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A
Hey, podcast people. I am off in Rio presumably making arrangements ahead of Carnival, which is going to start in 17 short weeks. And I like to be prepared for that kind of thing. And instead of a standard issue show, we will instead bring you most of a conversation that I had some weeks ago with Mark Shulman on his Tel Aviv Diaries podcast, which if you don't listen to it, you really might want to start. Mark on also has a terrific substack. He and I have been friends for decades and he brings real insight and perspective to Israeli politics and history. The conversation between us happened before the hostages came home and stuff has been edited out that is no longer worth hearing. But I think that what we've left in captures something, and I hope it captures something that you find to be of interest. We will be back with a classic sort of show next week. Now onto the show.
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B
This is TLV1.
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A
This episode may contain explicit language.
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B
Welcome everybody to today's Tel Aviv Diary. Today we have another special guest, Noah Ephraim, somebody who I've known for 14 years, from the time I came back to Israel 14 years ago. My wife and his wife have known each other since high school. So it's a long standing connection. So, Noah, please introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself and we'll go from there.
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A
It's great to be here. I am Noah Efron. Like you said in my social media profiles, it says I'm a professor of something somewhere. But I can share with you because I know this conversation is just between the two of us, that I am a professor of something called Science Studies or Science Technology and Society at Bar Ilan University, and I study the relationship between or the complicated relationships over time between Jews and science and technology. And mostly for the last few years, Jews and Zionism and technology and science, which is a really interesting story. So that's one thing I do. And another thing I do is I'm a member of the Tel Avivo City Council, the chair of the Environment and Sustainability Committee, the Animals and Animal Rights and Urban Nature Committee, and the Pluralism Committee. And those describe the the portfolios that I'm responsible for as a city council member, which are environment and Jewish pluralism, which is to say non Orthodox Judaism in the city. And then aside from that, I have a podcast of my own because we're all statutorily required in 2025 to have a podcast. Mine has been going for 15 years now. It's called the Promised Podcast and it is about politics and culture in Israel.
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B
You're A pioneer when it comes to podcasts, you were long ahead of the curve. Let's put it this way. You should be a multi, multi millionaire if you would have known what to do in terms of investing in other podcasts back then.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
What made you start a podcast?
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A
My podcast actually has an origin story, which is that I was having a conversation with my very beloved sister, who lives in New York and Brooklyn and works at Columbia. And she was describing to me back then in 2010 how she found that she almost never discussed Israel in public or in private with her, her friends. And I asked why, and she said, well, people here tend towards one of two groups. Either they're my leftist friends, many of them Jewish, some of them not Jewish, who have no patience for Israel and no empathy with Israel, and just think that the place should not exist at all. And then there are my friends who are more committed to Israel, and they don't seem to share the concerns that I have or the angst that I have about where Israel is going. And so when I speak to either of them, I feel as though I'm somehow alienated. And I had this idea because there was this new medium then called podcastery, and I had just started listening to WTF with Marc Maron, which had started just, I don't know, a few weeks before or months before. And it seemed to me that the conversation that my sister couldn't find or didn't find on her own in Brooklyn or in Manhattan could be had in a podcast between and among people who love Israel, are deeply committed to Israel, but share some of her concerns, and are willing to talk about it. And so that was the idea behind the podcast. That was the moment that it was born. And I was involved then with a think tank that I had helped to start named Shaharit, and brought the idea to the small group of founders of the think tank. And it seems intriguing because it was something new. Most of the people hadn't heard of it yet. So it started as a podcast of that think tank, but very quickly became its own independent thing,
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B
ahead of the curve. I tried something way back then because I do a weekly radio show, and. And we tried it as a podcast until Apple got rid of the automatic podcast creation, which it had a tool in the early days of podcasts, and it just wasn't worth the while, so. But very nice. That's very, very nice. You know, it's interesting because that conversation you're talking about is easier to have here than it is in America. In America, get into this Issue of, you know, where's the. You know, it's an issue that I've always had trouble dealing with. Where's the boundaries of where American jewelry can criticize, should be able to criticize. They can do whatever they want. But, you know, where is that line? And when I. Before I first made Dalia in 1975, I thought they should stay away from completely. You don't fight. You shouldn't say anything. When I came back to the States after living here for a while, I was much more. Okay, well, you can say a little bit, but not too much. You know, it's like, you know, if your kids served in the army, if they say, you talk a little bit, but. And today, I mean, that what you just described of 19, was it 2000, right? 2010. 2010. It's just that on steroids, it has
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A
gotten much, much more extreme. My view has always been that I think that Jews around the world should all speak about this and feel comfortable with their criticisms and with their concerns with questions. And I view Israel as being a project of the Jewish people and anyone who feels as though they have a part. If your heart aches when you read a headline that's unflattering of Israel in the New York Times, then I think that you should be part of the conversation if you want to be. But it becomes difficult in an atmosphere where all criticism of Israel immediately feeds into voices and political streams that I think really are deeply committed in the fullness of time to seeing that Israel ceases to exist. And so just having a conversation at all becomes more difficult. And it used to be then you could say, well, let's just have the conversation in Hebrew. Of course, you just don't speak Hebrew. And of course, now the language is not a barrier at all. So what you say in Hebrew is immediately part of the conversation, including the conversation of people who would use what you say as a proof text for their belief that Israel is somehow undeserving of being able to continue and to exist and to thrive.
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B
But also, I think too many of the Jewish organizations are fairly binary in where they sit on that, on that line. And so, you know, in some, you can't criticize at all, obviously. And it's hard to be involved in an organization where you can't be at all critical. And sometimes, from my perspective, I see J Street over the years, which many times I supported over the years, but sometimes sitting here, I sometimes think they've gone a little bit over. Over a line, too. So it's really. It's complicated. It's not. There's no simple solution for this problem. Of course, there isn't a simple solution for our problems either, but that's a different story. Before I. Before we get into our overall situation, I would like to expand a little bit about Tel Aviv, because this is called Tel Aviv Diary, and you're the first person I've had on who's involved in the future of Tel Aviv in any way. So. So, you know, for those of us who don't live, for the people who don't live here, I think we all share the fact we really love this city. And you've committed yourself to making it a little bit of a better city, not to mention taking care of the dogs in the city, which I didn't know you were in charge of. So that's good to know. But in any case, talk a little bit about that, the work you do and the vision, and why you decided to get involved on the city level instead of on a national level.
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A
Well, let me talk first about Tel Aviv in general, which. It is a place that I love. It is the place that I most love in the world. A lot of people love the place where they live. But for me, Tel Aviv has value that's both symbolic and practical that I think nowhere else in the world has. Nowhere else in the Jewish world has. Tel Aviv, I think, was founded as the first Hebrew city. And if you go back and you read what people wrote in 1909, when the city was first being incorporated, then you see that from the very beginning, people had this notion that a city that was. That is a Hebrew city, a city that starts organically as being a Jewish city, that when this was the first one in 2000 years of history to be that way was likely to develop in ways that would be unexpected and would somehow reflect what it means to be both Jewish and cosmopolitan and Western, that somehow organically, Tel Aviv would be a solution to the problem that many Zionists were trying to solve, what was often called the Jewish question in the 19th and early 20th century century. And the astonishing thing about Tel Aviv, for all its problems, because like every city, it has a lot of normal urban problems, and then it has some problems that are unique to the first Hebrew city. But for all its problems, Tel Aviv is a remarkable success at exactly what those first settlers of the city, first founders of the city, expected and hoped that it would be. Which is to say it is first and first of all, it is an astonishing factory of new Jewish culture that is deeply rooted in old Jewish culture. But still is new. It is a site of constant deliberation about what it means to take seriously being a human being, Democrat in the small D, Democrat, someone committed to liberal and humane values on the one hand, and someone who, just by virtue of when and where we live, are part of the project of creating a new Jewish culture. In that context, it comes up all the time the issue of, okay, so, so what does it mean? We view ourselves as a progressive city. I'll give you an example. The night before last, right now, or before Rosh Hashanah. And everywhere, all around the country, and Jews all around the world are saying slichot, which are these penitential prayers and songs that one says and sings in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, if you're Mizrachi or Sephardi, or in the two weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah, after Ashkenazi. And so all over Israel, there are slichot being said in Jerusalem, most dramatically at the Wall, every night. So the night before last, I was on the rooftop of the municipality building where we hosted for the second time. The first time was a year ago now. We hosted Orthodox queer slichot. And the person who sang most of the prayers and most of the songs, most of the PU team, the pietistic liturgy, said when he first started that he had grown up in a small town in the south of Israel, children, the child of Moroccan immigrants. It became clear that he was gay when he was very young, and it was hard for him in school. And at some point, when in his shul, they got wind of the fact that he is gay, they stopped calling him up without saying a word, without ever discussing it. They stopped calling him up to the Torah because a gay man didn't deserve to be called up to the Torah. And he said that he thought that he. And that his biggest challenge was coming to terms with the fact that he could not remain in the closet in front of God, but that he could not find a way to be out of the closet in front of God. And he said being able to sing these songs and pray these prayers on the rooftop of City hall in Tel Aviv was the first moment that he was able to come out to God and to realize that it was okay in God's eyes to come out. And one can think what one might think of that. The rooftop was filled with queer women and men, all of whom are Orthodox. There are several communities that pray together here in Tel Aviv, and some of these people who were there on the rooftop were not out to their families, and some of them were out to their families. But it was clear that something new and astonishing was happening in this place at this moment. Because, of course, you know, Tel Aviv now, for 25 or 30 years, has been. Has been one of the, I think, most accepting and lovely places to be queer in the world, certainly in the country. But almost all of the LGBTQIA folks that you run into are seculars. Many of them used to be religious, but almost none of them are because you think that, that. Well, that's an incompatibility between traditional Judaism and what we take to be our values in the modern world. The two just don't meet. And then here, all of a sudden, a couple of years ago, we noticed that in this city, it became possible again. It was the next step for many of these people to say, you know what I felt like when I came out? I had to give up my belief and I had to give up my practice. I had to give up my traditions. I had to give up that tie to my family. But now I realize that I don't. That I can have both of those things. And that is a profoundly Tel Aviv thing. There's nowhere else in the world where you would have. And in the country where you would have those hundred or hundred odd people gather to say Orthodox slichot before Rosh Hashanah on the roof of City Hall. And that is an example of something that is happening all over, all the time. I don't need to tell you that the most twice moving day of the year for those of us lucky enough to live in Tel Aviv, is Yom Kippur, because it is moving in the way that Yom Kippur is for anyone in the world who. Any Jew in the world who marks the day in any way at all, we have that in just the same way. And then at the same time, here in Tel Aviv, when no cars travel and no buses travel, the streets fill up with people on bicycles, mostly children. But when I say fill up in the evening of Yom Kippur, then there are everywhere you look, there are kids on bicycles, kids on scooters. It's this magical scene where streets that 364 days a year are given over to cars and trucks and buses and noise and dirt and danger. Suddenly, everything is open. And large herds of parents move through the streets talking to one another. And people who don't fast on Yom Kippur bring out their bottles of whiskey and wine and sit down. And as their kids ride their bikes here and There they sit down with their friends, and it's this magic that is spiritual, that is Jewish, that is created in this place. And the things that I'm describing sound esoteric. They each happen basically one time a year. But this trying to figure out what the first Hebrew city is and what it is not, and what counts as culture in this city and what counts as Jewish culture in this city is something is. These are questions that are being asked and answered and dealt with every moment of every day of the year. And it's thrilling to see. And we're used to being politically disappointed in everything, not just about In Israel, about Israel, but in the world. It's been a hard couple of decades. It's certainly been a hard last few years. And so it's a little bit shocking to look around and say and realize that, my God, this city is as big a success as the Most optimistic person 125 years ago hoped that it could be. I think bigger. I don't think anyone back then had the imagination to imagine that we were going to be producing the things that we produce. And the new Jewish culture and the questions and the debate and the lectures that happen in lecture halls and the concerts that happen in concert halls and the discussions that happen on sidewalks, in sidewalk cafes, and what is printed in the newspaper, not printed in the newspaper, and what you see online. I don't think anyone imagined that this, like, this richness, what the kabbalists call shefa, this plenitude of culture that is Jewish and is human and is European and is North African and is cosmopolitan and is parochial all at once. I don't think anyone had the imagination to foresee that it could be as successful as it is. And my life is just enjoying that from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. So now that leads to the question of why, you know, why did I bother to run for political office? And I spend a lot of time in City hall doing this and that, and a lot of time at meetings and a lot of time speaking with residents of the city. Why do I do it? And the answer is just to have the seat right at the front where I can see these things happen. Like, I'd like to think that maybe somewhere along the way I'm gonna do something that's gonna be helpful for this city. But between me and you, Mark, the reason that I'm there is because it is this spectacular seat in the very front row. To see this thing unfold in front of my eyes, and it just feels Like a miracle. Every day, the phone calls I get, the discussions that I get to sit in meetings, they're all amazing to see people try to figure out what this city ought to be, what this culture ought to be. And in the issues that I, in our coalition agreements that I demanded that I be given responsibility for and was given responsibility for of them, the Committee on Jewish Pluralism, it's very easy to see how that relates to what I was just talking about. But all the environmental stuff too, it's like, what does it mean to plant trees here? Where do we plant trees? What does it mean? How does one address an issue of social justice when one is thinking about what a city ought to do in response to climate change? What do you do when the Tony or richer people on the north of the city have measurably more shade than the less well off, mostly working class, mostly Sephardi and Palestinian, Israeli people in the south of the city and Yafo have. What kind of issue is that and how do you address it? And one thing that I can report, I'm very upbeat about all of this. I'm very upbeat about what I see all the time. For all the complaints that I have and that anyone could and should have about all sorts of things in the city. It's never enough. But what I see every day is that people are alive to taking seriously such issues. People are, people are interested in thinking what it means to be a moral and ethical city, and also what it means to be a Jewish city in addressing climate change. I love that. I just love that. So that's part of my. The work that I do in the city, why I do it, which is to say I'm the beneficiary of it all. And it's part of like, why I feel like I'm in the midst of such a big love affair with this city, which is a subset of a love affair that I'm with, that I'm involved with the country.
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B
But we'll get to that in a moment. I do have to mention though, of course, the other transformation that's taken place in the city over the last 15 years, and that's physical. The city looks very, very different today than it did 15, 20 years ago.
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A
And yeah, I'm sure it's a big building site. Is that what you mean?
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Yes, well, not only that it's a big building site, but there are a lot of big buildings, to say the least. Things that weren't here 20 years ago, but 25 years ago when it was only the Azraeli towers and the Shalom Tower were it. I still remember coming in 65 with my parents and going to the top of the Shalom Tower, and that was the only tower, the biggest tower between Rome and India or something like that.
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A
And that's just a down payment. I mean, just above the Yarkon, where. Where the state of airport used to be, they're going to be building 40,000 new units. The city has 450,000 residents now. In 10 years, it's going to have more than 600,000 residents. We're going to grow a third again in the next 10 years. And so the buildings are going to get taller and there are going to be more of them. And by then, there'll be a metro and there'll be light rail everywhere. Yeah, it's. It's changing physically.
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B
You've always been a bit of an after optimist, a little too Pollyanna for me sometimes, but you're definitely an optimist.
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A
I don't think you can live in
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B
this country without being an optimist. I think anyone who's not an optimist is looking for places to go, because you must be to be in this country.
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A
See, I don't consider myself an optimist. I think that there are always many, many streams of. Of things happening at the same time that can lead to all sorts of different places, and that in our discourse, we too often focus on, narrowly on one or two, often on the things that are bad, and we lose track of other things that are true and important, that have potential to lead to completely other areas. So I think that. That there has been a discourse in Zionism, you know, here I'm lucky that I'm a historian. I know you're a historian, too, that if you read the newspaper, read haaretz, starting in 1923, when it started, or 26, whenever it was, and always Israel is two years away, or the Yishuv is two years away from being totally destroyed, from just utterly destroying ourselves by virtue of our lack of moral insight, our selfishness, our evil. And then at the same time, this country has grown to be, not just to be a pretty astonishing success, but also in almost every regard, where we criticized ourselves so viciously. You know, think about what people said, about what it says about the Israeli soul, the way that they treat, you know, LGBTQ folks in the 1970s, after. After the United States, it had become an issue, but here it hadn't become an issue. You know, think about Marsha Friedman's speeches in the knesset floor in 1976 and 1977, and about how this country was irremediable, nothing good could come of it. It was the rabbis that were keeping us down. It was because people were prejudiced. And then all of a sudden it was different. And think of the discussion that we had about Ethiopians and how we treat Ethiopians and how we treat Russians and how we treat Palestinians within Israel, that Palestinians will never be allowed to get to Israel, enter the university, and now what, 35, 40% of all medical students are Palestinians. All of these things that we told ourselves by virtue of our own faults were impossible. That we were tumbling down into a ravine of moral disgustingness by virtue of our own lack of good character, they all turned out to not be true. And so I just think that looking back and seeing all the signs of something good that was going to come that we missed at the time, my point is just don't miss them now. Just notice that they're there. And that's not to say that I think that I doubt that you have anything more critical to say of our prime minister than I do at the, at this moment. I don't think that. I don't see things that we are doing that are bad, that are morally wrong, that are evil. I just see other things alongside them. And I think that they're not ghosts. I think they're real. And I think that it's important for a society to be able to see. And I think we've given ourselves so many examples to say, you know what, we thought we were gonna do a terrible job about this, but in the end we didn't. And you know what, we thought the country was gonna go in a bad way about that issue, but in the end, we didn't. So basically, like, I think that the story we always tell is always a declinist story. It's 150 years of the decline of Zionism and the decline of Jews. And history has time and again disproven that declinist narrative. And. And we still embrace it now. We have more reason than ever to be depressed about what's happening right now. But I don't believe in this decline thing. I don't think that. I don't look in the country and think that the trends are going in that direction, including about Gaza, which, between me and you, in 15 years is going to be beautiful and it's going to be inhabited by Gazans, by Palestinians, that's, I don't know, 15 years, 25 years, and people who lost their parents now in 20, 25 are never going to forgive Israel. It's not like I think then that's going to be great. Everyone's going to be happy, but that's going to happen. And the fact that we don't see that now says more about us than it does about the situation that we've created for ourselves.
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B
You're almost at the point where I wanted to end because I was so optimistic. But I want you to say three more sentences on your vision beyond what Gaza is going to look like. Two minutes. Your vision of the country 20 years from now, what you'd like to see and hope to see.
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A
I think that there is going to be some sort of peace and settlement with Palestinians that allow Palestinians to live social and cultural and political lives that are fully independent and fully expressive of who they are. I'm the only person that I know that doesn't really care that deeply about whether that happens in the context of a two state solution or a one state solution or condominium of having one land and two states. I'm skeptical about our ability to live together peaceably, side by side. So that to me it seems like the smart bet is to believe that the there should be a state of Palestine that's deeply intertwined, hopefully culturally, not behind a high, high wall patrolled by people with guns, but that is deeply intertwined with Israel, but still is independent. And I believe that there will be times when Israel will need to defend itself from Palestine. But I don't know enough about Palestinian culture. I can't say anything intelligent about it, except that I feel as though there is the potential for some kind of deep meeting culturally and socially and politically and morally between Palestinians and Israelis. But maybe that's Pollyannish. I really don't know. What I do know about Israelis is that we are geniuses at, for better and for worse, were geniuses at us and them, at dividing the world up between us and them and treating with such, you know, heartbreakingly beautiful empathy and concern the people that seem to us to be part of an us and feeling like deep alienation from the people who are them. And the story of my life, my like, just from when I was an adult until now, has been a story of seeing the US of Zionism expand and expand and expand to include, you know, black Jews and to include transgender Jews and to include and to include increasingly, though not, not far from perfectly Palestinian Israelis as part of a certain kind of us too. And I think that this genius for us, for defining and caring for an US and understanding that you must sacrifice for the other people who are part of an us, I see no reason why it can't expand to include Palestinians. Who share with Jews here a deep profound love of the land. Who share with Jews here bookishness. Who share with Jews here a certain irony about history. Who share with Jews here a bitter experience of being oppressed. Who share with Jews here a sense of that the world isn't just divided into nation states, but there are diasporas in that you can feel feel ties to people who live far across the seas whose parents may have known whose great great grandparents may have known your great great grandparents, but you haven't been on the same continent ever since. And yet they are part of this amorphous. I feel like there are profound commonalities that are going ultimately to win the day. I do not know if I will see it. I believe that I will. But I believe much more strongly that my children will. And God willing, when they have children, that their children will. That's where this is going. It's the only place it can go. We all know that we've been suffering 120 years of moving in that direction. We've developed resources on both sides. We're far, far, far from being able to do it. We've already agreed to peace agreements almost twice in the last 20 years. The time will come when we will agree to a peace agreement. And it will, and it will hold.
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B
Let's hope for the hope for it. I want to thank you and to all our listeners. If I don't.
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A
Thanks for having me. Sam.