything is easier there, you know. And we chatted about his business. And I asked why he came back. And he said, well, the kids were getting older. Our girl was five, our boy was two. And I knew they had to grow up here, but it is hard to come back. And I said, oh, yeah, how? And he said, everything is hard here. Our girl in the first six months, she said over and over again, abba, I don't understand this language. And she said this to me in Hebrew, Everything was so strange. And of course, making a living, I do not understand. He said, and this is what I knew was coming. I do not understand how you could possibly move here. And when you were all set up, you were an American, you could do anything you wanted there. How could you come and choose to live here? And I thought, well, hello, cab driver who lived in America and thinks it's nuts that I moved here, but not really. And I said, but it sounds like you chose to live here too. You were there for eight years. Why did you decide to come back? And he said, well, this is the only place for a Jew to live, but more than that, it is the best place in the world. And the bell that I heard in my head at that moment, I think it was my angel getting his wings. And that brings us to the end of our show. Huge thanks to Itaishelem, our station manager, without whom we would have none of this. Thanks to Acheboli, my favorite band from Kibutzgeva. They give us music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you, Miriam. Thank you, Natalie. We'd like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. That keeps the show going and it keeps the station going. We are moved and we are grateful and we are in your debt. And we would like to thank all of you out there for taking your valuable time to listen. We'd like to ask you 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. Maybe one that starts with this. The Promise podcast. No other podcast about Israeli politics and culture offers more mentions of Egyptian geese. Da, da da. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that today, April 23rd, we celebrate world Table Tennis Day. So stipulated. Way back in 2015, 11 long years ago, the date being the birth Date of Ivor Goldschmidt Samuel Montague, himself a great ping pong star who founded the International Table Tennis Federation, or the ITTF 100 years ago in 1926, and in the same year financed the first World Championships in table tennis in London. Ivor Goldschmidt Samuel Montague remained president of the ITTF for 41 years until 1967, during which years it grew from having four member countries to 160. Eivor Goldsmith Samuel Montagu was one of the great figures of the 20th century, the third son of Gladys Ney Goldschmidt and Louis Montague, the second Baron Swathling, a scion of a great Jewish banking dynasty who went to King's College, Cambridge and then established the London Film Society, becoming England's first film Critic also in 1926, and then working with Alfred Hitchcock on his movies, joining the Fabian Society and then the British Socialist Society and finally the Communist Party of Great Britain, through which he became fast friends with the great Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, whom he took to New York and Hollywood. He was a founder of the Progressive Film Institute beginning in World War II. Ivor Goldschmidt Samuel Montagu was also a spy for the Soviets. In 1959 he was awarded the prestigious Lenin Peace Prize by the Russians. In 1995, Ivor Goldschmidt Samuel Montagu was posthumously inducted into the Table Tennis hall of fame this fully 11 years after he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports hall of Fame for his successes with a paddle and for all he did for the sport. And obviously I adore World Table Tennis Day. It's probably my favorite day of the entire year because of Hitchcock, because of communism, because of Sergei Eisenstein, because it is, so to say the word Swathling, and because ping pong rocks. But even as I speak, these worlds World Tennis Table Day is not yet even halfway over. Still, if it were a table tennis game, the score of World Table Tennis Day would be like 9 to 7. Still, lots more to go, but already I can feel it getting perilously close to ending. Like a volley when you loft your return too high and you know, you just, just know that a slam is on the way, burying the point which you will simply never get back. Not so the promised podcast. We will back for you next week and most every week, reminding you that while a ping pong ball is really just a slip of plastic filled with lots of air and it can still provide you with hours of challenge and exercise and good clean fun, other things that are basically just a bunch of air can leave you feeling empty and frustrated and wondering why you waste your time on the day damn thing on this the Promise podcast.