Dara Horn: The answer to the Jewish question

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Times of Israel's What Matters Now, a weekly podcast, "Diving into One Issue of Facing Israel "and the Jewish World Right Now." I'm your host Amanda Borscheldon. This week joined in our Jerusalem studio by author Dara Horan. Dara, thank you so much for joining me today. - Thank you for having me. - It is such a pleasure. And you know what is even more pleasurable is that I didn't have to do any homework for this conversation. You have a book coming out in September, but I haven't received it yet. - Yes, no one's read it yet. - So we can talk about it a little bit without me having to actually do the homework assignment. It's still freeing. Dara, thank you so much. - Thank you. Well, it's also delightful to be here. You and I have spoken before, but only over Zoom. And so it's about wonderful to be even three dimensions and to be here in person in Jerusalem is absolutely a delight. - When I heard you were coming for the writers festival, which is going on right now. - Yes. - I reached out immediately and I said, "Okay, we need to actually meet the topic." I don't think we actually know what we're going to talk about. - That's okay. - I think hair and nails. - Basically sure. That's fine. Yeah, kids, recipes. - Exactly. - So just to mention the topic of the title of your book, it is I wrote it down because I have a terrible memory. Though the title is so memorable that's the first thing we're going to talk about. It's called The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, a love story for the living. So obviously this piggybacks off of a previous book that you wrote about people loving dead Jews, for example. - Oh yes. - So how did you come up with this title? - Well, so yes, I mean, you see my titles are, it's like I'm looking to get myself canceled in that possible way. That's like the goal, right? - Has it worked so far there? - Yeah. - Well, it's funny because I feel like, look, we live in an intention and attention economy, right? So it's the more outrageous, the better. It's always in the United States and probably here too. But people love dead Jews, which is a book we've spoken about before. It came out in 2021 and it's a book about, it's a book about the role that Jews play in a non-Jewish society. And ultimately the kind of conclusion of that book is that Jews are only acceptable in non-Jewish societies when they have no power. Whether that means they're politically impotent or dead. And so, no, it's sort of a critique of things like Holocaust commemoration, well, Jewish heritage sites in countries that no longer have any Jews. And it's things like that. And I delve into this history and the way Jewish communities sort of are forced into this position. - I was thinking about this even this week when I was looking at the lineup for the Khan Film Festival, which ended this week. And any smattering of Jewish adjacent topics were all about the Holocaust, a Holocaust journey or a hero even, but it was all Holocaust related. - 'Cause that's what you're allowed to do, certainly in the diaspora. And, excuse me, and so what happened was that book, that was my first non-fiction book after I published five novels. And I made a stupid mistake with that book because I didn't realize that when you write a non-fiction book about a problem, people expect you to solve the problem at the end of the book. And so I then had every reader asking me, coming to me at these events that I would do and things like that and saying, so what's your solution to this problem? And my completely tasteless reply was, do you really want me to give you the final solution to the Jewish question? 'Cause I wasn't prepared to give that to you. - Nice. - But now I'm prepared. - Yeah. - Now I'm prepared. So, and that is what this book is about. It's like how do we respond to this? - Okay. - And it's really about the nightmare of the last few years, which has looked different in Israel than it has in the United States. But in a sense, we are all facing the same problem, which is an attack on Amistar El. And understanding what that means and understanding how we respond. And I've sort of been on a journey through this as I think probably everyone in the Jewish world has been in the past several years. And this is exploring all that. - I think, I mean, I haven't read the book, obviously, but it seems to me that the key is after the colon, right? A love story for the living. - Yes. - And just having read some of your essays in the past, where you talk about how we need to teach, we as a society in the diaspora, eight side of Israel, we need to teach about Jewish life, that Jewish death. And so is this part of your book? - Yes. So there's a few pieces in this, in my arriving at this point. And one is the sort of two key experiences I had after I published people of the Jews that contributed to this. One was, I had them misfortune. And I think we spoke about this the last time we talked, right after October 7th, I was hauled into this anti-Semitism advisory group to the now former president of Harvard who didn't take a lot of our advice as perhaps your listeners are aware. Yeah, it went so badly that I ended up as a witness in the congressional investigation of Harvard. It was totally terrible. And I'm like, wow, college, too late. And I also had done a project before October 7th for the Atlantic magazine about Holocaust education in America. And it was just so striking to me how, there's so many places in the United States where people are required to learn about the Holocaust in school. And I want to be clear, like, it's 25 states or something. It should be 50. I'm not against Holocaust education, but was striking that that's the only thing people learn about Jews. And everything else we've outsourced to TikTok. But I have to say that it's not just the Goyum, right? It's not just the Gentiles. It's also the Jews themselves, just the-- Exactly. You know, quick anecdote. When I was 14, I was exploring my Judaism. And I entered and interacted into Judaism, course, at the local reform synagogue. And I was given a stack of books, Yehai, those of you on YouTube can see how high. Very high. And about 2/3 of them were about the Holocaust. And that was coming from the synagogue. Oh, yes. Yes. Well, so yes. So this is a problem within the community as well. So what I realized is a few things. So my first thought was like the way to address this is-- like I said, a love story for the living, really focusing on like, you know, sort of like giving people greater understanding of Jewish civilization. I then started exploring this more deeply. And I should say, I now actually have a nonprofit now that is pursuing this. It's called the Tel Institute, T-E-L-L. Like it's a Tel, like in Hebrew, like the archaeological hill that's made of layers of civilization of the past. But also, it's T-E-L-L because it's like an English telling our story. And I mean, I can say now, for your listeners, we now have a core product. And we have a-- yeah, this is-- it's eight lessons. It's basically a crash course in the fundamentals of Jewish civilization and the dynamics of anti-Semitism and its integrated. And it's really, again, said it's not a year-long class. It's not an introduction to Judaism. It's eight lessons. We piloted it already in public schools in the United States. I originally conceived of this as being for a non-Jewish audience. So it is designed for public schools. And we've already tested it. We've tested it. We had 12 public high schools that tested it. It's been amazing results from that. But we also realized that, as you say, we need this in the Jewish community too. So we now actually have a version of it that's designed for Barnbot midst of students. And which we are now able to provide for synagogues and people who do a Barnbot midst of a cohort for youth groups and things like that. So anyway-- Not anyway. That's the-- Well, that's the life. Well, that's what we're doing. And like I said, this is like a short-- it's like six lessons. There's a few different editions of it. There's six lessons. There's eight lessons. It's like-- but what it is is a way of telling this Jewish story that is really completely different from everything else that's out there. Because, as I said, my first thought was like the way to respond to this is by having this positive story of Jewish life, as opposed to this negative story about anti-Semitism. But the more I thought about this, the more I realized that this is an artificial divide. It isn't completely artificial divide. Because I started thinking about-- if you think about the content, the actual content of Jewish civilization, you realize the connection. And I'm going to tell you how I sort of arrived at this. I was talking to some-- there are other people in education in the United States who are looking at new ways of exploring this. And I just remember one conversation I had with somebody where they-- and I don't even remember who this was-- where they were saying, oh, I really want to move away from all this Holocaust education. It's so negative and all this education about anti-Semitism, Jews being oppressed. It's so negative. It's disempowering. I don't like it. And also, oh, but it's too controversial to talk about Israel and Zionism and Jewish independence. And why don't we just keep it positive? And instead, why don't we teach people about Hanukkah? I'm like, what do you think Hanukkah is about? Literally, what do you think Hanukkah is about? It's like, oh, I don't want to teach about Jews being oppressed or about Jewish independence. Let's talk about Hanukkah. I'm like, literally, that's what Hanukkah is about. And then I realize they're the same story. And so the way we teach about this is we teach about-- there's a few different angles to this. But the first thing that we-- introduce is a new paradigm for how we explain who Jews are, which is we talk about Amiastra El. Because we find that in America, and I can talk more about this, there's this misunderstanding that Jews are a religion. Jews have a religion, but Jews are not a religion, right? Millions of Jews are secular. Have you ever met a secular Mormon? A former boyfriend, I always say. I love being an ex-born man, right? Those people consider themselves like former Mormon. Oh, I left the church, right? They're not still Mormons, right? Whereas secular Jews are just as Jewish as a guy wearing a black hat, right? Like we don't think like, oh, you're not Jewish anymore because you're not Shomer Shabbat. When you say Catholics feel often that they're secular Catholics, but they're touch-based of traditions. They would call themselves a lapsed Catholic. Okay. The thing is, like, this is a Western idea of what a religion is that comes from these, from Christianity and Islam, which are the idea that a religion is a transnational thing, right? That's about beliefs, and what it is about beliefs and practices, and it transcends nationality. Well, the reason that Christianity and Islam transcend nationalities because they were built on conquest, that's why, right? And that's not what Amiastra El is. And so there's a whole reason why Americans use think it's a religion, which I can get to, but I'm very. Do you think it has to do with taboos around race ideas? Because if you say it's a people, then that's very close to the idea of it's a race. And then we have, of course, that Holocaust thing where you do that. So you're correct. There's a history to this. And I can refer you to my friend Rachel Gordon, who teaches at University of Florida. She's a historian who focuses on American Judaism. And she has a great book that came out a couple years ago called Post-Worst Stories that's about how the American Jewish community remade itself after World War II and basically rebranded as a religion. And one of the reasons they did this was, as you say, it was sort of to get away from the way the Nazis had defined Jews as a race, and also the whole way that race plays out in America. But this was actually a strategy of the American Jewish community. It also was a good time to position yourself as a religion in the United States after World War II. This was happened to be at a time when there was one of these periodic religious revivals in America. This is when the Americans are facing off against the godless Soviets. This is at the time when under God was put into the pleasure of allegiance. This was a savvy branding essentially for that time. She has her book is amazing because it writes about how this was like rabbi's play to roll in this. They were publishing articles in Life magazine that millions, tens of millions of people read about Judaism as a religion, the Judeo-Christian tradition. The problem is Jews are not a religion. Like I said, Jews have a religion. There's an answer to who Jews are. It's a type of social group that was very common in the ancient world, uncommon in the West today. It's a joinable tribal group with a shared history, homeland, and culture. That was a sentence in English and of course in Hebrew, it's one word and it's two letters long, "om." Until you understand that category, nothing else makes sense. Say it one more time for slow people like me. A joinable? A joinable is important. We just celebrated while we're having this conversation. We just celebrated Shavuot a few days ago. The book of Ruth is like this has always been a joinable tradition or a joinable people. A joinable people? A joinable tribal group. The tribal is important because this is a family and even people who join become part of the family. Even someone who converts to Judaism in a religious way, that person, their Hebrew name is Ben or Bat-Avraham Vassara. Da-da-da-r-sa-na-ah of Abraham and Sarah, of the original family. They join the family. It's like marrying into a family. A joinable tribal group with a shared history, homeland, and culture. Like I said, that's a sentence in English. In Hebrew, it's two letters long. Until you understand this category, nothing else makes sense. I can give an example of this, of how it became so clear to me that other Americans don't understand this category. A lot of Jews don't understand it either because they've inherited this very successful campaign from several generations ago to re-brand Jews as a religion. I remember two days after the October 7th attack, I went to get my hair cut. The woman who cuts my hair is not Jewish, but she's known me for many, many years. She knows I'm like the super Jew because she's asked me, "What do you do? What do you write about?" I remember I came in that morning and she said, "How are you?" I'm like, "Not great." She's like, "Oh, what's wrong?" I said, "Maybe you heard. There was this huge massacre in Israel." She said, "Yeah, I saw something about that on the news. That's really sad." She said, "But it's not like you know anybody there." I was like, "Lady, every Jew you've ever had in the seat knows people there." This was shocky to her. She's like, "Really?" Because she thought being Jewish was a religion, right? It would be like if I had said to her, "Oh, there was this big terror attack in Brazil and all these Catholic people were murdered." You must be so upset, or your friends and family, they're okay. She'd be like, "What are you talking about?" People don't understand what this means to be part of Amiastriael. So introducing that category is part of it. But then it gets much deeper. So I don't know how far deep into the weeds we want to go, but. Maybe. Let's go into the weeds. Okay. After the break. Okay. Are the United States, Israel, and Iran acting as rational players, or has military strategy been replaced by irrational moves and countermoves? On the latest episode of Identity Crisis, host Yuhuda Kertzer is joined by Michael Kaplow, one of the most trusted analysts of Israel and U.S. foreign policy, for a clear-eyed conversation about the war with Iran, the fragile ceasefire, and what comes next. Together they explore the political forces shaping President Trump's decisions, the limits of military power, and what this moment means for the future of regional stability. Listen to rational or reckless war, Iran, and the limits of strategy with Michael Kaplow in illuminating episode of Identity Crisis, a podcast from the Shalom Hartman Institute, wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I'm Amanda Borssell Dahn, an Adjuson studio with author Dera Horne. We're entering the weeds. I love the weeds. I'm a big nerd. I just spend my life in weeds. I'm such a nerd. Yes. This is my reference. Yes, exactly. So, the first way that we are sort of reframing the story of who Jews are, the story of the Jewish people for a broader public in the United States, for Jews and non-Jews, is the first piece of this is understanding what does it mean to be part of the Jewish people, Amistra El. But then there's the way we present this is, Amistra El is quite frankly like typical ancient groups or a lot of groups like this in the ancient world. Why do we care about this one? And the reason is because of these groundbreaking ideas that Amistra El, that are the ideas of Amistra El, that wind up shaping world history. So the first of these is monotheism and the idea of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. All those words I just said, you're listening to them and you're thinking, "Religion, spiritual." If that's not your jam, you probably just tuned out and you're like, "Okay, I'm going to fast forward this part." But here's what I think is interesting. Today we hear those ideas as religious spiritual. In the ancient world, these ideas are also political because in the ancient world you have these other societies that have many gods. And in some of those societies, one of the gods is the dictator. We know this about ancient Egypt. The Pharaoh is like a manifestation of the gods even in Rome, which is weight antiquity for, I'm told by ancient scholars. They're like, "That's not even ancient." Rome, it's like that might as well be yesterday. But the Roman Emperor is considered a god, right? There are people who are supposed to worship the Roman Emperor, even in societies where the dictator is not the god. There's this idea that the dictator is basically has some special access to the gods. You're infallible. Yes, right. Even today. Exactly. Exactly. This is very different from the Jewish idea of the covenant where the covenant, as we, like I said, as we were recording this, we had just finished celebrating Shavuot last week. Shavuot is the giving of the Torah. The Torah is for everyone, the entire Jewish people. This is a contract between this one god and the Jewish people. It's not a contract between the god and the king, right? It's not, it's not the god and the priests, right? This is for everyone. This is a radical idea in the ancient world. It's also a radical idea in the ancient world to have this set of laws that we have in the Torah that are not tied to an individual ruler, right? It's not like Hammarabi's code, right, where it's attached to a person, right? The kings are also expected to follow the laws. They don't always live up to that, which is like, you know, half the tonnachas about how the kings are failing this. you know, but this is the principle is that society have laws that are beyond a human rule or the idea of the liberation narrative, like the Pesach story, like that you have this that a social order can be overturned. These are radical ideas. I mean, I'm not going to give you the whole curriculum here, but like these are really radical ideas in the ancient world. Quite frankly, they're still radical today. I mean, if you look at the UN member states, like how many of those states are autocratic regimes where dissenters are thrown in prison routinely. I mean, these are radical ideas. And what I realized is that these ideas of Jewish civilization are inseparable from the history of anti-semitism for well over 2000 years because ultimately Jewish civilization becomes this almost like an anti-terranical movement. And when you have an anti-terranical movement, it pisses off tyrants. When you have a non-conformist movement, it pisses off dominant societies that need everybody to conform. When you have a non-hierarchical movement, it pisses off people who need to keep this social hierarchy. This is a counterculture that's a challenge to any society or group of people or leader that wants to dominate. And so the way we teach about anti-semitism in this curriculum is also a very different approach than what I've seen in other ways that people try to explain or teach this. We don't teach about anti-semitism as a bias or a prejudice or a bigotry or even a conspiracy theory. We define it as a lie that people use to gain or maintain power. And the lie is always the same. The lie is Jews are destroying what you value the most. And the only thing that varies in different eras, different settings, different social circles is what you value the most. And so to me these things are inseparable. These grounding ideas of Jewish civilization, which have a huge impact on the rest of the world. I mean, there are Christianity and Islam without Judaism. They have a huge impact on Americans. So I think about their impact on the American founders. The liberation narrative is something that's inspired people around the world. I mean, this has a massive impact far beyond the Jewish people. But it's also this sort of what I think is so interesting about Jewish history is not what the historian say about our own called the lackromose view of Jewish history, like full of tears, like this litany of horror. Because frankly, like the litany of horror and Jewish history is like the least interesting thing about Jewish history because every group of humans in human history has been through these things. Unfortunately, humans do horrible things to each other. Right. There's the joke, of course. They tried to kill us. They failed. Let's eat. And that's every Jewish holiday, as you said. And you're speaking. And I'm just smiling because my four year old is in preschool. And so he came home and he's like, "Ema, in three days, we are getting the Torah." And then the next day, "Ema, in two days, we are getting the Torah." "Ema, we're getting the Torah today." And then he phoned my son. He was a soldier, unfortunately, in Gaza right now. And he said, "Yerun, how are we going to get the Torah? How are you going to get the Torah? You're in Gaza today." And of course, that's the whole key to this Jewish peoplehood because it is us. We are getting the Torah from generation to generation. It is all about us. Yes. Which also, I think, works into the counter-culture idea because, yes. Obviously, Jews did not have a state always. And so, no matter where they were, they were. They were still us within the greater majority. And don't you think that's also one of the keys to anti-Semitism that Jews have pretty much been able to maintain their identity within a sea of difference? Yes. Well, this is why ultimately, this becomes a test case for a pluralistic society. Right. Is your society capable of living together with people who don't agree with you? And that is, you know, you mentioned your son in Gaza, so, "Behatslachah," quite frankly, this war that we are all facing is that same war. If you think about this as ultimately, this is Jewish civilization as this anti-imperial movement since ancient times. This is ultimately like an Islamist empire in all but name that is on Israeli borders. You're talking about the Hamas ideology in Iran and Haspulan. This is an Islamist empire in all but name whose goal is to eliminate minorities from the Middle East. This is an imperial project. That is what it is. They've eliminated many, the Middle East is a story of vanishing minorities. The Christians, obviously. Yes, of course. Zidis, this is a story of imperialism. You look at Israel, it's like this tiny island of that's pushing back against this empire essentially. That's not the way people view it in the West, of course. But it's like, that's why you see your family as part of this story. You're a family as part of this story, too. Yes. For better and worse, this is what we do. But this is who we are. This is who we are. This is who we've always been. That's what's so interesting. We just, as I said, we just celebrated Shavuot. We were reading the story of Ruth. She's the first Jew by choice, as we would say today. Everyone today is a Jew by choice. In a sense, every Jew alive today is a descendant of some people who made this countercultural choice. More than that, there, of course, the big point that is emphasized always is who is Ruth's descendant. Is a king-divided? Yes. And it's like, all of this is such an unlikely story. All of us are descendants from people who made this brave choice, a choice that's expensive in every possible way. For you and the diaspora, for Sarah Jewish education, as such. Well, I mean, you could say that, but also I mean, expensive in every way of expensive, right? I mean, of like, there's a cost to this choice. And here we are making it to this day. And so, as I said, to me, what's amazing about Jewish history isn't this litany of horror. That unfortunately, every, there's no group in human history that hasn't been through these kinds of things. What's unusual is that we're still here. And to me, this is, you know, often are branded as the chosen people. We're actually the choosing people because there are specific choices that Jewish communities have made over many, many centuries to make it possible to, for us to still be here and to still be part of this countercultural tradition. And ultimately, it is that the courage it takes to knock bow down to tyrants. That's good to us, right, break? This October 7th massacre was a national grieving. And for me, I chose the model of work, work, work, work, work. Hi, I'm Monica Marcus, host of What Came After. Last November, I sat down with Amanda Borscheldon, the deputy editor of the Times of Israel, someone who, especially for this audience, probably needs no introduction. Amanda is one of my heroes in journalism. Her podcast, The Daily Briefing, kept me sane in the many months following October 7th. In our discussion, she speaks about work as therapy and how she, as an Israeli, manages to continue to report the story from within this story. And for probably months and months of just being in a haze, I just worked as hard as I could. I look back at that period, I did probably even double what I'm doing now and I find it impossible that I could have done that. To hear more of my conversation with Amanda, listen to What Came After, wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I'm Amanda Borscheldon here and I drew some studio with author, Dera Horne. Dera, I want to break down your initial sentence a little bit more and focus in on the part of the homeland because it appears to me, I haven't been to the States since 2018. Okay, it's been a while, right? Yes. But it appears to me that not an insignificant portion of the Jewish population of the United States is not as receptive to the idea of the homeland as perhaps they had been maybe 10 years ago or so. And that Jews who are, you know, full on Jews, identified as Jews are perhaps not too keen on the homeland as it is today. So people always raise this. They're like, oh, there's these like anti-Zionist Jews. The reason people always raise this is because people who are Freikoyan, team Hamas and team G-Hod put those people out front. And so you see them and they're in the news and they're in your feed and whatever. This is not a, I do not regard this as a meaningful movement. I kind of don't care what it is demographically, but to me, this is a small group of people who are very loud and who have zero influence on the Jewish community. Zero. And to me, this is, there have always been people like this. Like when you think about, and I spoke before the break about the cost of being Jewish, right? And then when I say cost, I don't just mean, oh, you're paying a send your kid to a Jewish school. I mean, there's a social cost, right? There's, you know, you know, I mean, here your son is in Gaza, right? I mean, this is, you know, there's a lot that we carry as Jews. And a lot of people don't want to carry it. And those people put it down. And that has always been true. When this Baytami Dush, when the second temple was destroyed, you know, the story that we tell in Jewish life is that the temple was destroyed. And then there was this rise of these rabbis in Yavna, right? Who were the, you know, who sort of shifted the emphasis of Jewish life from, you know, temple sacrifices to study of Torah. And sort of that's how this tradition was able to continue. And that story is absolutely accurate. And the part of the, that story that we don't really realize is that not everybody came along, right? 'Cause only the people who came, like many people who were Jewish and what made them Jewish was that they would go to the temple for the pilgrimage three times a year. And they would tide their produce for the priests. And that was what made them Jewish. After the temple was destroyed, the people who stayed Jewish, it was a self-selecting group who were willing to educate their children and teach them how to read, at least some of their children, which especially in ancient world, that was a very expensive choice. Again, expensive in, you know, you have to pay for an education, also expensive at that time. That means you're taking that kid off the farm, right? I mean, also expensive in terms of like, there's no benefit to it. Back then, it was like, what did you have to gain from learning how to read, right? I mean, this was an, you know, an accountur cultural expensive choice. I hate to say it. Most Jews, I do not think at that period, stayed Jewish. I think we lost a lot of people who then just, you know, Amharites, the people who were just, though they just stayed farmers and they just became Christian, Christians and then Muslim or whoever conquered them next, that's what they became. 'Cause disappearance is the default. Disappearance is the default. And it takes a lot of, like I said, we're not the chosen people, we're the choosing people. It's a lot of conscious choice to not disappear. So, you know, I feel like now the reality is like, I think what makes a person Jewish, certainly in the diaspora, it's not whether or not you had Jewish grandparents, it's whether or not you will have Jewish grandchildren. And, you know, by that definition, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are Jewish, but both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are Jewish on that definition. But like, no, seriously, I mean, it's like the commitment to the future of the Jewish people is what makes you Jewish. Whatever that looks like for some people, that means raising Jewish children for some people that might look like something else. But like that commitment is what makes you Jewish. It is not realistic to have that commitment exclude half the world's Jews and exclude the entire content of Jewish civilization, which is centered around the idea of Amistra El. And not just Amistra El, but the homeland of Israel. I'm like, you know, I always ask the early go, we're having our anti-Zionist satar. I'm like, what do you say at the end of the satar? - Next year in New York? - Right, right. It's like, you know, it's like, and it's not even that. Like I remember once I was sitting in shul next to my daughter who's a college-aged daughter, and she's like, you know, we're just, you know, moving through the seedur or the prayer book, and she's like, she's started pointing to me like every instance where it says, you're a shulim, Cion, whatever. And then she's just says to me, like, totally deadpan. She's like, it's almost like it's part of our culture. (laughing) Right? It's like, how do you doven? Without that. It's like, how do you participate in any form of Jewish life with that? It's like, it's so absurd, right? And I actually think that there's, this is what's going to determine the future of Jewish life, is in the past, I feel like there's been these divides where it's, the divide is like, you know, religious. It's a, you're religious, are you secular or political? And again, this is a quote from my daughter who's 20 years old. We were, I live in New Jersey, and I'm fairly close to Newark Airport, which is, you know, a lot of the flights to Israel leave from there, and especially people coming from other parts of the states will often have a layover in Newark. And so this past December, I was, my family, and I were going to Israel as a family trip, but she had a few friends who were college students in North Carolina, who came in like, you know, slept at our house before their flight, they were going on Tagli. Oh nice. And one of these friends was like, it was a sister of a friend of hers, and it was just like very clear that my daughter and this girl disagreed on like basically everything. And I remember asking her, I'm like, you know, I noticed that, you know, it was very clear like, you know, you and whatever this girl's name was, you know, you, you know, part ways on all these different things. I said, I'm like, you know, are you guys friends? And she said to me something very revealing. She said, you know, mom, for Jews my age, there's only one thing that matters. And she says it, it's not about how religious you are, irrelevant, totally irrelevant. She says it's not about who you vote for, irrelevant, which is saying a lot in the United States, probably saying a lot here too. She says irrelevant. She says one thing matters. Are you in or are you out? And she's like, this girl's in. That means we can be friends or we can be frenemies and I can argue with her, but she's like, she's in. That's what matters. - So I think it worries me a lot looking again from here over there where I haven't been since, frankly, the Pittsburgh shooting. That was the last time I was in the States, I was sent to cover the funeral's. Super fun. - Super fun. - Yeah, why haven't I gone back? Crazy. In any case, looking at words, I just wonder if Israel as a country is being that Jewish homeland to everyone still. Because of course, in the current, you know, coalition, there's a lot of legislation that's being pushed through. To say such as the law of return, we need to change the law of return no longer make it for one Jewish grandparent and so closing the door on a lot of perhaps secular Jews or people who aren't quite Jews yet. Okay, that's one thing. Or the Kotel legislation where the chief rabbi of the Kotel will be in charge of the entire place. And so the egalitarian or non-denominational pavilion will be under his jurisdiction as well. And these things, you know, make headlines here and I think they're picked up abroad as well. But there's so much difficulty in recognizing somebody from abroad being Jewish here by their Robinette, for example, or if you convert reform, you're not considered Jewish by the Robinette here, but you can make a Yazoo citizen. All these little things that are, you know, another brick in the wall, shall we say. I wonder how much American Jews are paying attention to this kind of situation here. So there's all kinds of impossible problems here. You just named a few of them. We could have a whole other podcast talking about many, many more. And that's a lot of what your podcasts are about. The situation that American Jews are facing, people are trying to gaslight us into thinking that it's those questions, it's not. It's not. Like this is sort of this gaslighting that we're going through in the United States where people are like, oh, this is about criticism of Israel. And they try to make you think that there's this like slippery slope or a spectrum from like criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism and when does it cross the line? There's no line. These are two totally different things. There's debates like the ones you're speaking about, which are incredibly important to the future of the Jewish people, incredibly important to all of the people of Israel, Jewish and not. And many things beyond what you've mentioned and we could have a whole, like I said, we could have like 10 other podcasts, which is, you go look at the feed. And if you're, those listeners are interested in those debates, go look at the right. Keep paving back. Yes, this is all we talk about. What matters now, there's are the things that matter now for the Jewish people. And they are the things that matter now, certainly for everyone in Israel, Jewish or not. That's over here putting this on this side of my, you know, for those watching home, Christchurch, that's over here. And over there, that's not what's happening at all. There's something completely different, which is basically team G-Hod. Team G-Hod using the language of, you know, human rights and blah, blah, blah, laundered through team G-Hod, which is managed to, you know, fool all kinds of ignorant people into thinking that they're talking about human rights when they're actually talking about killing half the world's Jews. And I'm not going to pretend that those two debates have anything to do with each other at all, because they don't. And I saw this so up close when I did, it was on this horrible committee at Harvard, because it was so clear how everything that was happening at Harvard in terms of like Jewish students being harassed. I mean, you know, those kinds of things. It was like unrelated to anything happening in the Middle East. And I'm going to give one example that made that so clear. I remember one day in November of 2023, they had a walk out of class, you know, walk out for Gaza. Right? And it was like they literally, students came into classes with megaphone, disrupting these lectures, being like, you know, everybody walk out, walk out for a ceasefire in Gaza, you know, we're, You know, we're gonna walk out of class until there's a ceasefire in Gaza, globalize the intifada, blah, blah, blah, you know, river to see all this, but it was like, you know, we're gonna walk out, you know, we want there to be a ceasefire in Gaza. Guess when this protest happened? You said November 2023. It was during a ceasefire in Gaza. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, it's like, they're not even interested in what's happening in the Middle East. Like, they're literally not even interested. Like, there's like no connection. So like, this like mythology that this is about, you know, criticism of Israel and it's like, oh, we hate that there's, you know, all these, you know, right wing nut jobs in the government. Like, well, I mean, I live in America. There's a lot of right wing nut jobs in America. As you may have noticed, there's a lot of left wing nut jobs in America. Like, it's like, there are nut jobs everywhere. And yes, some of them are in power. Yeah. That's not what this is about. This is this is a, a extremely well financed campaign to push Jews out of public life. That's what it is. And all these debates you discuss are very important. But if you think that, you know, Jewish students or a young Jewish people who are, you know, get sucked into whatever this nonsense is, if you think they're doing it because they don't like that somebody made some legislation about the hotel, you're kidding yourself. These people, like, these are people who don't even know which river and which sea, right? They've just been, they've been colonized by the phones, you know, their, their phone in their pocket has been colonized by cutter and by Al Jazeera and by this huge billion, billion dollar investment. And that's what we're dealing with in that state. So, which is annoying because it means you can't talk about the real problems. It leaves no space whatsoever. You know, I mean, on a podcast like this, you can have these conversations and you have a real audience. There are people who understand these nuances and care. That's not what, you know, these people in the United States that they're not alienated from Israel because, oh, they don't like about, you know, something about the law of return. They're alienated from Israel because they don't know anything at all. And the first thing they learned was what the, what TikTok has pushed them. That's all, that's all. They're not even equipped to have an actual conversation about Israel because, like I said, they can't even name whichever which sea. So, is what you're proposing in a way enabling Jewish and non-Jewish youth to be armed with the information that they need in order to have a really knowledgeable conversation about Israel? What we are doing is not advocacy, it's education. That is an important distinction. There's people doing advocacy. That's very important work. That is not what I'm doing. My goal is not to arm people with talking points. My goal is to open a door of curiosity for Jews and non-Jews to my goal is to give people a story of the Jewish people, which is a fascinating story. It's not that it's a heroic and amazing, but it's interesting. I mean, that's the thing I've noticed, like, because I've done these training sessions for non-Jewish teachers and people are like, "This is astounding." Even just basic things that the kids are in the classes, they're like, "The kids were all like, really? These people have been around for 3,000 years." It's like, "Yeah." This is shocking to them. It's like, "This is news." To us, this is just basic. Well, of course, this is news. So, giving people, but one of the things that we teach about, though, and this goes to arming people. It's not arming people with, like, "Oh, here's the facts." It's not like this, like, talking points. Here's 10 reasons why Israel is not a genocidal apartheid. It's not that. One of the things we teach about is, when we teach about the big Y, as we call it, the big Y against Jews, which occurs in all these different eras, that it's Jews are against what you value the most, and it's like a plug-and-play we do. It's the purpose's pattern recognition. So, it's like, we do it through case studies. Our earliest case study is pre-Christian, it's from 40 CE in Alexandria. Our last case study is from 2001. It's the UN Durban Conference Against Racism, which became an anti-Semitic hate fast. It was taken over by the Iranian regime. In each case, we talk about how the big lies accelerated through new media, because new media is the Wild West. We don't know who's credible and who's not. Credibility is determined by exposure, saturation, and popularity. So, one of the things that we teach is something called, have you ever heard of this is called the illusory truth effect? This is a concept in psychology that's pretty, it's been pretty robustly studied. It's basically the idea that if you hear a lie repeated enough times, cognitively, even if it's illogical, even if it contradicts what you know to be true, even if it's implausible, if you hear it enough times, something in your brain breaks down and you start to think there must be something to it. I mean, I see it every day with the four-year-old. He was like, no, I didn't light the matches. It was blah, blah. He tells it enough times. I really didn't light the matches. Even you as the mother start thinking, wait, why isn't it? I don't know. And you can convince yourself of a different truth. So, this is the strategy. It's like, solanism is genocide. Zionism is genocide. Zionism is genocide. Zionism is genocide. It's like you repeat it enough times and you're like, I have this association between Zionism and genocide. It must be something to it. You don't even think far enough. There's no thought behind it or information. It bypasses the idea of information. So we're teaching people like, we're basically, it's not that we're teaching people like, oh, here's 10 reasons why Zionism isn't genocide. Because once you step into that frame, you've already bought the BS. Once you're sitting here, then you already are in the defendant's dock of some show trial created by some tyrannical regime. I'm smiling because again, we're journalists. We're not in advocacy group as well. And so so many of the comments I get on the pod guess are, how can you depict such a terrible picture of Israel over how can you be saying criticism of Netanyahu, you know, things like this? Because we're just trying to reflect reality to the world. We're trying to paint an agenda. Correct. So but what I'm doing with this is like, I mean, I do have an agenda so to speak in that I am I am presenting a new framing of the Jewish story. So I mean, in that sense, everybody has an agenda. Like, you know, you're the times of Israel, right? You're not the times of the Middle East or, you know, Israel, Palestine. I mean, like, you know, you can, okay, like, but like, you know, there's, you know, you've like, there's there are decisions about what you cover. Like you get more attention to this. You give less attention to that. That's, I mean, I, you know, anyone who claims that they aren't doing that is it's not possible to not do that. But our goal is really to give people the tools to be curious and sort of to also recognize when they're being manipulated. Because people, people don't like finding out that they've been fooled. But then once they find out that they've been fooled, they feel very empowered because they're like, wow, they're like, look at all these people who are falling for this, right? So that's like, you know, that is something that I think is empowering for young people sort of to be able to step out of the matrix, right? And realize that they're stepping out of the matrix. So I mean, that is what we're trying to do because and it's, we are stuck in this new media environment where it is the Wild West. And it's like, especially with like AI and LLMs, there's this, the LLMs are determining truth based on consensus, which basically means the most popular thing is what's true, which is why it's so easy to manipulate, right? And you see that with the manipulation of something like Wikipedia, for example. So you're target. So you have to prepare people for this. And in terms of preparation, your target age would be high school or middle school. Okay. So like the program we created for within the Jewish community is Barnbot, Metsva. Sure. So it's, that's the age because that's also something I thought about is that like, you know, there's a lot of effort we put into it because because anti-soundtives is like I said, it's not a bias, it's a lie. So, you know, that's like, like you said, you're facing all this idea that you have to debunk things, right? It's actually what research has shown is that the, the better strategy is pre-bunking. Pre-bunking means it's like your first to market in someone's brain. And then that is much easier than debunking. And so basically presenting sort of this structure of Amiastra El to someone who's younger. So that then when they, you know, go on TikTok and they're like, you know, Jews are white European colonizers blah, blah, blah, right? Like you sort of are like, hmm, that doesn't really make sense. But if the only thing you've ever heard about Jews before, that is that Jews are people who died in Europe between 1933 and 1945. And that's the only thing you know about Jews. And then the next thing you hear is that they're white colonizers who have no business in the middle of the, you're like, that kind of works. Right? So it's like, but you, so you have to sort of pre-bunk these different ideas of like, what is this 3000 year? And not just pre-bunk who are Jews, but pre-bunk, why are people lying about Jews? Like, why would there be this like movement of lies against Jews? And there's an answer to that, right? Which is that this is an anti-Toronical movement. Tyrants don't like that. Tyrants will invest a lot to crush that and always have. Dera, I think your pre-bunking is very necessary also for Israel. You would think that it's quite evident that you should be aware of Amisrael and I think definitely we are. However, just even on the way into the office, I was listening to the BBC, which I like to do because I want to hear the other narratives for sure. And my daughter was in the car and she heard a woman describe being arrested on the flotilla and the allegations she made were so ludicrous. But my daughter sitting there thinking, how is it possible that our soldiers are doing this? And you're like, "Yeah, it's not." It's not, exactly. And just even the concept of everyone hates us, I think Israelis get, but don't get. And so the idea of pre-bunking the situation of why are people so against the Jewish state/Jews is so necessary for Israel as well. And I wondered, do you have any plans to take your ideas over here as well? So that I would ask your listeners who are here, whether this is necessary here, I wouldn't have thought so. But maybe, I don't know. I mean, it's a, you know, I've actually been surprised by, look, I've already been wrong about some of who, you know, I had thought of this as something that's early. For a non-Jewish audience, I was surprised to hear from a lot of Jewish organizations in the states and Jewish communities in the states that were interested. And that's why we developed this, the Barn Bump, it's a version of it. I mean, they're the same. The content is the same. It's, you know, a little bit of the way we present it is different, but it's the same content. I mean, look, I've had a conversation recently with a member of the Australian Parliament, because I mean, you know, after the Bondi massacre, there was interest there in this. So, yeah, and I've been here for a few days now. For the festival, I've had some meetings with people here who are, you know, people are interested in this idea. So, I do think, like, you know, you look and there's, I just think that there's, it's a different way of, I think there's, in every generation, we are choosing, you know, the way that we want to understand our own story. And it may be a different way that we've understood it than how we've understood it in the past. All of those ways are true. Right? I spoke before about, you know, American Jews rebranding as a religion. Like, they weren't wrong, right? I mean, it's not that they lied and claimed we were a religion. That was just what was important to emphasize then. And so, as you say in your podcast, what matters now, what part of who we are is the Jewish people matters now? I do think this matters now. And I have heard from, you know, and looked, you're much better situated to tell me what Israelis, you know, what is lacking here and what's needed. But I do feel like I've heard from many Israelis, like there is a lack of, you know, having a story that is something that everyone feels they're fully part of. I know, you know, obviously, this is a very divided society. And it's not just about sort of unity, which, you know, a lot of people hear unity and they think this is a way of trying to erase our differences, which matter. Right? But to have a way of telling our story of who we are that does include, you know, the many, many people who are here, who are part of that story. There, we can speak for many more hours. And I hope we will. Yes. So, thank you for joining me today. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's a delight to be here with you in person and Jerusalem. Amen. Amen. Next year in Jerusalem, too. I hope so. Thanks for listening to the Times of Israel's What Matters Now. Please check out another installment next week. This episode was edited by, with care, by Yitzrak Lede. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, please drop us an email to podcast at TimesOfIsrael.com. Until next week. Shalom.