← The Promised Podcast
The Promised Podcast
The “Reuniting & De-uniting” Edition
01:40:06
Miriam Herschlag and Noah Efron discuss (1) The dramatic moments this week when hundreds of Druze from Israel crossed into Syria to help Druze in Suwayda under attack by Bedouin militia and the Syrian army, and hundreds of Druze from Suwayda crossed...
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A
Today is day 657, which are 92 weeks and five days of the captivity of still 50 hostages living and dead in Gaza.
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This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language.
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Welcome to the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1, the voice of the city that is home to the Maccabi Tel Aviv athletics operation, which is the club of Blessing Akwasi Afrifa, who in the event was born in Tel Aviv 21 years ago and who this past week became in Bergen, Norway, the European champion in the 200 meter run in the 23 and under division, stopping the clock at 20.64 seconds, a time that has been bested only twice in all of human history in that division, one of those two times being by the great Jamaican runner Usain Bolt, which is pretty good company to be. And Usain Bolt having gone on to win eight Olympic gold medals and to being regarded by most as the greatest sprinter who ever lived, which same sort of future could await Blessing Afrifa upon winning the gold in the 200 meters, blessing Afrifa wrapped himself in an Israeli flag and said, quote first of all, I am very very happy. I am happy to finish the championship with the Israeli flag on me. It is an honor for me. I am happy that I succeeded in bringing a little light, a little happiness in these difficult moments. I am truly happy, happy to defend my title. There is no one happier than me. I feel I am standing for a community. Israel is a country that some countries hate so it is an honor to represent I I want to prove anti Israeli slander is not true and Israel is different and I'm proving it through sports. End quote. After the perspiration had dried, Blessing Afrifa took his place on the middle podium in Bergen and this came over the public address system.
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Please stand for the National London on Israel.
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Which it must be said is a tune you do not these days often hear at public events in Norway and I got a little choked up hearing it.
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On Instagram. Blessing Afrifa posted a quote from Psalms 119114 you are my refuge and my shield. I have put my hope in your word. Blessing Afrifa is the son of two immigrants from Ghana. The his father working in the consular division of the Ghanan Embassy and his mother working as a cleaner. Blessing's name Blessing comes from the fact that his parents well saw right away that he was well a blessing. His younger sister's name is Mercy Afrifa. The hows and whys of her name. I could not learn. But she is also a talented ranking sprinter. She placed fifth in the women's 200 meter finals and she is only 19 years old and arguably nothing captures the the spirit of this city we love so well. Tel Aviv Yafo Better than a blessing, mercifully bringing a little happiness to us in these times. Now with us today in TLV1's newest satellite studio in Bitsaron in the city is a woman who, and I think everyone would agree, could just as well have been named blessing as she brings joy, humor, warmth and inspiration to everyone that she meets, making people feel after such a meeting that they have enjoyed the favor of God or the gods or the fates. Obviously, and I think you know this, that woman could only be Miriam Hershelag. Miriam herShelag is the ops and blogs editor of the Times of Israel, creating and residing over the biggest and most profound forum of Jewish discourse and debate since the Talmud was codified. Miriam was in the past the anchor of the Israel Broadcast Authority English Language Television News and an editor and anchor for the Israel Broadcast Authority English Language Radio News. Miriam, how you doing?
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B
I'm okay. I'm not sure I feel like a blessing or blessed or any blessings at the very moment, but I suppose if it's aspirational, I'll take it. Good to be here.
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A
No, the part of you being a blessing is not aspirational. That's just fact. This is science, Miriam. We're talking about science. I can't believe that you of all people would be attacking science. As for me, my name is Noah. I don't mean to boast, but owing to some purely technical snafu, my fancy pants status did not show up on any of the computers. When I flew to America to visit my folks yesterday, I went to the lounge and they were like, sir, the system does not show that you belong here. And then when I wanted to get on the airplane with all the fancy people, the system did not show that I belonged with them. It was like I was Lewis Winthorpe III in Trading Places and all of a sudden all my bank accounts and expense accounts are frozen and I am shunned in the club and even Penelope won't see me. And if you get me started after a beer or two, I will go on and on about what a terrible thing the class system is. I still call myself a mar, a college first year student. But my fellow proletarians, I must tell you, it bothered me all of a sudden to be cast back to the hoi polloi. I wanted the good WI Fi and I wanted the glass of wine in the lounge. I wanted to have my bags in the overhead bin, right? Well, overhead, over my head, not someone else's head. And fellow proletarians, I had this thought. If I had not grown accustomed to these things, I surely wouldn't have missed them. But what a cruel fate it is to know that the pleasures of the wine in the lounge and then to have them taken away. And please believe me when I say that I am not bragging. God knows that that is not how my parents raised me. But I am good. I am really good. I am the best at hypocrisy. Today we got two topics of such unprecedented power and importance that we were forced to register them with the Mossad. But first we have this matter that we are following with alert, interest and great concern as part of an occasional series that we like to call the Promise Podcast Ponders not to be a Dick Ensonian about it, that flinty thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. Or more sor to face the war.
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There was an interview this week in Haaretz with the historian Muki Tsur, who is sometimes called the Admir of the kibbutz movement, Admir being an acronym for Adonenu Morenu Verabenu, our master, our teacher, our rabbi, a title that among Hasid usually refers to someone who is both the practical leader of a Hasidic court, someone who makes binding decisions, and also someone who is a spiritual leader, someone people turn to for guidance. There is Haadmur Milobovicz, the Admir of Lubavitch, Vermi Klausenberg, for instance, and Mukitzur in his day has been both of those things. He was the secretary general of his own Kibbutzein Gev on the kineret already when he was just 20, and then again when he was 40, and then again when he was 60, and he was the head of the entire kibbutz movement when he was 50, and the kibbutz movement was in deep crisis then, short of money and moorings. And Mukitzur has also been a person a lot of us have turned to in our efforts to understand ourselves and this place, to the untangling of which Mukitur brings many years spent in archives, studying the first generations of the country, who those people were and what they did and what they hoped to create and what they created and in light of, and despite those hopes, back in 1968, when he was 30, Mukitzor and other Young kibbutznakimos Oz from Kibbutz Hulda, Yariv Ben Aaron from Kibutzkivat Ben Ermuchad. And there were more. They did something extraordinary in the months after the Six Day War, which was met in Israel and by Jews, and not just Jews around the world, with relief and celebration and joy and no more lambs to the slaughter. Pride they, these kibbutz nakim, including Mukitzur, gathered groups of young soldiers who had been through the war to talk about what they had seen and what they had done. And the result was shocking. It came out as a book called Siyakh Lohamim, the Discussions of Fighters. It was shocking in a country that by a year after the war, when the book reached stores, had already settled on an official version of things, that the war had been a miraculous, almost painless display of courage and might. But the war that came through the pages of the book was one of young men who were shaken, and some of them were broken by the death that they had seen and inhumanity and crime, some crime inflicted on us and some crime inflicted by us. And there was heroism in the book for sure, but that was not mostly what these young men thought about daytime and dreamed about nighttime now, back in the fields, in the cowsheds of their kibbutzim, having meals in the dining hall with their wives and their kids and their friends.
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When we first moved to the country, when we made aliyah, while we were learning Hebrew in an open and Nefal, we had a trip to Chavato Chatser Hakineret, the farm of Kfutzat Kineret, set up in 1908 by Arthur Rupin. And in time, for a time, it was home to AD Gordon and to Rachel the poet, and to Burl Katzenelson and to Yitzhak Tabenkin. All of these names are well known to anyone who knows anything about the first years of practical Zionism in Israel. And somehow someone had arranged for Mukitzor to be our guide when we went to Kinneret. And he told us how he got a note once from Rivka Sapir, who was Naomi Shemer's mother. And the note said that she, Rivka Sapir, when she was sick in Poriya Hospital, had heard from the woman in the next bed about a kid who grew up in Hazer, Kineret, and Mukitzur, having heard about it, he looked for this man, he searched for him, and he found him. The kid was now by that time, a very old man. He said that his mother had died on a ship taking them both to the land of Israel from somewhere in North Africa, and she was buried at sea. And his father, who became an itinerant merchant of notions of pins and buttons and thread, one day on a rock overlooking the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, on one of his selling trips, he died while he was saying Shema the prayer. And the kid, he found his way with another kid to Hazer Kineret, and he met AD Gordon and he told them all that he'd been through. And Ad Gordon said, make your home here. And the kid did. He lived in Kineret with those Chalutzim, those pioneers. And years later he told Mokitzor how the pioneers at Chatser Kineret, they tied a rope to a tree branch that reached over the water and they'd swing on it and they would yelp and scream like Tarzan. And Mukitur said, that detail, which you won't find in a book, it shows how young those people were then. And this is a point worth remembering, Mukitur told us. They were so young and so far from their parents, trying to make a new world. Mukitur said, when I first started studying these pioneers, they were like giants to me, they were like gods. And then as I studied them more, their fights and their mistakes and their cruelties, they came to seem so small to me. And now more time has passed, he said, and I see how wondrous they were again. What wondrous human beings. Not giants, not gods, but human beings. And wondrous. All of which is why I was so glad to read the interview in Haaretz magazine this week, which was headlined, mukitur will not even entertain the Thought of despairing. The interview starts with Mukisur talking about Vivian Silver, a founder of Women Wage Peace who was murdered on Berri on October 7th. Though we only learned what happened to her long weeks later, Mukitur said, quote when the news started to come in from outside Gaza, I thought straight away about Vivian Silver. She was my charge in Habonim, the youth movement in Canada, and in time she became my colleague and my friend. At first they did not know what happened to her because they did not find her body. I had the hope that they kidnapped her. I thought to myself, vivian knows a lot of people in Gaza. She has friends there, she knows how to operate there and she will take care of herself and she will help all the other hostages. Many fantasies passed through my head how she is managing there in Gaza until it became clear that she was one of the slaughtered, end quote. To which the interviewer Merav Moran, is her name. She said, what do you say to this claim that anyone who believes in a peaceful solution these days is a fantasist living in an illusion. And Mukitur said.
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You say that it is not an illusion, it is hope. I won't deny it. It is difficult to be a hopeful person. Hope is a principle. It is not a state of mind that comes and goes. For me, losing hope is a betrayal of my profession. It is malpractice. Like a doctor telling a patient he is going to die, or a teacher telling a student that he, the student, is a lost cause. Hope sometimes contradicts feelings of pessimism or optimism, especially because it is confused with being deluded. But there is an enormous difference between the two. The delusion of optimism arranges the world for you in such a way that it is closed and it is always okay, things will be okay. Hope, in contrast, comes with complaints and ask questions. Clearly I am not satisfied with our situation and I have no illusions to manifest my hope. That takes courage. Mirav Moran, the interviewer, she gently presses Mukitur to admit that even still things seem hopeless now. And it is not just Gaza, though God knows it is hard to see what has happened there and keep any hope for the future, but is also all that has happened within Israel, among Israelis. And Mokitur at first seems maybe willing to concede the point. He says, I give thanks each morning and say Baruch Hashem Shaasani ben Shmonim, blessed be God who made me 80 years old. But then he says, no. This declinist idea that yesterday all was good and today all is bad. It is just not true. Mukitzur says political life was always on the brink of a terrible split. It is like labor pains. We just forget how terrible they were the minute they are over with the passage of time. If you look at the fights that tore apart the people, it is hard to understand what they were even fighting about. What was that? The fight always seemed so childish and dumb. The revisionists and the murder of or Lazarov, the Haganah and the Lechi. They so could not stand one another that they held their memorial services separately. And the members of Kibbutz Ein Harod that ordered in police one on the other. When the kibbutz split into Ehud and Meuchad, who can possibly understand today why they battered each other so hard? Back then, even institutions no one thinks of as political were not exempt. The group of doctors that Split off from Balinson Hospital, then the central hospital of the Kupat Kolim, the Sikh Fund, for ideological reasons, and they started Sheba Teleshomer Hospital on the grounds of the old British army hospital. The disagreement was about the building tall buildings versus building low to the ground. The doctors who split believed that a hospital had to be an inseparable part of the community and that the medical staff needed to live near the hospital in the same place where the people they took care of lived. This was a split based on planning and building practices. Yes, you can imagine the enraged minutes taken at the meetings of the management of the Kupat Kolim in those days. The split was terrible. And the arguments, they reached the heart of the heavens. End quote. This thing about hope, it has been on Mokitur's mind for a long time now. And not long ago he put out a book he called Hope is Not a Hat with Feathers, echoing somehow Emily Dickinson. And it is a collection of things he has written and said since October 7th. And quote, the book is dedicated to the memory of my good neighbor Michael Werner. Michael, who got all of my books and was proud that he never read any of them because his soul was outside in the garden in agriculture. And Michael made a garden outside of Mukitur's house and he tended it as God commanded Adam and Eve to tend the Garden of Eden. Michael the boy was witness to the days of the Holocaust. He came from that black planet and he revolted against it, building a home and growing around it all sorts of trees and flowers, end quote. And in the book there is something that Mukitur said on his kibbutz, Ein GEV Antubishvat, during the war. And he tells how when they first came to Ein Gev in 1937, it was barren, just loose dirt whipped up by the winds coming down from the Golan, stinging skin and eyes. And there was an argument about what to do with the land, with the tents and the shacks. The one man, Ben Sion Yisraeli from Kibbutz Kineret, he had a scheme of just like the land of Israel was filling with Jews from all over the Diaspora, the land of Israel needs to fill too, with all the trees from same places. Trees from Persia and Iraq and Egypt and Australia and New Zealand, America everywhere. And the people from Ein Give, they brought in an expert from Kibbutz Yagur. He had studied at the Yisraeli Tisha Garden Baalshul in Alim, the Jewish School of Gardening that had been set up in 1893 by a philanthropist named Moritz Alexander Simon, to train Jews back to the land. And the Nazis kept the school running up to 1943. And the expert from Yagur, he came back with architectural drawings of straight rows of olive trees, intersecting boulevards of date trees paralleled to great rows of ficus trees, which looked beautiful on paper. But it's not something that you can just do. It takes time, years, until the trees would give shade. And there was a terrible fight on the kibbutz about whether to plant all these things that would give no shade and no protection from the sand for long years and would never make money or food to speak of. And decisions were taken. And there's a photograph of the very first tree that was planted, a tiny sapling. And around it, the kibbutz Nakim are dancing the tree offering them no protection. But they offered the saplings such protection as they could and promise. And now look, Mukizur says, look around us. Look at what there is. Toward the end of this week's interview, Mukitur comes back to Vivian Silver. He says, philosophy has its martyr. They call him Socrates, and for the sake of philosophy, he drank his cup of hemlock. And pedagogy has its martyr, Janusz Korshak, who got on the train to the death camp with his charges, his children. And history has its martyr, Mark Bloch, who joined the resistance and the Nazis executed him. Vivian, she is the martyr of peace. There was no small number of martyrs for peace who were murdered on October 7th. They were of two sorts. One sort who said we will not reach peace because we did not want peace, but if we wanted it, we would have reached it. And the other sort who understood that it is impossible to reach peace if only one side wants it. I do not belong to the group of people who say that if we decide there will be peace and peace will come, and not to those who say if we give up lands, there will be peace. I love people who say this, but I am not one of them. I think it is an arrogant thing to say, as if what we want, that is what will happen. I am in the group of those who believe that we are responsible, that if someone on the other side wants peace, he will hear an echo from our side. We are responsible to listen for that voice when it comes from the other side, when it comes. I would like the 7th of October to be set aside on the calendar as the official date upon which peace agreements are signed and the place, if possible, Kibbutz Niroz, 1/4 of the people of which were killed on October 7th. Of course it is true that in the Jordan Valley there is already a room that was built special in memory of Yitzhak Rabin that has been waiting for almost 30 years for the signing ceremony of a peace agreement with Syria. So I may be getting in trouble with friends of mine who have a different expectation. No matter, I'll face the music when the chance arises to sign a peace agreement and the date of the signing is set for October 7th, I will be happy to pay the price.
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The date that Mukizur has established for the signing of a peace agreement with Palestinians that today one strains even to imagine that date on the calendar is the sapling that Mukitur is today dancing around, maybe waiting for me, for us to join him.
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Today Two discussions the first north of the border as a deadly drama plays out in the mostly Druze regions of southern Syria, right across the border from Israel and Israel intervenes with boots on the ground and planes in the air, bombing Syria's military headquarters in Damascus. Ahead of this discussion, you, Miriam wisely observed that the fighting among different groups in Syria is an exquisitely complicated thing about which we know exquisitely little, implying maybe it would be best to leave this topic to people who live and breathe geopolitics, to which I reply with Norma Rae Kovech Kvechkovich if we only talked about stuff that we knew something about, what would we ever say? And Discussion two A little help. That title being our back of the envelope translation of the words Ezra Klein, who this week wrote in the Times an important essay headlined why American Jews no Longer Understand one Another, which important essay we will try to make tales of and time permitting, heads 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 as we are in what is known as the three weeks, the period from the fast of the 17th of Tammuz to the fast of Tisha B' Ab exactly three weeks later, both of which fast days memorialize stuff and or pertaining to the destruction of the temples back in the day and the exile of the Jews from the land of Israel, we will discuss how the sack and ashclothy time meets our present sack and ashclothy moment in history today, when present tense meets intense meets penitence. But before we get to any of that, listen to this.
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Ha.
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That song is Kanfei Ruach by Tuval Khayim performed here with Barry Sacrifice from his brand new record dedicated to his brother Yotam Chaim, one of those three hostages in Sejawea in Gaza who managed to escape only to be shot dead by IDF soldiers as they tried to make their way back into friendly hands. You probably know Tuval Chaim as the drummer for the band. Pulkis Achim is his first record alone and we will listen to songs from it for his brother throughout the show. And now it's time for our first discussion. So Miriam, it is like what is best about the humans and what is worst about the humans were both on display this week not far across the border Right, what's the story?
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B
Last Wednesday night, a week ago, as we record, Israeli warplanes bombed several governmental buildings in Damascus, including the headquarters of the Syrian army and the compound of the presidential palace. Three people died in the attacks, 34 people were injured. The IDF spokesperson called the attack a warning, translating wrecked buildings and lost lives into words. The warning went something like keep your mids off Suwayda, Quneitra and Dara and keep Bedouin militias from attacking in these places too. These three provinces, or governorates as they are called in Syria, comprise what Israel declared to be a demilitarized zone on the Syria Israel border soon after the fall of the Assad regime last year. Of the three governorates, it is Suweta that has lately been the focus of the most attention here in the region and around the world. Within Suwayda, it is Suwayda City, the provincial capital, that has been the focus of the most attention. Suwayda is a predominantly druze city of 75,000 or so people. There are relatively small Greek, Orthodox Christian and Sunni Muslim Bedouin communities in Sueta, too. Under the reliably repressive surveillance society of the Ba'ath Regiment regime, a sort of peace reigned between the different communities in Sueda. But over the past months this peace failed to hold. Over the past several weeks, fighting has broken out between Bedouin militias in the region and Druze families, with the Syrian government sending troops to the area as well. Over the past weeks, more than a thousand Druze have been killed in Sueda, some in particularly horrific ways. The Syrian Observatory for Human rights reports that 192 Druze were outright executed by regular Syrian soldiers. There are reports and videos of Druze civilians tortured, mutilated and kidnapped by Bedouin militia Klansmen. Although most of the dead and injured are Druze, there are also reports of similar crimes against Bedouin civilians in response to the fighting, Syria's interim president Ahmed Ashara announced that his government was sending troops to the perimeter of Suwayda to enforce a ceasefire. To the Druze of Suwayda, he said, we affirm that protecting your rights and freedoms is among our top priorities. We reject any attempt, foreign or domestic, to sow division within our ranks. We are all partners in this land and we will not allow any group to distort the beautiful image that Syria and its diversity represent.
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The foreign attempts to sow division that Al Ashara was referring to were Israel's. One day earlier, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yisrael El Katz had put out a joint statement on the fighting in Sueda, stating, among other things, that they had directed the IDF to immediately attack the regime forces and the weaponry that entered the Sueda area of the Druze mountain in Syria and that the regime intended to use against the Druze. They also said that Israel is committed to preventing harm being inflicted on the Druze in Syria owing to the deep covenant of blood with our Druids, Druze citizens in Israel, and their historical and familial link to the Druze in Syria. We are acting to prevent the Syrian regime from harming them and to ensure the demilitarization of the regime adjacent to our border with Syria. In a video statement, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel had two red line demands of the Syrian government that the region south of Damascus bordering Israel, including Sueda, stay demilitarized and that the Druze of Syria be guaranteed safety and autonomy. Despite this, the Prime Minister said, Syria sent an army south of Damascus into the area that should be demilitarized, and it began to massacre the Druze. We could not accept this in any way. One of the extraordinary things that happened last week as what happened in Sueda happened in Sueda, is that maybe a thousand Druze on each side of the Israel Syria border rushed to the other side, some to escape the violence, some to help victims of the violence, and all of them to see relatives they had not seen for a long time. In 1948, after Israel's war of independence, the border dividing Syria and Israel divided Druze clans and even families. When the border moved after the 1967 war and Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, some of these clans and families were reunited, but others were divided from their families deeper inside Syria. Last week, Sheikh Mawafak Tarif, the spiritual and political leader of the Israeli Druze community, called upon his followers to cross the border and assist our brothers being slaughtered in Syria Hundreds did just that. At the same time, Druze folks from Suwayda made their way over the border to Israel. And in both places there were family reunions of relatives who had not seen one another in 40, 50, 60 and 70 odd. And these were moving to sea. They suggested that Israeli Druze, though they are highly integrated into Israeli society, view themselves as part of a people that extends beyond the borders of the country. A recent scholarly study called the Preservation of the Brethren Principle among Druze Intergenerational Groups finds that the principle of pan Druze solidarity called Hifis al Ihwan is alive as much among young, highly Westernized Israeli Druze as it is among their more traditional parents. And we all got a glimpse of this this past week. We also got a glimpse of Jewish Israeli solidarity with Druze, as when the Tel Aviv municipality lit up city hall this week with the Druze flag emblazoned on the building's facade. No, everything I just said is so complicated. The state of Syria today, the state of Druze in Syria today, the state of Israel today, the state of Druze in Israel today, the Pres. Of the IDF in Syria, the motivations of Benjamin Netanyahu and the state of Israel in dispatching planes and troops in Sueda. We can agree that we are not exactly geopolitical experts, but we have been watching this unfold over the past week. What should we make of it? Noah?
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A
Well, I'm, you know, I'll give my. My answer, but before that, Miriam, would you mind saying three times fast?
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B
I think I just did. Hopefully it's been deleted from the recording.
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A
Actually.
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That principle of solidarity that is apparently at the foundation or one of the foundations of the Druze religion, I gather from my reading, is really at the very heart of my first reaction to this. I have many reactions and have been watching. We've all been watching it up close. It was astonishing to just see people pouring over the border in both directions. And I heard on the radio Drew's man, not young, in his 50s, being interviewed about how he saw his brother for the first time. And the woman interviewing him for the first time in 45 years. Excuse me. And the woman interviewing him said, well, how is that possible? He said, my brother is much older than me. And when I was just very, very young, when I was three or four or five, he traveled. He traveled to Damascus to go to university. And it made me realize how little I know about anything about somebody in the north of. In a village in the north of Israel packing his bags and going off to Damascus U and pledging at the Fratern presumably or something, and then falling in love there, getting married, living, I don't know, 30km, 50km from his family and from the place where his family has lived for some generations and then just never seeing anyone again. But with time there's technology and so then they have a zoom, a family zoom. Like I have a family zoom with my parents back in America. They have a family zoom with each other every week. So they see each other but they can't see each other. And then all of a sudden, because crazy things are happening all around them and because Iran, you know, Tehran is being bombed and because what happened in Lebanon happens in Lebanon. Then all of a sudden, all at once there is this terrible tragedy and people are being slaughtered and the gates are somehow opened and the two brothers run towards each other and meet and hug and then end up visiting each other's houses. It's an astonishing story that makes you realize how. Makes me realize how the categories that I use to understand the world are not rich enough, are not full enough to understand what's happening. Including and maybe especially I mean, I mean what I take from this is like trying to understand.
- [35:50]
What happens here, our day to day lives and certainly extraordinary circumstances like today in terms of concepts like nationalism or even ethno nationalism. It just don't make no sense in the end. It's just not, it's not that nationalism and ethno nationalism aren't here. The Druze are famously very patriotically Israeli. Israeli Jews are famously very patriotically Israeli. But that is not at all all that they are by a long shot. Just like when, you know, Jews are, when Jews are, are killed in Colorado, then people in Tel Aviv are talking about it in their cafes and, and hurt about it and wonder if there's something they ought to do. So too when, when you know, Druze are being killed or something across the border, then.
- [36:47]
What happens in Sueda happens as well.
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In the homes and in the hearts in northern Israel. And it's astonishing and it's moving.
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And it reminds you of how this area, given the fact that so many of us, and maybe all of us have those cross cutting commitments, were Israelis, but we're Druze or Israelis, but we're Jews, but we're Bedouins and were Syrians maybe, but we're Druze because this whole region is built that way that it longs for a political system that that's different. I've never so much missed the Ottoman Empire as I did this week.
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B
But I'M surprised you find this so unique, Noah, because if you think about Jews dispersed in countries and, for example, fighting against each other, if you were in the, you know, say World War I, you were with the Allies in France or you lived in Austria, and.
- [38:00]
We'Re fighting literally against Jews. I mean, we make a big deal about how Druze swear loyalty to wherever they are, but it's kind of Jewish. We've seen this before. And then we know that there were and remain family ties among Jews across borders. It is the case that, that we as Americans were raised as Americans still get surprised at what a border means. I mean, as long as we live here, the fact that you get to the edge of the country and.
- [38:36]
In all but the Western directions and there we are at the border, that's still always a bit startling for me. But.
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It was the case. I also, you know, just that whole border thing. And I want to loop back to this theme later, which is how much it rhymes with what happened. It both compares to and differs from what happened on the Gaza border. You know, the same kind of thing of rushing, that very.
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Human drama of the Druze rushing to the border and going through it and their soldiers, IDF soldiers, being completely flummoxed about what to do for the opposite reason from what happened in Gaza, where there was just an inability to stop it in Gaza. But here they weren't going to start firing on their Drew's comrades and friends. So that's why a thousand people ended up and politicians and leaders had to go over and say, come back, come back. We're taking care of this. We understand, we get it. We love you. Come home so that we can do this without killing you.
- [39:49]
A
Though the leaders and everyone else said two things. They said just what you said, and they also ordered their soldiers to let these people pass and to allow them to go across. And in the end, I mean, I think that you're exactly right. The response among Jews, including among our leaders, was, I think, a response of sort of that, that reflected a profound understanding that these Israelis up, these Druze Israelis up in the north.
- [40:23]
They were experiencing a family community trauma that we could understand. And the fact that.
- [40:33]
The people that they were concerned with, if they hold a passport at all, hold a Syrian passport.
- [40:40]
Did not make them feel like others. It was clear to the Israeli leaders that for these Druze, the Druze on the other side were brothers and not others. And I should should say what maybe is obvious to, to everyone. There's also tons of realpolitik here. Israel is trying to maintain a demilitarized zone in a big area of those three governorates.
- [41:11]
That you mentioned, Miriam. And part of one of the things that Israel was doing was protecting the interests of Israel above and beyond the interest of Druze Israelis, by far. And there were other things as well. I mean, Israel was also sending messages to Iran by doing this as well. It wasn't just out of understanding for the Druze predicament, but part of what was happening was a deep understanding for this trauma of Israeli Druze. And I also register, though maybe this is a projection on my part, that there is an understanding a little deeper than the headlines of the last five years would let know, that by passing the nation state law like that was an insult to the Druze and a statement that you are not equal among us, that everyone is willing, is eager in a circumstance like this to try to say, well, that's not exactly what we meant. That's not even if it might have been to some degree, there was this wish to say, what is happening to your Druze brothers.
- [42:27]
Across the border in Syria is very, very much an Israeli affair because you are Israelis and we will protect you. Understanding that the you is broader than just the 150,000 Druze who live within the borders of Israel.
- [42:42]
B
Yeah, no, I do think that that is a very powerful element. It's obviously the one that struck us on the human level. Look, we saw on the news. We saw.
- [42:54]
First of all, there are horrifying videos once again, jihadists filming themselves doing what they do, burning people, throwing them off balconies with guns to their, aiming guns at them and telling them to jump to their deaths. It's another horrifying episode that goes into this horrible, horrible basket. That's October 7th is part of it. But in Syria.
- [43:28]
This is one of several.
- [43:31]
Massacres not just of Druze, but of Alawites and of Christians. But I think if we move to the bigger picture and where Israel fits into this, I think a lot hinges on what you think Ashara, this interim president, is all about. Is he the rehabilitated former jihadi in the suit that Donald Trump called an attractive guy? That's what the US Seems to be thinking. And they're taking the trust but verify approach while Israel is saying actions speak louder than words. And that's what they're seeing. We are seeing this sort of repeat performance of Ashara coming after a massacre and saying, well, these was just a faction of my army. I'm still working on centralizing power. And once I get that, with your help, world this kind of bloodletting will stop. But.
- [44:34]
I would sort of lean towards the Israeli, what appears to be the Israeli approach, which says, you know, show us.
- [44:43]
Stop this. And so far he hasn't managed to do it. At the same time, Israel isn't throwing away the possibility of.
- [44:53]
Some form of rapprochement or arrangement with him. I mean, we were very clear the bombing in Damascus was very specific and very targeted. And it was exactly that kind of warning that allows that isn't a point of no return with some massive approach which we know how to do.
- [45:18]
A
Now listen to this.
- [46:54]
That song is Khalomot by Tuval Chaim, off his record for his brother Yotam. The record is called Achim. And now it is time for our second discussion, which we are calling A Little Help, what with Ezra, or Ezra being help in Hebrew and Klein being little help in German. Yeah, let that sink in, for it's deep. It works on so many levels. Now, Ezra Klein had an essay in the Times this week that lots of people were talking about and Miriam, I honestly do not know fully what to make of it. Ezra Klein's got a number of the virtues that I absolutely admire most. He can talk evenly and fairly about stuff that make most of the rest of us just go crazy. And he asks smart questions and he listens to the answers. And even though he doesn't seem to be trying to dazzle anyone with the originality of his analysis at any moment, it's like never really about Ezra Klein. The spatial relationship between what he says and the box is that often enough what he says is out of it. Honestly, he reminds me some of Leo Strauss, which for me is something. Still, I don't know what to make of this essay, which is called why American Jews no Longer Understand One Another, and which starts with this description of the state of affairs of American Jews when it comes to Israel, which description seems right to me. Quote, It's a tense time in the Jewish family group chats. The consensus that held American Jewry together for generations is breaking down that consensus, roughly was this. What is good for Israel is good for the Jews. Anti Zionism is a form of anti Semitism. And there will someday soon be a two state solution that reconciles Zionism and liberalism. Every component of that consensus has cracked, end quote. The reason for the state of affairs, Ezra Klein writes, is a fundamental difference of opinion among American Jews about what is good for the Jews. It has long, like for going on two centuries, been almost an article of faith among American Jews. That meritocratic race and ethnicity, blind liberal democracy, that is what is good for the Jews. That idea is a sort of constitutive idea of my own university stuff about American Jews and science. My research program starts with something like this proposition. If you want to understand the relationship between Jews and science, instead of trying to figure out, like so many people have, why Jews were so damn successful at science and still are winning all those Nobel Prizes and so on, let's ask the flip side, the inverse question. Why was science so damn successful among Jews? Why did so many Jews in America, maybe most of all, though also in the Soviet Union, fall in love with science to the great degree that they did? And there are lots of reasons, but one important one is that the very ideal of science, which is in principle supposed to be blind to the background of the scientists, literally using blind refereeing to judge new scientific knowledge. This fits with what increasingly became the most strongly held view shared by most American Jews, and maybe best codified by a man whom American Jews held in historically high regard, a reverend named Martin Luther King, Jr. Who said that he dreamed of a time when people were judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. For American Jews, especially, though not only the great majority, that left behind the traditional Orthodox practice, the idea that in the public, where people are not judged by where they come from, by where they pray, by the color of their hair or their skin, by their accent, by their height, by their health, by their sex, by their gender, that idea seemed both to hold a key to Jewish success. Without that, we would never make it in America, and somehow to also reflect the most deeply held moral and spiritual beliefs of Jews and Judaism in America, that that was the happy thing that people taught their kids for generations. Thing is, Ezra Klein writes, that basic liberal idea is not a deeply held moral and spiritual belief of Jews and Judaism in Israel. Here, rabbis controlling budgets got no problem saying that one kind of Jew is better than another or that all kinds of Jews are better than all kinds of other people. Here, there is no constitutional guarantee that minorities have the same opportunities as the majority. Here, in the name of security, in the name of destiny, Israelis oversee an occupation of Palestinians who don't have the same freedoms of movement, of speech, of association, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as the Jews here do. And here, lately, of course, Gaza, and everything that goes with that. There are some American Jews, Ezra Klein writes, who maybe having lived through the Holocaust or having been raised by folks who lived through the Holocaust, say, okay, that may be true to Some degree. But still, what is good for Jews is not just liberal democracy. What is good for Jews is having a Jewish homeland and a sanctuary. When anti Semitism gets violent, as it did in very liberal democratic Weimar Germany and as it did in 1920s liberal Austria and as it did in the liberal United States in 1924 with the Johnson Reed act that closed the gates to America to Jewish immigrants, leading indirectly to the deaths of millions of European Jews, our relatives. Not all that many years later, there is a gap between the what's good for the Jews is universalist liberalism Jews and the what's good for the Jews is a sanctuary sorts of Jews. That explains why American Jews don't understand each other and why I got a friend who had and I think that you do too, Miriam, who hasn't spoken with her daughter since October 7th. So Ezra Klein's essay ends, Ezra Kleinishly, with a question that is both open and chilling. For decades, American Judaism, built on the liberalism of the Diaspora, has been interwoven with Zionism. What happens when the ideals of the one become incompatible with the reality of the other? End quote. Miriam, I hope that I've done this essay justice. And if you out there have not read it, you might want to read it. And if I haven't, Miriam, please fill in what I've left out or fix whatever I've messed up either way, though. What I really want to know from you, Miriam, is what should we make of this? Do you think Ezra Klein's explanation of why American Jews don't understand each other, do you think that that's the explanation? And whether it is or isn't, where do we go from here?
- [53:35]
B
I do think he put his finger on some thematic problems that are driving this huge gap. I do want to say that he's trying to approach us in a cool manner and set up a conflict between the multi ethnic democracy aspiration and the ethnostate of Israel. And I want to look at that for a moment, but before I do, I want to say that this comes against the backdrop of starvation in Gaza and so my hair is on fire or my body is clenched and I'm outraged and devastated by what is going on. And while I ultimately ascribe the entire moral responsibility to Hamas, which is sitting on warehouses full of stolen food that it sells at gouging prices in the market while people starve, my country has culpability for this disaster and.
- [54:48]
I'm destroyed by it. Okay? So I need to say that because I think that these conversations, these intellectual conversations are always about something else. And that.
- [55:02]
While we're looking at whether ideas hold water, we're also feeling ideas that are on fire. And that goes for the fire of the horror that I feel as well as the fire of the love that I feel. And it's just important, I think that this is a certain Ezra Klein and I think it comes out of a sort of academic approach to figuring things out. But I just feel like it's important because it really ultimately I think that's so important in some ways more important. So do we have this clear model now of a contrast between the multi ethnic democracy and an ethnostate that is by definition a chauvinistic and if not thoroughly right wing on the way to being a thoroughly right wing ethnostate? I. I don't think so. I think some of the errors in this article are very illuminating. One, for example, just a really obvious one, was his claim that the majority of Israelis are open to expulsion. And interestingly, whoever edited the piece stuck a link on that, went to the Haaretz article and it debunks it. And you know.
- [56:24]
I think, you know, why let him make that claim if it's not true when it's a clearly important piece of the case that he's building and it's a problem of it's his problem. But also I would say it's a problem with the New York Times. It's sitting there and it's uncontested and it's just simply not accurate. There's a really good analysis of the data that was presented initially as proving that 82% of Israelis.
- [56:58]
Jewish Israelis favored or were kind of leaning towards, yes, let's expel them all. And it was very debunked. Even if a horrifying significant number of Israelis are feeling that way at this moment during this horrific war.
- [57:16]
The claim is fact that Israel is using mass starvation as a tool of war. Notwithstanding what I said before about how I feel about what's happening happening, I do not think that that claim is supported. I think something else that we can discuss at another time, but I do not think that claim is supported. I think that Hamas is using starvation as a tool of war.
- [57:42]
And then also even there this claim about Israel being inherently unequal because and he gives a ridiculous, it's not a ridiculous example of an outsider looking at something and not understanding what the meaning of it was. He gives to prove that.
- [58:00]
Israel.
- [58:03]
Is opposed to equality. He gives this example of three Palestinian Knesset members proposing.
- [58:13]
Something that the principle be affirmed of equal Citizenship for every citizen. Israelis will know that as Medina shall call Ezra Chaha. And it was a law proposed by three people from Balad, the same party that was founded by Azmi Bashara, who was accused of aiding and abetting Hezbollah. Like it's having some context for that. I think there are other laws that you could point to. You mentioned in the last conversation, the nation state law, which is deeply problematic. But I just think it just reflects.
- [58:48]
An awareness of other things like the fact that equality is embedded in Israel's Declaration of Independence and that the High Court repeatedly holds up the principle of equality under the basic law, human dignity and liberty. And it's, you know, I just think, well, these were sort of inconvenient nuances that were absent from this and reflect mostly somebody who marked his goal and then used whatever examples he could find to serve the model that he wanted to present. And you know, that is regrettable because this really is a crisis I think in Jewish American life.
- [59:32]
A
Well, I'm glad that you said all that you said, proving once again that you're all the Afrifas, you've got the blessing and the mercy.
- [59:46]
I don't know if I, if I agree that the Ezra Klein's proximate cause for writing this article.
- [59:56]
Is the starvation and the immiseration of Gaza as much as I think more like our friend who hasn't talked to her daughter since October 7th.
- [60:12]
And all of the like angst filled and anger filled discussions and non discussions happening within families in around Shabbat dinner tables or in the WhatsApp explaining why there will not be a Shabbat dinner this week because people who, who love each other can't sit with each other, I, I and this, that was already evident way before there was any starvation in Gaza and before there was most of the destruction that has since happened. And I think that that's an important issue for him and for many, many American Jews. And I think that that's what he is writing about. And I think that as a result also the, the conclusion that he comes to, I don't see it just as some academic thing as you seem to Miriam. I think that he put his finger on the fact, I mean he's not the first one and we've talked about this on the podcast before, but the fact that there really, really is a conflict between these two worldviews, both of which.
- [61:36]
I think are not sufficient, both of which I think are basically sort of, well, bad by virtue of being insufficient worldviews, the one that views Judaism as Being basically a good progressive liberal Judaism as Tikkun Olam. As if Tikkun Olam is enough to completely encapture all that Judaism is on the one hand and the other aspect, Judaism is the survival of Jews and Zionism provides a sanctuary that can ensure the survival of Jews. Therefore Zionism is deeply stitched into Judaism.
- [62:17]
So he says that there are these two principal images of Judaism and as a sociological fact in America. I think he's right. There are many, many others as well. But I think that those are very big. And he said that those things don't go together.
- [62:32]
B
Some people hold one and others hold the other.
- [62:35]
A
I think that, I think I. Well, like all generalizations, then you know this by definition is going to be wrong. But I think that there's something, some important insight into that. No, I think that everyone unders. Everyone understands that there are elements of both and other things as well in Judaism. But I think that there, that if you, if you principally experience Judaism as being Tikkun olam, then you can, I think that you can come to no conclusion as an American Jew today other than Zionism is at odds with Judaism as I understand it. And if you view Judaism as being principally like being sure that Jews have what it takes to be able to survive and always have your bags back because you always maybe will need to leave, then I think you that it leads you to say, look, I may disagree with what those crazy people in Jerusalem are deciding these days, but Israel is at the very, very heart of the survival of this people. Therefore I can be nothing but a Zionist by definition. I think that those two archetypes do have like, you know, one of them has greater purchase on the minds and souls of most American Jews. One of those two things. And I think that some people are exclusively in one camp. I think I feel as though I've met lots of Jews who are Tikkun olam Jews and that's their image of what Judaism is. And they are. If you read Jewish Currents, I think that that is their view that the Alpha, the Jewish voices for peace, the Alpha and Omega. The only thing about Judaism worth preserving is the fact that Judaism is know that Jews marched in the civil rights marches and that Jews believe it. So, so, and, but just I realize that you disagree with this premise and I want to hear what you have to say. But just to get to the, to the place where I'm going with it. Yes, but just to get to the place where I'm going with this for one second. Having established that these two Things are, are different. Ezra Klein rightly points out that maybe were.
- [64:49]
What we're observing now is not something that's quickly going to pass, but it's really a difference between two very fundamental Jewish views of what it means to be a Jew. And.
- [65:02]
There I think that he's right. I think that.
- [65:07]
Something like this break that we didn't see before, this conflict that we didn't see before, is evident as well in Israel by the people. People always say, oh, Israel is. There are people who always say that, oh, Israel needs to be or is Jewish and democratic, as though that's an answer instead of a problem that needs to be solved. Because I don't know what it means. I don't know what it could possibly mean to be Jewish and democratic. I'm committed to both things too. And all of this gets me to the fact that for me, the only solution is one that I think is not open to Ezra Klein and I know is not open to most American Jews, meaning they could never accept it, which is. Is something like Chifza el Ikhwan. It's something like saying, no. What Judaism is is that fundamental Druze principle that Jews are connected to other Jews. That's the basic thing. That's the only storyline, the only narrative through which Israel can make sense and can possibly.
- [66:07]
Possibly continue as a decent society where we say, look, we are democratic, we really are democratic, but at the same time, like in the way that Druze really are Israeli, but they really are Druze who have this deep connection to Druze who are Syrian. So too, you know, that's true of. That's true of Israelis. We really are, you know, we really are democratic, but we really have this deep commitment to other Jews. And this will now and forever in the world, in our, in our millennium, be a problem that needs to be solved, but it's not a reason to reject Israel. But now, Miriam, tell me why the premise is wrong of what I'm saying.
- [66:48]
B
I'm glad you mentioned again the principle that Druze have of unity and you were talking about views and what people think, and also you mentioned the heart. And I actually think those are two different things. Things.
- [67:05]
I will take myself as an example when you set up, and Ezra Klein sets up this tension between the Jews who are Tikkun Olam Jews, as you called them, and the Jews who are.
- [67:22]
I don't know, Zionist or connected to Israel Jews, and this tension between them, I, I never felt it. Like, I get that there are all kinds of inconsistencies, but in a Deep level. If you had asked me what Judaism is when I was quite young, which is formative, that's when you, you know, figuring when your identity is emergence, emerging, I would have said it's sitting next to my grandparents in shul. And I would have said it's going, I also would have said it's going to march and support racial equality with my parents. And all of this to me, the array of values that I have.
- [68:07]
And feeling connected to other Jews in that tribal way, having a large family, I would have said being funny was what being Jewish is. If you asked me when I was quite young, having a certain kind of, of dark sense of humor. And so what I am talking about is the difference between an analysis and your world view and what it is driving people. For me, what drives me is not only the question, and we hit up against also, of what is this? What do I believe? Which value is more important than the other value that I hold, but the question of what's my story and what story have I thrown my lot in with?
- [68:57]
And that's why before I said it's the difference between do these ideas hold water or are these ideas on fire and are they driving me? Because the idea that what the choices are is between a perfect, what is it, multi ethnic democracy or.
- [69:18]
An ethnostate is a theoretical question. America is not a perfect multi ethnic democracy. It never was. And at this very moment it is a horrific example of a really bad choice in what would be a model.
- [69:40]
And it's in tremendous peril, as are our values here in Israel, in tremendous peril. And so setting up this I think theoretical model, as if Israel doesn't exist, as if there isn't a war, as if you don't have a severely traumatized population dealing with people buried alive in tunnels and trying to approach this, to come up with this nice analysis.
- [70:07]
It doesn't fit how I am experiencing this. And I also don't think it fits how the people we're thinking of, which are very often students or college age Jewish kids, I don't think it's how they're experiencing it. They are looking at these pictures and saying, this is horrifying. I don't want to be connected with this ugliness. And for some reason they're not. They don't want.
- [70:33]
Look, they're in America so they can't turn Trump on his truth social calling, showing a video of Obama, an AI video of Obama being handcuffed on his knees in the White House and say, this is horrible. I don't want any part of this. Or they can, but it doesn't really. That's not a model of universalism versus particularism.
- [70:58]
It's an emotionally driven thing about which story you feel part of. And I don't think Ezra Klein is explaining why.
- [71:09]
American young people basically don't feel part of it. I understand why they don't feel part of it, but I don't think his article explains it.
- [71:18]
A
Huh.
- [71:21]
It's interesting. I mean, and.
- [71:25]
I think I remember back to the first Pesach after October 7th in 2024, and the discussions that we had about whether we could all, as a family, get together for Pesach anymore without somebody.
- [71:45]
Running out of the room screaming and crying. And then we decided that we could only because we understood that everyone would be on their best behavior and there would be no talk about anything that mattered, any of the things that mattered most to any of the people around the table. And I think that that's what Ezra Klein is trying to explain. And I understand what you're saying about how it's not a matter of logical principles.
- [72:17]
Working from philosophical axioms and seeing where conflicts arise, though I don't register that. And what Ezra Klein said.
- [72:27]
It is about narratives. But if you're. What he's saying is that for a lot of people, the narrative of what it means to be a Jew is to never, ever, ever choose what is good for Jews over other people. Because dividing people up in that way, putting them in different baskets and saying, I'm going to do what's good for the Jews I'm looking out for my people, is by its very, very nature a horror and anathema. And that a lot of Jews, especially young Jews, felt this well before there were attacks on Gaza and well before there was starvation. And because they feel it as a matter of fact, of principle, this is what. The way that they. This is in your language, the narrative that. That they use to describe their Judaism. And in Ezra Klein's language, it's. It is the. Their answer to the question, what does it mean to be a Jew? But I understand that this. This does not work for you. And somehow it. It does work for me. I wonder also if there's something gendered about. About this as well. But to me, it spoke. And I think that it's tragic. And I think that the way that almost everyone has conceptualized what it means to be a Jew for the last 50 years has been really, really problematic. And I think that we're paying for that now. I think both camps that Ezra Klein describes are real camps and they're both they both have a very impoverished view of what and mistaken view of what Judaism is. That's my opinion but sociologically like as a fact about what people think I find him illuminating but I understand that you don't.
- [74:23]
Now listen to this.
- [74:29]
Sam.
- [74:55]
Say but I write about it Most people don't know what is like maybe someone will Understand most people 99% passing through the planet Most people they will not come back I know it will be story for a second but you.
- [75:14]
B
Can keep on calling for you it's.
- [75:16]
A
Hard to get but this is me.
- [75:17]
B
I'm telling I don't know if you.
- [75:19]
A
Can hear but if you do I'm like.
- [75:45]
But I said.
- [75:48]
B
Most people don't know.
- [75:50]
A
What is like maybe no one will understand that song is Most People by Tuval Khayim with Esther Rada. It's off his new record in memory of his brother Yotam who died in Gaza. You'll find the record anywhere you look for it. Now it is time for our Voda country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of us describes something that maybe brought us some solace as we wended our way through our worlds over the last little while are possibly surprised, amused, delighted, enchanted in sorcerel, or if we were really lucky, maybe even fluged us as we wended our way through our world. Miriam, what is your what a country?
- [76:28]
B
Somewhere in a cabinet in my house there's a box of old videotapes in a format that's probably no longer supported by any camera or player known to humanity. And among the tapes there's video of me holding some leaves. It's from a long time ago. I'm newly married to Jonathan. The two of us are in a taxi in Yemen somewhere along the five hour drive from the capital Sana, to Sada in the north. I wish I could tell you that what you see in the video is me delivering some thoughtful observations about the fascinating terrain or explaining the fine points of our plan to meet the Yemenite Jews, the ones living in Sada who were were at the time awaiting a secret airlift to Israel. That is, after all, what we were doing in Yemen. But that's not what I'm doing in the video. In the video, the leaves I'm holding are cut leaves and I'm spoofing a public service announcement about the effects of khat. This is your brain. This is your brain on khat. And then I'm laughing a lot because, well, I'm stoned on khat. Our driver, who has been chewing the leaves since he made a pit stop at the khat market in Sana', A, has insisted on sharing his stash. Khat contains cathinone, a compound that's a stimulant that causes greater sociability, excitement, mild loss of appetite and mild euphoria. In the video, I am evidently in the euphoria stage. I remember the taste bitter and foul and the effect was a very slow crescendo during much of which I say this is having no effect. This is not affecting me until eventually I'm giggling and spoofing an old anti drug psa. Back then and up to this very day, khat had a huge place in the society and culture of Yemen and a devastating impact on the economy. Today, a majority of men and a third of women in Yemen are said to be heavy users of khat, and half the country's scarce agricultural water irrigates cot crops. It's got major significance. So getting a bit of that bitter taste of it, that was research. Here in Israel, home of something like 400,000 Yemeni Jews, older folks still chew ghat leaves, the younger crowd goes for it in liquid form, and you can get it in a shake at the groovier juice stands. Which brings us to last Wednesday, when I spent the day in Jerusalem with my sister Laura as an outing for her birthday. We hit the Botanical Gardens and the National Library and Nahalat Shiva and then Machane Yehuda. And as we were walking on Agrippa street, heading to catch a bus home, I noticed a shop called Kat Akiva, and I was curious. I had a vague memory about a change in the legal status of khat, so I figured I'd go in and ask the dude. He was a dude in the small clean shop explained that it was just the concentrated extraction of cathinone sold as a pill called hagigat that was outlawed. The plant itself is allowed to be chewed and sold in its natural state. They have to keep it legal, he explained, because they screwed over the Yemeni Jews. They kidnapped their kids and took everything from them, so they had to leave them the cat. Okay, well, a bag of khat leaves cost 70 shekels, and I decided I was not going to leave without leaves. I thought it would be a cute birthday present for Jonathan, and I walked out of there with a Ziploc bag of what the dude assured me was the mildest variety, called baby zavdiel. Zavdiel is a moshav in the south, settled by Jews from Yemen and it's just a 15 minute drive from another Yemenite, Moshava Yinon, where as a 19 year old volunteer I first dove into the Yemeni Jewish story. So yesterday we finally got around to trying the ghat. It was as bitter and sour and moisture sucking as I remembered it. And I kept the disgusting wad of chewed up leaves in my cheek the way you're supposed to for like an hour and a half until I couldn't bear it anymore. And it really did have almost no effect, maybe like a little pulsing behind my ears. But to be fair, the bag had been sitting in the fridge for a week. So no euphoria, just a very big hit of a long ago adventure.
- [80:55]
A
Hmm. I love drugs. Love drugs. All the drugs. So mine is this I went to two shows this past week. The first one on Tuesday in the new Barbie in the Jaffa port was Nunu, and the second one on Thursday in the ancient amphitheater in Kaysaria. That was Hakivas Hashishasar. On the face of things, the two shows were day and night, Heaven and Earth, east and West. Hakevas has the 16th Lamb is a beloved kids record made in 1978 by some of then the country's best young singers and musicians, most of them barely known then, which then the country's best young singers and musicians. Now, 47 years later, each and every one of them has had a brilliant and successful career, the promise of each of them fulfilled probably more than they themselves even ever expected. And by now the grandchildren of the first kids who grew up on.
- [81:56]
They are growing up on Hakevasasishasar. But Nunu, she was born 22 years after Hakiva Sashisaar was made. She's just 25 years old. And if you gathered up all the music critics in the country and asked them to rank order the greatest singers and songwriters that we have working today, it is possible that Nunu would come out on the top of the list, though it could also be Netha Barzilai and there are others too. But Nunu, whose given name is Nomi Aharoni Gal, she is astonishing and she just put out a new record. It's her second and it is called Mahu. What? Aside from that and the critic journalist podcaster Shaul Amsterdamsky wrote about it in an I have seen the future of Rock and Roll essay in Kalka list and it starts quote nunu's new record, Ma Hutsmise is a masterpiece. It has brought me to tears more than once. I listened to it this week at least 20 times, as far as I am concerned, it is perfect. Perfect. End quote. It matters. I think that Nunu first became famous posting videos she made on social media during the Corona. And she uses loopers and all manner of electronica. And her first big hit was a song called Cute Boy. And the chorus goes, cute boy, I am a little in love with you Even though I don't know your name. We will dance, you with me and me with you. Oy, that is not you. I have lost you, you.
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And for all these reasons and other reasons too, nunu and the 16th lamb, they seem like opposites. And the other reasons they were obvious at the shows, like the fact that for Nunu's show, the bar had every kind of alcohol and spirit that you could imagine. And at the 16th lamb you could maybe get a beer, but I don't think people did. And for Nunu's show, the doors opened at 8:30, but the ticket said that the show would start at 10, and everyone here in Tel Aviv knows that. Writing that the show starts at 10, that's a metaphor, meaning that the show is bound to start by 11, which the 16th Lamb tickets said that things would start on time, punk, Liszt, at 8. And they pretty much did. And the 16th lamb was filled with parents and grandparents, parents, people in their 30s and 50s and 70s, which is how old you might be now, probably, if you got the record for your kid when it first came out. And it was also filled with kids, kids, kids, young kids, little kids. In front of us, there was a girl, she could not have been older than four, while NuNu, like all Israeli shows, there were people of all ages there. I was there, save for kids. There were no little kids there, but the vibe was very 20 something. And another thing you'd think would be opposite about the two shows is that the 16th lamb, you'd figure that it was bound to be about nostalgia. Seeing a show today that transports you back to yesterday, while Nunu, at 25, how much yesterday does she really even ever have? And all those things were true, but still, the two shows were not opposite in several ways. Maybe the ways that matter the most, the shows were just like each other. One thing, the thing that surprised me most about each of the shows is that though you might not see it at first, I did not see it at first. Anyway, there's a kind of deep sadness to each of them. We think of Kids records as being happy, I think, because we think of kids as being happy, which is of course not what kids are. And if you just listen Casually hearing that there are songs about chocolate and songs about all the shoes in all the shoe stores in the city, leaving the vitrines and taking to the streets on their own. You'd think that the 16th lamb is just fun fantasies for kids to have fun with. But under it all there is a deep sadness too, which makes sense when you remember that the poems that became the songs that became the record are by Jonathan Geffen, who wrote that book about how cold his father was, and mostly about how cold his mother was, his mother who was Moshe Dayan's sister and who in time killed herself, and how withholding she was. She never did tell him that she loved him. Yonatan Geffen and how he wrote, Growing up on Moshav Na', Al, he always felt like an outsider. And he knew, he Yonatan Geffen, he knew that kids are not happy by nature. Only some kids, only some of the times are happy. He was not happy. And on top of that, Jonathan Geffen later told how when he wrote those poems over a weekend in Paris, he was deep in trauma over the Yom Kippur War a few years before, so deep in trauma that he could not, would not talk about it for years. And this week, watching the show in the great seats that Alison scored for me through her sweetheart Hillel in the Hellenic Amphitheater in Caesarea, I got the sadness of the thing for the very first time. Time. You can hear it, for instance, at the end of that song about the shoes, which is called Ch nasanu hair le vakeret do defrayim. When we went to the city to visit Uncle Ephraim, and you hear this.
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When we went to the city to visit Uncle Ephraim, we passed a man with holes in his socks. He had a sad face, he leaned on a cane. Ima said not to look, but I looked. And when we went to the city to visit Uncle Ephraim, it was winter two years ago. I've grown up since then. I already have a bicycle. I almost forgot that I was once only three. But just that poor man with the holes in his socks, I can't get him out of my head. And something like that is true of maybe the most famous song from the 16th Lamb, Hayel Dahachi Afabagan, which Yudidravitz sings. And this week, with everyone singing along, it sounded like this.
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B
Sam.
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A
The words go, the prettiest girl in the kindergarten. She has the prettiest eyes in the kindergarten and the prettiest braids in the kindergarten and the prettiest mouth in the kindergarten. And the more you look at her, the more you see there is nothing to say. She's the prettiest girl in the kindergarten. And when she smiles, I smile. When she's sad, I am sad. And I don't understand how it is possible to be sad when you are the prettiest girl in the kindergarten. Which words are so sad, if you think about it? And I did not see it ever in the past. And the same is true for Nunu, who I sort of thought of as the cute boy girl. Like maybe she was posting to social media a few years ago, but this new record, and in the Barbie this week, it is a different Nunu. She's got a song called Kapayam la Gizurim. Applause for the ones who are wrecked. That goes.
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The words of that song, they go, it is unbearably, unbearably hard, but we endure. He crossed the line, Swear on my mother. He seriously crossed the line. I swear on my dear mother. It's unbearably, unbearably hard, but we endure. It is inconceivable, so we just don't grasp it. Applause for those who are wrecked, who don't give up and keep trying. Applause for those who are wrecked, who don't give up and keep trying. And the saddest moment of the show came with what may be the saddest song that I ever heard, Nunu. She stopped the show and she said.
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I hope very much that when I got to the Barbie, I would not have to dedicate this song, but I will dedicate this song to the people who are kidnapped and are not here. The song presents a picture of a world that in the end, it is not so amazing. I do not ask for a world with great highs. I will give up on that. I just want a world that is okay. And this year all we want for these people is that they just be in their homes. It is such a small wish, not so big, so human. And then Nunu sings her song, I Imagine.
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And the words go. I imagine a world without colors, without clouds and rainbows, good and bad. Maybe it will be boring, but it does me good. I imagine a flat world, There is nothing to climb because you just don't have to. And there are no snowy peaks to look at the view from. And there are no dark abysses without a thousand stars, without seeing the sunrise together. I would give up on all that just to be able to go to sleep without fear. And the song goes on like that, without laughter, without tears and it is the saddest song I ever heard because I got kids Nunu's age and I do not wish for them a flat world and I do not wish for them to wish for that.
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But this sadness is one thing the two shows had in common. Another thing was that in both shows the thousands of people who came, almost every one of us knew almost every word of almost every song. And from the first note to the last, maybe you heard it in those clips that I played, we sang together, and in both shows we danced together too. And in both shows it felt like the sad things are not so sad or not quite sad in the same way when you are singing about them with other people. Judy Dravic took the mic in the 16th lam and she said, apropos of nothing in particular and then again apropos of everything, she said, it will be all right. You know that it will be all right.
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And in both shows that is what it felt like. Like we will be all right. Like we will have a thousand stars again and see another sunrise and then another, and then another.
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And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks to Itay Shellam, our station manager, without whom there would be none of this. Thanks to Ashibolim, my favorite band from Kibbutz Geva. They give us the music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you Miriam. Thank you Natalie. We'd like to thank all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. It keeps the show going and the station going and it keeps us moved and grateful. And in your day, we'd like to thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen and ask you to like us on Facebook and drop us a line. We are going to answer eventually. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this. The Promised Podcast's cultural references are contemporary enough to include both the movie Trading Places and the movie Norma Rae. That is why kids agree that the Promise Podcast is the the absolute hippest daddy. O da da da. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that yesterday, as we record on July 23, we marked international Sprinkle Day. So stipulated way back in 2017 by Rosie Alea, the baker, blogger, cookbook maker, photographer, founder and CSO that's Chief Sprinkle Officer of Sweet Appolita, the world's greatest online store devoted entirely to Sprinkle Nalia, which describes the origin story of the site thusly, quote recognizing the need for a simple and inspiring solution for amateur and professional bakers to add wow factor to desserts without spending hours in the kitchen. Rosie became particularly inspired by the idea of bringing new life to the world of sprinkles. End quote. And while good hearted people may disagree about whether or not the world of sprinkles was in need of new life, there is no denying the pleasure of seeing headlines in the 2025 German language press about Zucker Strusel tag Sprinkle Day. Especially when compared to the headlines in the 1925 German language press about Die Juden sind under Unglucht the Jews are Our Misfortune, which is, well, somehow less fun a headline. And I guess I don't need to tell you that I adore International Sprinkle Day. It's probably my favorite day of the year, what with the colorfulness of it all and the sweetness and the many different names that people in different places have for sprinkles. Jimmy's of course, but also Sugar Strand, that's in the uk, or Hegelschlag or Chocolate Hail, that's in the Netherlands. Hundreds and thousands it is called for some reason in Australia and New Zealand. Vermicelli in India, Edible confetti, sweet chards, candy dots, glitter, sugar luster dust, Sugar bits, Rainbow rain. Who could do anything but love all of that? That still fun and happy as it was yesterday all day, I knew it would soon be gone. Just like when you have a cone dipped in sprinkles and the thing could be just a plain old vanilla cone, but still, it looks like a million bucks, yet you already know from the very beginning that it's just going to be some small finite number of licks. 12, 20. And then the sprinkles will all be gone. The color literally stripped from your cone and the world will be back to its regular monochrome nature. The joyful colors not to return. Well, not for a long, long time. Not so the Promise Podcast we will be back for you next week and every week, reminding you that while there are some things that add color and sweetness and whimsy to our lives and ice cream cones, there are other things that remind you that all that color and sweetness and whimsy is little more than a thin layer covering a yawning maw of need and desolation. On this the Promise podcast.
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Sam.