Speaker 1Hi, I'm Naila Boodoo. Welcome to the very first episode of Oh God, Now What? I'm so excited for you to listen to this show that's been years in the making. I've been a journalist for more than two decades, and the heart of this show is that I really want to be having different conversations. So this isn't yet another news show. This is a show about how to live with the news. So each week, I'll be in conversation with one or two religious or spiritual leaders from different faith traditions. And the idea isn't to really learn about those religions, but really to learn from them and to get a deeper perspective on current events by taking a much longer view. And by longer view, I mean history that goes back hundreds or thousands of years to place this current moment in context. In future episodes, I'll be talking to Catholic priests and Buddhist monks about artificial intelligence. We're going to talk to theologians and rabbis about whether a country can ever be morally justified in starting a war. For Labor Day weekend, we'll be dissecting what makes travel sacred. So please subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Today, we're going to be talking about the Bible. We're going to be talking about the Bible. Today, we're tackling the idea of moral voting, and we really wanted to do this as the first episode as midterm elections are looming. Many people have been voting in the primaries this summer. We have the big election coming up this November. And even if you're not following the news very closely, I think you're probably familiar with the morally questionable candidates we have seen from both sides of the aisle. We've had a Republican accused of domestic violence, a Democrat who's faced allegations of sexual assault and rape. And that's just in this electoral cycle. So we're constantly being asked to weigh our morals against our policy priorities. And how do you choose? There are two people that I was really looking forward to having this conversation with. Curtis Chang is an evangelical Christian. And before the 2024 election, he helped start the After Party, a video in which Curtis Chang was a member of the Republican curriculum series, especially for evangelical Christian churches. And he's described it as a way to reframe our political identity away from the what of political positions and towards the how of being centered on Jesus. He is currently the founder and executive director of Good Faith and host of the Good Faith podcast. And Rabbi Jill Jacobs. She's a rabbi whose work is to actually train and mobilize other rabbis, cantors, or Jewish leaders to bring a more moral voice to protect and to help people. And she's the CEO of Trua, the rabbinic hall for human rights. Jill, Curtis, thank you for being with me. Welcome to Oh God, Now What? Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1First, just because of the current climate of political polarization, can I just ask you guys to introduce yourselves? Curtis, I think people make a lot of assumptions about particularly, especially evangelical Christians. And so I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about that. If we can just start with you just explaining to people what you want people to know about your politics and your faith and better yet, how you approach those two together.
Speaker 2Well, I do think that as a Christian and as somebody who claims that Jesus is the Lord of my life, I can't section off my life and say, well, my faith has nothing to do with that. Jesus has nothing to do with that. So politics, I think, is something that Christians ought to care about. But that word, even politics, needs to be really redefined. So one of my sense of calling in my work here is to help Christians broaden their very understanding of politics, certainly to include voting, but to actually encompass a far greater range
Speaker 1of concerns. Rabbi Jacobs, how are you entering this conversation? What do you want people to know about you and your work?
Speaker 3Thanks. Well, professionally, I am a rabbi and I'm the CEO of Truop, but really echoing. Something that Curtis said, as a religious Jew, I live my life according to halacha, which is a word that's usually translated as Jewish law, but it actually comes from the word lalechet, which means to walk. So it's about how you walk through the world, not only ritual practices like what I might eat or what I might not eat, but also practices like how do you set up courts of law and how do you think about using your money in a responsible way? And I think about my life as an integrated Jewish life. Where there's not a single area of my life or my decision making on a daily basis that is not touched by my Judaism and my commitment to live within the system of halacha.
Speaker 1I should introduce myself also, just because the people who know me as a journalist don't know my faith background. And I should say, I am a Christian, you know, I am a fourth generation Presbyterian, grew up in a more evangelical side of the Presbyterian church, and now I'm an ordained elder in the PCUSA. And so I think from. My framework of how I approach my faith in life, I do think it comes from a very Reformed, capital R, Christian perspective of just sort of looking at the world and understanding where my faith is applied. It's not something as a journalist, that's why I think this show is a little bit different for me. It's not something that I've ever talked about on any of the other shows I've been a part of, but I want everyone to know the background where I'm coming from as well. I think part of what we want to do with Oh God, Now What? is also get beyond. Get beyond the superficial and get into more of the nuance. Curtis, you have a podcast that's called Good Faith, and I was struck by something you said on it. As we think about the midterm elections, you likened it to Jenga. Can you explain to me why you think it's like we're playing Jenga?
Speaker 2Well, what I meant by that is the sense that we're living in this very fragile context right now where it feels like, you know. The next election will bring about collapse. That everything is riding on this move. You know how you play Jenga. It's like you're waiting for that one piece to get pulled and everything collapses. And that sense that we're on the verge of that one piece, I think, is fairly widespread. I mean, the sense of, you know, apocalyptic kind of mindset towards the next election. And I actually think that's not actually accurate nor a helpful perspective to have because it puts you essentially in this. This fearful, defensive posture. And it also kind of puts you in a passive posture because you're thinking that there's nothing you can do to actually strengthen the structure, if you will. And I actually think that's our calling, certainly as Christians, to be a blessing to the common good. It's not just to prevent or wait for some disaster that we particularly fear. Like, how do we add pieces to the structure?
Speaker 1If the stakes are that high, does that mean you make different choices when it comes to who you're going to vote for? Because if you think about voting for President Trump and the ramifications of that for American democracy, for the country, do you make different choices if you think the stakes are higher, I guess, is my question?
Speaker 3Yeah. I mean, I think the stakes are really high right now. And also, when we look back through history, there have been these really crucial moments that we can look back and say either, thank God somebody made that choice or, wow, I'm I wish I could go back and rewrite that. And so this is a really crucial election. But I also don't want to get into a place of saying, well, this is it. If it doesn't go the way that you might want it to go, or if the next thing happens to weaken American democracy, then the whole project of America is over. I think we can look back through history and we can see that there's ups and downs, but we certainly can't say, OK, I give up.
Speaker 2My take on this is that this perspective, of the, to use your title of your podcast, we're in a, oh, God, now what political moment or a Jenga moment, as I said, is precisely why we cannot simply reduce politics to the vote. The reality is, if you want to contribute to the outcome of American politics and you think that that is just your vote that you cast every four years for a president, unless you live in seven states, your vote practically has zero impact anyway, unless you live in a country where there's no vote. Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. So any listener who doesn't live in one of those seven states, your vote for all intents and purposes has almost no chance of affecting the outcome. And even if you live in one of those states, it's like a minuscule impact. So I am not saying don't vote, please vote. But if you are saying my life as a contributor to our greater society, my political life broadly defined is only exercised every four years, you've reduced your life as a political being to almost inconsequential fashion. And this is where I think if you want to actually contribute and strengthen the society, strengthen the fabric, strengthen the structure, my thing that I'm really trying to call people to is to invest locally, that that is where you can actually make a difference. And that politics happens in its most directly impactful way for most people in local politics. And I don't even mean local electoral politics. I mean the state of your schools, your parks, your police departments. department, how you're caring for the immigrants. arriving in your own city, your policy on the homelessness, those are all political issues. They are about the Greeks would call the polis, the community that you live in, the greater good. And so I think where we can live out our faith most powerfully is if we certainly vote, but we actually devote more of our energy to our local communities.
Speaker 3Well, I want to say that, you know, neither Judaism nor I think any other religion, even though I can't speak for others, is partisan, meaning that you can't open up the Torah and it's not going to tell you vote for this party or the other party because those parties didn't exist. And Torah is eternal and forms of government come and go and different parties and different elected leaders come and go. But what does stay are the values. So even the very first thing that the Torah tells us about human beings is that we're created in the image of God. It's right there in chapter one. And much of the Torah tells us that we're created in the image of God. Much of the rest of the Torah and of the Jewish Bible and of Jewish law codes, et cetera, is trying to figure out how you put it into practice, right? It's not enough to just say, be nice to each other like that doesn't get very far. And so a lot of the tradition is about setting up laws about, OK, well, how do you set up fair courts of justice, for example? What are the rules for judges? How do you make sure that there's a social safety net in your community? How do we make sure that every community that we have, is the most just place possible for the largest number of people is a place where people will be treated like their images of God. And so I really want to go back to that and say that, you know, people look for religious communities in all sorts of different ways. But I think that something that many of our religious traditions bring to the table is that we are rooted in values and that we should be making those our decisions, both politically and otherwise, based on values. It's not just about pick your political team.
Speaker 2I think what Rabbi Jacobs stated is also very much kind of a primary value for Christians. You know, the Genesis account where we are told we are made in the image of God is part of our scriptures also, and it's foundational. I would add on to that Jesus' interpretation of, you know, the scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures of his day. He pulled out as the two greatest things that are most important, are foundational, you know, love God with all your heart, mind, soul, body. And the second, is love your neighbor as yourself. And so not to keep banging on this drum, but when Jesus says, love your neighbor as yourself, he's directing you to a neighborhood level of concern that the neighbor around you, the people you live with, the community where you have your parks together, that is the most direct, immediate place where you can show love. And I would say showing love is another way to say, treat people in the image of God. And so I think we need to get back to what Jesus meant by that, that our neighborhood matters versus some imagined partisan opponent out there that we don't actually know, but we only see sort of news reports or their posts on social media. That person is not actually your neighbor in a very embodied, direct sense. And so I think the more we get back to our neighborhood, the less partisan we'll be.
Speaker 1So I just am kind of reflecting on the idea of love and very much hearing what you're saying, Curtis, about neighborhoods and investing at the local level. Jill, can I start with you? And then Curtis, can you respond about what standards you use when you're starting to think about, do you have like a character test? Like, is that the first thing you do? Jill, are you thinking about how just they are?
Speaker 3Yeah, I do think about, as I said, the values and what values this person stands for and whether they're likely to vote in line with what I think my values are. And I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question. When I think about a character test, I don't need an elected official who I want to go out for a beer with. I don't need to be friends with this person. I want to believe that they are somebody who is not corrupt, who's trustworthy, who's not going to be taking advantage of their position. This is something also that Judaism has a lot to say about it because we have a lot of stories of kings who did take advantage of their position and a lot of warnings and things in the Jewish Bible even before the people get a king. So I'm thinking about the first time that the possibility of a king is really talked about in the book of Deuteronomy. But it says basically, like, this king can't amass so much money and they can't amass so many horses and they can't amass women, right? These are the things that kings do. I'm talking about the classic kings, right? And actually what this king is supposed to do is they're supposed to write a scroll of Torah for themselves and they're supposed to study it. They're basically the symbol of how you use your power to worship God as opposed to just to accumulate wealth and power for yourself, which is a long way around to saying that I would hope that an elected official understands that their task is to serve the people, that it's public service, it's to represent their constituents. This is very much the role of the prophets in the Bible, but I think it's the role of all of us to hold them to it and to continue to say, wait, this is what's right. I'm going to remind you of it. I'm going to keep poking you even when it's uncomfortable. We can't just say, oh, I elected the person I really think is great. And now I'm just going to go back into my hole.
Speaker 2I would go back to the belief that love is primary, that love is the highest good that we can seek to advance. And the reality of love is it is personal. Love is about personal character, personal relations, and it's issues, policies, hot takes on things. I'm not saying they don't matter, but they don't love. And so I actually believe when you vote, you ought to actually consider, does this person move our society and move our culture towards greater love or lesser love? Now that includes perhaps the issues and the stances they take as more loving or less loving, but I actually really do believe character matters. A leader influences culture. They set the terms for what is acceptable behavior. And I want a, you know, just to bring it to the, you know, national level. I want a president that reflects love and that moves our culture towards greater love. And I'm willing to disagree. I'm willing to have that president to have policies or issues that I disagree with, because you know what, actually it is the cultural influence that emanates out from a president that I think has far more lasting impact than any specific issue or policy. Politics is down stream from culture.
Speaker 1Everything both of you are describing seems completely counter-cultural to the way that we think about politics. And even I would say the way that we journalists cover politics, right? We think about single issue voters. I don't know that that really exists, but I do think, Curtis, you're saying basically, and tell me if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying it shouldn't be like abortion or LGBT or whatever. I'm trying to think of hot but trans rights issues and this is how I vote. Is that what you're saying? Like we shouldn't just pick a single issue? Am I understanding that correctly?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think issues matter, but I think character matters more. And I would absolutely choose somebody of a high moral character that reflects the values of love and might disagree on the issues. I would choose that person. I mean, here would be like, if you want to reduce this down to a character level of a I would sort of say, well, would I trust this person to babysit my kid? Because that tells me something. Do they have integrity? Will they do what they say? Or if something bad happens, will they show courage? Can I essentially trust them to love my children? That's a meaningful test. Now, obviously, I don't know them personally. I have to just get some clues. I'm observing their behavior. I'm observing how they react to the people that they do interact with, including reporters, what the history of their personal relationship is. I'm not high on the love list. Let me just put it that way. You should be. You guys are doing a very important thing. But to me, that that really matters. Again, I am not saying issues don't matter. But to boil everything down to one issue is such a narrow slice of life. And the reality is, you know, if you follow the teachings of Jesus, you're going to end up on all sorts of issues differently and also disagree with other Christians of good faith on what's the right interpretation. Like Rabbi Jacob said, there's no straight line you can draw from any of our religious teachings that we're talking about here to any issue. But you can draw a pretty straight line to the kind of person that actually is somebody who bears the image of God and who embodies love.
Speaker 1So Curtis, can you talk about like immigration or abortion or the death penalty? And can you just sort of say where those things as we're just to parse out like the idea of, you know, taking single issue voting out of our kind of mental consciousness?
Speaker 2Well, what I mean by the fact that single issue just does not give you a proper or an ironclad rule, if you just say kind of evangelicals, you know, the classic standard evangelical view currently in existence, right? Okay, you can make a very strong case, which I hold that this sort of takes you towards a pro-life stance. But then it's like a whole other set of issues. What's the best specific policies that actually advance that view. and it's not clear. I mean, electing a pro-life president has almost run counter to the actual level of abortions. It does not correlate. It's almost negatively correlated. Just voting for a pro-life president does not mean you're going to get pro-life outcomes that you prefer. And at the same time, if you are making that pro-life statement because you value life, the life of a fetus cannot be the only life that you care about. The life of an immigrant, the life of hungry people, the life of homeless, they matter just as much. And so you have to weigh all of those lives to sort of cherry pick. This life is the only life I care about is quite at odds with any understanding of what it means to love your neighbor.
Speaker 1Jill, do you agree with Curtis on the idea of starting with character versus issues?
Speaker 3Yeah, I'm not sure, like I said, that I can separate the two of them. And there's certainly some elements of character that I would say are beyond the pale. So there might be politicians or elected officials that one might agree with their policy positions, but actually women are not safe around them. One thing that Curtis said that I really do agree with is about the ways in which the model that's set at the top can filter down. I think we've seen this in real time with the current president who's normalized sexual assault of women and normalized demeaning immigrants and people with disabilities and et cetera, et cetera. I want to say that I think it's a really important thing to think about. I think it's a really important thing to think about. I think it's a really important I want to know, is this going to be somebody who is going to put policies and laws in place that are going to make this a safer country for everybody?
Speaker 1One of the reasons I think there's such a moral dilemma now about, for example, recent candidates who have come out, like to your point, Jill, like the allegations of sexual assault and then people thinking, well, but I wanted to support this person. And I'm going to say this guy because in pretty much every instance it's been a guy. I wanted to support this guy because I think he's going to, for example, help Democrats and we need more Democrats in power. So I'm going to look the other way. I want to go back to the apocryphal kind of nature of things and ask how you step outside of that, because we can very easily trap ourselves in of thinking like, OK, well, we have to sacrifice character for this policy.
Speaker 2I don't think you can. I mean, I think in some ways Rabbi Jacobs and I are saying the same thing. In the sense that character and your public stance are integrated. I mean, like another thing that I would say is a mark of somebody that is worthy of our love is they have integrity, that the person together holds their values in a way that actually makes sense, that are that are consistent with one another. They're not saying one thing and doing another.
Speaker 3You know, at least in primaries, this doesn't have to be a zero sum game. Of course, the difficulty comes when you get to the general election. And like many of us, I'm not always voting for my favorite candidate in the general election. But at the end of the day, I'm making a choice about who do I think is going to bring this country or the city you're voting in in a better direction and make this a better place for the most people. So as we're recording this, it's the afternoon before Tisha B'Av, which is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. It's the anniversary of the destruction of both temples and many other catastrophic events in the Jewish history. And there's. There's this amazing story in the Talmud that I've been thinking about a lot recently because it feels like it was written yesterday, where basically the city of Jerusalem is under siege by the Romans. And there's a few very wealthy people who come and they say, OK, we have enough supplies that we can support the people for 21 years. Like this one has grain and this one has wood for, you know, for cooking. And basically the people can outlast the siege. But in the city, there's a group of zealots and the rabbis of the city say, well, let's go make peace with the Romans and the zealots say, let's go to war with them. And the rabbis are like, that is not going to work out for us. We're going to lose. And so the zealots go and they burn down these storehouses that have all the food and the firewood that the people need basically to force them into starvation so that they'll be forced to fight. And so for these zealots, they decided to force a war that ended up with death and destruction because of their purity of politics. Right. We have to fight the Romans. We can't. We can't just try to survive and to save lives. The position of the zealots is we can't have what we want. Just burn it all down. And there's another position that says we are losing and let's try to get what we can and let's try to save as many people as we can. Let's try to save this tradition. And, you know, if it hadn't been for that rabbi, maybe I wouldn't be here today.
Speaker 2Right. I'll just riff on zealots for a moment. And I think that in the Christian tradition of where zealots show up is actually in Jesus's first core followers. It's recorded that one of them was Simon, the zealot. So he was clearly known for his political position of burn it all down, you know, kill the Romans, evict them, any means necessary. And so apparently in Jesus's first 12 disciples is somebody who advocated for that position. You know who else is in the 12? This guy named Matthew. And he's known because he's known as Matthew, the taxonomist. He's known as the tax collector, which is the exact opposite of the partisan spectrum, ideological spectrum of the day. A tax collector is collecting taxes for Rome, for the Roman Empire. They would have been viewed by the zealots as a collaborator. And Matthew would have viewed Simon as a sort of radical extremist. And so somehow, you know, Jesus is, I think, expressing that his kingdom is going to encompass, you know, sort of this full range. Of ideologies. That should tell us something about what it means to follow Jesus.
Speaker 4Chutzpah is back with brand new episodes starting September 9th. We're talking about aliens, therapy, and how to show up as your authentic self during this year's high holidays. That's Chutzpah, Real Life Lived Better from PRX with Rabbi Shira Stutman and me, Hannah Rosen. Follow and subscribe. So you don't miss a thing.
Speaker 1Hey, welcome back. This is Oh God, Now What? Which, let's be honest, is how many of us feel about the midterm elections. I often guest host the NPR show 1A. And not long ago, I interviewed Milak Kiros, the candidate in Colorado who's a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. A listener emailed asking if members of the DSA were automatically anti-Zionist, which got me thinking. Jill Jacobs is a progressive, but she's also a radical. She's a rabbi at a time when support for Israel is declining in the U.S. So I asked her how she's balancing all of that when choosing candidates.
Speaker 3So I first want people to know why Jews care about Israel and Israelis, which is Jews aren't just a religion. We're a people, which means that Jews are connected to Jews across the world. And it's why October 7th was so painful for Jews in the United States because first, many of us had to leave. We had direct relationships to people who were affected by that horrible violence and also because when other Jews around the world are suffering, Jews everywhere are suffering. And also, the land of Israel is, of course, the ancient homeland of the Jewish people. The state of Israel is a modern state created in the moment that many other nation states were created in the period of the late 19th, early 20th century is when empires were falling and lots and lots of nation states were being created, including Israel. And Israel is also important to Jews because part of the reason that Israel was created was because in that moment in nation states, Jews were asking the question of, OK, well, there was a moment when it looked like enlightenment might bring safety for Jews in Western Europe in particular. And it ended up that enlightenment didn't bring that that promise safety. And the question that Jews were asking is, how do we make sure that our community is safe? Right. Do we want to demand autonomy in the places that we are? So national, political, cultural autonomy where we are, or do we want to get a nation state of our own? And those conversations were very live, really, until the Holocaust brought them to a screeching end. And, you know, particularly the fact that almost no other country around the world, including the United States, would accept Jews is part of why many, most Jews at the time concluded that there needed to be a Jewish state and really so did much of the rest of the world. So that's a little bit of background. It's important to know. And it's especially important when we're talking about Colorado, because, you know, there was a horrible firebombing of a weekly march for hostages when there were Israeli hostages in Gaza, still in Boulder. And there were some people who said, well, that wasn't an anti-Semitic event. But I think with that position of saying, well, it's not anti-Semitic or it didn't happen during a religious ritual or it didn't happen in a synagogue, what that's missing is the fact that they were there, they were actually observing a Jewish mitzvah, a Jewish commandment, which is pideon shfuim, or the return of hostages, which is no different when it comes to commandments than, let's say, keeping Shabbat. But then when we talk about the state of Israel, which is a country just like every other country and like every other country, it's bound to international human rights and international law and human rights law. And like every other country, it violates that. And so in the case of Israel, we've seen since. This October 7th, which was in itself a war crime, Israel has then launched a war that included many war crimes. I think that is clear and that left just horrendous destruction and death in Gaza. You know, more than 70,000 people in Gaza were killed, including thousands of women and children, and that killing continues. And Israel 100% deserves to be held accountable for that. Countries should be held accountable for when they violate the laws of armed conflict, when they commit war crimes, when they violate international law. And that is not saying that Jews care about Israel and care about Israelis and want Israel to continue to exist is not at all at odds with saying that Israel has committed her the crimes and that this war has gone on for too long. And I'll also say that I think that what is best for Israelis is also what's best for Palestinians, which is to have a long term solution. And that ensures the human rights, the dignity and the self-determination of both people, which I believe will best be realized through two sovereign states. So I just said a lot of words, which takes a lot more time than saying Zionist or anti-Zionist, because those terms to me just obscure everything. Somebody can say they're Zionist and mean, I think that Israel should continue to exist as a Jewish state. Somebody can say I'm Zionist and I want to destroy Gaza, which is, in my opinion, completely unacceptable. And people can say, I'm not Zionist. Somebody can say I'm anti-Zionist and mean everything from I want there to be one democratic state for Israelis and Palestinians, which is a political position that one can argue whether it's reasonable. Somebody can say I'm anti-Zionist and I don't think Israel should have been created in the first place. And there are people who say I'm anti-Zionist and all the Jews in Israel should leave and go back to Poland, which is not where most of them are from. But that's another point, you know, and I think that is just as unacceptable as saying all the Palestinians. Palestinians should leave. Whereas if you say to somebody like, what's your connection to that place? Do you have connections to Israelis, to Palestinians? Have you ever been there? What do you see on the news? What are you thinking about? What are you worried about? What do you think should happen there? It's an entirely different conversation.
Speaker 2You know, it's interesting that it seems like every religious community has some litmus test issue that defines it. You know, for the evangelical Christian community, it's Trump, not Trump, pro-Trump, anti-Trump, MAGA, anti-MAGA. And so it's. It's really interesting how even our own communities are getting sort of facing these political litmus tests that sort, divide, make even our own internal communities and us versus
Speaker 1them context. Jill, do you feel like that's, I wanted to ask you about Zoran Mandami, the New York mayor, who was actually at your event for TRUA recently. Can you explain just sort of like what's behind that and if that's a practical example of what you're talking about here and why you think it's important to have a relationship with
Speaker 3him? Yeah. I mean, Mayor Mandami and I have had many conversations and it's clear that we are never going to agree. Well, I can't say never, but we do not agree on what the best solution is for Israelis and Palestinians. That said, nobody has yet invited us, either of us to the negotiating table, nor is there actually a negotiating table. That's a very good point. If, you know, if, if there's. If there's negotiations, there'll be between Israelis and Palestinians and the international
Speaker 1community. They're not asking you about our one or two state solution.
Speaker 3They're, yeah. And if they invite the two of us, great, we'll go, we'll probably have a really good conversation, but we are not going to figure it out in New York City. And we can continue to, to talk about that. And we can also talk about the words that, that people use to have these conversations. And just to give, you know, an example, I think that, you know, Mayor Mandami has reached out to many members of the Jewish community. And had lots of conversations and visited different Jewish communities. And I think that we've seen this in the way that he shifted his language that particularly around the term globalize the intifada, which isn't a term that he ever personally used. But when he was first asked about people in the pro-Palestine movement using it, he kind of tried to give an academic explanation and he tried a few other time things.
Speaker 1I'm actually not familiar. What is, can you explain more about that term?
Speaker 3Globalize the intifada? Yeah. Yeah. So I don't want to try to. I don't want to try to explain why people use it because I really don't agree with the usage of the term and I don't want to try to put words in other people's mouths, but I'll say that when Jews hear that term, what many of us think about is the second intifada in Israel in 2000, 2001, where I was living personally, I was living in Jerusalem. I lost a friend and her boyfriend who were killed in a bus bombing. I remember that feeling of trying to figure out, is this restaurant safe or is anybody going to bomb this restaurant in this moment? Like, it's very scary. You know, and we also just passed the anniversary of the Amiya bombing in Buenos Aires in the nineties that was most likely carried out by Hezbollah. And when many Jews, myself included, hear the term globalize the intifada, we think about the violence of the second intifada. And we also think about those who are taking their anger about Israel out on Jewish communities in the United States, in Europe, in Australia. But I think once Mayor Mamdani heard. From Jewish community members that when many of us hear that phrase, we hear carry out a terror attack against a synagogue in New York city. He went on New York one actually, and talked about how he had heard that from members of the Jewish community and how therefore he would discourage the use of the phrase. And that is through conversation and relationship. It doesn't come through yelling at people in op-ed pages or on social media. And I also think that there's a lot of things that the Jewish community, and he can really agree on. And I think it's a mistake, a huge mistake that some part of the New York Jewish community has just declared war on him and said, we want nothing to do with the mayor of New York city who has so much responsibility for day-to-day life in New York city, whether our kids have daycare, what our apartments cost, et cetera, and has very little impact on the Middle East. And it's okay and reasonable to hold him to using language that's going to keep Jews safe. And you do that in, in, in conversation, not just through declaring him to be the enemy.
Speaker 2What Rabbi Jacobs described as, you know, this priority on the local is, is the drumbeat I've been trying to sound. We just have very little influence to nil over these broad issues. And so why would we try to essentially nationalize local politics?
Speaker 1I wonder if both of you can give me a sense of what you think about what your religious obligation is to voting and where voting, fits into the sphere of your religious obligation to be a good citizen.
Speaker 2Again, this, I think shows the, where I think the priority is between voting and local action. So I'll just give you an example of this. I voted for Biden over Trump. I would do that, you know, that's sort of a Moza pretty much, you know, 10 out of 10 times. But one of the things that I took great exception with when Biden ended up being a president was his withdrawal from Afghanistan. I thought, well, I'm going to vote for Biden. I'm going to vote for Biden. I'm going to I thought it was done hastily, done in a way that betrayed the trust of Afghan allies on the ground that caused massive chaos. And I think that was another example of where you couldn't have predicted in your election vote that that would happen, but it did happen. And so I don't, it's not like I regret the vote for Biden. I would do it again, but that's an example of where, boy, on that issue, I strongly disagree with him. And I think that that was a, that was a really poor decision, poor action of his use of presidential power. Now, he said that, okay, I can hold all of those positions. Does that really actually change anything? Does that actually make me a more loving, better person? Does that actually extend my range of love out into the world anyway? No, it doesn't. Here's what does, is that one of the results of, of the withdrawal is we got this flood of Afghan refugees into our country. And in fact, into my community here in the Bay area, because we have a large, large Afghan population here already. It's a lot of the resettlement efforts were directed here. And there's all these institutions that were tasked with doing that. And they, those institutions, local institutions, essentially involved in the local palace were really struggling. And they were struggling, especially here in the Bay area to find places to house these refugees, even at a temporary level. So my wife and I have built a accessory dwelling unit in our backyard. It's like a mother-in-law unit or something like that. One of the main things that we did was we wanted to extend that resource out to our neighbor, and especially the neighbor we didn't know, following the lines of the good parable of the good Samaritan, somebody who's on the other side of the, of the road. That neighbor that is being left out to dry in a highly vulnerable position, exposed to violence, is the Afghan refugee arriving in our, in our community. In almost every religion, one of the highest priorities of how you live out your, your faith in the public sphere is the Afghan refugee. And so, you know, I think that's, I think that's one of the things that you, you welcome the stranger, you welcome the, the neighbor you don't know. That's my, how I'm intersecting most tangibly, most effectively, and in a way that frankly affect, like shapes my own character, shapes my own capacity to love more. Cause it was also a challenge to have a family of six, you know, living in our backyard. But you know, that wife was a wife of a, of somebody who was serving the American military as a translator. and lost her husband. And so, right, we can make all the proclamations and votes and post on social media, whatever we want about whatever national or even international issue you want. In the end of the day, it's like, are you going to welcome somebody? Are you going to make a decision to share your resources with somebody? That is where you're going to live out your faith most decisively.
Speaker 3Yeah. So I very much agree with Curtis that voting every four years and then going back to sleep is certainly not enough. There's a lot that we need to do in between. There's a text that I love in the Talmud that says that if a person is moving to a new place, that after they're there, they're living there for 30 days, they have to contribute to the soup kitchen, basically, the food that would be given out every single day. And then when they're there a little longer, they contribute to more of a long-term fund for those in need and then a little longer, a clothing fund, right? So it's a less immediate need and a burial fund and then ultimately the infrastructure of the city, the city walls. And they don't talk about voting because, you know, Jews did not have autonomy in this period. But there's this idea that when you move into a city, you're already obligated in the very basic food needs of other people in the city who you might not even met those people or seen them. And as you invest more in the community, you are invested more in the long-term needs, right? Infrastructure, city walls, that's a very long-term need. And I would throw voting in here. Voting is an investment in the long-term needs of our society. It's an investment in our cities and our states and our countries, but it's not enough. We want to both continue to push that person, even if they're our favorite candidate ever, we're going to disagree with them at some point. And also invest beyond our communities to do what we can, whether it's like Carter said, that's really beautiful, welcoming a family into your home or donating to the local Tanaka funds or getting involved in local activism or whatever you can do to try to make your city or your community. Or your state or your country the best place possible.
Speaker 1Jill, Curtis, thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2It's been a pleasure having this conversation. Thank you for hosting it.
Speaker 1Thanks for listening. I'm Naila Boodoo. You can find Oh God Now What on Substack. If you sign up for the newsletter emails each week, you'll get bonus and behind-the-scenes content and join the conversation with other people listening to you. Oh God Now What is a co-production of PRX Productions, Glad You're Here, and Rhyme Media. Our production team is Nick Mainoni, Robin Lin, Genevieve Sponsler, Sandra Lopez-Monsalve, and Edwin Ochoa. The executive producer at Rhyme Media is Dan Bobcoff, and at PRX Productions, it's Jocelyn Gonzalez. Our theme music is by Hansdale Shee. Oh God Now What is made possible by the John Templeton Foundation. Oh God Now What is a co-production of PRX Productions, Glad You're Here, and Rhyme Media.
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