Episode three starts with a story. Julia’s first day working at a company with Palestinian colleagues. Being pulled aside and told not to mention that she was Jewish. Because of what “Jewish” has come to mean in a world where identity, state power, and violence have been fused together.

From there, we zoom out.

This episode is about origins. Zionism. The founding of Israel. The role of the United States. And the uncomfortable reality that what many of us were taught as a purely Jewish story is also deeply tied to Christian theology, British imperial strategy, and Cold War politics.

We talk about Theodor Herzl and the early vision of a Jewish state, not just as refuge, but as a project shaped through the logic of empire. We look at how that vision collided with people already living there, and how displacement was not an accident. It was part of the design.

We also turn inward.

What does it mean to grow up Jewish, steeped in stories of survival, persecution, and near-erasure? What does that do to how we understand safety and threat? What does it make harder to see?

The moral core of Judaism calls for care, dignity, and responsibility for others. And yet the systems built in its name are often rooted in control, hierarchy, and exclusion.

Then there is the U.S. We look more closely at the relationship between the United States and Israel as one of strategy, military power, and global control. And we name that real critiques of Israel and U.S. policy are getting tangled up with antisemitic conspiracy thinking.

So what are we left with? A recognition that Jewish safety cannot exist on its own, or at the expense of someone else. And a question that sits underneath all of it.

If the history and the “how” of this whole thing is a blueprint, what do we do now?

Sourced Audio Clips:

Joe Biden, https://www.c-span.org/clip/senate-highlight/user-clip-joe-biden-were-there-not-an-israel-the-usa-would-have-to-invent-an-israel-to-protect-her-interest-in-the-region/4962369

President Richard Nixon, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GUm74GXbN28

Fannie Lou Hamer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsxK0ODR6bU

All other audio is original.