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A reminder that the bodies of two hostages, Ron Gvili and Suttheesak Rinthalak, are still held in Gaza today, 782 days after they were taken on October 7th. We hope that by the time you hear this they will have been returned for burial to their loved ones and all of us. This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language. Welcome to the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1, the voice of the city that is home over there in Parc Hayarkon Ghanai Yehoshua, in what's called the Tropical Garden. Just north and across the bike path from the hot air balloon is the spectacular Lumagica or as we say here, Lumagica Festival, which is described on the city website as a transporting experience of light, taste and imagination. Featuring dozens of spectacular light sculptures, a variety of culinary stalls, shops and a country fair style games midway, all in a festive winter atmosphere, Ganeyo Shua park is transformed into a a kingdom of light and magic along a walking path of roughly 1 km spanning about 20 dunams. End quote. Now, in case you happen not to have grown up in the Ottoman Empire, a dunam is an early modern Turkish measure of area, from the Turkish word donmek, to turn, literally the area a farmer could turn a plow around in which unit was occidentalized into 1,000 square meters, which is just about a quarter acre or 10,764 square FE, or about 1/10 of a hectare depending on where your people spent the Middle Ages in early modern times. And 20 dunams. Well it is plenty of space even for the 30 huge light sculptures and the 300 odd smaller light sculptures, each offering its own delights that make up Lumagica, some of which towers are many many meters high and spread many many meters wide, which I know because I am not made of stone. So obviously I biked over there, beep bop booped my phone over the scanner, my card, some amount of money I think it was 39 shekels with my digital city residence card, slash surveillance apparatus and people inside. It is so beautiful and yes, enchanting as you walk on the path through the trees and suddenly a sculpture, often just an armature, garlanded with lights of all different colors, fills your stream of vision and they got wonder and they got whimsy. There is a glowing panda with arms outstretched seeking a hug that sits on the ground. If you are 11, you see it eye to eye and there is also not far away, a fox with the mischievous smile. And there is a Cinderella carriage ablaze in soft yellow lights. And there is a swan made of light gliding across a pool of water. And there is a huge heart hanging glowing from a tree. And there is a bigger than life size couple ballroom dancing, the colors of their attire changing with the music, as does the regal chandelier far above. And there are two hands, one swarthy and one not in a bro y dapp and pull, embrace a ribbon, bond the two arms at the wrist. And there's my favorite, a brilliantly radiant tree. Its branch is heavy with colorful beribboned boxes. Which tree, though it is not a conifer, would still summon to any imagination? Like mine, formed in a mostly Christian country, it would summon a Christmas tree. But here in Tel Aviv Yafo, it is labeled a quote unquote tree of wishes, because, well, you know, Jewish state and all. Though I wouldn't be surprised if most of the wishes of the under 11 set didn't somehow involve a prayer that maybe this year Santa Claus would visit the Jewish homes in Tel Aviv like he does all the Christian homes in Yafo. But I digress. The Lumagica Light park here is one of a dozen parks that the Lumagica Company, which is an Austrian thing, has going right now around the world. In Austria, of course, and Germany, and Murano, Italy, and Mount Blanc, Quebec, in Canada, in Warsaw, Poland, Wakayama, Japan, and of course here. It is part of the Lumagica magic that each of the light parks is designed with people from the places where they rise, with the particular likes and dislikes of the locals very much on everyone's mind. In our case, the people behind the design are Anat and Sivan Faraj, who are married and both photographers and curators. Sivan Faraj in particular holds a huge place in the hearts and imaginations of us folks from Tel Aviv. Yaffo as his family's photography studio, Faraj it is now called. It used to be called the Faraj Brothers Studio, but there was a famous falling out which Farage Studio you can now and since 1971 find at 195 Dizengaf corner of our Lazarof, but before that it was on Ben Yehuda and before that it was in Petahtikva. And for years there was a big sign draped in front of the Dizengav studio that read Infaraj Haolam yafe ki flaim. With Faraj the world is twice as beautiful. Which one of my great teachers, the remarkable polymath polyglot historian Amos Funkenstein, or Funki, as the students called him with love behind his back, quoted at the start of a lecture about epistemology and ontology, which two fields of philosophy he said were little more than footnotes to that Faraj sign. But I digress. The Faraj family, five brothers and five sisters, arrived from Iraq in 1951 in Operation Ezra and Nehemia, and they were sent straight to a run down Maabara transit camp, Amishav, long since absorbed into Petah Tikva. And the oldest two of the brothers and sisters, Peri and Sami Faraj, started plying the family trade, which was mostly photographic portraiture, though Peri Faraj, or as he was more often known and Sami Paraj, had become famous as children for setting up shop across from the main synagogue in Baghdad and taking pictures of the Jews of the city, organizing their alarmed exit from the city. And the brothers first joined their uncle Khaviv's store Studio Haviv, and a few years later started their own operation here in Israel, first in Petah Tikva and then in Tel Aviv. And the business grew and grew and they were the first operation in Israel to work in color, with Sami Faraj traveling to Agfa in Germany to learn the art and returning with the first color developing equipment the country ever saw. And their store became a place, one of the many, the places where people of reputation turned up. There was a thing you could get where the Farage brothers would pick you up with horse and carriage and convey you aristocratically to their Diesengaaf studio, the windows of which contained photos of famous politicians and performers. I remember walking by and seeing Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, also Rivka Michaeli. And in 1971 the Farage brothers had snapped up the Armand David cinema, which is having trouble making ends meet despite or maybe because of having screened such greats as Pierre Paolo Pasolidi's Accatona and Louise Brunel's Belle de Jour and Alain Rene's La Guerre et Finis. And there was a cry about the closing of the theaters. But the Farage brothers said they too are in the field of film art only a different sort of film and a different sort of art and their business thrived. Our own extended family got a number of groups portraits from Faraj, including as part of our celebration of my father's 80th birthday, Gvurot, as Jewish tradition has it, and the children and grandchildren gathered in Tel Aviv for a Dalla Palooza Da being what we called my father growing up, owing to what was taken at first to be my beloved older sister's 1 year old partial grasp on the English language, but turns out to be because through circumstances we never fully elucidated, she seems to have been born Irish. In Ireland, a father is a da. But again, I digress. But the point is, Faraj photographs hang on so many walls and are in so many photo albums in this city, one almost never goes to a Shiva without seeing Faraj. In the event, it was when the Farage empire was at its strongest that the roots of its destruction took hold. Faraj Perry, who was an artist of the highest degree, whose aesthetic talents were not matched by his business sense, pressed his brothers and sisters to expand, expand, expand new stores, cinema production, publications. And the sisters and brothers grew worried, then alarmed as the fortune dwindled. And finally, in 1977, the brothers at the helm of the business, Perry and Sammy, they split, ending their commercial association and with it, all the relations they had. After the split, Farage Perry continued to run the Farage studio operation. Sammy Faraj started curating photo exhibits with his son Sivan. There was a famous show after the Gulf War of shots of people in their sealed room with their gas masks. That was the Faraj father and son and father and son. Farage opened a studio and offices on Moshav Neve Yara near Hauda Sharon, which seemed to still be in operation. Its Facebook page reading quote, photo artists Sami and Sivan Farage have been documenting the country with their camera for more than 70 years, end quote. It is this same Sivan Farage who, with his wife Anat, brought the Lumagic show to the city and who gave it its cultural conversion, as Sivan Farage put it, quote, reimagining how a city like Tel Aviv can light itself up. And arguably, nothing captures the spirit of this city we love so well. A city ever and always illuminated by a light that wells up from the people and the places better than a lu magical evening of whimsy and inspiration. Leading kids and their folks often gape, mouthed one after another, saying under their breath, why? Why, why? The answer to which exhalation is of course, because. Because. Because still, 116 years after it started, this is a city of surprise and enchantment. Maybe the best response our people has ever cooked up to that most ancient of wishes, let there be light. With us, speaking from TLV1's flagship satellite studio in Jerusalem, is a woman who, and I think you'll agree, brings light to practically everything she says and does, every conversation with a woman in a veil on a bus, or with a man seeming mystified on the street with a friendly waiter or lost child, a friend suffering in Gaza. You might say that part of the reason she is a delight is because ever and always she is bringing delight. I think that you've already figured out that that person, that member of my own personal pantheon of Illuminati, could only be Linda Gradstein. Linda Gradstein 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 at NYU Tel Aviv and the Hebrew University, and not so 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, how you doing?
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I'm okay. I'm a little bit in mourning since I am back from a fantastic trip to Hawaii to visit my son. And it's really besides being the other side of the world, it's just there's so much space and so much green and, you know, the war and everything that's happening here seems really, really far away. At the same time, I'm very happy to be home and so I'm doing just fine. And happy Thanksgiving.
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Welcome back. Yeah, it sounds like it was a wonderful trip. Now, as for me, my name is Noah Ephron, and I do not mean to boast, but I just started WeGovy last week for the same reason I that dogs lick their genitals. Because I can. And I have since then in the past six days gained seven pounds or more than three kilos. And please believe me when I tell you that I'm not bragging. Gosh, my parents always taught me that bragging only makes other people feel worse, and ultimately you feel worse about yourself, too. But I am the rare sort of independent spirit who will not let big pharma or even human anatomy itself dictate whether or not I should be fat. No Big Pharma, human anatomy, and even my own desire not to develop some life crushing disease. They are not the boss of me. Today we got two topics of importance so profound that out of respect for them, you may want to change into the clothes you wear at a shul or temple. And while you do that, first we have this matter that we are following with alert, interest and great concern as part of an occasional series we like to call the Promise Podcast Ponders. Patience, perspicacity, piety, primogeniture, patriarchs, and the presence of the present in the past and the presence of the past in the present. A book came out recently and just started to get reviews. There was a big one this past Shabbat in Makor Rishon, the national religious weekly newspaper. And the book is called el tol.yitzhak. these are the Chronicles of Isaac after Genesis 25:19. And the book's subtitle is the Story of Isaac in the Book of Genesis. And the book is by a woman named Sarah Schwartz, who is the dean of the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies, Israel's Jewish theological seminary where Conservative rabbis are trained and ordained and where lots of people write doctorates and master's degrees and get teaching certificates in Talmud and Bible and Rabbinics, Jewish thought and Philosophy, Israel Studies, Jerusalem Studies, Jewish art, and there is more. It is a wonderful place. If someone were to look in the cold case files of the place, they would find that I am abd there. I never wrote the dissertation for the second of the two doctorates I was doing at once back in the day because I finished the first and got a postdoc in America and it bothered me being a B D all but dissertation. But then I thought do I really need a second D? What kind of a D am I to think that I gotta pad my CV with a second D so it never happens? But God did. I love that place because of how it is at once so serious about the stuff that it takes seriously, Halachah, Agadah, Kabbalah, Rishonim Achonim, the works, and at the same time how it is so open minded about the stuff it takes seriously. And Sara Schwartz, I saw, also teaches at Bar Ilan and I liked that here was a scholar at home in different worlds of Yiddishkeit, the Conservative Yiddishkeit of Schechter and the Orthodox Yiddishkeit of Bar Ilan, where I learned also wrote the dissertation that the book is based on. And I learned a lot of the work of turning that dissertation into this book Sara Schwartz did at JTS in New York and its gorgeous library. So everything was lining up and I saw too that the book is put out by Bar Ilan University Press. So on Sunday when I was on campus I called the publishing house offices and I said I have to have that new book about Isaac. And the guy on the other end said join the line habibi. And then he said, actually you're lucky. We got a bunch of them just in come by were right near the cafe in the Old Judaic Studies building and I walked over beep bop booped my phone over the credit card reader and took the book, got a coffee next door and found a shady bench. And just like that, I was in it. There is a conventional wisdom about Yitzhak, about Isaac, that he was simple. Thirteen years ago, Elie Wiesel gave a lecture at the 92nd Street Y in New York, a couple of miles east side to west from JTS in the event event and the lecture was called A Return to the why I Love Isaac, the Akedah being literally the binding of Isaac, referring to when God said to Abraham in Robert Alter's beautiful translation, take, pray your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I shall say to you, end quote. And in his lecture, Elie Wiesel described the second of the patriarchs as modest, quiet, poetical, a dreamer who knew solitude and anguish, who answers questions with simplicity, and who, when his father woke him up on that day and asked him to go to a mountain where he was to be sacrificed to God, rose and answered simply, hineni, here I am, Elie Wiesel said that night at the Y quote. Oh, do I love Isaac. I love him because he suffered so much, probably. End quote. Maybe, as only one person who suffered so much can feel for another person who has suffered so much, the Isaac whom Elie Wiesel loved was not without grandeur of spirit and wondrous stores of patient acceptance, but still he was an Isaac who made a virtue of his passivity, who most of all suffered and most of all suffered in lonely silence. Rav Tsviyuda Cook, the great scholar who did so much through the Merkaz Harav yeshiva that he ran to advance or maybe subvert the still greater scholarship of his father, Rav Abraham. Yitzhak Cook, the first head rabbi of Jewish Palestine, Rav Zvi Yehuda Cook, the son, wrote of Isaac, in contrast to the great activism of our forefather Abraham, our forefather Isaac is entirely passive, merely being acted upon. End quote. Sara Schwartz writes that many scholars have argued that Isaac is fashioned as a passive and weak man who falls victim to those around him, end quote. This view of Isaac is traditional, and it makes sense too, as how otherwise do you explain someone who asked to march off to a sacrifice he will come to learn is his own sacrifice, says simply, hineni, I am here. Or someone who, near the end of his days, offered with inexplicable trust a Birthright blessing meant for his firstborn son Esav instead to his second born son Jacob, who had deceitfully impersonated his older twin brother by wearing his clothes. In fact, in most all Jewish thought, Isaac has only ever been thought of as a man who was righteously, sacredly, admirably passive and beatifically simple. I once heard a drash that Isaac is maybe best thought of as a man with some kind of cognitive deficit, like Lenny Small in Of Mice and Men, luminous when doing simple things, like tending the rabbits, with simple things being the only things he is capable of doing. It is all this that Sara Schwartz challenges in her book. Like Elie Wiesel, Sara Schwartz loves Isaac. But unlike Elie Wiesel, she loves him not because of how he suffered, how he accepted, how he survived, but rather because of what Isaac did. Sarah Schwartz writes that when you pay attention, you see that Isaac never was that passive figure that we imagine him to be. For inst. When his wife Rivkah could not conceive, Genesis tells us 25:21 again in Robert Alter's gorgeous translation. And Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife, for she was barren. And the Lord granted his plea and Rivkah, his wife, conceived. And Sara Schwartz offers a long exegesis on the next chapter, chapter 26, in which Isaac and Rivkah go to Gerar and there Isaac wins the good graces of the king and builds a farm, expanding it time and again until it is vast and the well wealth it produces is vast. And the chapter tells how he digs a well that the local people then claim for his own. So he digs another, and then another, until finally there is enough water for all, and the people regard Isaac with respect and appreciation. And Sara Schwartz says even this matter of the blessing, when Jacob tricked Isaac, even that is not as simple as it seems. As Isaac did in the end, bless Jacob a second time, this time knowing he is Jacob, Jacob. And to him he said, and may God grant you the blessing of Abraham to you and your seed as well, that you may take hold of the land which God granted to Abraham. This was not submitting to trickery. It was Isaac choosing on his own, his second born over his firstborn, to keep going. This thing with God that had started with his father. It was refusing to treat primogeniture as destined. It was an effort like he had done when Rivka could not conceive, to summon God into a new kind of relationship where what people did mattered, just as what God did, mattered, and in which there was a collaboration underway between people and God. There's a lovely part of the book, maybe my favorite, in which Sara Schwartz writes about blessings, these vexed blessings, and then blessings in general. And it is there that she says that it is Isaac who gave us the spiritual world that some of us live in today, where a blessing is a human and a wish to draw God into some kind of shared project. When parents say, as some parents do to their kids at Shabbat dinner, may God make you like Ephraim or Menasheh, or like Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bila. May God bless you and keep you. May God's light shine upon you and be gracious to you. May God turn towards you and grant you peace. End quote. And at that moment, that moment of the blessing, a bond is being bound three ways between a parent and a kid, and a kid and God, and between God and a parent. Because God knows the only thing we parents really care about in the end is that our kids are bathed in God's light and grace. Isaac's life work, Sara Schwartz says, was about inheritance. It was about translating the harshness of what Abraham had with God and finding ways to add people's voices and what people wanted to this complicated thing of ostensibly being a people of God, which is to say God's people, which is to say God's chosen people. Isaac inherited one thing from Abraham and fashioned for Jacob and Esav and all the rest of us, a different sort of thing, a different sort of inheritance, messier and more human. That is what Sara Schwartz says. The last words in Sara Schwartz's book are these. And in conclusion, I will point out that the image of Isaac is close to many of us on a personal level, because a person spends a good part of his or her life in the dual role of son and father or daughter and mother. Like Isaac, we too are for a long time pressed to face the challenges of the second generation, preserving the ways and achievements of the generation that came before us, but also changing and adapting these ways and achievements to new realities. Isaac's ways and his story, which I elucidated in this essay, may therefore give inspiration to the reader and illuminate his path in building the bridges that bridge between yesterday and tomorrow. End quote. At the end of the foreword of the book, there is this paragraph by Sara Schwartz that begins with an epigraph From Qohelet, Ecclesiastes 9:12 no man knows his time. And the paragraph that comes next says on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Teyvet, January 8, 2024, my beloved son David fell in a battle in the Gaza Strip. David was a companion and a soulmate. He was wholeheartedly joyful when this book was accepted for publication. I did not have the privilege of having him rejoice with me when it was published. May the words I have written be an eternal light in his blessed memory, and may they serve to elevate his pure, noble and radiant soul. Your image is always with me, always before me. I have loved you with everlasting love, David. End quote. And I have now spent days reading and listening to Sara Schwartz. The book, of course, but also to things she wrote about David and for David and said about David and for David after he was killed near Rafiach. A sergeant first class in the engineering corps, 26 years old, married to Maital. They celebrated their third anniversary just the weekend before David Schwartz died. And also brother to Shirah, Yisra', El, Shai, Yosef and Yuda. And son, of course, of Sara and Jair. The things she said and wrote then, after David died, they somehow fill the book, most of which was written before he died, with deeper meaning. As when she sat at a memorial service at the Harazion Yeshiva where David Schwartz studied. Studied that when David Schwartz learned of what was happening on October 7, He did not think twice. He simply said, hineni, I am here. He stood with his friends, facing wickedness and evil, evil as the best possible representative of the good. Speaking at Reichman University, where David was in law school, Sara Schwartz described all that was luminous about her boy. And then she described what we must inherit from him. We must be deserving of him. His memory will survive if it raises in us too inspiration to act out of shared values, moral clarity and concern, one for the other. His name will remain with us if we can learn from him, to continue on his path, and if we take something of him into our own lives, Torah labor and acts of loving kindness. And you feel in these words the meaning of inheritance. Twisting Mobius in front of our eyes. The mother struggling to absorb what her boy has bequeathed to her and to all of us. To a reporter from Yidioth, Sara Schwartz used the words that are used to describe Abraham binding Isaac on the altar as a sacrifice to God, Akedat Yitzchak, and said, my boy was bound too, upon the altar of our collective freedom. He was needed, and he did not hesitate, did not waver, did not think of himself, only that his people needed him. And all week I find myself wondering, can a book be invested of its true meaning, its full meaning, anyway, by something huge of a divine scale, something as huge as a mother burying her boy, but still something that happened only after the edits of the book were edited and the type was set and the galleys were reviewed, can a book be invested of its true meaning, of its full meaning, anyway, after it has been finished, it turns out it can. This beautiful and wise book, like so countlessly many other things for all of us here on our side of the border with Gaza and on theirs, is different now than it was before. And it will be different now, forever forward, as I guess all of us will be. May David Schwartz's memory be for blessing, and may Sarah Schwartz be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem Today two discussions. Our first discussion Fragile Peace Symbol Syndrome. Because my philosophy is the best kind of wordplay on a podcast is visual wordplay. And a peace symbol looks kind of like an X if you turn your head the right way. And there is this thing called Fragile X syndrome that messes up your neurodevelopment. So I looked up the Unicode for P symbol, which is U262E and I think you'll agree it makes a great name for a podcast segment, as even as US President Donald Trump says that the Middle east is peaceful for the first time in 3,000 years, there are signs that we may be slouching back toward war in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran. It's our fragile peace symbol syndrome and the messed up neurodevelopment that goes with it. As we will discuss and discussion 2. You gotta fight for your right to party. As 11 months before the last possible date of our next elections, which will almost certainly come earlier than that, new political parties are beginning to form and we will discuss three of the most interesting and maybe most important of them and also ask what, if any, ideological lacuna they remain, perhaps to be filled by still more new parties. Which topic you will note makes the beasty title of this discussion. You gotta fight for your right to party. That most rare of locutions. It is a single entendre 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@patreon.com promised podcast on the World Wide Web. What with today being in America and as it turns out for Americans everywh Thanksgiving Day and as both Linda and I turn out to be big fans of celebrating Thanksgiving even here in the Holy Land. We will discuss why and how we mark the day, which I anyway think of as the American Mimouna, the Maghreb holiday that you celebrate too by eating and drinking too much all at once. But before we get to any of that, listen to this. That song is Mashia Vo by Shai Hamber and Ron Danker. More music of these now hard to define just right times which hard to definedness will be the through line of the songs you'll hear over the course of the show. And now now it is time for our first discussion. So Linda, is it possible that the first peace in the Middle east in 3,000 years might not last so long?
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It certainly seems to be that way. The United nations news operation put out a press release a couple of days ago saying of Gaza, quote, fragile ceasefire at risk. The press release quoted Dr. Rameez Al Akhbarov, the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, who said of quote, recent Israeli airstrikes on populated areas and Palestinian militant attacks on Israeli soldiers is jeopardizing the fragile ceasefire that was achieved last month. Elsewhere, the UN report said that since the ceasefire was announced on 11 October, Israel has reportedly committed at least 393 violations, killing 339 Palestinians, including more than 70 children, and injuring over 871 others. Just who reported that Israel reportedly did this is never said and one can assume that the source may be affiliated with Hamas. But even still, no one here in Israel is denying that the Israeli Air Force has resumed some bombings. Also, Israeli sources say there have been dozens, maybe hundreds of Hamas violations of the ceasefire, although these have been much less deadly than Israel's attacks on areas within Hamas control. Since the ceasefire, at least three IDF soldiers have been killed in Gaza in attacks that violate the ceasefire, and at least one Israeli has been murdered in a terror attack by Hamas affiliated men in Israel. Also, the bodies of two people killed in Israel on October 7, Sutis, Haq, Rinthalak and Ranguili, have yet to be returned, even though according to the agreement they were to be returned within three days of the start of the ceasefire. Islamic Jihad returned the body of a third hostage, Dror, or a cheesemaker from Kibbutz Ba? Eri earlier this week. Hamas leaders say that in preventing the opening of a crossing with Egypt, Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement. Earlier this week, an anonymous Hamas spokesperson said that owing to Israeli aggression, the organization no longer view themselves as bound by the ceasefire agreement, although other anonymous Hamas spokespeople quickly said that the first anonymous spokesperson should never have spoken. All of which makes fragile the most common modifier you'll see applied these days here and abroad to the word ceasefire, along of course, with tenuous. And it is not just the ostensible ceasefire with Gaza that seems fragile. The Israel Lebanon ceasefire agreement that was signed exactly one year ago today, as we record on November 27, 2024, also seems on the edge of collapse. Last week, IDF forces killed Haitham Ali Tabatabai, Hezbollah's military chief of staff, the head of their army, bombing his home in Beirut. The reason Prime Minister Netanyahu gave for the assassination was Tabatabay's continuing efforts to rearm Hezbollah and redeploy his fighters near Israel's border. The prime minister said, quote, we expect the Lebanese government to uphold its commitments, namely to disarm Hezbollah. We won't let Lebanon become a renewed front against us and we'll do what's necessary. Most political analysts believe that Hezbollah will not respond to Al Tabatabay's killing by attacking Israel and abrogating the ceasefire agreement. But at least some sources in Lebanon say that a countdown clock has now started tick, tick, ticking down the time that remains until the year old ceasefire ceases to hold due east of Lebanon. Tensions with Syria also seem on the rise, although maybe not not. Interim President Ahmed Ashara complained lately about Israeli assaults on Syria, which reflect the country's expansionist intentions. The reference was to Israeli airstrikes near Damascus on ordinance making its way from Iran to Lebanon at the end of October and start of November. He also told Fox News when he visited President Trump in Washington earlier this month that he is eager for the United States to open negotiations with Israel that would lead to the return of the Golan Heights Heights. That said, he told President Trump that he is eager to reach mutual security understandings with Israel over a good bit to the east of Damascus. A hop over Iraq is Iran, whose leaders have lately returned to vowing retaliation over Israel's nearly unimpeded attacks during the 12 day war the two countries fought last June. Someone identified as a senior advisor to Khamenei said that if Israel continues its violations in Syria and Iran, the understandings reached in June must be reconsidered. All of which taken together is a little unnerving, creating the impression that such calm as exists on Israel's borders is fragile, temporary and likely to change at any moment. Noah, is this impression accurate? What do you make of it? To what degree are we, the authors of this fragility and to what degree are our neighbors its authors? And finally, should I just stay in bed all day with the covers pulled up over my head?
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Head? It does seem that way, huh? I think in answer to your question, then, yes, it is as fragile, temporary, and likely to change at any moment as it feels this ceasefire moment, which is not really a ceasefire. And it's very, it is like you said, very, very, very unnerving. The ceasefire with Gaza, which is, is the thing that seems the most embattled and the most tenuous at the moment, is actually probably the thing most likely to continue because the United States is so deeply committed to it. And building this huge camp for a military encampment of American military leaders outside of Gaza, not that far outside of Gaza even as we speak, and planning all sorts of plans. And I think that probably the United States will keep us here in Israel at bay enough and be able as well to exert enough influence over Hamas for this thing to hold for quite a while. Still, having said that, it's the case that it seems less and less likely that the outcome of this is going to be the deep demilitarization and the exit of Hamas from leadership in Gaza. It just seems as though Hamas is being really remarkably successful at rebuilding itself. There was a news report this week that said that the count of Hamas soldiers fighters in active duty now is somewhere between 20 and 30,000, which is roughly the number of Hamas fighters there were on October 6th as well, which is an astonishing fact. And obviously the organization is much weakened and it has much less fighting equipment now and much less access and much less money and fewer by far, tunnels that work. And it's in a much worse position now than it was two years and two months ago. But even still, it's reconstituting itself with real rapidity. And it's getting harder and harder to imagine exactly what international force would be able to disarm it, especially since, save for the Turks, as far as I can tell, I don't think any country has volunteered its own soldiers to be part of this peacekeeping force, including the United States, is not interested in having soldiers on active duty within Gaza. So. So it's unclear exactly how we go forward. And meanwhile, Israel's beginning to enter an election cycle when it becomes harder and harder for the present government to compromise on anything. And so it just feels like this odd and hellish, but not as hellish as what we've lately been through, stasis of the United States ensuring that the thing doesn't fully fall apart but it's not being clear how to go forward as well as all the. And then in all the other areas. Syri Syria is really unclear. Syria. You hear two distinct voices coming out of Syria now. But it seems likely that with all the other problems that the Syrians are facing, that that will not be an active front. But Lebanon, I think, is just on a slow boil. I think it's just going to heat up. And I don't know if it's in a month or six months or a year or five years that we're back to where we were, but it seems like that's the direction it's going to. And Iran, who the hell knows? What do you think of all this? Linda?
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B
Yeah, I'm actually most concerned at the moment about Lebanon, because I think that Lebanon is basically a failed state and that the Lebanese government has failed to disarm Hezbollah, which still has quite a bit of popular support. I am also concerned about Gaza. I think that that things being frozen and not moving is never a good thing, and that leads to chaos. And the fact that we're now almost two months after the announcement of the ceasefire and really nothing has changed. Israel continues to hold half of Gaza. Most of the population is in the half that's controlled by Hamas. In addition to what you mentioned about the growth of Hamas, there's also Islamic Jihad has something like 8 to 10,000 fighters. And there was a report this week that Islam Jihad is operating a militia in Syria as well, which, you know, is not good news for Israel or almost for anybody else. So I don't see Hamas. I agree with you that I don't see anybody being able to disarm Hamas. And now there was a report in the New York Times that they're gonna start building these kind of encampments, temporary encampments for people to live in on the Israeli side of the Gaza border. I don't know who's going to go to these encampments, but I think the fact that if Hamas is not disarmed, then in a way, which was really the original goal of this war. And I do also agree with you that Hamas is much weakened and Hamas is not the same organization that it was on October 7th. But are we then just talking about another five years or 10 years and there'll be another war in Gaza, Iran, there's no nuclear deal. And as the Iranian government gets pushed more and more, might they say we're going to go back to our nuclear program or initiate another confrontation with Israel as a way of sort of uniting people. So it does feel very. It does feel very tenuous and also very. There's a certain heaviness about it, I think, because, you know, if you look at the past two years and the heavy price that, that both Israelis and Palestinians have paid, and then there was this euphoria right at the beginning of peace and the hostages, the 20 alive hostages came home, and there was this sense that, okay, maybe there really is a possibility for a new Middle east, some type of pathway to a Palestinian state, whatever that means. And now it just seems that we're back to where we were before this war started. And there's something very kind of depressing about.
- [44:03]
A
Yeah. And you asked to what degree are we, the authors of all of this fragility and to what degree are our neighbors, the authors? And I think that that question is unanswerable in the sense that there's something like huge and systemic that is taking place, and we're all involved in it and we're all playing our part. And one thing that, that could possibly get us out of this really deadly and static system that we're in is some big diplomatic endeavor that this government is not interested in. And because it's not interested in it, it's not capable of it as well. And so it just feels as though we're trapped in this hellish circumstance that once again, is infinitely better than the hellish circumstances we were in two months ago for everyone in the region, for Gazans and for Israelis, at once. But it does feel as though it both cannot change and cannot sustain itself, this moment that we're in. And so it just, it just, to me, I look into the future and all I see is darkness, clouds and darkness, and I can't really see exactly what path we are going to or could conceivably follow.
- [45:39]
B
Let me offer a somewhat possible, more optimistic scenario. There's an election. There is some sort of centrist to centrist right coalition, let's say, without Netanyahu, without Ben GVIR and Smotrich, and Israel makes a decision to look at the Palestinian Authority differently. Marwan Barghouti is released from jail. Palestinians go to elections, and there really is an option for some type of renewed Oslo. Now, the polls in Israel show the public doesn't want to want that right now, but think that they don't trust the Palestinians. They don't think there's really any difference between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which is something that I fundamentally disagree with. But there is. I think when the peace deal was first signed, I mean, we're only six weeks ago, it's not that long ago. And there was all this optimism. But I think if you don't want Hamas, your choice is the Palestinian Authority. Authority with help from outside.
- [46:48]
A
The thing about the scenario you just described is that it actually is very plausible. Certainly the part about the government switching is very, very plausible. And exactly what comes next in light of the despite the reticence both of many, many people and also of the leaders who are likely to be elected, Naftali, Bennett, Gadi, Eisenkot, even despite the reticence, something will happen. These are people who believe in diplomacy as opposed to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who for reasons that I think are fully understandable, is extremely cynical about where world led diplomacy would lead. So yeah, so that optimistic scenario has the the signal and rare virtue of being something that could actually happen. So thank you for that. Now listen to this. That is Ephrat Bensour singing so beautifully, so fragilely a brand new version of a 56 year old song sung back then by the artillery enlistes singing troupe. It is more lovely music of these still strange times. And now it is time for our second discussion which we are calling you gotta fight for your right to party. And here is why. If everything goes by the book, the next Knesset elections in Israel, as we mentioned just before, will be exactly 11 months from today, as we record on October 22nd. Since almost nothing ever goes by the book here, the next Knesset elections in Israel will almost certainly be sooner. Though exactly when is anyone's guess. Either way, already you can begin to feel a little election electricity in the air. The Democratim Party, what used to be the labor and Merits parties, lately announced a drive for people to join ahead of the party's primaries that are now being planned. Two days ago the Likud voted to elect its fourth 4500 member Central Committee. Which Central Committee will in turn choose down the road the powerful 50 member party secretariat. The competition to get elected to which secretariat is strong, though you don't have to be a man o war to get on the Secretariat. If you understand my citation, which I feel no need to justify or have affirmed. And yes, I would like a seabiscuit. I don't mind if I do. But I digress. It is not just the established parties that are beginning to spruce themselves off in anticipation of elections that will be in less than a year. And who knows, maybe a lot less than a year. New parties are turning up and turning out as well. Maybe the most important of these is a party called Yashar or straight, which name does not, you'll be surprised to learn, reflect the party's long standing commitment to heterosexual values and culture. But rather it is a sly reference to what many take to be the signal and best trait of the party's founder, Gadi Eisenkot, the that he calls things as he sees them. He's a straight shooter, candid, forthright, plain spoken, unvarnished frank, no nonsense on the level, says what he means and means what he says, pulls no punches, minces no words, offers no smoke and no mirrors, and is as reliable as the Swiss watch, the tides and the North Star. Gotti Eisencoat was IDF chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, and in 2023 he joined the National Unity Party under Benny Gantz, who served as IDF chief of staff right before Eisenkot. Last 4th of July, Gadi Eisenkot left the National Unity Party reportedly because he wanted to democratize the party in a way that Benny Gantz felt was premature. And not long after that he started Yashar, which name in fact has practically nothing to do with questions of heterosexuality and homosexuality. If you go to their website@yasharwithisenkot.com you will find among the aims of the party the following and I'm quoting to ensure the existence of the State of Israel as the home of the Jewish people. To unify and heal Israel. To strengthen national security, to return to governmental norms of responsibility and mutual respect. To strengthen the foundations of democracy, to spur the economy and diminish the cost of living, to reduce social polarization, to put the education system a class ahead. That's sort of a pun right there. To return personal safety, to advance young people, to promote aliyah, immigration to Israel, to get ready for the centennial. All those things taken together don't fully tell the story of the appeal of Yashar as a party which really has very little to do, almost nothing to do with heterosexual rights. Rather, the appeal of the Straight Party is the appeal of Gadi Eisenkot himself, who conveys to me and to lots of other people soft spoken integrity, decency, solidity, good judgment and sacrifice. You will never hear Gadi Eisenkot seek any sort of political capital in the fact that his son Gall was killed in action during this past war. But few of us here will ever forget the dignity and great grace with which he absorbed that tremendous tragedy. Another new party is called the Miluim Nikim, under the leadership of Yoaz Handel. Miluim Nakim are of course reservists and the party has basically one crucial plank in its platform, insisting that everyone serve most in the army and the rest in national service. Joaz Handel, like Gadi Eisenkot, was in Benny Gantz's Blue and White cum National Unity party. Gantz recruited him as part of Bogie Alon's Telem Party, mostly because of their right wing street cred at the time. But Yoaz Hendel quit the party when Benny Gantz reportedly considered forming a Benjamin Netanyahu Fry coalition that would have included a joint Jewish Palestinian party, thereby gumming up Gantz's political fortunes in a way that even now, five years later, he has hardly recovered from. Yoaz Handel has said that he will join any coalition that gets the ultra Orthodox Haredim into uniform and Arabs into national service service. Another party that was just launched this week is the OSE Party held by Anat Wilf. You'll be forgiven for assuming, who wouldn't? That the platform of the OSE Party calls for making the reading of Amos Oz novels and essays mandatory. But shockingly, according to the official registration documents of the party, it instead calls for quote 1 advancing peace on the basis of Arab acceptance of the equal rights of the Jewish people for self determination in their historic homeland two developing a society, economy and welfare system founded on the value of everyone's involvement in advancing the common good and common defense three advancing deserving people, especially women, to decision making positions and four separating religion from state. Among the 10 founders of the party are four who say their profession is researcher, one who says it is lecturer, one who says academic, one who says writer, one who is a retiree, and one, Joseph Abramowicz, who lists his profession as green energy. Which is modest for a man who has been nominated repeatedly for the Nobel Peace Prize. And more impressive still is a very close personal friend of Bill Slott, whom researchers, academics and lecturers alike agree is the most colorful Jew in Jewish history. As Anat Wilf told journalists, the heart of the party's mission is to, quote, pursue peace based on Arab and Palestinian embrace of Zionism. End quote. Enat Wilf was a member of Knesset for the labour party some 15 years ago. She is the author of a much discussed book called the War of Return. Return arguing that the notion of a Palestinian right of return is a big barrier to peace. And she is a deeply intellectually and morally serious person. So if you, like me, can't figure out why she thinks a platform of turning Palestinians into Zionists will get her into the Knesset, it may really be because you, like me, are Maybe missing something. The most recent polls give Gadi Eisenkot's party eight seats in the upcoming election, if they were held today. And Joaz Handel's party is below the minimum election threshold. And Einat Wilf's party, which is brand new, has yet to be polled. Linda, what should we make of each of these new parties? Also, what, if anything, do we learn about them from how the next election is likely to shape up? And finally, what lacunae are there in the parties that exist now? And what new parties might we expect to pop up over the next days and weeks?
- [57:13]
B
First of all, in general, I think it shows the strength of Israeli democracy. Despite everything that there is. There are new parties coming up, there are new faces in government, people, people who were willing to be part of government. The Israel Democracy Institute this week came out with a new poll that found that only 43% of Jewish Israelis think Israel's elected leaders have made war decisions based on professional considerations, but at the
- [57:40]
A
same time, presumably based on only professional considerations.
- [57:43]
B
Correct? Correct. Yeah. But 81% have trust in the army, and I guess that's, of course, because it's a citizen army and we know people. And in fact, when I discussed this with Cliff, he said, well, somebody like Gotti Eisenkot, you know, how can you not have trust in him? And that was his example. Yeah, and he's a straight shooter. At the same time, I think that there is a chance that Netanyahu could win again. Despite his low popularity ratings, he still has a base behind him. The latest polls that I saw saw that Bizala Smotrich's party doesn't make the cutoff, but there's a big increase, increase in support for Ben gvir. So that I think is somewhat problematic. I think it will be very interesting to see what happens with these new parties. I mean, Israel also has kind of a tradition of new parties, especially moderate ones, that crash and burn, that maybe get into one Knesset and then you don't see them again. Part of that, of course, is the, you know, the level that you have to reach the equivalent of four Knesset seats to get in. So it makes it, you know, which was a change in the law originally. And Israel's idea, you know, the whole proportional democracy, voting is on one hand, more democratic because, you know, you can have more smaller parties. On the other hand, it means that if you vote for a party that falls just short of that election threshold, it's almost as if you threw your vote vote away, which is what happened to me in the last election and probably quite a few of us. And that's a very. You feel very bad when you're. And I debated. Right. Should I vote for a party that actually is not as close to my own views, or should I vote for the party that most closely represents my views, even if I might be throwing it away? I think, as you said, Gadi Eisenkot's party has a lot of interesting. You know, it has good people. It has something if it's starting with eight seats again. But polls have also proven to be wrong over and over again in this country. So it's also hard to tell. And I think Democratim is getting like 10 seats. You know, the left. The fact that there are still, you know, that many seats of people on the left in Israel I find encouraging. But I think we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
- [60:14]
A
I feel I don't really understand these new parties entirely. Gaddy Eisenhod is a separate thing. Gadi Eisenhot is someone who many, many people see as a potential prime minister and he has that vibe to him. And I can entirely understand why he has formed this party, which is essentially just the Gotti Eisenkot Party. Nobody knows fully where he stands, but he. He seems to be center left, as opposed to center and center right. Benny Gantz is probably smack dab in the center and someone, you know, the rest of the people who are now in the opposition, like Yair Lapid for instance, is a little bit center right. So he's the left of the center, but mostly stands for integrity, stands for good judgment that I get. But these other two points, parties are a little bit mysterious to me and they also trouble me in some way. Johandel is to the right of the center right. I mean, he probably. I wouldn't call him center at all. He's probably right wing. And his single plank is a plank that every single opposition party also stands for, I think with a good deal of commitment as well. I guess his hope is to be like the ultra orthodox parties of having one issue. Once you have just one issue that is your only issue, then you can can exert great pressure on government information to see that your issue is taken seriously. So maybe that's what he's hoping. But it unnerves me to have a party whose only platform in these complicated times is we've got to get the ultra orthodox in uniform and to a lesser degree, Palestinian Israelis into uniform. And Anat Wilf, I have to say, is the most mysterious of all. All this notion of promoting among Palestinian Israelis promoting Zionism or Palestinians in general. I assume she's hoping to convince the Palestinian Authority to embrace Zionism, by which I take it she means probably that Jews have a right to be here in this land. But it's weird to have a Knesset platform that the central plank of which is, is convincing people who aren't citizens of the country to hold a certain view about you. It's just weird. And then overall, the thing I guess say for Gotti Eisenhower, the thing that bothers me about the other two parties is that they feel such a need to frame everything they say in hortatory, patriotic terms, which I think makes sense, I guess, in light of the war. But that's not the election that I want. In fact, I know I'm going on too long, but I'll end with this. The party that's missing when I look at the political map is a serious Jewish Palestinian party that could attract a serious number of Jewish and Palestinian voters. Which is to say the group which is not at all party oriented, standing together, the civil society group. There needs to be a party party that is just like them, that holds the same views of building together, a shared society. There is Khadash, which is the joint Arab Israeli list, Communist list that has traditionally filled that role. But I think it seems to have lost its ability to advance that agenda in a real way. And that's, that's what I feel like is missing. And I think that it's partly because there's this feeling in the air that we need hortatory, patriotic, let's build this as a Jewish state, let's turn Palestinians into Zionists atmosphere right now. That I think is a shame.
- [64:16]
B
I think the chances of what you're talking about happening are pretty minimal, like less than zero or zero percent. I just don't. And I don't think that Palestinian Israelis are there either, to tell you the truth. I think that the war has radicalized Israelis in a way that even people who were moderate before basically feel like there's no one to talk to on the other side. And Palestinian Israelis feel that they don't have a place here, here anymore. And I agree with you that I think it's really important, but I just don't see it happening. And the emigration rates among both sort of liberal Jews and Palestinian Israelis is really high. I mean, Palestinian Israelis are leaving the country in droves and just saying this isn't. And I had a conversation not too long ago with this guy who said to me that he would leave tomorrow, except that his wife is a doctor at Hadassah, and Hadassah a really good position. And he said to me, why are you still here? You have someplace else to go?
- [65:20]
A
Well, that's a very different issue. But today, as we're speaking, standing together, Omdin Bayachid is having their annual conference and more than 3,000 people signed up for it, which is fully 10 times as many as signed up over the past years. And it's a sign of something. I'm not entirely sure that I agree with you that there wouldn't be interest in this. And in fact, I know that in living rooms around the country, this thing is being organized as we speak. Whether it ends up attracting people is unclear, but I think it has potential anyway. I would like that voice to be part of the election. I hope it's there.
- [65:58]
B
I agree with you. I agree with you. No, I think it is an important voice and I think that in general, Jews need to hear what pale Palestinian Israelis are saying, and we just don't hear it enough.
- [66:09]
A
Yes. Well, I have a feeling that we're going to be seeing a lot of these parties launched over the next days. Some of them, I think, with the knowledge that they do not actually have a chance of being an independent party by the time the elections come by, but rather they are, I think, beginning to campaign to be absorbed by a bigger party and have some of the their, some of their members, but mostly their leader be get a realistic position in some other list. But that's the way that the elections work here. Now listen to this. That is a song called Hester Panim, a really remarkable song by Eli Ashdot, who is the son, of course, of Isar Ashdot, who was one of the founders of tlam. More odd music of these odd times, which you can find in all the usual places. And now it is time for About A Country segment. This is the part of the show in which each of us describes something that might have surprised or amused, delighted or enchanted and sorceled or possibly even fluged us as we wended our way through our world or been a source of solace, if solace is what we were in need of at the time. Linda, what is your what a country?
- [68:56]
B
Well, as I told you, I just got back from Hawaii and I was in the island of Kauai. Kauai is the northernmost island and the whole population is about 75,000 people. And my son runs a falafel truck there called Shakalafel. Shaka, by the way, means sababa. So it's and it's in Hawaiian. Well, shaka in Hawaiian. It's that, you know, speaking of visual symbols, the thumb and the pinky where you kind of waggle it, that's shaka. And so actually, as you drive around the island, he has a very big truck, pickup truck that he calls his baby, and he drives it around the island. And if somebody lets you in front of them, you out the window, you wave a shaka, as in thank you. So it's called shakalafel. And the mayor of Kauai actually eats there as well. There's one road that goes around the whole island. It doesn't actually go all the way around. And he's on that main road. And so anybody walking by is offered a sample of a falafel ball. So I flew about 26 hours for a falafel, which doesn't make much sense. But anyway, those.
- [70:11]
A
Seeing your son might have been nice, too.
- [70:13]
B
There are Israelis everywhere in the world, as we all know. And there are a lot more Israelis and Jews in Oahu, which is where Honolulu is. But in Kauai, there's probably about 20 Israelis. And we had all of them as guests at our Shabbat dinner at the wonderful beach house that we were given lent by very good friends, this beautiful beach house. And they have a big outdoor deck. Deck. And my husband cooked up, you know, a feast on Friday. We brought in kosher ground beef from Honolulu because Uriel really likes the shepherd's pie that my daughter makes. And anyway, we're hosting all of the 20 Israelis who live on Kauai now. Of those 20 Israelis, one was a survivor of Nova Eitan. He's actually one of the subjects of the film We Will Dance Again Again. And he's actually not living in Kauai, but he's traveling around the States doing speeches and things like that. And his parents are American. He grew up in a settlement in the West Bank. And he was actually in the migunit in the little shelter with Hirsch and Aner, who were two good friends of my sons, Nitanel. And he survived with dead bodies piled on top of top of him. Another guest was a woman whose ex boyfriend was killed in the Nova. And she said that it motivated her to sort of follow her dream and pick up. And she was 24. She raz and moved to Hawaii and is living in Honolulu, but is thinking of moving to Kauai. Two of the other guests, one of whom my son came back to fight in the war, and the other was his friend Josh, which is how he actually got to Kauai, who was a lone soldier, and also also came back to fight. And then there's a family who's lived on Kauai for many years that were originally. They had a family singing troupe, and they're seven siblings, and they've seven kids. They've been back and forth. One of them owns a farm in Kauai with cows and makes their own. You know, Kauai's got this kind of hippie vibe as well, and makes their own cheese and their own goat milk. The head of the Reform movement, who's not Israeli, and her husband, they were also there at the dinner. And they also run a farm in which they have a lot of Jewish volunteers, and they do a Shabbat dinner every Friday night on the farm. But looking at these Israelis around the table caused me to think, what is it that makes somebody Israeli? Right? Are these people who are on literally the other side of the world. You have to fly for a really long time to get from Tel Aviv to Kuwait. And yet the war has affected all of them very deeply, just like it's affected all of us. And to what degree? I was wondering if, let's say I had been in the American army and there was a war, a war was launched against America, to have the metaphor be correct, would I get up from Israel and fly back to America to fight? I don't think think so. And yet tens of or thousands of Israelis from all over the world came back to fight in this war. Now, part of it was that it was seen as an existential war, right? That if this war was lost, the state of Israel might be lost. But it was almost without thinking. And of the 20 people there, at least four had been directly affected by the war. Actually more because this family of siblings, their youngest brother is right now in the army in a combat unit. And it actually made me very proud in a way that all over the world, Israelis have such a strong Israeli identity, and they describe themselves as Israeli and they feel Israeli. And I think that's something that's kind of unique as opposed to a lot of other places. If somebody moves away from the country country, you kind of lose that identity. Or you might have it on a cultural level, you might eat certain foods. But this deep connection with a country where you don't even live there anymore, I think is something that's unique to Israel.
- [74:44]
A
So mine is this. My best friend through most of college was Fred Evans, maybe the most talented person I ever met, and brilliant musician, writer, poet, actor, out gay since God knows when, maybe forever and in general, out in the sense of outre and a serious Quaker and quick witted and funny. When he visited over winter break, my parents fell in love with him and everyone fell in love with him. He was the one who founded our mixed gender and hence neither a sorority nor a fraternity. He called it Sigma Phi nothing and said it was a serendipity. And he had gotten an old Florence Foster Jenkins record which he loved without irony because of the guts of the thing. And he loved all sorts of music and in senior year, year I think, though it may have been earlier, he founded the Opera Company of Swarthmore and put on Henry Purcell's High Baroque 1689, Dido and Aeneas. He was Aeneas in the opera and it was so beautiful and so brilliant and I still have my Opera Company of Swarthmore silk screen T shirt somewhere with a quote from Dido and Aeneas garlanded across the top, reading Great minds against themselves. Conspiracy. After college I went off on a year long fellowship to photograph the mostly diminishing Jewish communities of North Africa and Ethiopia. And after that I moved to Kibbutz Ksura and Fred went to graduate school at Brown and then he died of aids and one of the middle names of our girl is Freda for Fred, and sometimes I see that she is luminous in ways that he was, with a brilliance that appears now, here, now there, there alongside all the other things there are to see in her. And I'm happy that she carries his name. This week, for the first time since senior year, or whenever it was at Swarthmore, I went to see Dido and Aeneas again, now performed by the Israel Opera Company, based here in Tel Aviv. The new opera house is right near the art museum and these days Hashes Square, and I went with Susan and another of my best friends from college, Emily. People who have listened to this podcast for a long time may remember that she was a regular on the show maybe 10 years ago, the best person in the country on affordable housing and planning and making cities so that they make communities and making communities so that they can make cities. And Emily's boy, Noam Heinz, kind of miraculously turned out to be a musical prodigy. He discovered this and was discovered himself back in high school and now he's an international opera star baritone living in Berlin, and he came home to be Aeneas in this opera. Later in the year he'll be Papagaino in the Magic Flute and it'll also be Figaro and the Marriage of Figaro in New York. And he's also singing in a contemporary opera called the Red Whale in Stuttgart in the summer. And something about all this does seem truly to be a miracle. A kid in his 20s scaling the highest heights of the most exalted art form. It's a thing. And maybe all the more so because you talk to him, and he's still this kind, gentle, unassuming kid with a British accent, a remnant, I think, of Emily's doctorate at lse, though his father, Jonathan, is from England, so there's that, too. The director and choreographer of the show is a crazy, brilliant Italian named Stefano Poda, who directed Faust in Turin and Aida in Verona and Tosca at the Bolshoi, and Romeo and Juliet in Beijing and Othello in Budapest. Then I could go on and on. And dude likes geometry, and he likes to mix up the old and the new, and he likes striking, powerful symbols that you don't quite know what they symbolize. They are like how Norman Maclean once described sunrise, when everything is luminous but not clear. Like in this show, there were these three uprooted cypress trees suspended from the ceiling. At first we saw just the dangling roots and the trees lowered and raised. And the show starts in medias res. Dido, Queen of Carthage, is already besotted with Aeneas, the Trojan prince whose ships have docked at Carthage, though from the start she has a bad feeling about it. Here she meets Aeneas, who says, when royal fare shall I be blessed with cares of love and state distressed. And when Dido replies, fate forbids what you pursue. Aeneas sings, aeneas has no fate. But you let Dido smile and I'll defy the feeble stroke of destiny. And then the chorus starts to sing about Cupid throwing his dart. And as they're singing, the trees come down, and somehow you know that can't be good. And the production continues, and the players are, in time, covered in silver paint. Something about modernity and romance. Robots, I think. And an illuminated square catwalk made of steel descends. And I really don't understand a thing that is happening, but the music is so beautiful, and Noam is so beautiful, and I am in sort of a fugue state. The thing is washing over me. And I read in the Playbill before the show started that when the opera company started 40 years ago, Dido and Aeneas was the first show that they put on, the first show ever put on. And this performance is a homage to operation. And, of course, that was around when Fred Evans put on the same show, when he was still here. Young, everything in front of him. And Emily's boy, Noam, he is so young and so beautiful and so full of life and everything human and divine, and it feels like time and everything is folding in on itself. I feel like Dave in that last scene in 2001 A Space Odyssey, seeing how everything is connected after all. And after the show, Emily takes us to a stage door and Noam lets us in. And he's there with two friends from high school who are chatting just like high school friends who haven't seen each other in a few years. And Noam is covered with silver paint and he says, all the steel and the lights and the paint and the trees hanging from the ceiling, that is just how Stefano Poda rolls. And we chat for a moment, this mensch of a star, this star mensch. When I get home, I open the playbill and there's a letter from the mayor, Ron Houdai, there. And it starts. Once upon a time, there was an intense and daring love. And it ends with. With this I wish the Israeli opera Tel Aviv Yafo, many more decades of meaningful and enchanting creation and hope that the madness and frenzy, the plots and the schemes, the demons and the ghosts, the heartbreak and lament of disappointment, will be confined to the orchestra pit and the hall and the stage and remain there forever. May we know how to heal as a healthy and strong and stable nation. May we continue to be committed to the sacred fundamental values of. Of freedom, justice and human dignity. And may we merit the swift return home of all the hostages. And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to Itay Shillem, our station manager, without whom there would be none of this. Thanks to Achibo Lee, my favorite band from Hibotskeva. They give us the music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Natalie. We would like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. It keeps the show going and the station going and it keeps. Keeps us moved and grateful and in your debt. And we'd like to thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen and ask you to like us on Facebook and drop us a line. We are eventually going to answer. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this. If one of America's biggest holidays of the year, Thanksgiving, basically celebrates the first year of settlers in Plymouth, during which first year 47 to 50 of the 102 settlers actually died, is it really too much? To expect you to celebrate the Promise podcast. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, and before I even mention that today, November 27, in addition to being Thanksgiving is also International Turtle Adoption Day, I wanted to say something actually serious. And because it is serious, I saved this for the end of our show when I knew only our most serious listener would remain. Honestly, and this is true. Even, even Linda had to go. So it's just me and Itai and and you, our listener. The serious thing I want to say is that now that we have a ceasefire and all the living hostages are home and that save for Ron Veli and Sud Thi Sak Rinfalak, all the hostages waiting to be buried by and near their families have been. And before we are off and running in earnest with the new elections, which we already started to talk about, about this week, I am thinking I haven't fully decided, but I am thinking of taking a break for a little while after not having done that for 15 years, say for a couple of dozen clip shows over the course of all that time. The reason I might want to do this is, to be honest with you, the war has been hard. I mean hard for everyone and less so for me than for many people. When the boy was in the reserves in Gaza for months and months I did not sleep and was hobbled by worry. You could see it in the way that I I walked but no knock ever came on my door. Poo poo poo. And others were not as lucky as I was and I have no complaints. But it has been hard. The din of the hard hearted and the awful blood libelish accusations over social media and elsewhere and the much smaller percentage of accusations that are probably right about us. And every week at Hostage Square and the podcast through all that, don't get me wrong, it is been so beautiful to be able to talk things through with people I love and trust on the microphones and I've gotten many thousands of letters, literally thousands of letters and notes of support which I've gotten from you and other people who listen to the podcast it meant and it means so much to me. But still the keeping my eyes and ears always tuned to hearing the news because the podcast and reading seven different newspapers religiously, well religious at least in the sense that I read all the weekend newspapers on Shabbat anyway, it's not always easy being that much in tune with everything that's going on at every moment. And there's also that I'm back teaching. I'm still trying as well to make something of this privilege I have of being on city council. And I want to try to write something and Susan deserves better. And most of all, I want to pay attention to my folks who also really, really, really deserve that and every other other good thing in the world that anyone could possibly give them. And I can feel that I'm making all this sound much more grave than it is. I am thinking of taking a little time off, maybe a couple of months, maybe less off during this moment between the war in Gaza and the battles over the Knesset that are gonna start sometime soon, during which maybe couple of months I like maybe to do some sorts of specials, like the stuff that I talk about at the start of the show, things that move me about this home of mine that I love so much. Maybe, I don't know, something, something like that. Maybe once a month. My thinking is season one of the Promise podcast lasted for 15 years. Now there'll be a couple few month break and then we'll be back for the start of our 15 year long season. 2. Of course I got worries about this plan. One worry is I do not see how we ask our Patreon people to pay while I'm off, presumably vacationing in Hawaii like Linda. So that makes life harder for ITAI and TLV1 perforce the money, like I always say, really is important. Another is that you'll get used to not listening and in a couple of months, not for the life of you, will you be able to figure out how you ever could stand this show in the first place and then you'll never download it again. A third worry, weirdly, is I don't know for sure who I am without this podcast, which, like I said, I haven't had more than a week off from in years and years. Another thing that I'm embarrassed to say because it is is so immodest, is I think, I hope that in these terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, maybe hearing on a podcast someone who loves Israel as much as I do and believes in this place and our future as much as I do, maybe it meant a damn thing to you and maybe it means something now too. And maybe there'll be something missing if that voice is gone. Even at this moment. I do not know for sure what I will do, though I guess I'll probably do something like what I described above. Not starting next week or the week after, but sometime, you know, in the foreseeable future. If you have an opinion one way or another about this, I would be grateful to hear it. Until then, I will just say that today as we record November 27, we are in fact celebrating alongside Thanksgiving International Turtle Adoption Day. So stipulated way back in 2011 by Christine Shaw, who posted a post on the animal welfare site Found Animals, a post proposing that a day be set aside to encourage people to take into their homes and arts abandoned turtles a population in great need owing to their relative longevity. Even those little pet turtles in the bowl with the plastic palm trees can live 20 to 40 years, people, while the seven year old you get them for only stays seven for give or take a year. Box turtles typically live to be 60. You get the idea. And I love International Turtle Adoption Day because turtles are cool. They're like little dinosaurs if you think about it. And don't get me started about Yertle. And the Internet is filled with great ideas about what to do on International Turtle Adoption Day. Like quote unquote share turtle awareness online through sharing fun facts like did you know sea turtles can detect the earth's magnetic fields? Or using hashtags like WorldTurtleday or SaveTheTurtles. And there are educational events at local zoos and aquariums, including Meet the Tortoise events. And you can watch turtle documentation documentaries like the Incredible Journey and Galapagos Realm of Giant Tortoises. Plus there are so many interesting things to know about turtles like that they have photoreceptors on their pineal organs, meaning that they can sense light on their tongues. And they've been around since the times of the dinosaurs. That's why they look like little dinosaurs. Turtles born at less than 29 degrees Celsius tend to be males and those born above 31 degrees Celsius tend to be females. So. So that climate change is making turtle populations skew. Gynopolis ly some turtles chirp. And it goes on and on and on like that. There are so many turtle facts and they're all fun in literature. There are also so many great turtles even beyond Yertle, like the mock turtle in Alice in Wonderland. Quote when we were little, the mock turtle went on at last more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then we went to school at sea. The master was an old we used to call him Tortoise. Why did you call him Tortoise if he wasn't one? Alice asked. We call him Tortoise because he tort us. The mock turtle said angrily. Really, you are very dull. End quote. I guess the point of the day is if you are dull, thing to do is adopt a turtle so that someday you'll be able to say she tort us how to be better people. She because what with climate change, odds are, that is what she will be. But even though, as I speak these words, International Turtle Adoption Day is not even halfway over, I have not yet even managed to adopt a single turtle today. Though on the positive side, I have watched hours of Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo. But still, I can feel the day slipping away, slowly but surely, like that turtle who slowly but surely beat that bunny in that race. Not so the Promise podcast. We will be back with you next week and every week, reminding you that just as slow and steady wins the race and slow and steady calms the nerves, fast, neurotic and twitchy can be a sure recipe for getting nowhere fast while jangling the nerves. On this, the Promised podcast.