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- [00:01]
Noah Efron
This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language. Welcome to the Promise Podcast brought to you on TLV1, the voice of the city that exactly 100 years ago published in the number 14 June Tammuz edition of Yidiot Iriata Tel Aviv News of the Municipality of Tel Aviv, the official organ of, well, the Municipality of Tel Aviv, an indispensable accounting of, as the document title puts it, quote, the indictments and the sort of people indicted in the Tel Aviv Municipality courthouse from the month of June 1925 to the month of January 1926. End quote. These days City hall does not even have its own court system. Hell in a handbasket, if you ask me. In any case, the article makes for wonderful reading. From it we learn that in the six months in question there were a sum total of 2,025 indictments. This at a time when the population of the city was only 34,200, which means that there was one indictment for every just under 17 people in the city. Though one gets the impression that recidivism was a problem and that those who ran afoul of the law once were likely to run afoul of the law again and again. The 2025 crimes committed are in the article divided into 44 Catego categories, of which the 44th is miscellaneous, of which there were 44 instances. Happily, none of the 2025 crimes were violent crimes, no murder, most foul, no fights or altercations, and as far as I can tell, no armed robbery and no breaking and entering. The most often committed crime with 348 infractions was, quote, operating a business without a license, stores, welding shops, tailors, carpentry shops, sign shops, and various factories. End quote. The next most popular crime was, quote, leaving building materials on streets and leaving goods on sidewalks. End quote. There were 157 instances of that 142 people hung signs without a license. 141 people were summoned to court to answer for, quote, camels in a train numbering more than four, end quote. There were 122 unlicensed shacks. 75 people were arrested for taking sand from the commons Without a license, 62 were hauled in for wasting water, to which were added 27 who used water at night without a license, which was forbidden by law. After that were automobile related crimes, driving too fast, 25 driving without lights, 43 failing to follow the rules of the road, 113 driving without a license. 28. There were all sorts of commercial infractions with 20 people brought in for Quote, selling bread in which was found worms, nails and shards of glass. It's the end that I like there. 25 were brought in for transporting uncovered meat. 7 sold milk diluted with water. 2 people ran afoul of the law for production of bricks without a license, hanging signs that did not include the seal of the municipality. 16, failure to remove extraneous signs and failure to remove expired announcements from walls. 19. A good number of different infractions had to do with sewage and waste, such as failure modernize an outhouse, public urination, emptying bedpans in public. 46 people faced the judge for, quote, failure to adhere to the health laws. After this itemization of all the crimes committed, Yidiot Iriat Tel Aviv reported as well the professions of the perpetrators who came in 19 categories in descending order of criminality. Property and homeowners, shopkeeps, drivers, craftsmen and artisans, longshoremen and stevedores, neighbors, shack owners, peddlers, contractors, porters, breadmongers, horse drawn cart drivers, butchers, bakers, sign hangers, milkmen, camel men, hotel owners and finally factory owners. Of course there were 189 miscellaneous. At the bottom of the document it says, quote, in all of these trials, after a verdict was reached, only 11 appeals were submitted to the district court, of which appeals most were denied and the verdict of the municipal judge was confirmed. End and arguably nothing captures the ethos of constant self improvement as we are ever and always a work in progress, which progress is ever and always underway, better than an exactly 100-year-old list of crimes and criminals that reveals with even the most cursory analysis that the number of camel trains passing through the city with more than four camels has in the past century dropped enormously, actually to zero. The number of bedpans emptied in the streets too, and also sand purloined without a proper license. And the same is for the number of people charged with illegally drinking water after dark. Also crimes by milkmen, camel men, horse drawn cart drivers, breadmongers and porters. Basically nil. People always worry that things are getting worse. It's just human nature, I guess, to do that. So it is reassuring every once in a while to look at the cold hard facts and to see that we today have got camel related crime well under control. With us here in the great underground vault that is the serenity studio, here at number 12 Lesser Ory street, beneath a bakery, where in the bread is always free of worms, nails and glass, is a woman whose prose is so lovely and whose analysis is so insightful and whose interviews are so incisive that it would frankly be a crime not to read whatever she writes and to listen to whatever she podcasts. Obviously, the author of such lovely prose and the maker of such riveting podcasts could only be Alison Kaplan Sommer. Alison has written for Politico, the New Republic, Foreign Policy, the Jerusalem Post, the jta, the Ford, 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 NPR, PRI, and the BBC, and of course, the Haaretz podcast that she hosts very often. Two times a week, Allison holds a B' Nai Bath World Center Award for Journalism recognizing excellence in Diaspora reportage, and a Simon Rockau Award for excellence in covering Zionism, Aliyah and Israel. Alison, how you doing?
- [06:35]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
I'm good. I'm trying to think of if there was such a court today, you know, what would be the biggest crimes committed in Tel Aviv? That couldn't even be, you know. No camel related crimes. There'd be a lot of like electric scooter related crimes.
- [06:47]
Noah Efron
That's what I was thinking. Exactly.
- [06:48]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Crossing the street with your electric scooter while listening to something on your earphones and looking at your telephone at the same time. Like, I think that that would be
- [06:58]
Noah Efron
the new camel related crime. Definitely.
- [07:00]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Exactly. An updated version.
- [07:02]
Noah Efron
Now as for me, my name is Noah Efron and I do not mean to boast, but I agreed to give a paper at the most lovely conference on environment and Jewish philosophy. It started yesterday and I got in my own head while was writing it and I wrote and erased and wrote and erased and in the end it came out pretty lousy. I think though people were nice about it. And the whole time I was trying to write the thing and rewrite the thing in the middle of the night, I found myself perseverating about how after writing a million papers for a million conferences over decades, you'd think that I would have learned how to do this shit by now. I mean, for years I have watched all of my friends get better and better at what they do as they gracefully become wiser with time. And please believe me when I say that I am not bragging. God knows my folks raised me better than that. But I have, to a truly remarkable degree, retained the incompetence of my youth, learning pretty much nothing, getting better at pretty much nothing. And people, that is my secret to staying young. Today we got two topics of such immense importance that the IPCC phoned up and said, yeah, deal with those first. You can deal with climate change after that. But first we have this moving matter in memoriam made by Miriam
- [08:16]
Miriam
it is always a shock how abruptly life slips over to death, like going bankrupt, as Hemingway said, gradually, then suddenly. That's how Lisa Fleagle went during the Shavuot holiday. She was fully alive. In fact, more fully than anyone I know. And then, at age 65, on a trip to San Diego, she was gone. She'd been living for decades with a rare disease called moyamoya that restricts the flow of blood to the brain and carries a high risk of cerebral hemorrhage. That had not stopped her from living an epically large life in the US and in Israel as an artist, writer, journalist, kibbutz member, community organizer, trauma therapist and peace activist. Health problems had not prevented her from years of work in conflict and post trauma settings, from families affected by homicide and at risk teen girls in inner city Boston and victims of the Boston Marathon bombing to conflict hotspots in Northern Ireland and of course Israelis and Palestinians here, where her heart stayed even after she relocated back to Boston. And two and a half years ago, on October 7th, nothing could stop her from buying a plane ticket. Within hours of getting news of the carnage that day, she came to work with survivors from the Gaza border communities. I fetched her from the airport. She arrived with duffel bags full of protective gear for soldiers, a supply of yellow ribbon for the campaign to free the hostages, and the capacious skills and insight she would deploy to help kibbutz communities that had been evacuated to Eilat, Israel's southernmost city, had turned into a giant trauma response center. Social workers, teachers, volunteers were themselves overwhelmed, and Lisa embedded herself in the hotel lobby, supervising the youth counselors, handing out water and guidance even as bad news continued to roll in and missiles started flying over from Yemen. She worked most closely with evacuees from Near Oz, the kibbutz where 47 members were murdered and 80 abducted. Here she is during that period, speaking from Eilat to an NPR interviewer.
- [10:43]
Lisa Fleagle
Our number one job is to bear witness. Yeah. Yeah. And by bearing witness we reflect back to people that this thing that you can't believe happened to you, that you feel like nobody could understand because it's unbelievable and is believable. You are not helpless. We are with you. And that's the most important thing to be is present.
- [11:11]
Miriam
Lisa's weeks in Eilat and the continuing assistance she provided remotely after going back to Boston would have been a career defining moment for a normal therapist, but she'd already had quite a few of those. She plunged into things literally. We knew each other from young Judea, but the experience that pushed our acquaintanceship into a friendship was a trip to northern Israel. Lisa was studying at the Kibbutz Movement's College of Education in Tel Aviv and had use of a kibbutz car for a few days. We visited her friend, a classmate of hers, in Ommelfachem. That was my first close encounter with Palestinian Israelis in their home. But the other thing about that trip was water. Whenever we got near any body of water, any lake, any stream, any natural spring, Lisa stopped the car, hopped out, stripped off her clothes, and plunged in. I was always a bit abashed. If I'd had the expression back then, I might have said, get a room. She had a passionate, almost carnal love affair with Israel. Years later, she said that no matter what terrain she saw, it could be a snow capped peak in New England. The landscape in her mind's eye was always the hills surrounding Kibbutz Kitura in the Arava desert where she lived for 20 years during her aliya and army service and studies. Long after she left the kibbutz, it was still the landscape she continued to depict in her artwork. Lisa plunged and plumbed the deep structures of Israeli society and culture. She studied Hebrew literature and dove so far into the language that she worked as a translator, published her own Hebrew poetry, and could quote Roni Samech and Yona Volach by heart. Later she would add Arabic. With her progressive American Jewish pedigree, a desire for peace and a just resolution of the Israeli Palestinian conflict was no surprise. But for someone who was almost always broke, she really put her money where her mouth was. Among her assorted careers, Lisa worked for a time as a newspaper reporter, pinning down Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian CEOs to talk about negotiating joint ventures after the oslo Accords. In May 1994, she was among the few journalists who managed to get past an army blockade to witness the return of Yasser Arafat. And a convoy of police crossed the Allenby Bridge to the west bank, producing a UPI story titled Palestinians Hoist Flag over Jericho. You can Google it. At that time, Sarah Kramer, who ran the center for Jewish Arab Economic Development, hired Lisa to coordinate a regional textile conference. As Sarah recounted in Moment magazine, the day after Israel and Jordan signed a declaration of peace on the White House lawn, Lisa Fleegle, the relentlessly energetic journalist organizer the center had hired to coordinate our planned Middle east textile conference, bounced into the office with an Idea. Let's put on our textile conference for Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians and Jordanians, proposed Lisa. We'll make history. We'll be the first Israelis ever to host a Jordanian business delegation to Israel. Then Lisa came out with her next whopper. Let's have a fashion show, you know, with models and music and a Runway, and they'll show the latest designs from each country. And that's what they did. She was camped out at our place in Jerusalem, so we had front row seats to the chaos of her planning and pushing and prodding to pull off what was then a historic moment. A moment now largely lost to history. In the decades that followed, Lisa became an art therapist for all her grand projects and wild adventures. An anecdote I've always loved was the one about a pair of socks. While working in the adolescent unit at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, she got in trouble for buying socks for a patient. She had breached professional boundaries. She shrugged. The only socks he had were full of holes. What was I going to do? Having experienced terrible loss as a child, she was acutely aware of basic needs. Her mother died when she was 11. Her father retreated into his own pain. Her beloved older sister died at 32. Lisa paid close attention to loss and neglect, to physical safety, clothing, food. She told of taking a group of girls to a Holocaust themed play. And during a group discussion at intermission, this happened with a girl named Allegra.
- [15:57]
Lisa Fleagle
This one girl says, yeah, there was this dude, Hitler, and he killed a bunch of Jews. And I said, that's right, that's right. Hitler was a dictator and he caused the genocide. And then Allegra said, I admire Adolf Hitler. I want to be Adolf Hitler.
- [16:21]
Miriam
Lisa took a minute to walk away and compose herself and then remembered she had promised Allegra she would get her something to eat and hadn't managed to take care of it.
- [16:32]
Lisa Fleagle
They brought Allegra over to me and I said, allegra, I really need to apologize to you. And I said, I told you I was going to get you food. And I forgot because there was so much going on. And that's not okay. I'm the adult. It's my job to take care of you. So I'm sorry because I understand that you're saying these things because you want to have some power, because I've made you feel powerless again. And Allegra looked at me and she said, lisa, I'm so sorry I said that to you. And I said, it's normal to want power. We all want to have power. You just can't Become a genocidal dictator, that's the thing. So we have to figure out how to empower you without you having to be a genocidal dictator. And you're hungry, so let's go to Rudd fuckers, because they have hamburgers as big as your face. And she said, Lisa, Ay Dios mio, it's Fuddruckers.
- [18:03]
Miriam
A few months after Lisa got back to the US from her work in Eilat, she told an audience at the Jewish center in Princeton about an American high school kid who had asked her if she also cared about the people in Gaza. Her answer was yes.
- [18:19]
Lisa Fleagle
I believe that violence happens when people feel victimized, when their trauma isn't treated and they feel victimized, they feel entitled to do terrible things. And if we want there to be peace, we need to treat the trauma. And I go wherever the trauma is. I go to whoever needs the help. I've been to Gaza, I've been all over Palestine right now. I'm here to restore humanity and it doesn't matter who the human beings are.
- [19:04]
Miriam
This is the prism that she brought with her when on her many visits to Israel, she joined protective presence in Palestinian west bank communities, simply standing there to deter Israeli right wing extremists from attacking villages. You can find a video of her singing Hit the Road Jack to a hilltop youth who is menacing her. She was horrified by what was going on there, but she always resisted demonization and in fact, before she died, she was urgently trying to write an article on the hilltop youth having her clinically compassionate analysis of the mayhem these mostly young, mostly men are perpetrating. Now wouldn't that have been grand? In her work with gang related violence in Boston, working with both victims and perpetrators, she rejected the idea that crime should be treated as a case of good against evil. She bristled at zero tolerance political slogans. Lisa worked through similar ideas, forming an improbable connection to a conflict transformation organization based in Belfast called Rethinking Conflict and Bringing Protestant Ex Combatants on a Trip to Israel and the West Bank. The book she was forever writing and now will never finish was called Bulletproof My Clinical Adventures in Inner City Boston, Northern Ireland and Israel Palestine. And there were the paintings to paint and the collages to glue and the friendships to continue. Lisa had a talent for finding mentors, wise people to be her sounding boards, troubleshooters and emotional support. When she went to Eilat, she contacted Daveed Senesh, a clinical psychologist, and asked for his supervision. Senesh, who was a prisoner of war, held in Egypt in 1973. He knows a thing or two about darkness. His aunt was Hannah Senesh, the Hungarian born Israeli poet who parachuted into occupied Europe to help rescue Jews and was captured, tortured and executed at age 23. David Senesh called Lisa courageous and praised her therapeutic skills. He says he never met anyone as consumed by giving as she was. David Senesh has been hearing his aunt Chana Senish's poems his entire life. Elie Eli, of course, but also Ashreha Ghafrur, Blessed is the Match. So it was remarkable to hear him say that more than anyone he has known, Lisa's life and mission embody the words of his aunt's poem. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart's secret places. Blessed is the heart that knows for honor's sake to stop its beating. Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame. And here I'll add Blessed is Lisa's memory.
- [22:23]
Noah Efron
Yes, Lisa was someone like unlike anyone else anywhere. She was a friend of mine too, and of everyone that I know. Yihi Zikhra Baruch today 2 discussions Discussion 1 the coarsening as this past week, President Yitzhak Bouji Herzog gave an angry and disturbing speech in which he he warned that Israeli society is deep in a process of what he called hit Bahamut, literally in bestialization, which you can maybe translate as coarsening, growing more violent, more xenophobic, more supremacist and less tolerant, though he insists this embeastialization is happening only at the edges of Israeli society. But could, he says, be spreading back to the core. Is he right? We will ask and discussion too. Abba Ima I am a b beast as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu puts out the very first viral video of this young election season, this one showing a young high tech sort coming out to his parents at Shabbat dinner saying that he supports Bibi. That's the coming out that he's doing. Which parents do not take that well. This was a video that launched a thousand think pieces and satires and made me think with a shudder. So that is how Benjamin Netanyahu plans to win the next election. We will talk about what we learn from this video about our Prime Minister and more important about our fellow citizens, at least as the Prime Minister understands them. And for our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters in our extra special special extra discussion, the link to which you can find in our show Notes on your podcast app or at patreon.com promisepodcast on the world Wide Web. We will talk about last week's Israel Day on 5th id 05 as it is known, formerly known as the Salute to Israel parade, in which, we are told, about 60,000 people marched, including 26 Israeli ministers and members of Knesset, including far right ministers Betzalel Smotrich and Amichai Eliyahu, and center left sorts like Mehrav Ben Ari and Eitan Ginsburg. New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani did not join the march as he is well known for his criticism of and some say antipathy to Fifth Avenue, I assume, which is a shame if you think about it. We will try to make heads of the event and time permitting, also tales. But before we get to any of that, please listen to this.
- [25:07]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Sa.
- [26:36]
Noah Efron
That song is Katonti by Yonatan Razel, who, as we learned on the radio from Sister Rika, was this week hospitalized in Charizedek in Jerusalem having had a cerebral hemorrhage. He is stable and he is recovering, but Rika asked that everyone who does this sort of thing say the Misha Beirach prayer for the sick, adding as she did that his name is Yonatan Adi Ben Chayarochel. We will listen to music by Yonatan Razel as we wish him a fast and full recovery. And now it's time for our first discussion. So, Alison, the president seems pretty upset, doesn't he?
- [27:11]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Yeah, he's not a happy camper. Yeah. Speaking last week at the ceremony for the Jerusalem Unity Prize, President Yitzhak Buji Herzog gave a disturbed and disturbing address that immediately almost everyone was calling the Naom it Be', amut, which means literally the bestialization speech, or maybe the involution speech, and which means a little less literally, the coarsening speech. This is what President Herzog said.
- [27:41]
Noah Efron
Avrim Alenu Yamim Vahem Lorak Alimut Merim El Aletsida Beshule.
- [27:51]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
We are passing through days not just of harsh violence, but alongside that, at the margin of Israel's glorious society, a horrid process is creeping up on us. I say this with great pain. It is a terrible process of becoming like animals, of coarsening. It is a slow process and a worrying one that threatens to enter the mainstream of Israeli society, and we will not let it. There are among us some who are now hardly shocked by violence. Parts of us take the violence slightly. Almost no day goes by without a murder in Arab society, and no one is shocked and surprised anymore. There are at the margins of our society, parts that have normalized violence. And sadly, there are among us who even celebrate it, boast of it. We are witness to a terrible wave of violence carried out by an anarchist mob in Judea and Samaria. Acts that defile our home and contravene every basic norm, moral, legal or Jew. We see demeaning and ugly behavior of extremists against Christians, Moslems who live in our midst, as if there was no meaning to the basic human morality or the commandments in the Torah of Israel to love the stranger who dwells among us. And we see beastly actions of a fringe of people who think that prisoners or detainees or suspects do not have human rights. Beloved is the human who was created in the image of God. It says in our sources. I stand here and say out loud, unity begins in humanity and in protecting the dignity of humans in the image of God. It is the foundation of everything we are building. Even in the most just of all wars. We must protect the image of God that is within us and within everyone who lives among us or near us. Our people are a glorious people with enormous powers. But for us to use these powers, we must set out red lines. It is forbidden to torment prisoners, despicable as they may be. It is forbidden to take the law into your own hands. It is forbidden to harm people of other religions or their symbols. And it is forbidden to accept this coarsening that is coming from the margins of society and is threatening us all. So Noah is the president, right? Do you agree?
- [30:02]
Noah Efron
No, he's not, Alison. Wait, let me rephrase that. Yes, he is, Alison. He is right that we are around us seeing this really shocking series of violent events from different areas and by different people. So just late last night, as we record, a group of, I think 70 ultra orthodox men rampaged outside the house of Deputy Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, Noam Solberg, smashing the windshield of his car and going into his yard and smashing, I think, plants things there. Anyway, it looked terrible to see the picture. And Noam Soberg's wife said that she felt as though it was Kristallnacht, though she was very quick to add that of course it is nothing like the Holocaust in any way. So we saw that just last night. And add that to the video that we saw a couple of weeks ago of a man in Jerusalem running up and bashing over the head for no obvious reason, a Christian woman who was walking in the streets of Jerusalem, a young Christian woman, an acolyte or some such, and then kicking her when she was on the ground. And of course There is story after story of horrid things done to people who live in the West Bank. Up to and including, people have been killed, but a far larger number have been beaten and hurt, and a far larger number than that have been terrorized. People have had their olive trees uprooted. We saw a video of a dog being beaten for, I guess, because the dog belonged to a Palestinian or reasons. I mean, we. It's. We don't know why. And there is this feeling when you start to add these things coming in different places from different sorts of people, though all the people that I mentioned are religious, it's worth saying you start to get the feeling that something is happening. Oh, and then add that, of course, to the question of whether. Of whether prisoners have been abused by Israeli prisoner guards, including sexually abused, which is a question. We don't know exactly what happened, but it's not really a question that we all. I think everyone knows that prisoners are regularly abused and maybe in terrible ways that we don't quite know the facts about. So you add all these things up and you feel like something is happening. And so then I understand what the President is talking about. And of course, he's completely right about that, and I am so. And we're all, I think, terribly unnerved about this, except for the people who aren't. And the President is talking about that, too, how there are circles in which such violence is accepted and there are smaller circles in which such violence is championed, is enjoyed. And so that's what he's talking about, and it's real and it's true. There are two things about what he says and what he implies that I think aren't really right. And it's not just the President who's saying them. One is that this is a process with a certain direction, that this kind of violence is new, that we haven't seen it before. And I think that that's just not true. Sadly. We have seen it before. We've seen these kinds of things before for years in all sorts of contexts. And, you know, read, read Palestinian testimonies about things that happened in 1948, and you'll see that they were the same as the worst things that are happening now, and they happened at a very, very large scale. And there have been other moments when such things have happened. So it's to view it in a kind of teleological way, like history is developing and we're becoming coarser, and more and more we're reverting to animals. I don't think that that's quite right. I think that we have a terrible problem that we have often had that comes up. And then the other thing which is related, that I think is not true is this notion that all of a sudden, for whatever reasons, this thing is developing in us. And I think that, like, at many points when this has happened, there are reasons. I think that it has something to do with October 7th. I think it has something to do with, with this absolute rage at Palestinians as emblemized by Hamas. I think it has to do with us having understandably, inevitably rehearsed to ourselves over and over again the horrors that happened on October 7th and other things as well. So this sort of mystical process that we're becoming like animals and we need to stop ourselves where really what the president means and what everyone who I've heard say it seems to mean is those people over there pointing their fingers at settlers or the ultra orthodox or others have become animals. I think that that's not quite right. I think we, we've. I think we're all traumatized. We're all acting in, in ways that, that, that, that we can't, we shouldn't. We. And, and so, so I, I think that we, we need to, to both be tougher on ourselves and also more understanding of ourselves and try to pose it out and not have it be some mystical process that some people are going through. It's completely not mystical. It's psychological, it's social, it's spiritual, and we're all going through it. That's what I think. Allison.
- [35:53]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Well, here's what I think. First of all, we do know the facts, and we do know about systematic abuse in the prison system. It's not just that we have tons of reports and testimonies from people who have done it. But, you know, the quiet part out loud, we have our minister of internal security, who's in charge of the prisons, bragging about how badly the prisoners are treated. So I don't know if maybe we know, maybe we don't know. We do know. We do know.
- [36:18]
Noah Efron
I think you don't know. I think we know everything you said is true. I think it's worse than we think, is what I think. We don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if how prisoners are abused and how many prisoners are abused. I know of a few cases that make me know that there are many more, but I don't know how many more and what they look like. So we need to know, right?
- [36:39]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
But if you read the reports of some of the organizations. If you trust the organizations like B'tselem, it's pretty clear, it's pretty out there. I happen to have, on my other podcast, interviewed the head of B'Tselem this week. So that's sort of a top of mind for me. I think the coarsening, it's not sudden and it's not all of a sudden. When I hear this speech, I just think of things that, you know, inherent in the DNA of Israeli society that were always there from the original Zionists kind, the masculinization of the Jew. We're not gonna be all poochie moochie, insensitive. We're tough kibbutznitz, we're tough soldiers, we're tough settlers. We live in a rough neighborhood and we have to behave tough. We have to be able to stand up to it. I mean, October 7th was a peak moment, but we've always had terrible bloody terror incidents against us. And there's always been sort of a theme in the Israeli society that we also have to tough, we have to toughen up. And the, and the coarseness I school culture and kids, the way people treat each other, there's always been, I think, this coarsening, which maybe some Israelis are in denial of that, that streak in the society now, the extreme bad fringes, you know, there were always the violence. There was always especially, you know, since the beginning of the settler movement. And you say we're all guilty. Well, I haven't rampaged through many Palestinian villages lately. I don't know if you have, but that used to be clearly outside the norms. It always existed. But the messaging from the top was, you know, marginalize it, push it to the fringes. And I don't know if there's, you know, this subtext in what Herzog is saying, but we've had a process over the past five, 10 years that not only are people with this kind of, you know, violent Jewish supremacy who endorse really violent retaliatory or not even retaliatory, just violent actions against Palestinians, against people who don't, aren't necessarily Jewish or share our faith, not only, you know, brought into the government the mainstream, acceptable, you know, high levels. And again I mentioned Ben gvir, who is the head of the internal security and the police. These are the levels at which you're supposed to be accountable, at which you're supposed to have consequences for this kind of behavior and condemn. And so I think, I don't know if it's necessarily that we've gotten coarser as an overall society, it's you, it's me, it's everybody. But I think what's really disturbing is that the parts of our society that, that behave this way or that endorse this kind of behavior have become in the mainstream and are, you know, now able to send messaging again through the, the, the, you know, equivalents here of Fox News or, or the right wing media that, that this is all okay and this in the mainstream. So I don't know if Israelis have necessarily gotten coarser or if we've all gotten coarser, but the coarseness I think has now become institutionalized and mainstream and socially acceptable. And to me, if I was Herzog giving the speech, that's what I would be emphasizing.
- [39:56]
Noah Efron
And when you say mainstream, you mean that it's in the Knesset and in the ministries in particular. And you also mean that it's on channel 14, the particularly right wing and some not very old news network.
- [40:09]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Right? The institutions that used to point to this behavior and say, no, it's bad, no, it's unacceptable. No, it's not what we're about are no longer sending that message. They are sending the message that it's okay. And it is inherent in all of us to have that. And so we need sort of those guardrails against it. And I think the guardrails against it in Israeli society are breaking down now.
- [40:32]
Noah Efron
Listen to this, Sam. That song is Kama Tov b' Yisrael. New music by Yonatan Razel, to whom we wish a speedy recovery. And now it's time for our second discussion, which we are calling Abba Ima. I am a bee beast. And here is why. You may disagree, Allison, but I think that we have just seen the first great political commercial of this election. Everyone is talking about it. The setting is a round family dinner table, probably Shabbat dinner, probably in a nice place like Ramad Aviv or Herzliya or Savion. At the table are four people. There's a couple in their 60s, the woman in a nice maroon sweater with a good deal of tasteful jewelry, well put together. And across from her a man wears a slightly garish orange tie over a pale purple button down shirt. He has a gray beard and long gray hair gathered into a ponytail. And There are their two children. A son, probably in his late 20s, with an heir of a young man who has made it, and a daughter a few years younger, probably in college, staring into her phone. In front of each person is a full glass of red wine. As a scene opens, the woman The Ima says, turns out that Shabi's son watches Channel 14, which is that right wing Rupert Murdoch ish television network that we were just talking about. In the last segment, the man, the Abba, harrumphs, disgusting. The son shakes his head as the daughter tap tap taps into her phone and then the son clinks his spoon against his wine glass and says, ima Abba, I want to tell you something. The father says, you're gay. The boy says, what? The mother says, maybe let the kid tell us himself that he's gay. The sister says, wow, coming out of the Closet is so 2019. The son says, I am not gay. The mother says, adi, we will always love you. The father says, let the kid speak. The boy says, I am right wing. The father spits out his wine onto the carpet. The mother covers her face with her palms and says, okay, okay, we'll get through this together. The father says, everything is okay. No one is perfect. You right wing? You mean Bennett Eisenkot? The girl looking into her phone and says, whoa, that is so not right wing. Boomer. The boy says, I am a b beast, a supporter of Bibi Netanyahu. The mother gasps. The father clenches his fists and says, how can this be? You work in high tech. The mother screeches. She hyperventilates. My son is a b beast. Anything but a b beast. The father says, but you read books. You are in high tech. You are cultured for God's sake. Sake. The boy says, what's that got to do with it? The girl says into her phone, listen, they're fighting here. It's explosions because my brother said he is a b beast. They're insane. I swear on my mother, I can't stand them. The mother faints into the layer cake on the table in front of her. The boy cries, ima. The father says, they brainwashed him in Miluim in the reserves. The girl says, he was in Shmona Mataim, the mostly leftist high tech unit. The boy says, call the ambulance. Can't you see she is suffocating in the cake? The girl says, whoa. Calling is so 2019. The boy shouts, EMA. And administers CPR. A voiceover says, you are not alone. More than 2 million right wing voters each year face discrimination, anger and hatred just because of their political opinions. Google a B beast is not half a human being. The boy then shouts, don't go into the light, Ima. The father says, but what's so wrong with being gay? You couldn't be gay and seen since the video has come out. Everyone has been talking about it. Like I said, LGBTQ groups have condemned it, saying that it makes light of coming out, which can still be hard and fraught and heartbreaking even in Israel of 2026. Shmuel Rosener, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, which everyone knows is my favorite People Policy Institute, wrote in Mari that in the video, Prime Minister Netanyahu too impatient to wait for some left winger to insult the Likud voters, now that Yahoo's Garbus of blessed memory is gone, that Benjamin Netanyahu himself created a synthetic left wing insult of the right for him Netanyahu to use in his campaign for re election, which analysis I think sounds true, at least to me. Another interesting response to the video is a poll that the Kantar people did in which they asked the people they were polling whether or not they had very close family members who planned to vote for the opposite case camp than they themselves planned to vote for. Half the people in the poll said no, but 30% said yes and 20% said they did not know. Which is to say, as a matter of fact, lots of families are mixed in the way the family in the commercial is. The question of how many of those families had one or more members suffocate to death in a layer cake was sadly not included in the polls.
- [46:39]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
What a way to go. Sounds good to me.
- [46:43]
Noah Efron
So, Alison, I've already said I think this commercial is kind of brilliant and kind of effective because I think it captures something that maybe matters to voters. At the very least, we know that it captures seemingly everyone's attention for many news cycles. Actually, it was reported in every newspaper that I read and from the ultra orthodox all the way to the most left wing, and it was discussed on every TV network. Why do you think that this video made such a splash and do you think it tells us anything about what, what these elections are going to be about if Prime Minister Netanyahu has his way?
- [47:18]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Well, these elections are going to be bad and disgusting and ugly and there's going to be all kinds of mud thrown. So I would say that probably this is a kind of a light version of what the election campaign is going to be about. Mind you, it reflects reality a little bit because the younger generation is trending more right wing right, as far as I can see when I've looked at polls. So it's not completely off base in terms of reality. I think the analysis by Rosner has it has it down in that, you know, instead of waiting for the infamous statement by some stupid elite member, you know, putting down the, putting down the primitive right wing crowds. Like, as you said, Yair Garbuz before him, what, Dudu Topaz, There was a famous statement about chak Shakim. Yeah, chak shakim. So like, yeah, why not set up a straw man? Why not, you know, put it, you know, in front of there. Why wait for somebody to say it, you know, have somebody in a commercial say it again. The right has been in power now forever, for such a long time, with the exception of our one year government of change. And yet how does Netanyahu get his base out? How does he get his voters out? By a narrative of victimization. The elites are out to get us. The parents symbolize the Supreme Court, academia, the elite media. He does, he doesn't win on being, wow, I'm the big powerful prime minister who has been controlling the country for so long. He gets them out on, I'm like you, they all hate me, they hate you, and we're all victims together.
- [48:55]
Noah Efron
So I have a question about this, exactly. I think that you're right, but my question is, why is this still effective in your view?
- [49:03]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
You know, I think anyone who looks at Trump's America can see how it's effective that again, they hate us. It's, it's much more about who you're against and who you're not rather than who you are. It's, you know, partners in being looked down on or spit on. It's very powerful emotional stuff and it gets people to vote against their economic interests.
- [49:27]
Noah Efron
But. Absolutely. But again, I feel like I must seem like I'm pretending to be a simpleton, but I'm in fact a simpleton about this. I see that you're right about that for sure. It's hard not to see. I still don't exactly understand why it works, except for, I mean, I'm not gonna be cool here. I think that there's some truth to it somewhere. I mean, I think that, like, it used to be clear that in the 1960s, when Begin came in the 1970s, there was this huge well of rage among people that had been Israel's underclass, who were, I think now we can say, you know, with looking at the historical record, were completely right, that they had been kept out of power, kept out of influence, that they had been condescended to, that they had. And so back then it was very, very clear. You had all these immigrants from Morocco and Iraq and who were treated like they were less than in very straightforward ways, and they resented it. You don't so much have that in the sense, same crass way now as you did. So what is it that you don't
- [50:41]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
think it's still lurking? You don't think people still feel it?
- [50:44]
Noah Efron
But is it residual? Is it people that, that are feeling the insult of their parents still? Which is one possible thing. I'm sure that that's an element of it or like one of the. What you've heard me say a million times before is that, that, well, if somebody feels like the university, like the, the smarty pants at the university are mostly Ashkenazim and they're mostly pretty condescending towards religious people and towards Faradim, I have said a million times, I think that that's right, like I live in that world and I think that that's really the way it is. They really are condescending. And the courts seems to me to be less true than it was in the past. In the past, you know, 15 or 20 years ago, certainly 50 years ago. I think that was very true about the courts, but I don't see it now. Now the courts seem to me to be much closer to everyone. There are a lot of rel. There are more Palestinians than there have ever been, but there are also more right wing people. There are more Mizrahim than there have ever been, including on the Supreme Court. So I'm just trying to understand the secret of the durability of this argument and whether it is simply because there are elites in maybe, certainly the universities, maybe the media, maybe to some degree the courts, and I don't know exactly where else, maybe high tech, maybe business, I don't know. That's one solution. One answer is they're right. They're perceiving something that's still there. And the reason why it still has its power is because the thing that makes them feel like they're being told they're less than is still out there all the time.
- [52:21]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
You don't think that, say you're going for a high tech interview for a job or something that someone still feels like if they have a Mizrahi last name and that they say their original originally from Dimona, that that's something that they still need to overcome, that there's still a stereotype that they. I don't think that you can say that these things have, you know, disappeared from Israeli society. And also, you know, it doesn't have to be perfectly accurate to be used in a campaign commercial, you know, even
- [52:49]
Noah Efron
the, to have it resonate. I mean, what I want to understand is why it resonates. We don't know if it resonates, but if it resonates, if Netanyahu is right and he's pretty good at this kind of thing, then it's because when he says this to people, when he says those people wearing ties and gathering their hair in ponytails and speaking all hoity toity around fancy tables, they hate you and they think you're stupid, if he's saying that, and I just want to know why people look at that and say, that's right. And what you're saying is in part because that's. That's right.
- [53:27]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Because that's right. Absolutely. And it's good. It's good ammunition. And again, I think you can make the parallel to Trump's America too, that he does exactly the same thing, especially that he's powerful, he's president on paper, he's billionaire, his friends are billionaires, he passes laws that benefit billionaires, and yet he goes to these rallies, right? I'm just like you, they hate me. It's powerful stuff. It works the world over. It's kind of sort of like in the lifeblood of all authoritarian leaders.
- [54:01]
Noah Efron
So then let me ask you this. Do you think that in this election where we're, you know, which is going to be three years out from October 7th, and all that has happened since then, do you think that it will continue to work or that the issues that people are going to vote on are going to be the more immediate issues of war and peace, of dismantling the courts or not dismantling the courts,
- [54:25]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
if the other side does its job and reminds people what it's really supposed to be about. And in that vein, you know, the immediate response ad by Gadi Eisenkot by one of the opposition members.
- [54:36]
Noah Efron
Oh, yeah, describe that. You sent it to me. It was really powerful.
- [54:39]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
It has sort of an echo of what the scene was in that commercial. You know, a table where there was a meal, the wine glasses, the wine glasses. And you hear the voices of the people who are in the Bibi ad. But the place is smoldering. You can tell it's been attacked. It's a post October 7th scene. And it's, you know, reminding people that basically what the BB ad is, is bullshit and that's not the real problems of the country. And you know, what is it relevant, these little arguments back and forth. BB is not bbs. If people are getting killed and slaughtered because BB was busy paying attention to this stuff, presumably, and, and not on guard, protecting the country on October 7th. It was very, I think, very powerful and effective counterattack.
- [55:21]
Noah Efron
So do you think, think that this is kind of the meta level, the meta question that's most important about these elections is whether attention is going to be on those traditional issues of those elites have fucked you and I, Netanyahu, am the only one that will speak for you versus remember how you felt abandoned on October 8th by this government, without which October 7th never would have happened. Remember that and vote from that. Is that what the election's gonna be gonna hinge on?
- [55:59]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Partially. But I don't think this message is gonna be the only sort of arrow in Netanyahu's bag of tricks. It's one of them. It'll be one of them, but I think it will really focus on whatever it is that he puts to distract or to make people not think about the failures of October 7th and how he was responsible for them. I mean, you know, his huge efforts to prevent any kind of inquiry with facts that people can point to about it. I think it's going to be a great deal about that, about him throwing up any kind of smoke and mirrors and distractions that he can in order to distract people from the fact that. That his government was, you know, responsible to a great extent or his sort of. He was in charge that it all took place on their watch. And both that and the prosecution of the war and the hostages and all of that stuff, as much as he can, shove that into the back and into the, you know, as far back of people's minds as he can and try to pop up anything he can get people talking about things like this, commercials like. Yeah, I think that that is going to be the direction of the campaign. I can't say that this is precisely what it's going to be about, but, yeah, it ain't going to be pretty. Noah. Sorry.
- [57:14]
Noah Efron
I guess with that, we will end, though. Itay has asked us to add as a public service that you should always be careful to keep your layer cakes toward the middle of the table more than half a meter your face, and also immediately clear soup bowls once they're done, because those also potentially provide.
- [57:34]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Drowning. Drowning. Drowning's a danger.
- [57:36]
Noah Efron
Kinds of danger.
- [57:37]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Good to know. Good to know. Safety first.
- [57:39]
Noah Efron
Now listen to this, Chevy. That song is new music by Yonatan Adi Ben Chaya Rochel Razel, whom we look forward to seeing perform it live in the best of health, hopefully very soon. And now it's time for our other country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of US describes something that may have surprised you or amused, delighted, or enchanted and sorceled, or possibly even floored us as we wended our way through our world over the last little while. Alison, what is your. What a country.
- [59:49]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
Well, I am back from a fabulous vacation that included not one, not two, not three, but four Broadway experiences.
- [59:57]
Noah Efron
Wow.
- [59:57]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
I did the Binging on Broadway thing. I saw two great plays, two great musicals. And that might make me depressed to come back to an Israeli cultural backwater, but no, with perfect timing, my husb grabbed tickets soon after my return to the closest thing that Israel has right now and probably has ever had to a splashy Broadway experience that stars one of his clients, pop star Lee Biran.
- [60:25]
Noah Efron
Wow, cool.
- [60:35]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
It was the local production of the Priscilla Queen of the Desert, produced by none other but than our national theater, Habima. Now, about Habiba, which I'm sure no one knows all about. Founded in 1913 in Moscow, it is the first national theater of Israel and it is also the world's first professional Hebrew language theater. Fleeing persecution and censorship in Soviet Russia, it relocated from Moscow to tel Aviv in 1931. Now I'm trying to imagine, imagine, you know, if they could be in a time machine at the turn of a century, this group of, I'm sure what were very serious actors from Russia transported in time. Could they manage to imagine a century later in the theater that they founded drag queens prancing around, gyrating on stage, making some very, very dirty jokes, singing and lip syncing songs like Boogie Wonderland and Go west by the Village People. You think they would have enjoyed.
- [61:36]
Noah Efron
Their first big hit was the Dybbuk by An Sky. This is a long way from the Dybbuk, I think.
- [61:42]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
I think so. But you know what? I think they would have had a good time. Cause you could not not have a good time in that show. It was very true to the original Broadway show, which was based, of course, on the 1994 Australian film. Quite light on plot, heavy on the glitter and spectacle, very big on messages of pride and acceptance of lgbtq.
- [62:03]
Noah Efron
Oh, is this for Pride Month? That just started.
- [62:05]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
It premiered in March. It's been around long time. I just happened to have picked up tickets at the right time. So this was all kind of pretty cutting edge stuff. When? When in 1994, when it came out. Celebrating drag queens, you know, celebrating trans people. There was very interesting interplay in the songs between the Hebrew and the English lyrics. It's a jukebox musical. Jukebox musicals have popular songs. Not, you Know too much original songs. I think there are a few original ones. Lots of Village People, lots of Gloria Gaynor, lots of songs with the word boogie in them. And also, you know, very true to Australia and the Outback. The encounter between the drag queens and the people in the Australian Outback. It would be interesting to see a truly local adaptation. Priscilla, Queen of the Negev Desert. Priscilla, Queen of the Arava Desert. They could throw in some Bedouins or an IDF Air force base in the middle of the desert. I think someone should consider, like, doing a real adaptation. Anyway, it was very fun to get the VIP treatment from Lebey. It was amazing because he was sort of like a young boy pop star idol. And seeing him do the drag queen thing, he's amazing. He took us backstage after the show.
- [63:16]
Noah Efron
The.
- [63:16]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
The quick change dresses from costume to outrageous costume to outrageous costume. There are more than 60 people backstage helping people, like, switch in and out of their different sequined outfits. So I remember even on this podcast back in the day, I used to whine at the level of musical theater in this country, and it has really, really, really stepped up. In addition to Priscilla, there happens to be an excellent production of Cabare the Camry. Right now. People are talking about how Cabaret is super timely to Tel Aviv at this moment. You know, everyone trying to distract themselves while terrible things are happening in the darkness beneath the glitz and glamour. But Priscilla has less dark and more light and very inspiring. It's super appropriate for the kickoff of Pride Month in June and on the eve of the parade, which is this weekend, I believe. And it's also a little pushback on some of the creeping religious fundamentalism in the current government. And of course, in these hard times, we all need to be reminded of Gloria Gaynor's important message of optimism in the face of hardship. I will survive.
- [64:25]
Noah Efron
Oh, that's wonderful. And you just suddenly made me aware a light went off that my new favorite genre of music is songs with the word boogie in them. It's a great genre. So I was biking through B' Nai Brak to the university this past Sunday. Now, B' Nai Brak is maybe the last three kilometers of a 10 kilometer ride, but it is the most treacherous part of the trip for sure, because there are not many bikes in Bnei Brak, which is kind of odd because you'd think that a Haridim neighborhood where fewer people have money for cars would have lots of people on bikes, but I guess it's just not really done. Maybe bikes don't go well, with the clothes that Haredim wear, those long coats and long dresses, I don't know. But I do know that there aren't very many. And also because Bnei Brak is kind of a poor city, lots of people don't pay full property taxes and it's expensive to run a city with so many K. And also there's all those tax free and charitable organizations, places that don't pay taxes. Anyway, what I'm getting at is there are lots of potholes in the street in the city that does not have the money to fix them. Plus, it's just the fact that people in Bnei Brak drive like crazy people, I don't know why. So every time that I've ever been hit by a car on my bicycle, save for one, and the number of times I've been hit by a car on the bicycle, which is five times over the past couple of decades, that's if I only count the ones that are serious enough so that my bike won't work anymore afterwards. And in two cases where I had to go to the hospital, which criteria were not at all met this past Sunday, when I was hit by a bus in Bnei Brak, and probably hit is too strong a word, I was riding on the right side of the road, coming up to a bus stop, and a bus behind me sped up and then swung left, you know, away from me, and then cut sharp to the right to make it to the stop just before that I could get through it. And in doing this, the bus squeezed me toward the curb and I was going fast and I didn't want to go over the curb, so I kind of stopped fast and the bus sort of sideswiped me, grazing my arm just on the top of my elbow, sanding off a little patch of skin before coming to a halt itself to collect passengers at the bus stop. And I was not really hurt and nothing had happened to my bike, but still there I was bleeding. And definitely I was mad at the bus driver about the whole thing. So I walked my bike around the back of the bus and up, up the left side of the bus until I got to where the bus driver was and his window was wide open because it was one of those beautiful, still spring days here. And I said, hey, Nahag, you just hit me with your bus. And the guy looked shocked and he said, what? And I said, I was riding my bike up the street and you cut me off. I'm sure you saw me. And you scraped the skin off my elbow, which I held up for him to see the blood, which, thankfully, was more impressive than you'd ever think would come from the, frankly, not very big scrape above of my elbow, but it was dripping all down my arm and onto my shirt. By now, the kharidim getting on the bus all crowded around the driver, you know, up. Going up to the window to hear what I was saying. And I, on the street, was suddenly surrounded by, I don't know, 4, 5, 6 Kharidim, who came from nowhere to catch whatever it was that I was saying, whatever it was that was being said between this crazy man in the bike helmet and the bus driver. And the driver said, I did that. And I said, in fact, you did. And he said, but I didn't see you, about which I have my doubts. But I said, I guess that was the problem. I was there. You could kill someone on a bike with your bus. I was mad. And he said, but are you okay? And I said, well, I'm bleeding. And I showed him my elbow again. And he said, now, I think with something like concern, but are you okay? And I said, kind of resigned, yeah, it's really nothing. And he said with relief, well, that's the thing that matters. And I. And I said, what matters to the next guy on the bike is that you don't cut him off like you did for me and you don't knock him down. And he said, oh, certainly, Betach. And honestly, I was not altogether happy with everything that had gone down, because I was still thinking, I'm pretty sure this guy's gonna go away. Not with the moral of the story is treat bicyclists with care because you could kill them. Lessons from what had just happened, but with some other lesson or maybe with nothing at all. So I sighed and I said, okay, okay. And the driver, like, picked up my dismay, and he wasn't having it. He said, but you can't go. We can't part while like this. While you're upset, we can only part as friends. He said. And I said, it's fine. And he reached his hand out the window and he grasped my hand and said, no, brother, it's not fine if you ride away. And we are not friends. And by now, the crowd around us on the bus and on the street, it was pretty big, blocking traffic, which made me feel kind of bad for all the other people in the cars who were starting to honk. And I said, well, I am not sure that you really get what I'm worried about, about the people on the bicycles. I think that in the same situation you would do the same thing again. We were still holding hands at the time and he said, no, no, I do, I do, brother. I get it. I would not do the same thing again. I would have done the same thing again before if you just rode away. But now that we're friends, I'm not gonna do that same thing again. Really, I'm glad that you're okay. One of the men standing right next to me said, chukoyach. And people, I do believe the bus driver. I can't help myself. What's more, riding away, I was surprised that even though my elbow hurt and even though there was blood now all over my shirt, I was feeling pretty good because I think of the friend thing, which is nuts. But then again, there you have it. And that brings us to the end of our show. Thanks we Tai Shellam, our station manager, without whom they're doing thanks to Oshibo Lim, my favorite band from Kibbutz Geva. They give us some music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you, Alison. Thank you Natalie. Thank you very much, Miriam. 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 debt. 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 best through Patreon. We are eventually going to answer. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star, maybe one that starts with this. The Promise podcast. Say what you will, it is still better than eating worms, nails and shards of glass. Dot ta da. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that tomorrow as we record on the first Friday in June, we will celebrate International Donut Day, so stipulated in Chicago way back in 1938 to honor the Salvation army lassies of the Great War who served doughnuts to soldiers who coincidentally were known as doughboys. But apparently for a completely unrelated reason that it's been lost for history. Which we know because doughboys as a slang designation for American infantry soldiers actually predates the invention of donuts themselves. Doughboys appears first in the army and Navy Chronicle in 1835. While the donut was invented by Hanson Gregory In Maine in 1847, what we know for sure is that in 1917 the Salvation army sent a mission to France and decided to set up a network of quote unquote service huts that would keep American soldiers overseas flush with cakes, cookies, pens, papers and stamps. There was also a clothes mending service. 250 women volunteers went over and Ensign Margaret Sheldon and Adjutant Helen Purviance came up with the idea of giving out free donuts. Not long passed before Sheldon wrote in her diary, quote, Today I made 22 pies, 300, 700 cups of coffee. End quote. The women volunteering in the huts came to be known as donut girls two decades later in 1938. Like I said, 88 years ago, the first Friday of every June was set aside to honor these Donut Girls, a tradition that has been honored the world round every year since.
- [72:25]
Alison Kaplan Sommer
The World Round.
- [72:26]
Noah Efron
Oh yes, yes, absolutely. It works on so many levels. This is such a profound thing. It's like the Kabbalah. And I know that International Donut Day is be to going to be great, what with its deep symbolism about the value of giving selflessly of yourself to people who are themselves giving selflessly of themselves. Plus there's the glazed and the frosted, jellied, creamed, sprinkled, chocolate chipped twists and did anyone say crullers? It is going to be a sweet, sweet dream of a day. But then I just know it. It'll be over. Day old, gone stale. Not to be back for a whole new another year. Not so the promised podcast. We will be back for you next week and most every week. Delightful at first, but then it will start to be too much, too sweet, too greasy, oleogenous. And after a while you'll feel like you understand why empty calories are called empty because they leave you feeling as though surely something is missing from your life. You've got to change something. At the very least, you've got to change the crap you listen to in your earpods when you're at the gym. And ultimately the whole affair will leave you nauseated and pondering existentially how everything is, but everything has a big hole right in the middle. And no, Leonard, that is not how the light gets in. Not in any case on this the Promise podcast.