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- [00:01]
Noah Efron
This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language. And welcome to the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1, the voice of the City, about which on the Poly Market Prediction Market site yesterday you could for just 8.8 cents buy the position that the thermometer today in the city will rise to 35 degrees. For those of us who think in Fahrenheit, that's 95 degrees, which seems like a pretty good buy, though yesterday the high was only 86 degrees, though it felt like 95 degrees. If you had wanted to be a little more conservative, you could have bought yesterday for 23 cents a position that says the high today will be 33 degrees or 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit. If you wish to be more traditional in where you lay your money on future events, there is today's game between Hapol Tel Aviv and the Bulgarian Professional football club Ludo Goretz 1945. That being the year they were established, Ludo Goretz is at the end of an okay but not great season, finishing third in the Bulgarian Football League, getting eliminated from Champions League qualifying in the third round, and reaching the Europa League phase where they lost in the knockout playoffs. Hapoel's season was good as gold, even though they only this year were promoted to Liga Taal Israel's Premier League, and still they finished fourth and qualified for Europe for the first time in 12 years. On Polymarket, you can bet on the outcome of tonight's game. 28 cents buys you a position backing Hapoel, 44 cents gets you Ludo Goretz 1945 and 31 cents gets you a position on a draw. However, the market is less definitive on the question of which Club will score first with 75 cents getting you a position on Rapoel, 74 cents on Ludo Gorette's 1945 and 79 cents on neither, which pays out, one imagines, in the event of a 00 tie. Of course, oddly, in the exact score prediction market, $0.10 gets you a position on the outcome of the game being 00, which seems to me to open up some possibilities of arbitrage. If you want to show the world, though, how much you root, root, root for the home team, just 2.2 cents gets you a position on Rapoel beating Ludo Goretz 1945 by a score of 3 to nil, paying you out 97.8 cents on that. If you're right. Of course, if you've got thoughts about how tired the clubs are going to be, you can put money on the first half results and the second half results separately, with $0.24 buying a position on a poel Tel Aviv winning the first half and 26 cents getting you the same position in the second half. Of course, if you're looking for a position that maybe gives you more skin in the game, you can for 25 cents buy the position that Iran will bomb the city of tel Aviv before July 25, picking up 75 cents in cool profit. If that happens, buying a position saying the city will be attacked by Iran rockets by the end of the month will cost you 34 cents and the position that we will be bombed by August 15th is an even proposition, costing you 50 cents and paying out 50 cents. If you are lucky enough to be right, to be completely transparent, those positions will pay out if anywhere in Israel is attacked by those dates. But without trying to be immodest about the thing, I think the Iranians know if they're going to attack anywhere, it'll be Tel Aviv. Yafo and arguably nothing captures the dialectical existentialism of this city we love so well, Tel Aviv Jaffo better than the worldwide crowd applying its famous wisdom to the first three topics you're likely to hear being discussed in any cafe you wander into off the streets here. The first being Damn, it's hot, the second being did you see the game? And the third being when you think we'll be back in the shelters. By the way, just 4.1 cents buys you the position that Prime Minister Netanyahu will be arrested by September 30th, and $0.06 gets you the position that he will be arrested by the end of 2026. But those predictions are, when you think about it, more about the city of New York, the United States, Tel Aviv than it is about our own city that truly we love so well. With us today from arguably TLV1's toniest satellite studio in the lovely bedroom community of Ranana, which city registers consistently the highest level of resident satisfaction in the whole country, and one of the highest in the world, is a woman who, if you see on Polymar, it's that a positive position on the question. The prose in her next piece in Arts will be beautiful and thoughtful and just plain wonderful. Costs even 99 cents against the dollar. Still, you should do it because it's a sure thing. Money in the bank. It's a mortal lock. And the same thing is true on a 99 cent position on the proposition that her next podcast she will ask just the right guest, just the right question. It's all just money in the bank. Obviously, the woman who holds the most secure position in the prediction markets of my heart is Alison Kapl. Alison Kaplan Summer has written for Politico, the New Republic, Foreign Policy, the Jerusalem Post, the jta, the Forward, and many other of your very best papers and magazines. She is a columnist with Haaretz. You have seen her on i24 television and Al Jazeera TV, and you have heard her on NPRPRI and the BBC and of course on the Haaretz podcast that she hosts with style, elan and intelligence very often. Two times a week, Alison holds a B' Nai Bhrith World Center Award for Journalism recognizing excellence in Diaspora reportage, and a Simon Rock, our award for excellence covering Zion Aliyah in Israel. Allison, how you doing?
- [05:51]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
I'm doing great, just in a little bit of self promotion. One podcast per week now is going to be completely dedicated to the Israeli election. So if you want to obsess about Israeli politics even more than you do when you listen to the Promise podcast, you can tune into the election podcast. I personally, while I was listening to you, was wondering if there are Iranian officials sitting around, you know, planning when they're going to throw missiles on Tel Aviv and half of their screen is on polymarket, like planning to make something bank on their decision of when to shoot.
- [06:24]
Noah Efron
I'm telling you, that's the answer for them. If the Americans do not unfreeze all their holdings, then they can just go to polymarket. Exactly.
- [06:33]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
It's a good business model.
- [06:35]
Noah Efron
Now also with us in the newest in the worldwide network of TLV1 studios, this one in the lovely northern hamlet of Zichron Yaakov is a man who, if memory serves, once threw a snowball at though possibly he threw a snowball with the IDF chief of staff. So you might want to consult with him before you take a prediction market position on tomorrow's weather. Obviously, that man could only be Judah Ari Gross. Judah Ari Gross is managing editor of E. Jewish Philanthropy, a daily news publication covering the world of Jewish philanthropy and what a world it is, the aim of which is, quote, to capture, convene and drive the daily conversation in the Jewish philanthropic sector via original news reporting and thought pieces on the pressing issue. End quote. I can tell you from experience, you don't gotta be rich and philanthropic to love this publication as I do, and to find great interest in it as I do. Before taking the helm at ejp, Judah Ari Gross was a correspondent for the Times of Israel, reporting first on the military and then on Israel Diaspora affairs and on religion. He has lately been an inaugural Elson Fellow at the Jewish Federation of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Judah, how you doing?
- [07:49]
Judah Ari Gross
Hungry and thirsty.
- [07:51]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
I will correct you. I was a spectator in that snowball fight. You know, I'm not a pacifist, but I did not participate in the snowball fight between.
- [07:59]
Noah Efron
Was that Benny Gantz? Was he the IDF chief of staff?
- [08:02]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
Yep, I was then IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, who got into a
- [08:06]
Judah Ari Gross
snowball fight with a Palestinian family on
- [08:08]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
the side of the road during the, I think 2013. There was the snowstorm in Jerusalem in the west bank, and he'd stopped on the side of the road and. And got into a conversation with them and that developed from there. And the backstory which I wrote about some time ago at the Times of Israel was they wouldn't let me publish the photos. The photos were kept under lock and key or password protected on a computer. And then Nahum Barnea, the sort of mythological journalist who was there for it and wrote about it, but the pictures were kept locked up. Suddenly he wrote about it again a couple years later when Gantz entered politics. And suddenly the photos could be put out there and could be displayed.
- [08:55]
Judah Ari Gross
So that was an exciting time for me.
- [08:57]
Noah Efron
Years after the fact, since then, obviously not coincidentally, we have suffered, I think, some of the greatest national security damage in the country's history. Is there a connection between the photos and October 7th? We will have to investigate, I think.
- [09:12]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
I think you can draw that through line Y.
- [09:14]
Noah Efron
As for me, my name is Noah Ephron and I do not mean to boast, but it is in the middle of the Morning on Tisha B'Av. Judah just referred to that obliquely. There's lots of day left to go and already I'm feeling kinda hungry, bordering on hangry. This despite the fact that I am trying Wegovy, as I've said before, which does make me feel always as though I was just punched in the stomach just after getting off the tilt a whirl, just after having had a malt made of milk that's going bad. And still I am always hungry, even on the day when one temple was destroyed and then another. And I hope that you will believe me when I say that I am not bragging. God knows my folks raise me better than that. But when it comes to stuff like overeating, I mean, when it comes to stuff like stuffing my face, I have a certain determination that is reminiscent of both Captain Ahab and the Great White Whale, both of whom, as I get older, I come to resemble more and more today, we've got two topics of such monumental importance that a White House staffer called and asked us to rename this show the Donald J. Trump Edition of the Promise Podcast. But 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. Quietly questions the quadricentennial of a quixotic Kabbalist and maybe Messiah exactly 400 years ago today, on Tisha B'Av 5386 in Smyrna, the city on Turkey's Aegean coast today called Izmir, a baby was born to a poultry merchant who later became an agent for Dutch and English traders. He, the poultry merchant was named Mordechai Zvi. The boy born on that day was the second boy of the family born after Eliyahu. Another boy would come later. He would be named Yosef. Eliyahu and Yosef Zvi would grow up to be wealthy merchants themselves. The middle son, whose name was Shabtai Sabtaitzvi, would grow up to become, for a time anyway, a messiah. Even as a child, Sabbatait Zvi was extraordinary. Everyone could see he was an Elui, a Talmud prodigy, and he studied with Rav Yitzhak de Alba and later under Yosef Escapa, the most revered rabbi of Smyrna, gaining ordination as a hakham by the time he was 18. This years after his studies took him into the world of Kabbalah, especially the Zohar and Sefer Hapliya. After he turned 16 and at least until he was 22, Sabbatait Zvi lived in seclusion, learning from morning to night, visited now by melancholy brought on by some demonic power, and now by periods of brilliant illumination and exaltation, during which times he reported compulsions to commit acts that ran contrary to religious law, what would later be called Maassim Zarim, foreign acts. In these times, Shab Taitvi would pronounce out loud the ineffable name of God, The Tetragrammaton Shabtai Zvi was 22 years old in 1648 when news arrived in Smyrna of the start of the Chelmnytsky massacres, a wave of pogroms led by a Cossack named Bohdan Chelmnytsky that would over the next years account for the murder of more than 100,000 Jews in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and the destruction of hundreds of Jewish towns and villages, in response to which Sabbataitzvi publicly invoked the name of God and by some reports declared himself for time to be the Messiah. In these years, Sabbatait Zvi twice married, although each marriage was in the end dissolved unconsummated. Sometime before Sabbataitvi turned 28, owing to his claims to be the Messiah and his insistence that he had attained the power to levitate, the rabbis of Smyrna, including Rav Yosef Efskapa, took the difficult decision to banish Rav Sabbataitzvi. From Smyrna, Sabbataitzvi wandered to Greece and to Thrace or southeast Europe, settling for a time in Salonica, until, in an exalted state, under a chuppah, he married himself to a Torah scroll, after which the local rabbis gathered and voted again to banish him. After that, Shabb Tay Zvi went to Constantinople, where he befriended the famous Jerusalem kabbalist David Khalibo, and where, by means of practical Kabbalah, he set out to rid himself of his demonic obsessions. In a period of ecstasy in Constantinople, Rav Sabbataitzvi celebrated Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot, all in a single week. He also abolished a number of the commandments which he justified on the grounds that as the Messiah, he had the capacity to allow that which is forbidden. Expelled again, Sabbatait Zvi returned to Smyrna for a time mostly lost in melancholy, after which, in 1662, when he was 36, he decided to ascend to Jerusalem via Rhodes and then Cairo. In Jerusalem, Sabbataitzvi earned respect for his scholarship, most of all for his mastery of Kabbalah. In 1663, after Ottoman pashas demanded of Jerusalem's Jews an extortionate tax, Shab Taitvi was sent back to Cairo to contributions there the money needed to keep the Jews of Jerusalem from themselves being expelled from their homes. And after he succeeded in this task, raising enough money to satisfy the pashas, Shab Taitvi remained in Cairo, marrying on March 31, 1664, a Polish woman named Sara, orphaned in the Chelmnicki pogroms, who had since then found a reputation as a sexual profligate. It was just months after that that news reached Cairo that a great man of God named Natan, just 20 years old, was causing a stir in nearby Gaza. Offering supplicants tikkun and peace for the soul through practical Kabbalah, Sabbataitzvi made a trip to visit Nathan of Gaza, who he, like many others, regarded as a quote unquote, physician of the soul. And soon after, Sabbatait Zvi arrived, Nathan had an ecstatic vision of Shab Taitzvi as the Messiah. The two men traveled in pilgrimage to the holy spots in Hebron and Jerusalem. Upon their return to Gaza on May 31, 1665, Sabbatai Zvi, with Nathan at his side, proclaimed that he was indeed the Messiah, producing great excitement in some circles and worried skepticism in other circles. In the next month, Sabbataitzvi traveled on horseback to Jerusalem, circling the city seven times in kingly fashion before entering, winning over some of the local rabbis of renown while consolidating opposition. And most weeks later, the rabbis of Jerusalem banished Sabbatai Zvi from the town. By now, Nathan of Gaza understood that his role was to serve as a prophet of the Messiah and the organizer of a mass movement of repentance ahead of the redemption that Sabb Tay Zvi offered. A charismatic man and a scholar of considerable talent himself, Nathan attracted thousands of followers. In the name of Sabbatai Zvi, he proclaimed the abolition of the fast of the 17th day of Tammuz, replacing it with a day of celebration in Gaza and Hebron. What was happening in the Holy Land was almost immediately known back in Europe, although, as happens with these things, the simple facts were often embellished by rumors. And reports came that the lost 10 tribes had reappeared in the Holy Land and were marching under the command of Sabtay and Nathan, by some accounts to conquer Mecca, by other accounts through the Sahar, and by still other accounts through Persia. In September 1665, Nathan of Gaza wrote a long letter to Rav Yosef Khalibi, a friend and a mentor of Sabbatai Zvi since way back when, setting out how the redemption would go. The world had already undergone metaphysical changes of the highest order. No holy sparks were yet under the domination of evil occluded by Klipoth, the husks that, according to the Kabbalah, encase and imprison divinity. In a more practical and political sense, Shab Tait Zvi was on his way to taking from the emperor of the Ottoman Empire his crown, which he would relinquish peaceably. So wrote Nathan to Rav Khalebi. Around this time, the dead would arise to renewed life, and Sabbatai would marry the resuscitated daughter Rivkah of the resuscitated Moshe of the resuscitated Moses, who had taken the children of Israel out of Egypt. There would be birth pangs of redemption, Nathan wrote. People who oppose and fight to stop Sabbatait Zvi although he wrote their efforts would fail. After this, things moved quickly. Shav Tai Zvi left Nathan of Gaza behind and went north, making stops in Tzfat and then Aleppo in Syria, where he spent Tisha Bav 5364, 1665. After this, he traveled back to Smyrna Izmir, his birthplace, the city where he grew up and from which he was banished nine years before. For a time his presence was accepted with equanimity when he led the morning prayers. According to contemporary reports, he did so in a lovely way. He was quick to give alms to the poor. His scholarship was of undeniable interest and undeniable quality. After a time, though, Sabbathay Zvi returned to practices that troubled the rabbis and many others in the town. During Hanukkah 5325, according to reports, he ate of the fat of unkosher animals, encouraging others to join him. He again pronounced aloud the ineffable name of God. He desecrated the Shabbat by taking an axe to the door of the Portuguese synagogue, which had refused him entry. He skipped the shema and otherwise shuffled the order of the prayers. He read Torah from a printed Bible instead of a handwritten scroll. He did not call first to the Torah, Kohanim and Levi'. Im. He gave Aliyot to women. He gathered the Torah scrolls into his arms and sang an old erotic Castilian romance song, Mela Seldom it was called. He declared Monday to be his Shabbat. He behaved with unseemly familiarity with his two ex wives. Some of these reports may have been fully or partly exaggerated. Sabbathay Zvi was by now the subject of hot controversy. But some of these reports are no doubt true, at least in part. It was around this time, Hanukkah 1665, that Chabhtay Zvi announced as Nathan of Gaza had, that on the 15th of Sivan, June 18, 1666, redemption would come to the Jewish people, and he, Shab Tay Zvi, would be granted the crown of the Ottoman Empire. The seven months that followed were months of growing enthusiasm among growing numbers of Jews in the region and far beyond the region. At the end of December, Sabbataitzvi sailed with supporters to Constantinople, where they were met by Turkish and Jewish authorities committed to keeping the peace and preventing the enthusiasm that Sabbatait Zvi found in Smyrna from finding expression in constant. Although the grand visitor of the city, Ahmed Kripullu, while he sent boats to intercept Sabbatait Zvi at sea and brought him ashore in chains, chose not to try him and not to execute the Messiah, aiming to overthrow the Ottoman government in the upcoming months. After a short time in a dark dungeon, Sabbataitvi was kept under watch in comfortable quarters where he was allowed to study and to visit with followers and local rabbis who came to talk and together to read Kabbalistic and other texts. On the day before Pessach, April 19, 1666, Sabbatai Zvi was transferred to holding at Gallipoli, where important political prisoners were held. In Gallipoli, Sabbatai Zvi received the Paschal Lamb which he sacrificed, roasting its fat while reciting the blessing. For he who Mater Asurim, he who allows that which is forbidden. During all this time, Sabbatai Zfis fame was growing in Jewish communities in the Middle east, in northern Africa and across Europe. As the great scholar of Kabbalah and the Sabbathian movement, Gershom Shalom wrote, the appearance of a Messiah produced, quote, unquote, tremendous excitement and took hold of communities. In Aleppo. So many supporters of Sabbataitzvi liquidated their homes and their businesses and moved to the Holy Land to be there when the Messianic age began that a special charitable fund had to be established to support those too old or too poor to make the pilgrimage, who were left back in alone. In Mantua, a book of Messianic penitences by Nathan of Gaza was printed twice in one year in 1666, and the spiritual exercises were adopted and used by local synagogues. In Amsterdam, a Spanish translation of Nathan's manual was published, and there were reports of dancing and music in the street to celebrate Sabbatait Zvi's ascension. In Hamburg, letters from Smyrna describing Sabbatait Zvi's doing were read from a synagogue pulse. Young people wore green silk sashes, green being, quote, unquote, the color of Sabbatait Zvi. In Krakow, two editions of Nathan of Ghaza's manual were printed in Yiddish translation. In 1666, in Morocco, rabbis adopted Nathan of Gaza's penitences as part of local liturgy. In Yemen, shop owners and traders shut down businesses in the first months of 1666, getting their affairs in order before the start of the Messianic age. All of this enthusiasm would soon be dashed. Exactly what happened next is a matter of some disagreement among scholars, like many other aspects of Sabbatait Zvi's life and legacy. A Polish kabbalist named Nehemia Hakohen from Lwow came to spend several days with Sabbatait Zvi in September 1666, entering into an angry debate which ended with Nehemia denouncing Sabbatai Zvi and announcing that he himself, Nehemia, was now willing to embrace Islam. Not long after that, Shab Tayitzvi was brought into a court of the Sultan for proceedings that the Sultan himself observed from an adjoining room, looking through latticework. Contemporary reports of the trial vary greatly, but Sabbatai Zvi seems to have been given a choice between conversion to Islam and execution, and he chose the first, adopting legally the name Aziz Mehmed Efendi and adopting the title Keeper of the Palace Gates, and accepting a royal pension of 150 piastres a day. The date of the conversion was September 15, 1666. News of Sabbatait Zvi's apostasy spread quickly through Jewish communities around the world, producing shock and heartbreak and a great deal of perplexity. Nathan of Gaza announced that what had happened was a deep mystery, the meaning of which would come clear by and by. Over the next months, Nathan of Gaza developed a Kabbalistic interpretation of what had happened happened, developing what scholars have called a Sabbatean theology that was embraced in some circles who passed it down to their children and theirs. In this Sabbatean theology, the redemption that Sabbatait Zvi offered was real, and his own apostasy was a reflection of a grand metaphysical struggle between evil and good that was still very much underway. Sabbataitzvi himself had descended back into the realm of the Klipoth, what not to called the abyss of Ishmael, to try to undo them from within. He had converted, but he had not really converted. Sabbatai Zvi himself lived for 10 years after the apostasy. He died in 1676 at the age of 50, mostly in Adrianapal, where he attended mosques and read of the Quran, but at the same time continued to meet with Jewish pilgrims and followers and to discuss Kabbalah and Halacha. This double life led to Sabbatai Zvi's arrest, accused of praying in Tefillin and accused of apostasies against Islam. Now, in punishment, he was exiled to a remote fortress town on the Adriatic called Dosigno, and it was there that he died on Yom Kippur 53, 37, Sept. 17, 1676, and was buried in an isolated plot outside a Muslim cemetery, the location of which is unknown to this day. Just what we ought to make of the life and career of Sabbatait Zvi is one of the most debated questions in Jewish history. Two of the biggest questions that scholars ask are what caused so many people in so many places to believe that Sabbatait Zvi was in fact the Messiah? And the second question, what did the fact that so many people in so many places believed in Sabbataitzvi most? Their belief quickly shattered. What did all this messianic fervor cause in the generations that came after? To both questions, probably the greatest scholar of Sabbatanism and the man who made the first best case that we had valuable things to learn from the study of Sabbatai Zvi, Gershom Shalom gave complicated answers that have been argued about ever since. What made it possible for Sabbataitzvi to capture the imaginations of Jews around the world and to spur them? Their businesses and change, their liturgies and all the rest started 130 odd years before Shab Taitvi was even born, with the shock of the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497, huge cataclysms, according to Gershom Shalom, that reverberated still in the 17th century in Europe, where many Muranos, conversos and crypto Jews still lived. Generations later, the echoes of that shock of exile could be heard with the massacres of Chelmnytsky. Shab Tait Zvi was born into a society traumatized by a century and a half of persecutions and catastrophes. To this, Gershom Shalom adds the redemptive logics of Lurianic Kabbalah, which had spread from the Holy Land to Jewish communities around the world. This Jewish Kabbalah matched well the growing influence of of mysticism among Christians, of Christian Kabbalah and of Christian millenarianism. Shab Tait Zvi also thrived at a moment when rabbinic authority in many places was at an ebb, and at a moment when in many places, in Prague under Habsburg Emperor Rudolph ii, in Italy and Provence, Jews, Christians and Muslims were finding ways never very popular, never very big, but still always meaningful ways to share news, prophecies, reports of the lost 10tr, new astronomical findings, and so much more. Since Gershom Shalom first offered all these explanations, other scholars have offered other sometimes conflicting, sometimes enhancing, accounts, arguing that Shalom maybe exaggerated the place of Lauriana Kabbalah in Jewish spiritual life and that it gave too much weight to expulsions that had happened more than a century and a half before so many people fell for Sabbatai Zvi and arguing that Shabbat Zvi ought best be understood in the context of Muslim culture in the Ottoman Empire of the day, and arguing that the spread houses and the explosion of the number and the availability of printed books in Sabbatait Zvi's days, that's also part of what allowed what happened to happen. And probably most all of these later scholars are right. The picture that emerges after reading them all is still, though, a picture of a Jewish people beset by generations of calamities, living at a time when the ways people communicated with one another was changing around them, in constant and complicated contact with the people that people who were not them among whom they lived, eager to embrace someone with charisma, promising to change things that no longer seemed to work as they had in the past, embracing a wild hope at a fraught and uncertain moment as to what Chabtay Zvi's short career as Messiah caused to happen in Jewish history that came after him. Gershom Shalom wrote that it created a kind of tradition of questioning traditional authority and did a lot to weaken the power of the rabbis. In this sense, according to Shalom, Shabbt Haitzvi is part of the prehistory of the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is part of the prehistory of secular Judaism and part of the prehistory of Reform Judaism. Shab Tay Zvi weakened the force of tradition, which allowed for the rise of all sorts of new traditions. It is no coincidence, according to Gershom Shalom, that Hasid arose in the wake of Sabbatianism. Hasidim, like the followers of Sabbatai Zvi, understood the power of charisma, and they embraced it. They understood the power of mystical devotion, and they embraced it. They understood how powerful it could be to change up prayers and how powerful it could be to see sanctity in things the rabbis before them saw as profane and how powerful it could be to try new ways of being and to see a link between ecstasy and God. Gershom Shalom also wrote that after Shab Tay Zvi, there grew in Judaism a tradition of an orthodoxy forever policing, looking for, trying to root out heretics, radicals, people trying to overturn what we have now in favor of something better in some mystical or messianic future. Here too, later scholars have subjected every conclusion of Gershom Shalom to skeptical scrutiny, finding that all the causal links that Gershom Shalom posits need to be softened. Sabbatai Zvi did not give rise to Hasidut Though he played a role, Sabbatai Zvi was not the motor of Jewish enlightenment, of Reform Judaism, of secular Judaism, though the way he shook traditional Judaism and rabbinical society surely played a role in all of these things. Recent scholars have also pointed to other changes that Sabbatait Zvi may have played a part in that Gershom Shalom did not much write about. In a recent book called Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zvi, the historian Ada Rapoport Albert writes that had said to women that he would make them as happy as men, liberating them from their subjection to their husbands and to the rabbis. This quote, unquote liberationist message did not entirely disappear with the end of Sabbatai Zvi's life. It would turn up again in other later movements of all sorts. What I think that all the scholars of Sabbatait Zvi and Sabbatianism agree about is that there are shudders and quakes in history. Big things happen, and they are always, in part echoes of shudders and shakes and big things that happened before them, and they also lead to shudders and quakes and big things that come after them. 400 years ago on this morning, as I speak, a baby was born into the tumult of a Jewish world still reeling after expulsions and upheaval and into the upheavals of Chelmnytsky. And he grew to be a messiah, a man who inflamed the hopes of so many and in the fullness of time squelched the hopes of so many and who caused misery and maybe also opened Judaism to many of the changes that it has undergone since, in so many ways liberating Judaism. And I bother to talk about all this history on the 400th anniversary of the birth of Sabbatai Zvi, and on Tisha B'Av, a day that by tradition commemorates the destruct of the first temple and then the second. Because I think that what it all tells us maybe matters. And we ourselves have seen so many cataclysms and also wonders in our lives. We grew up surrounded by people with numbers tattooed in soft blue on their arm. We grew up surrounded by people born in a world where a sovereign Jewish country seemed like an end of days family fantasy, and yet who lived to see it come to pass, and then lived to see that country grow from near nothing into a strong, rich, creative, astonishing place. And we all of us saw October 7th, and we all of us watched all that has happened since. Things lead to things. 400 years have passed. And we can ask ourselves now, with the perspective of so much history, when, when in the story of Sabbatait Zvi, when was the moment for despair? And while admitting that there were many moments in that story when people surely felt hopeless and surely felt betrayed and surely felt lost, in fact, the answer might be that there was no moment in that story that was right for despair. One thing led to the next. Things fell apart, only to be pieced together in a new way, way. People created new forms. They affixed their hope to new things and new people, some leading nowhere that led anywhere, others leading to forms of life of profound rich meaning that we experience today. Professor Rachel Elior, one of today's greatest scholars of Kabbalah and of Sabbataitzvi and what came before him and after him. Rachel Elior told us at our Tikkun Lel Shavuot that it was from the destruction of the Temple that much of what means the most of us in our Judaism today arose. Because what we do best, we the Jews, we the humans, is gather our ruins and build from them new things of our despair. We may cope because we have seen over and over again that dark moments produce moments of light. It may be, I think, it is the case that there is some sort of causal connection, faint but real, real, between the women whom Sabbatai Tzvi scandalously called up to the Torah in the 17th century and the aliyah my own girl got a few weeks ago when she read Torah at our Havorah. No one can doubt that there are so many connections between what happened on planet Auschwitz and what happened here in the generations that have followed it, as those people with the soft blue numbers built here, families and factories and farms and shuls and university departments and buildings and all the things of weight and purpose and infinite beauty that we have here now already. In the astonishing music you hear everywhere here these days, you hear the echoes of all that happens starting at 6:29 on Saturday morning, October 7, 2023. You hear them, those echoes. They're there. Things happen always on the way to other things. And it is only much later that you can see how it was a false messiah who brought your girl so beautifully to the Bhima. Today, two discussions. Our first discussion, Democrats all as on Monday, Miflegeta Democratim, the Democrats party held its much anticipated primaries, rank ordering 51 candidates in a single list of whom, if the elections were held today, 10 to 13 of them would only ultimately end up being members of Knesset. And we will talk about, and we will ask with Chaim Nachman Bialik, who once almost wrote this in a somewhat different context, who is up and who is down? And we will wonder with Chaim Nachman Bialik, is it just me, me and you? Or is it maybe democracy itself? Ooh, I give myself the chills. And the second discussion is bad hatred and good as Like I said, we are recording on Tisha B'Av, a day that marks, among other things, the destruction of the Second Temple, which tradition tells us was destroyed owing to Sinat Chinam groundless hatred, the gratuitous and a priori rejection of people who see the world differently than we do. Which notion of Sinat Chinam has lately become a matter of political debate, with some party leaders saying a priori that they will never cooperate with the politicians across the aisle and a whole new party, on the other hand, announcing its run for the Knesset just before Tisha Baav because its very raison d' etre is to fight fight Sinat Chinam. We will discuss what the day may or may not have to teach us about our political discourse 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. And apropos of Sinat Chinam, we will talk about the AI generated video that Prime Minister Netanyahu shared just yesterday as we record that shows Gadi Eisenkot, the IDF chief of staff who at this moment leads all the polls and who if the elections were held yesterday, would likely be our next prime minister, running through a field toward a young man wearing a T shirt that says National Unity only to have the general run by him to embrace Mansoor Abbas, the head of the Islamic movement Ram Party. The kicker being the young man looks a lot like Gadi Eisenhot's own son, Gal, who was king killed in the war in Gaza. We will try to understand this video and a few other toxic videos that have already appeared in this nascent campaign and try to make sense of what they mean to say and how we ought to regard them. But before we get to any of that, please listen to this.
- [40:07]
Judah Ari Gross
Adonai.
- [41:06]
Noah Efron
That song is Mi Ma Amapin by Sinai Tor and Bini Landau, Music of these Odd Times. Almost a kina to my ears. And now it's time for our first discussion. So Alison, what was this celebration of democracy that everyone's been talking about all week?
- [41:25]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Well, I just have to Say, speaking as an Israeli American, it is all very confusing that the main Jewish Zionist left wing party has decided to be called the Democrats, because I have conversations with my friends supporting that Democrat or the step, which Democrat, which country? It's, it's very confusing. So yes, just to establish our terms, the merger of merits and the Labor Party is now called the Democrats. When we're talking about the Democrats, we're talking about the Israeli Democrats. So with that put out of the way on Monday, 97,097 people, that's very symmetrical. 97,097. 86.6% of the total party rolls of 112,376 voters participated in the primaries for the Democrats Party. Each of the 97,097 cast electronic votes for six to eight of the 51 candidates for the party leader list. Israel's parliamentary system being what it is, all 51 of the candidates will appear on the list of 120 candidates that will be submitted to the General Elections committee before the September 10 deadline. But Israel's parliamentary system being what it is, the order in which the candidates appear on the list is crucial. If today's polls tell us anything about how people will vote on election day, October 27, then the first eight to 12 candidates on the Democrats list will become members of the Knesset. When the new Parliament is sworn in. If the Democrats join whatever government is elected, several of its members will probably become ministers, quitting the Knesset and thus allowing a few people down the list to join the Knesset. So unless something dramatic happens and the Democrat Party does much better or much worse than we expected, expect anywhere between eight and 15 of them, give or take, will find themselves either in the Knesset or a nice corner office on the top floor of a ministry building with a private car to drive them around. The relationship between the number of primary votes the different candidates win and the order of the candidate list the primaries produce is complicated because why shouldn't it be complicated? The rules for the primaries fill a dense 12 page document and they adjust the raw vote counts in a number of ways. For one thing, the rules stipulate, and I really like this, that the list alternates. Man, woman, man, woman. The man who comes in first is Yair Golan, who was elected party head two years ago. For that reason, he was not required to stand for elections in this primary. Because of the gender back and forth, the votes are themselves also tabulated by gender. So the second spot goes to the woman with the most votes. The third spot goes to the man with the most most votes, and so on. It is possible therefore, that the person who ends up number three on the list may have more votes than the person ranked in the second spot. In fact, the person who ends up at number five or seven could in principle have more votes than the person who is ranked number two. Another complexity of the list is that the Democrats Party is a union, as I said, of what were once two parties, labor and Merit. The coalition agreement signed at the time of the merger stipulates that at least one former merits member will be among the top six candidates on the list, and that two former merits members will be among the top eight, and that three will be among the top 14. If no former merits member polls in the top five primary candidates, then one will be elevated from further back on the list and installed in the sixth position. If this person is male, then the number five candidate who's a guy will be swapped out for the number eight category candidate. Oh, this not complicated enough for you? Did I mention that positions 12, 13, 18, 23 and 27 are set aside for Kibbutz or Moshav members? And for Muslim, Jews, Christian and Circassian candidates? You can see how the thing is just a little tiny bit complicated, even as the principles behind it are pretty simple. Mostly democracy, tempered by some concern that all kinds of people in all kinds of gender defenders will find on the party list someone who looks a little bit like them, sounds a little bit like them, and maybe thinks a little bit like them. So all that said, when the vote happened mostly on people's phones, and when the calculating and the aggregating was done, the people chosen to be the top dozen candidates on the Democrat team list are number one, obviously party head Yair Golan, general and former deputy chief of staff, who on October 7 got into his car, drove down to Gaza and saved the lives of dozens of kids trying to escape the Nova Festival and the results of the primaries, he is now followed by these three presently serving Labor MKS. Number one or rather number two, Naamalazimi, the 40 year old feminist child of immigrants from Morocco. Traditionally religious, not orthodox, but I've actually been in her house and they are quite traditional and one time Haifa City Council Council member. Number three Reform Rabbi, Attorney General, former head of the Reform movement in Israel, Gilad Kariv, who often dovens at Noah's Havorah Efrat Wrighton, a lawyer, former children's TV star, host and actress and like many good hearted people, ha ha ha. Noah, you wrote that a resident of Tel Aviv after which three serving MKS came these three impressive people. Yaya Fink, at number five, a 42 year old, young, relatively speaking, religiously observant, head of the social justice division of the Histidrute labor union and the founder of a bunch of NGOs helping people in all kinds of ways. 6 Gabby Laski, the feminist Mexican born human rights lawyer who is fluent in Spanish and Hebrew and English of course, and Arabic and a few more besides. She was a merits MK in the last government and she was before that a member of the Tel Aviv Yaffo City Council. Number seven, Omri Ronen, the lawyer and a leader of Brothers in Arms, the anti judicial reform and pro draft, the ultra orthodox movement of reservists who had the good luck that just a day before the elections Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered his removal from active reserve duty on account of him ostensibly encouraging other reservists not to show up for duty. Which for what it's worth, is not true. May I just add that he's incredibly hot. Sorry, editorial comment there. Number eight, Michal Rozine, the feminist, former merits MK who is a member of Women of the Wall, the group of women who with each new moon come to the Wailing Wall to pray with the start of each new month, which each month draws angry and violent protests from Haredim. She was very active and vocal as a merits mk. I think she did a good job. Number nine is Moshe Radman Abutbul, 41 year old high tech entrepreneur who in 2023 left entrepreneuring behind to make the anti legislation legislative reform protests. His career and his life all over social media all the time, all over television, all the time. Number 10, Sumayya Bashir, a psychologist, religious Muslim and leader of Women Wage Peace from the village of Jat in the north, and also one of the leading Palestinian Israeli anti judicial reform activists. Number 10, the first Palestinian citizen of Israel, Israel who is in a realistic spot for the Knesset. Number 11, 65 year old retired major general, Air Force chief of staff and CEO of the Israel aerospace industry, Nimrod Scheffer, the son of survivors who grew up on Kibbutz Alonim. And finally at number 12, Moran Zara Katzenstein, another star of the protest. She founded Bonot Alternativa, the feminist protest group that we all know from their very visible presence at the anti judicial reform protests marching in the handmaid's tail outfits. The list goes on and on, but this list of the first dozen plus candidates probably gives a good sense of what its identity will now be and who Its potential Knesset members will be. So, guys, what do we make of the list?
- [49:43]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
So, for one thing, the very complicated rules did not really play a role in the top spots on the list. Like, the first five are just the numbers, and they also happen to be man, woman, man, woman, and sort of match everything. And it's only sort of below that that the different merits positions and going man, woman sort of comes more into play. So the top spots really are, I don't know, representative of the primary voters. I think that's one part of it
- [50:13]
Judah Ari Gross
in terms of who's at the top
- [50:14]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
of the stage slots, which speaks highly of Naama Alazimi and Gilad Karib and Ifrat Wrighton, who got a large share of the votes. I think, for me, looking at it, some of these names are sort of very familiar, and some of them have long careers either in the Knesset or
- [50:36]
Judah Ari Gross
broadly in civil life.
- [50:39]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
I think I always remember Michal Rosen for a and I think this is going to touch on something that we're going to discuss later. But I always remember Michal Rosen for an ad that she had in 2015 where she got where she got other MKS from sort of rival parties to say, you know, don't vote for her. She's too good, she's too smart. She just she gets on an issue and she doesn't let it go like, don't vote for her. She drives us crazy. Crazy. Which is both a good ad for her, it's a clever advertisement, but also the fact that she had that kind of rapport with rival lawmakers who are willing and not people who are known for being particularly friendly. Yuriv Levine, now the Justice Minister I don't know that that would happen today, wouldn't happen today. I don't believe that would happen today for a variety of reasons. But at the time, he was not a markedly different person than he is today. And he appeared in there saying in this ad for her, which shows that both she was reaching across the aisle and had those relationships and that people respected her. And I think that's a real vote for her. I mean, the other person who really stands out to me as an interesting, exciting person is Yaya Fink, who's this is kind of rare on the list in that he wears a kippah, is religious, sort of is a product of the yeshiva system. He went to male Gilboa, and, you know, he's just a prolific organizer. You know, he started the lobby Tishimbitesha, which is sort of this, like, lobbying
- [52:18]
Judah Ari Gross
group that represents the public.
- [52:21]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
He did a huge he started a fundraiser in 2023 after there was the attack pogrom on Hawara, raising money and raised like a million shekel for them. He started a whole like town hall sessions to talk about what a center left government should look like and their priorities going forward and reimagining the north and all these things. So he's a very active person who has a real track record and he's very interesting. I look forward to seeing what he
- [52:50]
Judah Ari Gross
accomplishes in that religious role.
- [52:52]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
And then the one last thing that I'll say before handing it off to Noah, one person who's not on the list and I have to say, whatever, putting my biases and politics and personal preferences on the line, Naur Narkis, who's this very active on social media at least you can't even say like anti har. He's very anti religion in a very, I think, not helpful way and not in a separating church and state, but in a being anti religion. And I'm very glad to see that he's not on the list because I
- [53:22]
Judah Ari Gross
don't think that that would be good
- [53:24]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
for anybody, myself as a religious person included.
- [53:27]
Noah Efron
I think that that points the fact that Narquis ended up, ended up polling in the 22nd position, which means that he certainly will not be a member of Knesset, is like you said, I think a very good thing. But it's also a sign of one of the really many virtues of this list, which I think overall is quite excellent, though I have some misgivings about it as well. That trait being that it is for the most part not a populist list. The reason why very few parties in Israeli politics have primaries is because there is always the great fear that they will be taken over by relatively small groups of people who are well organized, who have these kind of populist views. And in fact, fact, it seems likely that something like that, if the Likud ends up having its primaries, which it has boasted of for the last, I don't know, 30 years as being the most democratic party in Israel internally. But now Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to limit or maybe to cancel entirely the primaries. And the reason why Prime Minister Netanyahu is concerned about his party is he is afraid that what is going to be expressed is this awful populism that's going to put the people on the furthest right who are the most incendiary, like Mai Golan, say near the top of the list or at the top of the list, and that it will be difficult or impossible for him to appeal to what he views as reasonable voters, because the list is going to be filled with unreasonable people. And one of the reasons why Yair Lapid and Betty Gantz said and Avigdor Lieberman and all these party leaders have for years refused to hold primaries is because they're afraid the same thing will happen. So then the Democrats Party held this big primary and it produced exactly the opposite. The process by which this happened is.
- [55:36]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
Sorry, is Omrim Ronen not kind of a populist figure?
- [55:40]
Noah Efron
Well, I will get to. To the figures who come from the protests against the Jewish Reform in a minute. That's my concern about this list. But overall. So they put out a call for candidates, 51 people answered, of whom I think that probably 40 are among in the fields of NGOs and public engagement, are some of the leading people in the country and some of the most respected people in the country, people who, many of whom have earned a lot of respect from both the left and the center and somewhat the right. So there are people like my friend who unfortunately didn't get high enough on the list again to become a member of Knesset, Yael Paran Cohen, who is one of the undisputed leaders of the environmental movement for the last 20 years, and she was there. Avi Dabush, who almost certainly will be. He was number 13 on the list, and he almost certainly will be in the Knesset, or very likely will be in the Knesset. He's a Reform rabbi, the leader of Rabbis for Human Rights, and he is a leader in the environmental movement, a leading social activist in the south of the country, a kibbutznik who has deep, deep ties with development towns. These people who put forth their candidacy. Gen Ariely, who's a deputy mayor in Tel Aviv, who was one. One of the leaders of the lgbtq, I don't know, movement or community for years, and this incredible woman. These people put their candidacy forward. And for the last month, so much of certainly my leftist social media feed, but all of us, so much has been hearing one after another of these fantastic people talking about this party as being their party and its way as being their way. I think it was really profound and I think that it produced this very, very good list. Overall, my concern is just what you were saying, Judah, which I guess was maybe inevitable. The leaders of the protest movement against the judicial reform, or as they call it, the judicial takeover, decided that this would be their party. And a number of them, like Alison, you said, Moshe Radio and a number of others, Henri Ronen ran and were elected in high enough positions because they are extremely well organized and because they have a lot of support, frankly. And they are populists. So much so that in his proud, happy, exuberant acceptance speech, the head of the party, Yair Golan, made a point of saying, saying all of us need to leave behind our protests. We're no longer protesters. We are now people seeking to govern. Which was his unsettled message to the people from the protests, saying, now's the time to cool it with the populism. Now's the time to stop talking about those people destroying the country and start being more serious as politicians. I think that three or four of this list of people who are likely to get in of the top 14 or 15 come from there and that they will in fact find it difficult to stop being populists because they are so populist down to the bone. And I think that that might be what ends up being the least appealing part of this extremely appealing list. And the last thing I'll say is just that this list also is a list that puts the two state solution and puts the occupation back into the discourse, really against the will of the party head, Yair Golan, by virtue of Gabi Laski being number six, and she is a longtime fighter for Palestinian rights and an incredible woman, and by virtue of Samayya Bashir being on the list, she who is now being pilloried in some quarters for having said on social media that that Israel had turned Gaza into the Warsaw ghetto or something like it. But these people in any instance are going to insist that part of the discourse and be about the occupation and ending the occupation. And they will ask their voters to understand that they are voting for a party that is seeking a two state solution. And it's refreshing to me to be confident that that's going to be at least a part of the agenda in this campaign. Alison, what did you think of the list?
- [60:25]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Well, no, it sounds like you equate being populist with saying stupid, right?
- [60:30]
Noah Efron
I, I do, I do in a way. Why do you think that that's not. I'm not. Populism is.
- [60:36]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
I look at all of these protest leaders and I think a couple of things. Number one is for so long, you know, really good hearted, well intentioned, smart, accomplished Israelis wanted nothing to do with electoral politics. And so they held their nose and they went into these, you know, trying to change the country through the NOS and through the, the social justice movements and, and all of that. So the fact that they are now vying for positions in which they can actually have power and make things happen. I see that as a positive sign. I also think it's a positive sign that presumably people who have kind of the presence and charisma to bring hundreds of thousands of people out into the streets to protest hopefully also have that kind of charisma and message sending that can bring them into, into the polls. And I, I curiously, I, I was curious if Yer Golan had run in this primary against everyone else, one wonders would he have come out number one? I seriously doubt it. I think just such a huge wave of appreciation for Namalazimi who sort of crossed both being a populist quote unquote leader and an, an effective legislator and politician because she really was, and I wrote story about her because of it, the only, only Knesset member who was regularly visibly present for long periods of time at the protest. So I wonder if, you know, whatever, if there was quote unquote justice, if she might be the, the leader of the party. I'm not saying if that's going to be good or bad. The other thing I'll say is that when you talked about Yara Golan's tension with the, with the populace, big mouths presumably, I mean it sounds like he is feeling that he's going to be quote unquote, competing for voters with say Yat and Eisencot. And so therefore he wants to keep their profile low. And on the other hand, you know, the ones who are going to be talking occupation and, and serious Israeli Palestinian conflict politics at Haaretz, both are Palestinian Israeli correspondent Naram Z. And also Judy Maltz who has been crisscrossing the country and reporting from Haifa and Umar Fahim, both of them found an unusual number of young Arab citizens who were interested in the Democrats. So you know, I wish maybe if, if there had been two Arabs in the, in the top, whatever 1012, I think that might have like encouraged that momentum. And also I keep thinking this new party that Omdin Bahad started, you know, if somehow that energy had got of cooperation had gone into the, had gone into the, the Democrats Party instead. So that's going to be, and that's an interesting tension between Yara Golan's, you know, kind of desire to pull from the center and the potential or you know, potential which will be used or not used to pull more from the left and more from the, the Arab population. And I'll my last final comment is it seems like, you know, there was a huge pendulum swing because of the disaster of the last elections where Merits and Labor mostly came from the labor side refused to join together and cooperate when it looked either or both would fall below the electoral threshold. So this is sort of a renewal or a push for unity that people who view themselves as the center left or the left or however you want to define it, stand together or fall together, and there's a decision to stand together.
- [64:08]
Noah Efron
And all of that I take deeply to heart. I think that you just said the thing that gave me the most comfort and optimism about the people from the protests. It's true that they bring important virtues and they represent important people. I just want to. Before Judah, I want to hear from you, but just want to say a word in favor of actually something that you raised, Judah, of the place of religion in this list. Because, I mean, it occurs to me, Sumayya Bashir, she's from, she's religious. And, and like you said, in one degree or another, Lama Nama Lazini is religious. Yahya Fink is religious. Avi Dabush is a rabbi. And one of my absolute favorite politicians of all time, Gilad Kariv, who is like you mentioned, somebody who lately has taken to davening in our chava, is a deeply, deeply religious man and a Reform rabbi. And it's a little bit shocking to see Merets especially, but Merets and what was labor together electing a list that has so many people that take this thing seriously that I'm pretty sure 10 or 15 or 20 years ago both of those parties would have outright rejected at most allowing one person on the list as a symbol. But this, and if I can interject,
- [65:48]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Noah, there was an active campaign to push this narquis down off the list. I don't know about you, but I received many, many messages from many people in my environment saying, you know, vote for merits, people who aren't him, so he won't get. Get the merit spot and vote for anybody but him. There was a big negative campaign against him, the anti religious candidate.
- [66:10]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
I mean, in terms of the issue of populist, I think the issue there is not just who can get. Getting people in the streets and getting people riled up is an important thing. It's a crucial aspect of civic engagement. But there's a huge difference between that and legislating. Those are two very different things. And I think one of the issues that the sort of center left in Israel has had is that there's always this push to find people from business, people from people who are in the civic world, people that are not legislators and don't have that background and bring them into politics with the hope that they're gonna get people out in the streets and people are gonna feel connected to them and be impressed by them, but then they don't really pan out in terms of getting the work done. And look, it's possible that that's the case here. It's possible that they're going to, you know, there are a number of sort of veteran legislators and people who have worked sort of at the top levels of civic society where they understand better the political system to know how to work it and to, you know, get things done. But that, I think that's the issue with the, like, populist movements is that, okay, so you say big things that get picked up on Twitter, but then you don't know how to like, actually
- [67:23]
Judah Ari Gross
write a bill and get it passed.
- [67:25]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
Passed and get it through committee.
- [67:26]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Right. But especially if they have niche issues, I'm thinking of Moranzer, Katzenstein, you know, women's issues. One would hope, one would imagine that they are also very engaged in the nuts and bolts of legislation and how it affects their, their particular issue. And if Noah's friend Yael had gotten in, I'm sure she would have known very well how to navigate legislation regarding the environment. So, you know, hope springs eternal that, and that this was the anti judicial reform protest. Okay, how deep into that legislation are these people going to be? One imagines. And one would hope that they would carry whatever expertise and knowledge of that area from their NGO and social activities to legislative knowledge, but as you know, we don't know until they're there.
- [68:13]
Noah Efron
I think we can all agree that if you want to bring in from the outside new politicians who can hit the ground running and work well as politicians, you got to go to the community of historians and philosophers of science. I think they're the ones you'd want to bring into your political system. And podcasters, Aidan, podcasters. Now listen to this. Amen. That song is Amen. New music by Maya Soliman. And now it's time for our second discussion. So, Judah, I gather that hatred is cool so long as it's not groundless.
- [70:20]
Judah Ari Gross
Look in the Talmud, Tractate Yoma, page 9ver, and you'll find this answer to the question, why was the second Temple destroyed? Because there was Sinat Chinam, or ground hatred. Also sometimes baseless hatred. Today is Tisha B'Av, as Noah said. And to mark the day last night in shul's living rooms and public parks all around the country and all around the world, Communities read Eijah, the Book of Lamentations, which in five chapters graphically describes the raising and ravaging of Jerusalem and the exile of its people to Babylon. And the destruction that's described in the book has come by tradition to be associated with the sacking of the Second Temple as well, leading many Israelis to see in the holiday a warning about the destruction and desolation that can result from baseless hatred. Rabbis and Jewish philosophers argued over the years about just what counts as baseless hatred. The great 19th century scholar Rav Naftali Tsvi Yehuda Berlin or the Netsiv, wrote in his gloss on Genesis that baseless hatred is hatred based on the idea that anyone whose religious observance is different from our own is somehow suspect or heretical or evil. They experience as a mitzvah their hatred of others who see the world differently than they do. It is this self righteousness, according to the Netsiv, that is the foundation of baseless hatred. In his novel Mother Night, my non Jewish rabbi Kurt Vonnegut would describe it as such. There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, Vonnegut wrote, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation. To imagine that God Almighty himself hates you too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive. Over the decades, and especially over the past six years, it has become common for rabbis to sermonize and for pundits to publish think pieces about how we are now experiencing a great and frightful rise in baseless hatred of the sort that the Natsiv wrote about. I should add that includes myself in e Jewish philanthropy yesterday. It started during the corona when some people against the masks and the laws limiting where we could go and what we could do came to hate the people who believed that we all needed to wear masks and stay at home. After that we spent a year fighting about the judicial reforms or overhaul or takeover or coup. Some people hated the people trying to change the courts, while other peoples hated the people trying to protect the courts. Then, after the October 7 attacks and the start of the war in Canada Gaza, some people who thought that the war needed to be ended right away now, now, now in order to bring home the hostages hated the people who thought that the war must go on even if it further risked the lives of the hostages. In response to this golden age of Sinat Chinam as we seem to be in Lots of people from lots of different perspectives have insisted that our very survival depends on us overcoming such hatreds, on finding common ground and coming to appreciate each other, even those whom we disagree with most. This theme, that baseless hatred needs to be overcome by solidarity and appreciation of the people we disagree with has in lots of shuls and living rooms and public parks become the theme of tisha b' av sorry idol worship, forbidden sexual relationships and bloodshed, the traditional reasons for why the first temple was destroyed. It is maybe a sign of just how schismatic our times are that the
- [73:32]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
notion that can't we all just get
- [73:34]
Judah Ari Gross
along and that we need to sacrifice for the sake of solidarity and that unity needs to be our greatest shared value. Three years after the most devastating terror attack in the country's history has itself become controversial. Not long ago, a Tel Aviv University philosophy professor named Assaf Sharon published a best selling book titled Civil How Unity Is Shattering Us Inside. In it, he argues that democracy is inherently conflictual. Politicians disparage the policy of other politicians trying to convince voters to follow an alternative, alternative path. The insistence on unity keeps democracy from working. It allows scoundrel politicians to keep doing their scoundrelly politics by making their critics suspicious, like they're enemies of solidarity itself, that wish that we just get along with the people who are doing things we think are bad, dangerous or evil. It dashes our moral intuitions and squelches our positive political influences. Imagine telling Spain and Argentina that above else they had to maintain their solidarity with one another and their first fellow feeling while playing this week's World cup final. What sort of game would that have produced? A bullshit one? A boring one? A lousy one? Asaf Sharon suggests that when some Israelis reacted to Yitzhak Rabin's assassination with pleas for solidarity, instead of angry demands that the rabbis who encouraged Yigal Amir to commit his crime get tried and jailed. We did no one any favors. A response to Asaf Sharon was written by popular Israeli public intellectual media Mika Goodman, who wrote in his book the 8th Day Israel after October 7th that what is needed now is a concerted effort to create what he calls a merchav haskama, a space of agreement. Micha Goodman does not think we all need to agree about everything all the time. But he does think that we need to create a public discourse in which the opposite camp is acknowledged to be legitimate and where no side tries to vanquish the other, achieving a total victory over them, and where everyone recognizes that today's political changes may tomorrow be revised or overturned. If all of this sounds like the kind of esoteric things that philosophy professors and people who write books make their livings making a big deal about, you should know that the debate is indeed raging in the political sphere today about whether or not we ought to prioritize unity or whether we ought instead to fight for what we believe in and against those things happening in our country that, in our eyes are taking us in the wrong directions. Earlier this week, Major general Yair Golan, head of the Democratin Party that we just spoke about at length, announced in a radio interview that his party after the elections would refuse outright to enter a coalition under any circumstances with any party that was part of the outgoing Netanyahu government, not the draft dodger Haredi parties, not the messianist religious Zionist party and not the corrupt Likud. Yet your Golan is this sense rejects unity and solidarity as a foundational principle. On the other side, Benny Gantz of the Blue and White Party has said that he will sit with any party that will take an active and constructive part in rebuilding the country's security and resilience. For what it's worth, though, Gantz and his allies have also indicated that they probably won't sit with Arab parties. Lately, a civic movement with thousands of activists called Harivon Harivi the Fourth Quarter, dedicated to what it calls the politics of agreement, announced that it has formed a still unnamed party dedicated to unity and solidarity. The head of the new party, Yoav Heller, who was the head of the Wingate Institute for Excellence in Sports, told reporters that the party was launched during the nine days before Tisha B', Av because it comes to put into practice the lessons of that day that we all need to pull back from baseless hatred. It wouldn't be fair to say that people like Assaf Sharon and Yair Golan are in favor of baseless hatred. They're not, of course, but they're both against the idea that it is the job of politicians to seek common ground with their opponents. The same thing can be said for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of course, who has demonstrated time and time again in his term of office that he is not against doing things that deeply alienate almost half of the citizens of Israel.
- [77:25]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
Prime Minister Netanyahu, too, cannot be said
- [77:27]
Judah Ari Gross
to favor baseless hatred per se, but
- [77:30]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
he is also kind of an agent
- [77:31]
Judah Ari Gross
of baseless hatred in the nativity sense, that he easily vilifies those with whom he disagrees, branding them as traitors of one kind or another. And the same is also true of Many of our other politicians. In his 2020 book Morality Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks wrote that argument and dissent are healthy, positive things for a society, necessary even, but that we should stay
- [77:51]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
far away from people movements and parties
- [77:53]
Judah Ari Gross
that demonize their opponents.
- [77:55]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
If we were to follow the late
- [77:56]
Judah Ari Gross
Rabbi Sachs's recommendation, we would be staying away from nearly every Israeli party political leader. Though maybe that's a good thing. But seriously, Allison, is there anything wrong with these politics of exclusion? Is this a form of baseless hatred? Or is it that other good thing, a mahlok et leshem Shemayim, an argument for the sake of heaven that we should be embracing? Should we always ask our politicians to seek common ground? Or is the old Marxist idea that there's value in sharpening the contradictions and the old populist idea that we need to throw the bums out, a better attitude to bring our politics out at this fraught and dangerous moment?
- [78:29]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
This conversation to me seems to always confuse finding common ground with demonstrating mutual respect. Because I don't believe that there always needs to be a search for common ground. I mean, there needs to be an effort for common ground. But I don't think that either side or any of the sides or anybody who has a strong political view of something should back down, down on what they believe, on what they think is good for the country, and what they think is the right way in service of, you know, this elusive unity or, or being together. I kind of disagree on, on that Netanyahu is an agent of baseless hatred, but he doesn't favor baseless hatred. I think he favors it. He would never do so publicly, but he views it as a important tool to ensure his political continuity and, and survival. And that's why I think that a lot of, of people who may agree, you know, point for point with Netanyahu's politics are now anti Netanyahu people. Exactly. For that reason. And again, I'll refer to, to Judy talking to voters ahead of this election for her arts articles. She's spoken to a lot of people like that who are right wing but who are very upset with the, the current government for the fact that it is sewing, actively sewing disunity and, and divisiveness. I'll just say that for me, what, you know, what has crossed a line, us and them. You know, there's always been the sense that despite our internal sharp disagreements and disunity inside the country, that we are all united in wanting to love, protect, care about Israel against our enemies from the outside who want to destroy us, harm us, etc. Etc. And the conversation has shifted now, you know, from the right about the left. No longer. We are all Israelis who disagree with each other, fighting our common enemies who want to destroy us with again, this traitorous language. You are part of the, you know, outside world that wants to get rid of this country. And I think what has changed on the, on the left left is the active articulation by the newly empowered religious and right wing parties expressing a vision of a country that actively excludes people who want to live in a certain way, you know, secular or who want to live in more in, in harmony and push for equal rights for Palestinians and for, who disagree with them politically and live different from them religiously and actively articulating a desire for a form of a country that excludes the other half. So it's become, I think, on both sides, an existential fight. So that seems to, you know, really be sharpening the hatred, demonification of the other side in a way that, that we never had today. I mean, I'm, I guess I'm probably more of an Asaf Sharon than I am of, of a Miha Goodman, but I definitely feel that, yes, you know, that certain language and behavior that is common today should be out of bounds and not practice. But when it comes to standing your ground for what you believe in and, you know, not compromising for the sake of compromise, that I'm very, I think, strong on, on believing in that.
- [82:08]
Noah Efron
Well, I think that you also pointed us in the direction of a way out of this dichotomy at the very beginning of what you said, when you said, look, there's a distinction about agreeing about matters of policy and there's a distinction between that and treating other people with respect. And you can, and once you make that distinction and keep it firm in your mind and insist on that distinction, then it allows you to go one level up and say, I'm going to fight the fights for the policies that I believe in, the path, the vision that I believe in very, very strongly and uncompromisingly and at the same time always insist on recognizing the humanity and decency and commitment of everyone that I disagree with, save for the, you know, very, very few people at the borders who are truly deplorable in one way or another. So I think that you don't need to choose sides. I think you, like you've basically, to my mind, given me my answer to this, which is you have to do both things. I think that it's both comforting to remember and it also gives useful perspective that while all of this feels new, it's not really at all new. And I have on my computer somewhere a PDF of a pamphlet that the Labour Party put together about Menachem Begin, where they said, menachem Begin is Hitler. It wasn't that Menachem Begin has some passing similarities to Hitler. It's that Menachem Begin is Hitler and that we need to get rid of him and his followers and. And everyone who believes in his way, because otherwise we will become Nazis. And this was in the 1940s. And then all the way through, you can find things like that in both directions mostly, then more than from the left to the right, as I would say. Now, probably you see it more from the right to the left, but always you see it on both sides, one to the other. And the reason why I find that somewhat comforting is because it's not that we have tumbled off this cliff of rationality and decency into something that is, you know, much, much worse than that, where we are no longer able at all to distinguish good from evil and no longer able to distinguish friend from foe. It's sort of always been that we've always been walking in those fields. But I think that the answer that you gave Alison is just, to my mind, it is just the answer. And even among politicians who you feel are mindful of this, like, say, Yair Golan, who I think is very careful to try not to vilify people too
- [85:14]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
much, even, yeah, IYAR Golan got in trouble a couple years ago for referring to settlers as subhuman.
- [85:23]
Noah Efron
Well, right, exactly. So even if that's exactly my point, that he definitely, he does have perfect control over, he famously, not that long ago, you know, accused IDF soldiers of killing babies for sport, something about which he, you know, as a hobby, something about which he immediately said that he has misspoken. And. But it's clear that it's just that my point is, even if you're mindful of it, it's a very, very difficult border to patrol to keep clear about. Especially because, like you were saying, Alison, Benjamin Netanyahu is so infuriating about this thing. We're going to talk in the Patreon about this video that he posted showing Gotti Eisenhutt, probably showing Gotti Eisenkot ignoring his son in order to implement, embrace this Arab leader, Islamicist, which is so terrible on so many grounds, so inflammatory on so many grounds. And so Netanyahu does this, and it poisons the entire debate, as I said, not in a way that's not at all new, but in a way that he keeps replenishing over and over again. It makes it difficult. And I think that almost none of our politicians manage actually to keep that distinction that you were talking about, Alison, and to actually treat the other side as though they're sensible, decent, committed human beings who just have a different vision of the world, but who deserve to be argued with and who deserve to be persuaded and are our interlocutors. It's hard to do that. What do you think, Judah?
- [87:07]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
So I was talking about this topic with my wife, who's much smarter than I am, and her insight on it was sort of like you just said, Noah. This is something that has been going on for a long time. There's always been, we won't sit with him, they won't sit with us, talking about sort of other politicians and other movements in negative terms. But the, the thing that does seem to be escalating. It's, you know, probably not a new thing, but definitely escalating is the, the voters is the people who won't sit with someone who they think has, you
- [87:45]
Judah Ari Gross
know, opposing political views.
- [87:47]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
And there's, you know, it's becoming more and more of a thing of families being like torn apart by, by the politics of it all. And that's where the. What do you mean?
- [87:58]
Noah Efron
I think that this is one of the greater gaps between the way that we describe ourselves in the way that we really are.
- [88:06]
Judah Ari Gross
I like all the time, like Karen
- [88:09]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
Neubach had a great, has a new podcast who's a. Karen Neubach is like a very well regarded con broadcaster who has a show on the show.
- [88:19]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Can I interject that my husband and I met at Karen Neubach's apartment. That's all I.
- [88:22]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
Well, there you go, really. But she has a new, like, daily podcast and the first episode was about this and she spoke with a family that the, you know, the sister of the, the sister in law went and became involved with Achim Lane, you know, Brothers in Arms, the anti judicial overhaul movement. And the family was sort of longtime Likud voters. And like she left the WhatsApp chat and they didn't talk to each other for months and months and months at a time and it was only eventually that they were able to reconcile. So I think it's real.
- [88:58]
Noah Efron
I think that it's not real. I think that you can find, I'm sure you can find hundreds of cases like that. But I think that in fact, when you speak to people, start to try as an experiment asking people that, you know, Somewhat, whether their family, you know, what diverse views are held by their family members members. And you will find one after another, they say, oh, yeah, my cousin, whom I love, is a crazy settler who lives in Oatmeal, or my sister, whom I love, she completely left religion and she's like some crazy left winger. And what you will find, I think overwhelmingly, I would guess, in almost all the situations, though there are some exceptions, you will find that people speak over those bounds and love over those bounds and respect over those bounds in their personal lives. And this is more a phenomenon of social media and media and politicians and public discourse and much less of the private world, though obviously I don't have proof for that.
- [90:09]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Speaking to my personal life. I also have close family members who I love and adore, who I actively do not want to know, who they voted for, for, because it would alter our relationship. So I didn't do that. On the confessing to Sinatra side, I fired my personal trainer this year because I couldn't stand his politics and I couldn't stand the views that he repeated. And while I feel like he had the full right to them, I didn't want to listen to them while I was also suffering and lifting weights at the same time. Can I just ask, though, is not sitting with a coalition party in the same government when you feel that that party, party has opposite goals for the country than you do? Is that Sinat Chinam? Is that. Is. Is that stepping over a line? Is that, you know, not being unified enough? Because I would say that that falls more in the category to me of, you know, standing up for the principles and, and fighting for the kind of country that you want to see.
- [91:00]
Noah Efron
Well, consider this as a taste test case. So Yuli Edelstein is leaving the Likud and probably going to be part of. Of another party that has the. And there are a number of people who are hovering around this party now. They were members of this government, but they're forming a party that's going to be Likudish, but differing about a certain number of issues, mostly about whether the ultra orthodox ought to be forced to enlist in the army. And Yair Golan has said that he will not sit with him because he was responsible for the crime of sitting with Netanyahu. Supporting Netanyahu, and in the case of Edelstein, quite actively. I think that that's a position that is defensible. I'm not here trying to say Yair Gulen, therefore, is an agent of Sinat Chinam, but I do think that is part of what you might think of as constructive Sinat Chinam in the eyes of the people who embrace something like that. And then most of the other parties. Certainly Yair Lapid would not feel that way. Yair Lapid, I'm sure, would be happy to sit with Yuli Edelstein in a government that doesn't have Netanyahu in it. That's the difference of saying this person, by virtue of what he did in the past, is simply deplorable to me. He is out of he is off limits. He is out of the realm. Now listen to this. K. That song is Oiva Voili by Nir Khan. More New Weird music of these new weird days. You can find everything you heard on the show today in all the usual places. And now it is time for our Vada country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of us describes something that may be surprised or amused, delighted or enchanted and source old or possibly even fluked us as we wended our way through our worlds over the last little while due to what is your what a country.
- [94:42]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
So a week ago I found myself
- [94:44]
Judah Ari Gross
on the train heading to one of my favorite places, Anu Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv.
- [94:50]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
And I was going for something that was pretty special and I think very relevant for Tisha BAV today. I mean, it was explicitly about Tisha bav, specifically in Anu, I was going
- [95:02]
Judah Ari Gross
to the Tisch center for Jewish Dialogue
- [95:05]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
and they were holding the apostle aptly named Tish Baav, which brought together, and this was the special part, leaders of the Israeli religious Zionist movement, sort of people, Rabbi, mostly rabbis, educators, rabbaniyot, etc. And then non Orthodox, mostly American rabbis from the Diaspora. And they brought them together to have dialogue, sort of to meet each other, to interact with one another. And they were doing it because of the Sinat Chinam that we've kind of been talking about off and on throughout this entire podcast and trying to bridge those gaps because it happens very frequently that there's a reluctance or a refusal for Orthodox rabbis especially but Orthodox figures to share space with non Orthodox ones because it's considered sort of giving legitimacy to non Orthodox streams of Judaism that they don't see as legitimate expressions of Judaism. And it happens from time to time. And in this case they brought together about a dozen of each sort of about a dozen religious Zionists and about a dozen sort of non Orthodox Diaspora rabbis. Also Sarah Horowitz, a former Obama speechwriter. But they brought them together to just sort of speak to interact with each other and mostly to hear about what the past three years have like for each of them. Sort of post 10-7-and after sort of brief panel with Elliot Cosgrove, who's a well known rabbi in New York City at the Park Avenue Synagogue, and Jaffa Gisser, who's the head of an organization called Yesodot, which brings sort of democracy
- [96:48]
Judah Ari Gross
education to the religious Zionist community, they
- [96:51]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
all broke up into groups. And so you had lots of different people. And I happened to get placed with in one group that included Rabbi Doron Peretz, who's the head of the Mizrachi movement, sort of an international religious Zionist movement, and he's also currently the president of the World Zionist Organization with Rabbi Sharon Brous, who is the head of a very popular sort of non denominational congregation in LA called Ikar, and also a rabbi named Judy Schindler who is from Charlotte, North Carolina and sort of
- [97:23]
Judah Ari Gross
works in academia more.
- [97:25]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
And we were all talking about where we were sort of post 10-7-7 and Rabbi Doron Peretz, for those who don't know, his son Daniel was stationed in Nahal Oz on the Gaza border. And on October 7th his son went missing. And at first it sort of wasn't
- [97:43]
Judah Ari Gross
clear what had happened.
- [97:44]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
And it was only later that they
- [97:45]
Judah Ari Gross
found out that he'd been killed and his body had been taken into Gaza and was being held hostage.
- [97:51]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
Another son of his who went down, who was also in the army, who went down to fight was, was injured. A few days later his son who was injured, sort of got, had a, got married, had a wedding. While they still didn't know the state of Daniel, he told this whole story of being a hostage father for this time until his son was returned or
- [98:11]
Judah Ari Gross
his son's remains were returned for burial two years later.
- [98:14]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
And that was a story that the two American sort of non Orthodox rabbis hadn't heard before. And you could see when they were hearing this story for the first time, just their body language moving, moving in to listen to him and to hear his story and to hear his pain. And on the flip side, when they were talking about what they'd experienced and them losing all of their sort of interfaith friends and colleagues in the sort of interfaith world and progressive spaces, he leaned in and was asking follow up questions and wanting to hear about how their, you know, the rug had been pulled out from under them over the past few years. And it was just a beautiful moment of sharing. And I spoke with other people from other groups and sort of the same thing was happening. It wasn't. They disagreed with each other about a lot of things, about sort of progressive values. And Daron Peretz was, you know, they were talking about the death toll in Gaza. And Daron Peretz, who, who comes from this religious Zionist world was saying, you know, every death is a tragedy, but it's all Hamas's fault.
- [99:15]
Judah Ari Gross
And it could have just at any
- [99:17]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
moment, it could have broken into not even an argument or something negative, but just a debate. And it didn't. It was just both sides kind of sharing their own thing. And that happened in every circle was everyone sharing sort of what they experienced without pushback, without like it was discussion, but, you know, talking about it but not pushing back against it. And that was just an amazing thing. And at the end, you know, the fact that all these people got together was an amazing thing. And then Rabbi Sharon Browse, who I'd never heard speak before it got up and gave an amazing sort of impromptu sort of Dvar Torah about in Mishnah Midot that it says that when you are, everyone goes up to the Temple Mount and they go clockwise, but if you are in mourning or you're brokenhearted, you go counterclockwise and everyone sees your pain. And I could see the rabbis and the rabbaniyot in the room from the religious Zionist community sort of nodding along and sort of listening to this sort of female Rabb, a non denominational congregation in la, and really taking in sort of her, her Torah and what she had to offer. And that was a beautiful moment that really like, really, you know, made me emotional. And then Rabbi Sharon Brous did something crazy and she asked everyone to sing together. And she asked everyone to sing the song which talks about, you know, our brothers who aren't in, you know, who are in trouble, you know, who are experiencing, you know, these, these difficult issues. And everyone sang together and this is
- [100:58]
Judah Ari Gross
what it sounded, You know, and so
- [101:32]
Unnamed Male Speaker (likely a colleague or co-host)
that's men and women and Israelis and Diaspora Jews and rabbis and rabbaniot and everyone. And it's one thing to sit together in a group like that, and it's another thing to talk together in a group like that. And it's yet another thing to learn
- [101:48]
Judah Ari Gross
from each other in a group like that, but it's another thing entirely to sing together.
- [101:52]
Noah Efron
Oh, how, how wonderful. Wow. The, the wedding that Rav Doron Peretz performed for his son, while they didn't know the fate of the, the other son, is one of the most beautiful things I've seen, ever seen. There's somewhere Back there in the podcast we talked about it for a lot or I presented tape of it a lot. Anyway, beautiful. Alison, what is your what a Country
- [102:23]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Before I give my what a Country. Judah, it's taken you this long to ever see Rabbi Sharon browse speak live to people in public. I discovered her in 2011 because she was giving one on one Torah lessons to the the then mayor of Los Angeles. And I was in Los Angeles. I also came across her at a conference and there's just wow, you know, again, she's not some close personal friend or something, but there's something really amazing. She is a rabbi of a generation and watching her sermons on YouTube I think were amazing during the war. We discussed them frequently on the podcast if I'm not mistaken. So yeah, big Rabbi Sharon fan here and she does these out of the box things so I'm glad you got to experience it. On another note entirely, I am famously indifferent, too derisive of sports fanning in general.
- [103:17]
Noah Efron
You're famous on this.
- [103:19]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
On this podcast. I've always had, as I do in life, a kind of a mean and unforgiving attitude to unrelenting sports fans and the way they get unreasonably worked up about watching a bunch of guys and let's face it, it's usually, usually guys running around chasing a ball. So therefore my peak anti attitude is always once every four years when Israel goes cuckoo over the final of the World Cup. Over these many decades in Israel and many World cup finals I've experienced, I've always been the big party pooper. But somehow this year things were different. First of all, I've had to hold my tongue at home because a good friend of my husband's convinced him that what he really needed in his bucket list experiences is to sit at a World cup game. Convinced him to fly to Philadelphia for one of them. Oh my God, I don't know. 8th final, 4th final, whatever games, you know, to experience the game and the atmosphere. All I knew is as the day grew closer, is that in Philadelphia it was going to be in the boiling heat like over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And the combination of Philadelphia, no offense Philadelphia, and know, frying and boiling in a, in a big stadium with a bunch of other people made me say have a great trip honey. And made me not feel at all unhappy and jealous that I was not included in this bucket list adventure. Indeed, in the extreme heat, there was a sunny side of the stadium and a shady side of the stadium. Guess which side my husband ended up in. Long Story short, he nearly passed out from heat stroke, spent much of the game in the shaded concessions area and took a very long time to recover. But he is back, I am happy to report, and all is well. So back to me, he was already back because of the final. You know, the. The game he saw was weeks before I sent him off watching the game with people who actually cared about it. And on game night I got an offer, however, to meet my dear friend and dear friend of the podcast, Dina Kraft, who now writes for the Christian Science Monitor. She wrote for how it's previously she had a great podcast called the Branch. She recently relocated to Noah's hometown of Silver Spring Mar, Maryland, outside Washington D.C. but she still writes about Israel and she was here on a reporting trip and to see some of her kids who were here. She wanted to watch the game like a normal person. And I decided, okay, I really wanted to see Dina and I would be interested in at least watching people watch the game. People watching, watching the game. So we met where she was staying at Dalia Shenlund's place because, you know, the world is small and we're all interconnected. And we strolled down Diesengoff, it's such a sight on World cup final night. All of the usually crowded popular restaurants are empty. We enjoyed eating at Hakosem with no line whatsoever. And then we strolled down Diesen Golf for a bar to watch. And they were all full crowded. Anything that had a screen with the game on it, no seats. The regulars had like pre reserved seats. So we ended up on the corner of Diesen Golf and right, right after Diesen Golf center to a watching area we found that was not a form. It was underneath the building. It looked like the residents, it was some sort of outdoor gym workout area. They had filled it up with chairs and mattresses. The mattresses in front were all filled with little children in their little Argentina jerseys watching the game. So Dean and I grabbed a corner and watched the families watch. She was actually watching the game. I was watching the families watch. So yeah, it was really kind of beautiful to see everybody just sort of losing themselves in the game. On a wider scale, what was notable, you know, people, a lot of people tried to politicize the World cup final. The whole Free Palestine crowd were cheering for Spain, which has been very active in working against Israel in terms of the, the war, the Gaza war. The vast majority of Israelis were rooting for Argentina especially and very publicly, members of Prime Minister Netanyahu's government. They posted their support for Argentina on social media channels because the, the leader of Argentina has a bromance going on with Netanyahu. But as one, yet another journalist friend of mine wrote, Lisa Goldman wrote, and it was true, she wrote, that for ordinary Israelis, the political posturing of their government officials was irrelevant. They were simply caught up in the joy of watching the match and the drama of seeing Messi play possibly his last World cup game against Spain's Superstar Lamin Yamai, 19 years old. And that the, the media here, they were all but indifferent to all this. Pro Palestine, you're for Spain, against pro Israel, you're for Argentina. And it was pretty much reported straight out, you know, only mentioning that, oh yeah, the Palestine people were backing Spain and Netanyahu and Ben GVIR and Smoch were for Argentina. So Lisa also wrote that reporters adopted a tone of mild disdain towards the performative populist antics of the Prime Minister and his far right ministers in claiming they were suddenly big arguments Argentina fans making them sound a bit clownish or at least irrelevant. And the fact that most Israelis were indifferent to or unaware of the symbolism of Spain's victory, of Argentina's defeat, you know, kind of illustrates the gap between our government and its rhetoric and the sentiments of the normal ordinary people that I was watching sitting on chairs and mattresses, enjoying the game. So I guess after what we've been through for the past few years, witnessing that Israelis got caught up in the joy and an escape of being absorbed in the game, no matter who you're rooting for. Even though, as we've established at the beginning of this, that the game itself, no matter how hard I try to be absorbed in hours of men chasing a ball up and down a field with no score whatsoever, still doesn't speak to me. I have to say, this year it was a positive experience.
- [109:13]
Noah Efron
Oh, I wish that you had stumbled all the way up Diesen golf to the beach where I was watching it with like a thousand people in front of a huge screen. It was like two stories high, the screen. It was incredible. I love the fact that you said this may be Lionel Messi's last World Cup. That's very sports like magical thinking. Yes, it's true. It could be. When he's 43, he'll be back and with him it's very possible. Though the game was a lousy game to watch. I have to say I'm rooting for Argentina and the last thing I, I would say is, I don't know if you saw Guidon Sar's post, but they were so sincere. He was talking about how his father, his parents come from Argentina and how he's always loved Argentina. And in my part of the beach, I think that everyone's heart was beating with Argentina. And it was so frustrating, so frustrating. So my moment this week, there were a lot of moments this week. Frank, the thing that I went to was called Judah was called Ted Bav, and it was Ted Talks in honor of Tisha Bav about Sinat Chinam, one after another. They were quite amazing at Mirkah's Brot, at the Brot center in Tel Aviv. But the moment that I chose to talk about was at a show at the jazz club Shablool, where Anna Zelensky, my brilliant, beautiful, Polish French philosopher friend, who I I mentioned, I think just last week she took me there as part of the continuing tutorial on Israeli jazz that she has given me on her frequent visits. And we went this time with our friend Nadav Davidovich, who teaches with me at Bar Ilan. And he brought his boy who plays and teaches jazz piano, also classical, though he's now going off to the army. And we were at Shablool for an album launch of a group called Shalosh, who, like you'd maybe guess, have got three players. There's got be to who plays piano, and Matan Asayeg who plays drums, and David Michaeli who plays contrabass. The show was spellbinding and had me in its grip already when Mattan Asayag starts beating on his tom toms and then David Mihaeli plucks out on his double bass a tune that I know very, very well from young Jedea.
- [111:39]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
It.
- [112:24]
Noah Efron
The song is called Cira Emek, Song of the Valley. The music was written in 1934 by the great composer Daniel Samborski, and the words are by Nathan Alter, the great poet of the greatest poet of the decades, just before and just after the state he was the national poet. And they go. The words go, Rest comes to the weary and repose to those who toil. A pale night stretches over the fields of the valley of Jezreel. Dew below and moon above. From Beit Alpha to Nahalal. What does the night say? It is silent in Jezreel. Sleep valley, land of splendor, we will watch over you. And when you're 14 and singing that with 200 other 14, 15, 16 and 17 year olds, you sing it loud and you maybe sing the harmony and it is beautiful. And here it was turning up in this unexpected place. And of course, this being a jazz show and Chalosh Being who they are, apparently. The Thing, over the next seven minutes, undergoes all sorts of transformations, though you can always feel Szamborski there in the thing. And finally at the end, it comes all the way back to Szamborski's melody, straight up, kind of mournfully, but beautifully. And one of the things I love the most in the world in my life is midrash. When you're taking something old and you're making it into something new, sometimes changing its meaning top to bottom, which is somehow, somehow at once both very reverent and also entirely irreverent. It's respectful of what you got handed to you, but it's not the least bit diffident towards it. And in this song the other night, I felt like I felt it all the Jezreel Valley 100 years ago. What those halutzim must have felt when they sang the song. There is a clip on YouTube of Daniil Samborski playing it in the 1930s on a piano in a chaderochel, in a kibbutz, and everyone joining him and singing it. It's beautiful. And you feel that. And you feel Ari GEINSTEIN Singing it 30 years later. And I felt anyway, me at 14 screaming it at the top of my lungs in the Khaderokhel at ti. And here it was again, old and new, the same and different, in a club on a weeknight in Tel Aviv. And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to Itay Schelem, our station manager, without whom there would be none of this. Thanks to Achibo Lim, my favorite band from Kibbutz Geva. They give us the music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you, Alison. Thank you, Natalie. Thank you, Judah. We'd like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and for your support. It keeps the show going, it keeps the station going, it 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 we'd like to ask you to like us on Facebook and grind us a line best through Patreon. 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. If you are sad that you only get to read Lamentations one day a year on Tisha B'Av. The Promise podcast gives you what to lament each and every week. Da da, da. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that just yesterday as we record, on Wednesday 22nd July we celebrated. And oh, how we celebrated International PI Approximation Day, so stipulated way back in 2004, though by whom we do not know. The idea for it arose from mathematical circles. But you will say, shouldn't that be geometrical circles? And I guess you have a point. And mathematicians are a famously self effacing bunch. Though there are those who attribute International PI Approximation Day wrongly to physicist Larry Shaw. Wrongly, I say, because that is conflating International PI Day with International Pie Approximation Day. Now, International PI Day, Larry Shaw did invent way back in 1988, it, as you probably know, falls on March 14, which in the United States is often indicated as 314 with a dot dividing the month from the year, which if you interpret the dot as a decimal point, gives you 3.14, which is the closest approximation you can get to the irrational pie with only two digits after the decimal point. Are you with me? Yes. March 14th, 3.14. Look, if it helps, then listen to this.
- [117:26]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
1, 21 2. 3.14, 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197.
- [117:59]
Noah Efron
So you see why 3-14-3.14 is PI Day. Now PI Appreciation Day is something else all altogether coming on the 22nd of July, or as they often write it here and throughout Europe and in most places around the world, putting the day before the month 22 7, which looks just like the fraction 22/7 or 22/7, which is an extremely close approximation of PI, having only the very small percentage error of 0.040 2.0. It was Archimedes way back in 250 BC, during the Golden Age of the Second Temple, by the way, who championed the use of the fraction 22 over 7 to represent PI, the true value of which Archimedes famously proved lay just between 22 over 7 and 223 over 71. And just as I knew it would be, International PI Appreciation Day was great, great. You know, it's probably my favorite day of the entire year, which the American Mathematical association and many others suggest we should celebrate by doing things approximately. Like we should arrive at school or work approximately on time. We should eat things that approximate a pie, like a quiche or a cheesecake. We should raise a glass in toast to the day at 3:13 in the afternoon or 3:15, which is approximately 3.14. And I did all of those things, and all I approximated working by sitting at my computer but watching videos instead of actually working. And it was approximately great. But the whole time I knew in the back of my mind that soon the day would be over. Not to be back for a whole nother year, though March 14, it is true, will offer some consolation, but even that is approximately eight months away, which means that it's gone now, not to be back for a long, long time. Not so the Promise podcast. We will be back to you next week and most every week, reminding you that while there is often upon summits of human genius like the discovery of PI, people will sometimes build cairns of whimsical genius like PI Approximation Day. At other times, in troughs of human ingenuity, people will dig still further foxholes of failed and frankly, kind of pathetic efforts to entertain on this, the promised podcast.
- [120:25]
Judah Ari Gross
Sam.