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A
This is TLV1. This episode may contain explicit language. And welcome to promised podcast brought to you on TLV1. The voice of the city that if you call with a question about, say, your property taxes or say, about parking, the person on the other end of the line representing the city with confident authority will in fact be located 75 km to the south in Sderot, the city on the Gaza border where 70 people were killed on October 7th and 8th and 9th, and from which all but 1500 of the 37,700 residents were evacuated. Right after that, spending long months in other places, slowly, slowly, slowly coming back to the city, joined by others who decided that they would move to the place for the first time. Some because they just couldn't live with the idea of the town being hobbled by the attack. So they decided they would come join it. Until today, 39,350 people live in Stay Road. One more resident for every 25 people who lived in the place before October 7. But the economy in a place like State Road, it can be a bit like a shark. If it doesn't move forward, it dies. And when all the people came back to Stay Road, they found that the places where they used to work, many of them were gone. And it was around this time that in Tel Avivo, a decision was taken to expand its online and television telephone services centers. And somebody had the idea that what with telephones being what they are, and what with the Internet being what it is, there is no reason why in order for the people who work for the city to work for the city, there is no reason for them to actually be in the city. And that why can't the newest city workers be in a city far away where the people really need the jobs? And this is how it came to pass that the latest ribbon cutting for the newest Tel Aviv Jaffo Municipal Service center took place in Sderot at the doorway of a room with a huge Selaviafo logo painted on the wall. And this is how it came to pass that the newest employees of the city are people, some of whom not all that long ago returned to their homes in Sderot, and some of whom are people who, like Ruth to Naomi, joined their future to the future of Sderote in an wherever you go, I will go where you live, I shall live sort of way. And arguably, nothing captures the spirit of this city that we love so well, Tel Aviv Jaffo, better than exuberantly doing the most bread and butter Aleph Bet thing that every city always does, which is make jobs for the people who live in the city and vote in the city, by the way, and not doing this most bread and butter Aleph Bet thing because let's be honest, there are people who live and vote somewhere else who, when you get right down to it, can do the job just as well but need it more because the city has got borders, but the city's moral imagination, not so much. With us Today, speaking from TLV1's flagship studio in Jerusalem, which I should say is also not in Tel Aviv, is a woman whose own moral imagination and her concern for and connection with the others have no municipal boundaries and stretch to wherever there are people who maybe need a hand and then stretched back again. Obviously, the woman I am describing could only be Linda Gradstein. Linda Gradstein has long covered Israel, first for NPR and most recently for the Voice of America of blessed memory. Linda is also a lecturer in journalism at NYU Tel Aviv and the Hebrew University. And not too long ago she was at NYU Abu Dhabi. Linda has won an Overseas Press Club Award and an Alfred I. Dupont Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. Linda, how the hell are you doing?
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B
Well, yesterday was my birthday.
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A
Yay. Happy birthday.
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B
Thank you. And I actually spent a good chunk of it in Chavat Gilad, which is an outpost near the Jewish settlement of Kadumim, which I'll talk about a little later. But when I came home, there was cake and really good champagne and balloons and lots of jewelry and a delivery from my son in Hawaii of a huge bouquet of flowers and a massage from my son, who is currently in Gaza. So I'm doing just great.
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A
Wow, you did something right in the parenting area, I have to say. Your children are so lovely about these kinds of things. I haven't done it again.
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B
They really are. I mean, it's funny. My youngest said often he's just finished his army service and he often brings me flowers on Shabbat. And he said to me once he goes, I think it's a total waste of money, but it makes you so happy that I do it.
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A
Oh, that is wonderful. Now, as for me, my name is Noah Ephron, and I do not mean to boast, but I am reading that brilliant new book by Ian Baruma about the lives in Berlin during the war of all sorts of people, basically everyone who wasn't flat out persecuted, your actors and your teachers and your bureaucrats and your workers. The book is called stay alive Berlin 1939-1945. And as I read, I find myself thinking of one after another person who did not act particularly admirably that I am reading about, but they just did what they could do, I guess, to, well, stay alive. And I find myself thinking, yeah, I bet I would have done that too. And I guess I probably wouldn't have stood up for principle in that situation either. And I definitely would have spent evenings getting drunk and listening to music on the radio instead of joining some underground just like those people. And please believe me when I say I am not bragging. God knows that my folks raised me better than that. I mean, bragging is at least the one thing I would not do. But while I guess I have not managed to make that much of a place for myself on the high ground, I think that I am very, very nicely ensconced in at least the moral underbrush. Maybe like a vole or a shrew or a stoat or maybe like a weasel. And for me that has made all the difference. Today we got two topics of such great importance that we kindly ask that you dunk your phone in a pitcher of water after listening to make sure that this transmission does not fall into the wrong hands. But first, we have this matter that we are following with alert, interest and great concern as part of an occasional series that we like to call the Promise Podcast ponders with the prophet the promise of an appearance of a son or a daughter, of life's longing for itself. A few days ago, Sheer Siegel posted a video on her story with titles she added. It opens with Scheer's father, Keith, and mother Aviva standing in a living room that could be anywhere in Israel. Behind them, through the Trisim, the plastic louvered shutters that you used to find in most every apartment in Israel. You can see that it is nighttime. Aviva holds in her hands a big brown paper bag with handles, the kind you maybe get in a nice boutique, and the first title under that part of the video says, quote, they just this minute got back from Ben Gurion Airport after flights that took the whole day. End quote. Aviva Siegel reaches into the bag and takes out an intricately decorated canister. Keith Siegel says, what is that? How nice. Sheer Siegel's husband, Aviva, and Keith's son in law, Yuval Bar, or he's a medical student at the Technion and he's the one videotaping all that's happening. He chuckles and he says, open it, open it. Aviva Seagull looks at the fancy canister in her hand and she's puzzled and she undoes the big red ribbon tied in a bow at the top. And she takes the lid off the canister and looks inside quizzically. Keith Siegel says, what gorgeous packaging. Aviva says, the packaging is gorgeous. And then she hands the lid to Keith and says, hold this for me. And the title at the bottom of the screen says, are you ready with your earplugs? And next, Aviva Seagull lifts out of the canister from atop a poof of tissue paper is resting on a slim wand of two toned plastic, white on the one side, lavender on the other, and she regards it for what seems like a long time before she throws it back in the canister and throws the canister behind her. And we hear. And a title says, the neighbors almost called the police. In the video, Aviva Seagull grabs Shira Seagull and she hugs her. And the two women, mother and daughter, they jump up and down, up and down. And the last title says, that moment when I understand that this is the best present I could possibly give them after what they went through. End quote. Sheer Siegel and Yuval Baror got engaged a month and some before October 7th. In fact, according to the papers, Keith and Aviva Siegel were up visiting them in Haifa on October 6, 2023, and it was their plan to stay over for the holiday. But Aviva Siegel decided to drive back home to Kibbutzkvar Aza on 6 October, so she could start to put together an album of pictures for Scheer's and Yuval's wedding, which would be here before you knew it. It was time to get to work. After Keith and Aviva were taken hostage into Gaza, Schir Siegel and Yuval Bahor decided to put off their wedding until Aviva and Keith could be there. Yuval Bahor said to Sheer Sie that what he was waiting for specifically was, quote, the moment your parents take you to me under the chuppah, that is the picture I have in my mind. Freeze. On that moment, Shir, you are walking to the chuppah, Aviva on one side, Keith on the other. That is the picture I kept in my head the whole time they were captive. End quote. Aviva and Keith Siegel were taken together from their home in Kfar Aza to Gaza nearby, and they were held together too, for the 51 until Aviva Sigel was freed. When Aviva Sigil got out and she called Schir from the army camp outside of Gaza before she was helicoptered up to Wolfson Hospital in Jolon, where she was to be reunited with Scheer and with her other three kids, Shai and Gal and Ilan, and her twin sister Fiona. When she, Aviva Siegel spoke on the phone to Shir Sigl that first time from the army camp. The first thing she said was, did you already get married like you planned? 433 days passed after that, before Keith Siegel got out of Gaza on February 1, 2025, when he talked with Shir on the telephone from the army base just outside of Gaza, before he was flown by helicopter up to Ichilov Hospital, where he was reunited with Aviva and with Scheer, Gal, Shai and Ilan, and with his brother, Lee Siegel. The very first thing he said to Schir was, did you get married like you planned? Next week, Shir Sigel and Yuval Bar Orr will celebrate their first wedding anniversary. A year ago, Yuval Baror watched while Scheer walked to the Chuppah. Aviva on one side, Keith on the other. That scene frozen in his mind for almost two years. It was real now, not frozen at all, and not just in his mind. The day after Sheer Siegel posted her story on Instagram, the Radio News called up Aviva Siegel to ask her what she thought of it all. And she said, Sheer is our baby. You have to understand, she is 30 now, but still as a mother, she will always be my baby. And I have to tell you, when I was in Gaza, I did not think I would come back. And really, so many times there, we brushed up against death. We were always brushing up against death. I remember myself lying there on a mattress saying to myself, voila, I will not be at the wedding of my daughter and I will not get to see her children. And I would think about this and I would prepare myself, this is what my life is going to be. I will not get to see it. So for me to be here I am all the time pinching myself and saying, you are here. I was at Cheer's and Yuval's wedding. Keith came back, which is a miracle of its own. And as a bonus, I am going to be a grandmother. Another time I look at Cheer, whose belly is getting bigger a little, and I do not believe it. My girl has a baby in her belly today. Two discussions, our first being ain't your daddy's religious Zionism, as this week, the Religious Zionism Party has a primary of sorts, or anyway, what they call a primary, and it produced a list of candidates for the Knesset that seems to have very little in common with the candidates for the Knesset that the forebearer of the Religious Zionist Party, the old National Religious Party used to bring to the Knesset. We will wonder what this party is these days in 2026 and WHO and what it now seems to represent. And our second discussion is them as a favorite, I don't know, public intellectual of mine, maybe a socialist kibbutznik law professor activist named Ofer Sitbon, wrote in our this week that the folks who so avidly hope in the upcoming elections to send home Benjamin Netanyahu and to send his supporters into the powerless depths of opposition are all wrong about who these people we so eagerly seek to defenestrate actually are. Ophir Sitbone offers a big analysis of which we will try to make sense, while also seeking our own answers to the question who are these people who see the war, the courts, the rabbis and all the rest so very differently than maybe we do? 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. After social media D did its frenzied thing this week over the fact that campaign billboards for challenger Gotti Eisenkowth apparently lately blanketed areas in Cyprus where lots of Israeli tourists go and lots of Israeli expats live, we will ask whether or not it is smart and whether or not it is seemly to campaign to people, many of whom have left the country more broadly. There is more talk in this election than I can ever remember about getting out the vote from Israelis who live abroad, and we will wonder if that makes a lick of sense. But before we get to any of that, please listen with especially close attention this time to this. Take down. That song is Levad Levad off, a truly astonishing new record by Neta Barzilai Serenada. It's called, and it's seven songs all address in one way or another the crisis and painful, painful, painful breakup of Neta Barzilai and her partner Guy Raphael, who came back from Miloim in this war with post trauma part because his close, close friend Gilad Malho was killed up in the north and Guy Raphael could no longer sl and everything lost its order and being together. Two human beings. It stopped being possible. On Asaf Lieberman's podcast Echad plus Echad a few weeks ago, there's a long discussion he had with Nether Barzillai and it is sad and moving and one of the best documents of this war you'll Ever hear what it's like to be an Israeli in this war? If you've got Hebrew for it, you should listen anyway, the new record, I guess it's also one of the the best documents of the war that you will ever hear and it is terrible and it is beautiful and we will listen to a bit more of it over the course of the show. But for now, it is time for our first discussion. So, Linda, what does the Religious Zionism party in 2026 actually tell us, if anything, about religious Zionism in 2026?
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Well, the religious Zionism Party held its quote unquote primaries this week, and the results were pretty stark. I put the word primaries in quotes. Well, primaries typically signify a plebiscite among the members of the party to pick its candidates for general elections. Think of last week's primaries in the Democrats party, where all 112,000 plus members of the party had the right to vote, and almost nine of every 10 of them exercised this right. In the primaries of the Religious Zionist Party, a party that won more than half a million votes in the last general election four years ago, only 173 people had the right to vote in the primaries, of whom 170 or 98.5% actually voted. For comparison's sake, in the 2002 presidential referendum in Iraq, there were 11,445,638 eligible voters and all 11,445,635 of them turned up, and every one of them voted for Saddam Hussein.
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A
That's a really committed elector.
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B
Still, a 98.5% turnout in the Religious Zionism primaries is pretty good. The 173 people with the right to vote are members of the party's Central Committee, which includes sitting mks and ministers, party members holding official positions in the party, deputy mayors and city council members from the party, and founding members of the party. The official rationale for limiting the primaries to Central Committee members is that these are the people who follow most closely the goings on in the party and in the Knesset, and they are best suited to make judicious and balanced decisions about what the party and the country most want to need. In fact, there may have been some concern that primaries ostensibly open to all party members would be a public show of the weakness of the party. During the last primaries in 2022, there were 23,924 party members who were eligible to vote, and almost 20,000 of them did. Did. Although the party keeps a lid on this information, probably only A small fraction of that number of people have paid the 40 shekel membership fee. That's about 13 bucks needed to keep their status in the party current since 2022. Some experts believe the party may have lost more than half its members. So limiting the primaries to just the Central Committee may have saved the party the embarrassment of a public showing of its diminished rank. Ranks when the 170 votes were counted, the rank ordering of the candidates was one Minister of Settlements and National Projects, Orit Struk, number two Member of Knesset and Chair of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Simcha Rotman, number three, MK Zvi Sukkot, four MK Ohad Tal and five Director General of the Yesha Council, Omer Rahamid. The Yesha Council is the umbrella organization of the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Yesha is a Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The Central Committee selected five other candidates, but in truth, unless the polls are very wrong or something dramatic changes between now and the elections, only the top three candidates have a chance of actually being elected. This is because the first slot on the party list is guaranteed to Minister of Finance and Minister in the Defense Ministry Betsal Smotrich, who heads the party. And he also has the right to appoint the number two candidate on the Knesset list and the number four candidate. This means that Orit Strzok will be third on the list, Simcha Rothman fifth, and Zvi Sukkot sixth. Right now the Religious Zionism Party is in an average of the polls at just under four seats. What is maybe most striking about the results of the primaries and the candidate list that seems to be shaping up is how ideologically homogeneous it is is for one thing, all of the candidates who were elected are settlers living in Judea and Samaria. They are all avid proponents of the market economy, except when it comes to supporting and expanding settlements anyway and letting the markets do what they will. They all support the renewal of Jewish settlement in Gaza. It is illuminating to consider for a moment who might have been on the list of candidates running for the Knesset, but is not. Two presently serving MKs stand out, Moshe Salaman and Ophir Sofer. Both these men chose not to run in the primaries, possibly because they understood that their chances of success were vanishingly small after they recently opposed the party's support for bills meant to ensure that Haredim Ultra Orthodox Jews be exempt from the draft. Moshe Solomon's and Ophir Sofer's position on this matter that Haredim must be drafted did may be a majority opinion among the people who voted for the party in the last election. And it may even be the majority opinion among the party candidates in the next election. But Balella Smotrich and the party itself lined up behind Prime Minister Netanyahu on this issue and demanded that all the MKs do the same. In the party today, there is apparently no place for politicians who support drafting the ultra orthodox young men into the IDF. Noah what is the religious Zionism party in 2026? What relationship does it bear to the religious Zionist parties of years and generations past? What relationship does it bear to people who call themselves religious Zionists today? And what might we expect of the party in the future?
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A
Those are some really good questions. I think the one that's easiest to answer is about the relationship that this party bears to its forebear parties like the National Religious Party all the years from the beginning of the state up until the 1990s when it basically ceased to exist and started to morph into other things. And that relationship, the relationship it bears to that is it is very, very close to the opposite of that party. That party was socialist in tenor. It was not at all drawn towards this harsh version of capitalism that people like Batsalo Smotrich and Simcha Rothman embrace so totally. And it was not at all a party of settlements. I mean, obviously the settlement movement started after 1967 and then really after the Yom Kippur War is when it started to really gain momentum. And so the earlier party didn't have that issue at the center of its agenda. But that earlier party looked like what religious people across the country looked like. It was heterogeneous to a large degree. It included people who came from all sorts of backgrounds, mostly from Europe. But there were a lot of people who were Sardi in background who also supported the party. It was deeply interested in what it viewed as being the ethical issues at the heart of making the country into a good place. Education was always the ministry that it demanded in coalition negotiations and usually got. And in its control of education, it was not at all deeply interested in trying to make secular people religious. It was interested in making education better and letting each of the different streams of education, the secular and the religious and the ultra orthodox and the Arab, each of them have more money to do what they felt needed to be done. And this party is really now, I think, fully a party of settlers, by settlers, for settlers. It is also worth saying that I think in the last four years this has probably been the most effective political party that we've had in the Knesset, it has done more to advance investment in the occupied territories than ever before. It has done more to dismantle the army's protection of Palestinians in the west bank than ever before. It has done more to build infrastructure in the west bank than ever before. And it has done a good deal to dismantle those small pockets of socialist economy still left for the rest of us to diminish the amount of money that the healthcare system gets and other things. It is it has truly been, considering how small it is, relatively six members of Knesset, I believe, at the moment, it has been highly effective at advancing its very, very narrow agenda in the service of a relatively small number of Israelis. Is there something that I'm seeing wrong
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B
about that, Linda I think you're probably right, but I also think that but, you know, if we look at the number, if we look at the army, the number of people in Miluim, the number of officers coming from the religious Zionist community is quite large. You know, they're really coming with a strong ideology, and it's having an effect in the army. This whole incident, this case in which, you know, they voted with the government in favor of haredi exemption, is, to me, just kind of hard to believe. And then the other thing is that, you know, if we look at they're all, as we were talking about, pretty extreme in their views, you know, supporting, you know, the return of Jewish settlement to Gaza. I don't think that that's something that religious Zionism might have, you know, wanted in, you know, 30 or 40 or whatever years ago. At the same time, I think there's also something common which is that, you know, God gave this land to the Jewish people. And for them, their belief is not only a national belief in the state of Israel, but it's very much a religious belief. They really believe that settlements are what God wants to see happening, and therefore, you know, they are simply fulfilling what God wants them to do.
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A
You raise an interesting question about what the relationship is between this party and all of those tens of thousands of religious scientists who are serving in the army and their families, and also the religious scientists that I teach with at Bar Ilan, which is a campus that's filled with religious Zionists. It's the Orthodox University in Israel, and I do not any longer have a good sense of this. To say that the religious Zionist agenda is perfectly coterminous with the settler agenda seems to me to be a mistake. And it is true that this party is hovering around the minimum threshold. They may not get into the Knesset at all. They've clearly alienated a lot of people who were their traditional voters, though a lot of people who were their traditional voters have gone further to the right and are voting for Benvir now. If you put together the Religious Zionist Party and Benvier's Jewish Power Party, then they still have more or less the same number of seats that traditionally, Starting in the 1950s, the religious Zionists always pulled at, but the difference between. And so it's hard to figure out exactly what to make of what has happened to this population. There's no longer any political representation for a religious Zionist who. Who does not support fully, who does not think that expanding settlements should be Israel's highest priority and that annexing the west bank should be its highest diplomatic priority, and who did not think that the war should be continued in Gaza, even potentially at the expense of the lives of the hostages, as this party did so firmly from October 7th up until the last hostage got back. They were always in favor of maintaining the fighting, even if it meant that the hostages were going to continue to wallow in Gaza and maybe die. So there's no voice at all in Israeli politics for someone whose identity is, yes, I am a religious Zionist, but who does not buy into that program entirely. And that mystifies me some somewhat.
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B
No, it's an interesting point. I agree with you. I mean, there is, but they're very small. There's a group called the Small Emuni, which are religious, who would define themselves as religious Zionists, but who support the left side of the party map, whatever, again, that means these days, and who, you know, you can look at it as God gave us this land of Judea and Samaria, or you can look at it, every person is created in the image of God. God, and therefore we have a responsibility towards the Palestinians. When I was in Chavat Gilad yesterday, as I said, and 13 homes there were burned in a fire a couple of weeks ago, which the army has determined was probably an accident. It was probably started by a cigarette thrown out of the window of a passing car. But everybody there is convinced that it was an intentional arson. And I spent the day with one couple, Ilana and Yehuda Shimon, who are among the founders of the settlement. It was originally an outpost, and it was legalized a few years ago. And it's, you know, caravans and stone houses, and their house was completely, completely burned. And to them, there's no question that their life in Chabad Gilad is doing what God wants them to do and redeeming the land and making sure that that land stays Jewish and whatever measures are necessary to do that. Ilana didn't really want to talk about the Palestinians. She said she doesn't really care about the Palestinians. She only cares about the Jews. And Am Yisrael Yehuda, after a while said, look, if there are Arabs here who say to me, what should I do? How should I behave? Then they could stay here, otherwise they should all leave. There are dozens of Arab countries they could go to, and if they won't leave peaceably, they should be forced to leave forcefully.
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A
Are these Religious Zionism voters? Is that why you're. You're telling about them?
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B
Yes, yes, that's why I'm telling you. These are Religious Zionism votes. Actually, I don't know. And they actually know Smotrich well, and they say he's done a lot for them. I don't know if they voted for Smotrich or Ben Ver last time. One of the two they voted for together.
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A
So.
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B
Right, true. Yes. And in fact, also Amichai Eliyahu, who's a government minister from Ben Gvir's party, came to the Shiva for one of the guy from the security thing, from the Security Commission Committee, who was killed in a separate attack. Although the two kind of came very close together. Anyway, they have no doubt of what should happen here. And I think that that certainty has kind of taken over the religious Zionist community. And I agree with you that it's very different.
- [35:54]
A
I'm not sure if it has. I think that that certainty has taken over the Religious Zionism Party, and I think that that certainty is overwhelmingly common in the occupied territories. But again, I don't feel as though I have a clear perspective because most of my exposure is in Bar Ilan and in Tel Aviv, which are both famously liberal religious communities. But I do feel as though there is a voice that has been boxed out of this community. And like you said, there is the Smol Emuni, the religious left, the belief left is a not so terribly small group. I mean, it's 5,000 people or 7,000 people or maybe 10,000 people, but that are organizing themselves. But in the Knesset, there is no one who even aspires to represent that voice. It is as though it doesn't exist.
- [36:52]
B
Well, I think. I mean, I think there might be another voice, but it's not by any means the dominant voice. I mean, even in Efrat, which. Which Cliff calls occupied Scarsdale, and you know, when you go and you talk to people there and you know, they're relatively moderate, more than half in 2022 voted for the religious Zionist, the Religious Zionism Party. So. And assumedly another chunk voted for, let's say, Likud or for Naftali Bennett. So, you know, I don't know how you know, is there really. And I think certainly since October 7th, there is a sense among even, you know, on the left that there's just no one to talk to. So I think there's kind of this move in all.
- [37:44]
A
No, but there's a difference between again, are you saying that there are no religious Zionist voices that are not living in the occupied territories? Because I just think demographically the people living in the occupied territories are still the minority of religious Zionists, but we hear no voices in from religious Zionists who do not live in the territories and who maybe think that the highest priority should not be giving still more money and still more money and building another road and building another settlement in the West Bank. I wonder if those people just exist, but they're politically homeless, right?
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B
I think that's probably true, Noah. I mean, I'm sure they exist and I'm sure they would say that the state of Israel has other priorities that are not necessarily expanding the settlements or certainly expanding the settlements in some of these outlying areas. And I think they are homeless. And there have been attempts in the past at moderate religious Zionist parties like Maimad, and they really have not been able to take off.
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A
Now listen to this
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B
foreign.
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A
That song is Serenada by Neta Barzilai of her amazing new record of the same name. And now it's time for our second discussion, which we are calling them and here is why. Now, one of my favorite, I don't know, public intellectuals, people who got smart things to say about the mess that we've gotten ourselves into, is a man named Ofer Sitbon who teaches at the law school in Tzvat and he heads something called the Clinic for Corporations and Society about corporate responsibility. And he edits an an academic journal on law and social justice. And he's a member of an urban kibbutz in Beit Shemesh named Tammuz, which is old timey in the sense that the members actually pool their income and raise their kids communally and all the rest like old fashioned kibbutzim. Ofer Sitbon is also brilliant and he is soft spoken and he is always fascinating. We worked for some years side by side in a think tank called Shaharit, which actually started this podcast. And I love the guy. If you're someone like me, and I can only assume that you are. Ofer Sitbone ticks all the boxes and then some. And I tell you all this because the other day Ofer Sitbon published an essay in Aharis that I think is important. The headline the editors gave to the thing is, quote, the opponents of Israel's liberals aren't conservatives, they are reactionaries. In the essay, Ofer Sitbon tries to give a theory of what for him and for me and maybe for you, though maybe not, is the other camp, the camp that votes for Prime Minister Netanyahu maybe happily the camp that thinks that the judicial reform is maybe a good idea. The camp that maybe had misgivings about stopping the war in Gaza in exchange for the release of all the hostages, no matter how desperately important they also understood the release of all the hostages to be. That other camp, Ofer Sitbon writes, is, quote, a combination of three groups that comprise the present ruling coalition. Supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Bibi Steam, the Khardalim or Haridi, nationalist, settler, public and the Haridi or ultra Orthodox population, end quote. But what, Ofer Seatbone asked, do those three groups have in common together? It's common to answer that they are all, quote, unquote, conservatives. But Sipone writes that is not really quite right. They are not just trying to keep change at bay and conserve what we got. They're much more activist in fact than this. What they are are, Auver Sipon writes, is reactionaries, a word that first was used to describe the 18th century Frenchmen who opposed the French Revolution and like their French forebears, according to Ofer Sitbon, the Israeli reactionaries object to the foundational ideas of enlightenment itself, first and foremost to the idea that all people are created equal to them. It's seems obvious that different sorts of people are, well, different one from the other, and they have different roles to play in society. This is like their fundamental principle, according to Auver, for instance, men and women, according to them, are different from each other in all sorts of ways and it is okay for men and women to take on different roles at home and also in public. Also a Haridi 18 year old might be exempt from the draft, while a secular or religious ordinance, Orthodox, religious Zionists or 18 year old would be required to go because they're just different, living different lives, doing different things, and so they have different rights and responsibilities. They were not all created equal in this way. Reactionaries tend to think that group identity sometimes trumps equality. A Jew might be subject to halacha, while a Christian wouldn't be. They're not equal in that sense. All of these things are. Are right. At odds with that old Enlightenment ideal that every person is born with exactly the same inalienable rights. What's more, Ofer Siphon writes, reactionaries believe that there is a natural order to things, or maybe it's a divine or godly order to things in which good and evil are absolute values. And they are not at all relativist ones. You do not choose what is right for you. Right comes with a capital R. And it's an objective thing, the authority of which each of us is morally obligated to recognize. And the way we come to recognize what is right and what is wrong, according to these reactionaries, is through traditional institutions, our shuls, our families and our communities. And once you see all of this, Ofertzipon writes in Arts, you can understand what makes the camp that votes for Benjamin Netanyahu into a cohesive bloc. And you can also understand the positions that this camp puts forward. The courts get under their skins because the courts these days anyway, are all about equality under the law. They do not know how to distinguish between a Palestinian and a Jew, for instance. They do not know how to distinguish between a woman and a man. These people in the other camp favor letting haredi boys out of the draft because the inequality of the thing just does not bug them. They fight to expand the power of the rabbis because in their view, the more ancient authorities, like rabbinic authority, are exactly the things that help us determine how to live our lives better. They oppose equality for, say, queer folks because they think it's the job of society to enforce what is normal and what is deviant. That's a fine thing, in their view, for society to do. In fact, it's like the fundamental role of society is to do that. So Ofer Seatbone writes that it's important to understand why these reactionary views are appealing for so many people. For one thing, he writes, they can today what the famous sociologist and Mizrahi activist Nissim Mizrahi has called rootedness. They allow us to like to. They agree with the intuition of many people that our identity is a function of our community and that that really matters, and that that should not be something that the courts are blind to. For another thing, they give life to a certain immutable order, which. Which, according to Ofer Sitbon, could be comforting in the rather anarchic marketplace of ideas that arises in liberal societies. They say there are things the society should be this way and not that way. This is right and that is not right. Reactionaries seek to live in what the great German sociologist Ferdinand Tunis called a Gemeinschaft, or a community rather than a gesellschaft, a society. Society is a colder and harsher thing than community. All of which, writes Ofer Sitbon, makes it a big, big irony that lots of the reactionaries, like the folks in the religious Zionist party that we were just talking about before, they champion a market based neoliberal economy, which in Siphon's view of things, is ironic because exactly the kind of economy that they champion is very corrosive of the kind of community that they champion. So everything they're trying to do with the economy is destructive of the Gemeinschaft y sorts of things like family and community by doing things like shutting down factories heartlessly or offshoring jobs heartlessly without a lick of concern about what it does to families and what it does to communities. So, Linda, my question is, does all of this make sense for you as an analysis of the people that support the camp that Bibi Netanyahu is the head of? Has Ofer Sitbon managed to describe the difference between us and them and in particular to give an account of what makes them tick? And if not, by the way, I would ask you, what do you think the glue is that holds all the people together who will go to the polls and vote for one of the parties in the present coalition, even after four years, that almost no one sees as anything but tragic and disastrous, what makes them tick?
- [48:37]
B
Well, I think he actually makes some very interesting points and really caused me to sort of think about this. I think, first of all, and again, this is obviously a generalization, but many Mizrahi voters vote. It's almost a tribal kind of identity. And some of them are bibistim or they vote for Bibi because that's what they do. And I think sometimes one of the things that we Ashkenazim sort of, you know, Supreme Court backers Ms. Is this sense of that Mizrahim still feel put upon by the society and still feel that everybody is against them, even though, you know, it's just not it doesn't bear out. In fact, if you look at the number of senior Mizrahim in very high places in the government, in the army, in business. And I remember my trainer who has changed my life and I'm incredibly grateful to her, is Moroccan. And when we were talking about she has nine children and we were talking about the army and I said that my son was going to agoz and she said, oh, that's not for people like us. I said, what do you mean, people like us? What are you talking about?
- [49:52]
A
And she said, personal trainers, no doubt.
- [49:54]
B
Personal trainers, right. And she said, oh, you know, Ms. Rahimer never accepted to agos. Now, that's simply not true. But that was her. Her impression. She said, oh, you know, that's for Ashkenazim. That's for rich Ashkenazim like you. And it really came as a shock to me because I had no idea what she was talking about. But I think there's a certain tribal identity. I do think. I mean, I think in some ways I have my own. I have a contradiction in my own view of this, because on one hand, I very much believe in equality and, you know, all of these things that you were talking about. And yet. Yet I also define myself as a liberal Orthodox Jew, which means I accept different roles for men and for women, and that there are certain things that men are obligated to do and women therefore can't fulfill those obligations, all of those things. So I perhaps have an internal contradiction, but I do think that there's a community sense. And I was talking earlier about Chavat Gilad. So I was with this family whose house was burned. And over the course of the day, they must have had at least 40 visitors from around the country, mostly from other Jewish settlements, who came with food, blankets, clothing. And they have this family that I was with, has 10 children. And she said they have more clothing than they know what to do with. There was this outpouring of support for them and for the settlement that I think think the sense of community there was really palpable. And each person who came, she greeted them with a hug and said, look at Am Yisrael. Look how amazing the Jewish people is. Look what they're doing. They're coming to support us. And some people, there were some very old people, some very senior people in the settlement movement. And to them, the sense of community that I felt there was really palpable.
- [51:52]
A
Yes. Still, for me, I love Ofer Sitbone, as I'm sure came across, and I admire him and I take him seriously. And when I disagree with him, it makes me think that I probably am wrong about what I think. But I'm not sure that there isn't a whole bunch of Gemeinschaft on the left. I think that that Yair Golan getting in his car and driving to OSF Gaza on October 7th and just going and saving people's lives, even risking his own, was like totally a gemine shafty kind of thing from a person who deeply embraces those enlightenment values of equality and all the rest. And so I don't think that there's nothing to this analysis, but I think that the real state of affairs has gotta be a lot more. More complicated than what he put forth, because also among the people on the other side, I certainly register a whole lot of antagonism between some people in the Likud and some people in the Religious Zionist Party, and certainly all of them in Haredim. They don't seem to be one great brotherhood to say that Haredim reject Enlightenment values. True, but I think pretty straightforward. You talk to any Haredi person and they will tell you that, I think, quite explicitly, talk to your average person in Meash' Arim about Voltaire, and I think that he will tell you that he has a strong disagreement with Voltaire, even as he imagined, even though he admires the encyclopedia as a work of art and as an intellectual edifice almost without compare in human history, is what the Kharidigay Emersharim will probably not tell you. But. I think that among religious Zionists and Likud members, I don't think that they're really exactly rejecting that foundational idea of equality. It is true that they're more happily tribal, like, more unselfconsciously tribal. So something that it seems. I don't actually think that the left, the secular left in Tel Aviv doesn't strike me as any less tribal than any Mizrachim I've ever seen. They just have their own things. We were just talking in the break about the opera. Go to the opera. I think you'll see that as a tribal ritual of a certain kind of Ashkenazi.
- [54:43]
B
So.
- [54:43]
A
So I just think that in the end, like, the categories are important, but this isn't quite right. We're more jumbled than that.
- [54:54]
B
Okay, you're right. But how do you explain, Noah, that in the latest polls, NETanyahu is getting 21 seats? Not Likud. Netanyahu, who I see as responsible for the greatest intelligence failure in Israeli history. And you would think that Likud would turn against him and would say, you know, you cannot be our prime minister anymore. And there was apparently an attempt for that to happen right after October 7th, but it didn't get anywhere. And if you look at Netanyahu and you look at Gadi Eisencott, how is it that roughly the same number of people are supporting each of them now? Again, it's very early.
- [55:32]
A
And so what is your explanation for that? I do have an explanation. But what is yours?
- [55:36]
B
I just don't know. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. What's your explanation?
- [55:40]
A
I think you wake up in the morning, you get dressed, you go to work, you look around you and you say, my God, this Jewish state is stronger than anyone imagined it would ever be. And it is more successful than anyone thought that it would ever be. My family is thriving in a way that no one ever could have expected it. And if you look at where my. My grandparents or great grandparents were living in Yemen or in Algeria, you'll see that our circumstances are incomparably better than those. And there is one person who is more responsible than anyone else for creating the Israel that we have today, and that is Benjamin Netanyahu. He is the one who put the economy on the footing it's on today. He is the one that gave us the army. And yes, of course, October 7th was a massive fuckup for which Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible, along with many, many other people as well. But by God, look at the whole package and you will see that this man deserves to be front and center in the pantheon of the Jewish people. Next to King David and next to King Solomon. That is who this person is. I am going to vote for him. To me, it seems like a completely plausible way of looking at the. The world.
- [57:07]
B
I just find it so hard to accept. And, you know, and after that ad that he did with Eisencut, which was so awful, and, you know, all of these things where I feel like he's just trying to sow hate and division among people, and it just. I don't know, I find it. I mean, maybe you're right. And I think, you know, we have. I have a tendency to, you know, we all have a tendency to, say, sort of live in our little bubble where people think like we do. And I think it is important to kind of go outside your bubble and say, what are other people thinking? But I just find it very hard.
- [57:47]
A
That's what I loved about this essay, is I think it asks the right question. I think it's like. I think. And I think it starts from the right premise, which is we think we understand who they are, which is that they're primitive, hateful, stupid people. But in fact, there are ideas behind their views. Let us understand them. I just do not think that. I just do not think that this category of reactionary captures those ideas. But the endeavor of figuring out what it is that makes them tick seems to me to be really, really important. Now Listen to. That song is Akcitosin off Neta Barzilai's beautiful, really astonishing new record, Serenada, which I could not recommend to you more and you can find it in all the usual places. And now it is time for our Vada country segment. This is a part of the show in which each of us describes something that maybe surprised or amused, enchanted and source sold fluged us as we wended our way through our world over the last little while. Linda, what is your what a country.
- [60:31]
B
Well, one day last week there was terrible traffic in Jerusalem, which is actually nothing new because the traffic and the construction has been unbelievable. It's just, and it's just getting worse every week. But of course I didn't leave enough time and I arrived at the venue where I was supposed to be at 4:15 when my timed ticket for entry was 4:30. The parking lot was jammed. I had to drive around a couple of times. I finally found a space, I went inside and I had to buy another ticket. And I waited for 20 minutes, which means I was already late for my time date entrance. Then it was a 15 minute walk and I got there and there was a line of very excited people waiting to get in of about, I don't know, 40, 50 people. And I joined the line and I was starting to prepare my explanation for why I had missed my time slot. And I was getting ready to play the journalism card and say, you have to let me in because I'm a journalist now. Have I built up enough suspense? This was not a rock concert, not a dance club, not a Disney ride, but a chance to see the original scroll of Isaiah.
- [61:44]
A
Ooh.
- [61:45]
B
And it's really cool.
- [61:46]
A
Oh, that is really cool.
- [61:48]
B
Now if you're not familiar, the great Isaiah scroll, it's one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls and it was discovered in 1947 by Bedouin shepherds in Qumran cave number one. And it is the largest and the best preserved and the oldest nearly biblical scroll known. And it measures about 24ft or 7.34 meters long. It dates to around 125 to 100 BCE, which makes it roughly 1,000 years older than previous any Bibles that were found. And it's made of 17 stitch sheets of animal skin, either sheep or goat. And there's 54 columns of Hebrew text and it has all 66 chapters of the biblical book of Isaiah from start to finish. And it matches the traditional medieval Masoretic text very closely and which shows that the Bible was copied with extreme care. Now where does this scroll usually live. It's housed in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum. And I'm sure a lot of you have seen the Isaiah, but the one that you saw almost certainly was a facsimile, not the real thing totally. And the only time that the real thing was shown was in 1965 when the shrine of the Book opened to the public at first, and then it was put into storage in 1968. In 2008, a very small section was shown to the public. And then they decided to bring it out in 2026 for the anniversary of, of the Israel Museum. And they planned this big exhibit called A Voice from the desert for the 60th anniversary. And the whole scroll was unrolled and it was briefly shown. And then the war with Iran started and they quickly wrapped it up and put it away. So they have now taken it out again and it will be there through September. And there's lots of rules around seeing this scroll of Isaiah. It's in a specially made 8 meter climate case imported from Belgium. Only 25 people can come at any time. And you're only allowed 10 minutes inside the room with the scroll. And no photography is permitted with flash. You're allowed to take pictures without flash. So once I got on this line, and once, apparently once, once they, once this exhibition or once they stop showing this in September, they say it'll go to storage and it probably will not be unrolled again for another generation because every time they unroll it, it's potentially damaging. So we waited online on this line and I was worried that they would say, wait, you missed your time slot. I think they felt if you managed to get to that line, you had a timed entry and we saw a short movie about how they found the case. And then we got to go into the actual room to see the scroll. And it's one of those, like, security doors where, you know, one door opens and the second door won't open until the first door closes. So we're all crowded into this little room and then the second door opens and we kind of look around the scroll and the writing is quite small and the Hebrew is slightly different from our Hebrew and the lighting is dim to preserve the scroll. And so I started looking for the words nachamu, nachamu ami, which is a chapter of the Book of Isaiah. It's read the shabbat after Tisha B'Av. And it's what we were going to read just a few days after I visited. And it means, you know, comfort, you know, My people comfort my people. And it's about God promising the Jewish people that they will be comforted. So. So of course I said out loud, hey, does anybody see Nacha mu nachamu ami? And it became sort of a giant, you know, treasure hunt or scavenger hunt for everybody there to look for it. And it turns out that it was right in front of me on the last line of it. And I stood there looking at these words from this piece of parchment that is, you know, almost 3,000 years old and that talks about comforting Jerusalem after the construction. And I had two powerful feelings. First of all, the Jewish connection to this piece of land is obvious, whatever your politics are. And the second idea was this idea of God comforting his people. And I think, you know, for me personally, where has God been the last almost three years has been very hard. And for everybody living in Israel, Israel since October 7th, it's just been an incredibly difficult time. But this is a promise from God that things will get better and that the people will be comforted. Ken Yehiretzan.
- [66:52]
A
Amen. Hear, hear. Well, mine is very different. My basic exercise schedule is on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I go to the gym and I lift weights, mostly machines. And on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I run in Independence park, which is just up the street for me. And it's one of the few places in Tel Aviv that has actual hills for me to curse when I'm running up them. Since last week, though, the park has been filled with mostly young women and girls, mostly walking from the bus stop on Haryarkon street, through the park and then down the stairs to the Tayele to the boardwalk and past that to the Chofani Frad, the separate or segregated beach. Separate, referring to. To the compound fact that the beach is surrounded by an eight foot high wall, meaning that it's divided from Hof Mitzitim to the north, that's my beach, and from the gay beach and the dog beach to the south. And the beach is also segregated by sex and gender. That's the other half of that compound fact. So it goes to boys and men on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, and it goes to women on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the days that I run in the park. Last week we had Tisha B'Av, and from Tisha Bavan till Rosh Chodesh Elul, the day of the Hebrew month of Elul, it is in the Yeshivish world, Ben Hazmanim, between the times, a period of several weeks in which Yeshiva's mostly shut Down Ben Hazmanim is like semester breaks that you used to get at university, or the break between terms and the unequal in length. Yeshivish Zmanim, or terms are Zman Elul, which runs from the first day of Elul to Yom Kippur. And then there's Zman Choref after that winter term, which goes from after Simchat Torah to the beginning of the month of Nisan, the month that Passover is in. And then there's Mankait, the summer term, which goes from the first of the month of Iyar, not long after Passover, until Tisha B'Av, which is the zman that ended last week. Obviously. Now, the Zmanim mostly don't directly affect women and girls in ultra Orthodox places, because their schools mostly have off for the whole summer, more like the schools that the rest of the kids in the country go to. But it does matter a lot in their lives indirectly, because Ben Asmanim is often the only time in the year when everyone in the Haridi family is off. The men are home from their yeshivas and the boys are home from their yeshivas. And in this Ben Hazmanim between Zman Elul and Zman Khoref, the girls are off from school. And having everyone home oftentimes frees up the women and the girls from taking care of the youngest boys in the family. The fathers of the family are to lend their hand to at least some of the housework, and it gives the girls a chance to, say, go to the segregated beach in Tel Aviv, though from what you can see in Independence Park, a lot of times a teenage girl is corralling a bunch of smaller girls in a Maria von Trappish sort of way. So for that girl anyway, Ben Asmanim is maybe less a vacation for her than it is a chance to take care of her little sisters in the sun and on the sand and in the water, rather than in a crowded apartment. In any case, to make it possible for these groups of girls to come here, the Ministry of Transportation adds special bus routes for Ben As Menim that collects people in ultra Orthodox neighborhoods, mostly in Bnei Brak, but also in the city of Elad, an ultra Orthodox city near Petah Tikva, and it takes them straight to the beach. There's the 850 line that in Benasmanim runs from six in the morning till nine at night. It has a stop on rabbe Akiva street, five minutes from where my Bubbi and Zaidie lived at 15 Ram, which I would have liked to have back in the day, though back then there was no 8:50 line to the beach in Tel Aviv, and there's a 2:75 line from Elad that runs from 6:30 in the morning until 10 at night. All of which explains how for the past week, when Lucy and I go for a walk in the park, and when after that I go for a run in the park, the place has been filled with women and mostly groups of girls, mostly packs of sisters, usually holding inflatable floats and tubes, which I see when I see them get off the buses that keep coming one after another in the morning up to the edge of the park. They seem to take onto the bus already fully blown up for some reason. So often after a girl steps off the last step of the bus, she like has to pull and pull and pull the float or the tube to dislodge it from the doorway of the bus. And then she finally pulls it with a thwack and sometimes falls down while she does it. It's a comedy that just plays over and over again in the mornings here now, I usually walk the dog first thing in the morning and then run right after that before it gets too hot, which is the time for shacharit, the morning prayers. And as soon as the sun comes up. These days, under most every tree, everywhere where there is shade in Independence park, there is a group of mostly girls, mostly young women, girls, each of them holding a pocket siddur, shuckling and praying with a stack of tubes and floats at their feet, and usually with a few very young girls toddling around them or sit on the grass nearby and playing. The whole park is a sanctuary in the sense of like a shul sanctuary. Yesterday, when I was with Lucy, first thing, while Lucy stopped to smell the leaves on a bush in the park, a girl, maybe 14, came up to me and spoke very shyly and she said, sir? And I said, yes. She said, would it be permissible for my sisters and me to pet your dog? She used the word kelev, which is a male dog. And I said, kalba. And of course, of course you can pet her. Her name is Lucy. And she said, kalba, that's better still. Then she said, she does not bite, does she? And I said, never. She has never bitten anyone. She is gentle, but she's also too enthusiastic and she will lick you and she may jump on you out of affection. And the girl said, oh, I would not like it if she jumped on me. And then still, one by one, she took her little sisters There were four of them. The youngest was maybe three and the oldest was maybe. And one by one she took their hand and she quietly led them to the dog and led them to pet Lucy, while the looks on their face were this mixture of excitement and also terror. And the older sister said so gently to each of the younger sisters, see, she is a very nice dog. She is a nice dog. She is a nice Lucy. And when she got to the littlest, she picked her up and she hoisted her over Lucy horizontally and she said, make nice to the nice dog. And the little girl patted Lucy and Lucy licked her. And the big sister said, lucy gave you a kiss. And then the big sister said to me, thank you, sir. And she said to Lucy, thank you, Lucy. And the girls gathered up their floats and their tubes and they made their way to the stairs that led down. And that brings us to the end of our show, thanks to Itay Shalem, our station manager, without whom there'd be none of this. Thanks to Achibo Lim, my favorite band from Kibbutz Geva. They gave us some music at the start and the end of our show. Thank you, Linda. Thank you Natalie. Thank you to all of our Patreon supporters for your generosity and support. It keeps the show going and it keeps the station going and it keeps us moved and grateful and very, very much in your debt in a day to day sort of way. And we'd like to thank all of you out there for taking the time to listen and we'd like to ask you to like us on Facebook and then drop us a line. Vi patreon.com, we are going to answer. After you do that, go to Apple Podcasts and give us a five star review. Maybe one that starts with this. I saw a back of the envelope Fermi estimate that said that somewhere between 10 billion and 70 billion person hours went into developing the technology that is in today's smartphones. This includes developing transistors and chips and printed circuits and radio and cellular telephony and antennas and Internet protocols and LCDs and LEDs and lithium I batteries and optic processing and GPS and accelerometers and gyroscopes and microphones and speakers and all the rest. Listening to the Promise podcast, you get the idea that those 10 to 70 billion human hours were definitely time well spent. Da da sa. Finish that any way you want. But before you do that, remember that today as we drop this show on July 30th, we celebrate the International Day of Friendship so stipulated by the United Nations General assembly way back in 2011, 15 long years ago, in Resolution A65 L72 International Day of Friendship, which says stirringly the General assembly, recalling the goals and objectives of its Declaration in Resolution 53.243A and Program of Action in Resolution 53 243B on a Culture of Peace and International Decade of a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of of the World, as per resolution 5325 and all its relevant resolutions Recognizing the relevance and importance of friendship as a noble and valuable sentiment in the lives of human beings around the world, bearing in mind that friendship between peoples, countries, cultures and individuals can inspire peace efforts and present an opportunity to build bridges between communities. Honoring cultural diversity Affirming that friendship can contribute to the efforts of the international community, in accordance with the Charter of the United nations, towards promoting a dialogue among civilizations, solidarity, mutual understanding and recognition, the General assembly decides 1 to designate 30th July as the International Day of Friendship and 2 to invite all Member States, organizations of the United nations system and international and regional organizations to recognize that day and requests that the Secretary General brings the present resolution to the attention of all Member States and organizations of the the United nations system. End Quote man, if there is a more beautiful and by beautiful I mean, of course, bureaucratic way of invoking friendship and its quiet joys and satisfactions, well, I sure do not know of it. And I am pretty sure I do not need to tell you that I love the International Day of Friendship. It is probably my favorite day of the entire year, mostly, I would have to say, because I know that friendship can contribute to the efforts of the international community in accordance with the Charter of the United nations, towards the promotion of dialogue among civilizations. But also because it is friendship that gives you the people you can go to see the movies with. Although it's mostly the promoting dialogue among civilizations in accordance with the Charter of the United nations. But it's really both things. Still, even though as we record this a day early this week, the International Day of Friendship has not even started. Still I know that as soon as it arrives, it will be gone. Just like the friendship between Julius Caesar and Brutus or Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, or Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung or Leon Trotsky and Joseph Joseph Stalin here one day, gone the next, leaving you to say et tu Stalin? And wondering how it all went away, not to return for a long, long time. Not so the Promise Podcast we will be back for you next week and most every week, reminding you that Mark Twain was surely right when he said that, quote, the proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are on the right end, quote. And reminding you that that if you want to hone your talents for friendship, it is worth remembering that rarely will you hear in one place so much that is wrong as on this the Promise podcast.