Why Are Young Jews Anti-Israel? New York Times Bestselling Author Sarah Hurwitz Returns!

Watch and Listen

We're confusing Zionism with like the current Israeli government.

If all you have is the Torah, that's sort of a snapshot of Jews thousands of years ago and you miss everything else that makes us who we are today.

We've lost sight of the fact that to be a Jew is to be different and a little uncomfortable.

Anything that's done os sensibly for Jews now can be done against Jews later.

Guess who's back?

Back again?

Sarah's back.

Tell a friend.

Guess who's back?

Guess who's back?

Okay.

That's right folks.

We've got our first BJJP repeater in the house.

Last year we had her on to talk about her incredible debut book and Jonah Jewish Starter Kit Staple here.

All along this year, we brought her back to talk about her new book that just released as a Jew, reclaiming our story from those who blame, shame, and try to erase us.

She's full of rage and it's on the page.

Please welcome the world's first Born again Jew, Sarah Herwitz.

It is so good to be back.

You give the best intros of anyone.

Thank you.

I mentioned the rage on the page as you were telling me and prepping me to read this book.

Mm-hmm.

Almost with glee you are like, there's so much rage in there.

So who is the rage directed at?

It's really directed at centuries of haters.

It's basically directed at the 2000 years of anti Judaism antisemitism that I feel.

Infiltrated and warped my identity and the identities of a lot of other American Jews.

Tell me about the title as a Jew, which is a, a loaded phrase these days, so how, how are you meaning it?

I didn't actually originally intend it as the kind of edgy, like, you know, as a Jew.

I think Israel's terrible, like not that kind of way.

I actually meant it as I was thinking about my former Jewish identity when I was growing up, which was very much like.

Oh, I'm Jewish, but I, I'm just a cultural Jew.

I'm, I'm just a social, just I'm, I'm just this, I'm, it was always the, I'm just a, let me apologize, kind of Jew and I was like, Nope.

Just as a Jew.

Jew.

Period.

And it's funny how the word Jew makes people little uncomfortable.

Like, it's almost like they'll be like, what Jewish person?

Um, you know, a person of the Jewish heritage.

And I'm like.

It's not actually a slur, it's, it's actually what we are.

I mean, I know Jews who are uncomfortable calling people Jew.

Yes.

They, 'cause they think it sounds like an, an insult.

Exactly.

And, and which is, it is not through history.

It probably has been used as one.

So I think we've kind of, you know, picked that up.

But no, I, I really wanted to own that and claim it and just say there's no caveats.

There's no apologies.

I'm a Jew.

So is it by luck of the draw that it also has taken on this other meaning?

It kind of is.

I mean, when I, you know, I knew obviously from getting it and I thought like, well, if other people are doing this, doing, like as a Jew, I think Israel shouldn't exist as a Jew.

I think I'm like, well.

I can play too, right?

Like I can actually, I can also step up to this play because no one gets to claim this conversation.

Nice.

We can all kind of add our voices.

So I was like, oh, okay.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna play too.

Love that.

Okay, so I've read it, but my audience perhaps some have, some have not.

What's the thesis of this book?

I thought my.

Identity growing up was freely chosen.

I thought that I, as a modern empowered Jew, was like, yeah, I'm just a, just an ethnic Jew, which like, dude, Jews are of like countless different ethnicities and ethnic Jew.

What was I talking about?

But I thought that was freely chosen.

And what I realized was that actually all those centuries of anti-Semitism.

I had internalized them like I had actually, they really had an effect on my, my Jewish soul.

And not only that, they had affected our ancestors in response to that persecution.

Over the past a hundred years, many of our ancestors kind of made a choice to try to erase themselves in order to fit in right, to kind of leave behind parts of the tradition that didn't fit into the majority society, and they did so.

In a very understandable attempt just to be safe, right?

I look back to Western Europe in the 18 hundreds at this moment, where Jews were finally allowed to be citizens of their country, where they were finally allowed to go to universities and have these secular jobs, and these Jews had to figure out how to be Jewish when they were so used to living in these insular Jewish communities.

They spoke Jewish languages, they ate Jewish foods, they live by a Jewish calendar, and suddenly they're kind of.

Integrating into the modern world and they had to figure out how to be Jewish and they were, they were just kind of hit with like waves of anti Judaism and, and antisemitism and that affected them and the choices they made for how to reshape Judaism, I think were shaped by the people around them.

So the kind of Judaism that they came up with.

Kind of helped me understand the kind of Judaism I grew up with, where it was a kind of, it was an edited version of Judaism, right?

Where it was like, okay, we both love the Old Testament, right?

The Old Testament Christian, what Christians call the Hebrew Bible.

They're like, we have that in common with Christians, with people around us, so we'll really emphasize that, right?

Right.

We're a religion of prophetic morality and you know.

2,500 years of commentary and debate that we have after the Hebrew Bible.

We're like, oh, but that's, they don't have that.

So let's just kind of diminish that.

Right.

You, you make a big point of, of looking at this in the book, which I really liked this idea that if all you have is the Torah, that's sort of a snapshot of Jews thousands of years ago, and you miss everything else that makes us who we are today, because that, and by the way, you know, growing up for me, Judaism was.

Three boring holidays and one fun one, Hanukkah.

It was two texts.

There were only two Jewish texts in the entire universe.

There was the prayer book we held in their hands.

The Torah at the front of the synagogue, right?

That's the Judaism, right?

The Jewish text.

And there were like a handful of Universalist values.

Don't lie, cheat, steal, la la, la.

And if those are your only points of contact with Judaism, why would you think it has 4,000 years of wisdom about the human condition?

Those are found in the 2,500 years of text after, right.

The Torah after the Bible that Yes, interpret that, but also, you know, really dig deep into Jewish law and into what it means to be a good person, lead a worthy life.

And I didn't see any of that.

And you know, this book was helping me understand why that was taken from us, like what actually happened, right?

That that was, our ancestors made this decision to kind of almost like jam a Protestant cookie cutter into Judaism and get rid of what didn't fit in order to be safe.

Right.

It was a really brave move.

They could have just gone and become Christians.

They could have been nothing, but they said, no, we want to remain Jewish.

And they figured out a way to do it that would let them participate in the modern world.

So I feel such gratitude to them and also such heartbreak.

And by the way, I was telling this to a bunch of Israelis and this guy interrupted me and he said, that happened to us too.

And I was like, no, it didn't, dude.

Well, what do you, and I kept talking, he interrupted me again.

He said, that happened to us too.

I was like, what?

And then I realized if you look at the early Zionist writing, a lot of them were very, uh, very negative about Jewish religion, very negative about rabbis or these rabbis are getting us killed.

They're claiming them a size are gonna come and save us.

But no, no, no.

We have to save ourselves.

We need to be, you know, have a, a Jewish state.

You look at secular Israelis today and like they've lost it too, right?

Yeah.

Zionists were the predecessors of all of these secular Israelis who.

Have a very complicated relationship with Jewish religion and spirituality, and I just thought like, oh my God, they lost it too.

Right?

Like, we've both had this loss.

And you think the The source is the same.

The source is the same.

It is persecution.

Okay.

So let's get into some of the specifics from the book.

So one of the things you sort of open with is this notion of keys, how you were given the wrong keys and you needed to sort of discover the right keys.

Like, just tell me about that concept of keys growing up in a Christian country.

You're handed a bunch of keys that you expect to unlock religion.

You know that that's, these are the keys and you think they're universal keys.

One of them is spirituality.

It's like, oh, spirituality is our bodies and this material world is, it's carnal.

It's, it's sort of inferior and there is like a superior, heavenly realm.

Like there's a soul in a heavenly realm.

And the goal is to transcend this kind of gross bodily material world for that spirit world, not a Jewish idea.

Mm.

But I always thought like, that's spirituality, right?

You read the Torah, they're really into our bodies.

It's kind of interesting, a lot of wisdom in the Torah about how you treat your bodies, care for your bodies, a lot of wisdom about how you treat the land, how you care for the land.

We're pretty p preoccupied with this world.

That's our spirituality is very much like a kind of land-based spirituality, but like.

That's not the key you're given when you grow up in a Christian country.

You know you're taught like even how you engage with a sacred text.

I remember I trained to be a hospital chaplain as a volunteer and I was doing a shift one day and this lovely Christian patient asked me for a Bible and of course I brought it to her.

And when I came back later she was just like absorbed in its pages and she told me like, this gives me comfort.

And I thought, that's so beautiful.

That's how I always thought you were supposed to read the Torah.

You just open it up and it's gonna be soothing and comforting and like help you have faith in God and like it's really not, not quite.

That's not how we read our sacred texts.

But again, this idea of like, this is, you just read, you read your scripture, we think that we should engage with Judaism.

Like Christians engaging C and, and it's not true.

Right?

Right.

And, and one of the things that sort of stuck out to me, going back to the, the Torah and the, the snapshot of it all is like in, you know, the, in the Christian faith, like the rules, the laws, whatever, like that's in that scripture.

And for us.

It's there, but then they spend the next several thousand years reinterpreting and remaking the laws.

And it, it's not just, okay, what they said in that sentence is exactly what we're supposed to be doing today, thousands of years later.

This is the thing like, like the Torah is like the constitution, the original draft of the Constitution, right?

No one would like be like, oh, I, I read the, the Constitution and I guess you guys still use slavery and women can't vote.

It's like, no, we spent 250 years reinterpreting that.

Like same for, you know, the last.

2,500 years.

One of the concepts I like in, in the keys section is the, the notion of obedience and the way that you compare Moses to Noah.

I thought that was really cool.

Yeah.

Can you speak on that?

I think we have this idea that like, we're supposed to be obedient to God, like that's sort of some, a key that we have gotten.

But like if you actually look at the Torah, many of like the greatest heroes are quite disobedient to God.

Like when God comes to Moses in a burning bush and is like, Moses, I want you to lead rescue your people from Egypt.

And Moses is like, you'd think he'd be like.

Whoa, you are God, absolutely I'm in right?

Instead he's like, Nope, nope, not the right guy.

Don't wanna do it me.

Not for me.

I can't mean like again and again, like it's not a onetime objection.

It's like multiple times and God is so annoyed and is finally like, my God, I'll get you a spokesperson like homie, like, like just do this thing.

Whereas Noah, who comes earlier in the Torah, God goes to him and says, bill, mark, do all this stuff, and he just does it.

No objection, no problem.

And he kind of, at the end of his life, you see him just naked in a tent drunk.

Like he really doesn't come off as a particularly great Jew.

And then you've got Abraham who is arguing with God at the moment of Saddo and Gomorrah, where he's saying, don't kill these people in Saddo.

Like they're, he's literally like haggling with God, right?

So it's like these people who really wrestle with God, argue with God, they're considered great.

And Noah, who just obeys.

Not the best character.

Yeah.

I thought that was really interesting.

Yeah.

Then you get into this notion of chosenness.

Yes.

Uh, which I think is really key.

My father-in-law shout out to Big Vin.

He's not Jewish, and it's something he's brought up to me, like, you know, the whole chosen thing.

Like, what's that about?

Like, you know, like, you think you're better than us.

It's like that kind of idea.

And I don't think he realizes as you lay out in the book, like it's not like we're chosen for greatness, like we're chosen for latrine duty, you know?

Totally.

It's just like, I mean, first of all.

Just read the Torah.

The Israelites are like some of the worst characters, like the best, most moral, heroic, noble characters are often Nonis Israelites.

Hmm.

You know, you look at, like, Moses' entire life was made possible by this series of quite heroic women, none of whom were Israelites.

You know, the midwives who decided not to kill him as a baby, even though Pharaoh had ordered that you have Pharaoh's daughter, right.

Who rescues Moses from the river Batia.

Uh, right.

Like that's kind of wild that she did that.

Like these are not.

Right, and they come off as quite heroic.

And this idea of chosenness, like if you actually read the text, God never says, I've chosen you 'cause you guys are awesome.

It's more like at one point God is like, you're not the biggest people.

In fact, you're kind of a little people.

It's like, thanks, thanks bro.

It's like there's no idea of like the Jewish superiority in the Torah.

That is, that's something that probably later Jews, when they were being brutally oppressed, told themselves as kind of like.

A self-esteem boost, like we are chosen, we are special.

Also, there's a number of parts of the Torah that indicate that Chosenness is conditional.

It's almost like you're chosen if you actually rise to the bar that I've set for you, and what they're chosen for is to meet a really high ethical bar.

Right.

They're chosen for responsibility.

That's exactly, they're chosen for responsibility, so it's like, that's actually a funny way to put it.

They're chosen for latrine duty, but like, look, you're, they're chosen for these, this really.

Serious burden, which is also a gift.

And so this idea of like we're chosen to be better than others is it's.

Utter nonsense.

And the Torah in every way disputes that idea.

Yeah.

I just think that's so important for Jews to know.

Yes.

'cause I don't think Jews understand that.

And then they can't answer when they're awesome father-in-law's.

Like, what's the deal?

That's the thing.

And by the way, I would just point out Judaism is both universalist in particular, it's universalist in that it says all human beings are created in God's image, every single one.

And then God has a particular relationship with Abraham and with his descendants.

And also has particular relationships with other peoples and it's all cool.

So it's not like there's one way to be saved.

There's not one way to God.

There's, you know, everyone is a child of the divine and God has different relationships with different peoples and that is different from other traditions.

I think that's really the key.

That's a key thing to, to understand.

So then we get to the right keys.

For which I've made a, a little acronym, BN Market, you know, B-N-M-K-T.

Do you remember what the BNMK and T are?

Oh my gosh.

There's, there is bre, is it Bret?

Is it covering?

I think so.

Yep.

I can't, I didn't even write it down.

I just wrote down the thing.

Beats vote.

Oh my God.

This is, it's so, like, people are like, how can you forget?

Which in your own one?

No, I, I forget.

I do have these four C's of conversation.

I forget one of the C's every time I say it.

One of 'em I think should be study as a spiritual practice.

I don't know if I, I don't know how I said that.

I don't know what letter.

Okay.

I'm gonna to put you on the spot and there's five.

It's hard to remember lot.

I really did write this book, I swear, KA kado.

Is that one Kosh?

Kdo, yes.

Holiness.

That's just Tous.

T Tous, Torah.

Maybe Torah and maybe study came under that.

That's right.

I still dunno what the N is though.

Why am I blanking?

It's like a phrase, right?

It's Hebrew and it's, it's, we shall do and we shall hear is the English It's is, it's the, it's the idea that like, you know when the Israelites accepted a Torah, when they said, okay, we will.

You know, this, this obligation you've given us this call.

You, we, the Covenant.

Covenant.

A brief covenant, exactly.

Which was, I mean the Torah basically is this covenant.

It's God saying, here is an agreement that I'm, I want to have with you.

Here are a bunch of of laws that I want you to follow, to be close to me and to be better people.

You can accept or reject it.

They decide to accept it.

And they accept it by saying like, we shall do and we shall hear.

Which is sort of weird.

You think you hear first and then you do.

There's an idea that you do these things in order to understand them.

So it's a fascinating Yeah, that's a, that is a key key.

I also think the idea of study as a spiritual practice is really key.

'cause growing up I thought like spiritual practice is, you go to the synagogue, you sit and say the prayers.

That's it.

That's been a lot of American Jews experience we get, and I get it, but like actually studying our, our sacred texts.

That is a spiritual practice.

And this is like, this is your big thing.

This is my big thing.

I mean, this is like at the heart of ev, everything I hear you say is this idea.

This idea.

Do I love my hours in services?

Not always right.

This may not be my favorite part, but when you study, like you're really listening for the divine voice as it has echoed down through the centuries and through the voices of our ancestors, it's like I'm opening a book of the wisdom of my grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents that they've really sacrificed and.

And just fought to like hand down to me.

And I find it tremendously moving.

Like I really feel a sense of spiritual connection when I study.

A few moments ago you mentioned Ella, me, Loki.

Yeah.

In God's image.

Yeah.

And you, you have this quote from Rabbi Ytz Greenberg, who by the way, is responsible for the birth of my brother Henry, because.

My parents were in the Wexner Foundation program, and Rabbi Greenberg spoke to them.

And basically the takeaway was, if you can, you should have more Jewish children.

My parents were like, okay, let's have another one.

And then my brother Henry was born.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Right?

I hope your brother's written a thank you note.

I don't think so.

Okay.

Well, Henry, you're on notice.

Um, so the way he sort of defines.

Is infinite worth, we're all created equal and everybody's unique.

Yep.

So how do you square that idea with some of the stuff in the Torah that's, you know, kill Alek Stone, the gaze, stuff like that.

I can say like, well, how do you square?

All men are created equal with allowing slavery.

And you'd be like.

Can't, we don't allow slavery anymore.

Well, now we don't.

When they wrote it exactly.

It was a thing.

This was at the time.

Right.

These were the moral standards at the time.

Right.

These were, but so it's just a contradiction that's there.

It's, it's, well, it, I mean, not necessarily because at the time they probably thought that this was actually a.

This was actually enacting those values at the time, like right back in.

I mean, it's heartbreaking to say now, but 250 years ago, our founders probably did think that all men are created equal, was reconciliable with slavery.

We now found that appalling.

Of course, that's not true, but that was the moral sensibility at the time, and the genius of the Constitution was that it contained the tools within it.

To allow them to reinterpret it as their moral sensibility evolved and improved.

Mm-hmm.

And I, I think similarly for the Torah, our tradition has within it, these interpretive tools and techniques that allow us to reinterpret as our moral sensibility evolves.

So, you know, the Torah says an eye for an eye, it's pretty clear.

And later rabbis we're like, no, no, no, no.

Clearly that means that if you take out my eye, you have to pay me monetary compensation.

Right.

They reinterpreted it.

They, they have the tools and techniques to do that.

So I don't, I don't actually.

Think it's a, a contradiction like it was given to human beings, right?

Human beings receive this as they were at the time, and we kind of continue to, to understand it differently in, in, in our own time.

Okay, so then sort of the next portion of the book is, as you mentioned, sort of, it's really like a history book.

I mean, you really do a intense research and you take us down the, the history of.

Persecution of the Jews.

And where does this pervasive antisemitism come from?

Where do these ideas come from?

This is the case with sort of everything in life where you, you know, when you enter the world, you sort of take for granted everything that's already there.

But everything started somehow somewhere.

Exactly.

And you sort of like.

No, antisemitism isn't just like floating in the air.

It was sort of invented in this way by these people.

So here's the problem.

I like many young people got my antisemitism education through Holocaust education, and it was like, okay, the Germans lost World War.

I blame the Jews.

The depression happened.

They blamed the Jews, then they killed them all.

And it's like, okay, but why the Jews 'cause of prejudice and scapegoating.

And you're like, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Then you're like, but why the Jews, 'cause of prejudice and scapegoating.

We're learning about that and you're like.

Okay.

And you kind of walk away thinking like, huh, antis is a mystery.

Like it must have just always been there.

Eal mystical, right, right.

You know, in the, in the air.

Or you think maybe we did something to disturb this.

You hear that question?

All these people, right?

If all these people think it, but antisemitism is one of the least mysterious phenomena in the known universe.

In ancient times.

There is pagan antisemitism that predates an Christianity for sure.

But I think that Christianity, in many ways, theologized, anti Judaism and antisemitism.

And what happened is, like the New Testament is it's a dispute between groups of Jews, right, between different groups of Jews.

They eventually part ways and early Christianity.

Began to define itself in opposition to Judaism.

It's a tradition called the Advers Judaist tradition, which is Latin for against the Jews.

And you know, it was trying to distinguish itself from Judaism and trying to get people to stop practicing both, which they kind of were doing back then.

You really start to see very early on these themes of, of power that Jews are like diabolically, superhumanly powerful.

You see themes of depravity.

Jews are just depraved, perverse, awful, disgusting.

You see conspiracy, they're working together behind the scenes.

Even though they're small in number, they're very powerful 'cause they work together.

So power, depravity, conspiracy, you see these themes, and I quote the work of a number of really outstanding Christian scholars who are pretty adamant that you can trace these, these three themes from early Christianity all the way to the Holocaust.

One of the.

Ideas you bring up, and it's something you and I discussed last time you were here.

I've discussed it with Dara Horn.

It's her framing is the, the Hanukkah antisemitism, which is not the, I'm gonna kill you antisemitism.

It's the, there's something you can do to make yourself acceptable to me.

Exactly.

Antisemitism, which, which you call sort of the conversion demand.

Exactly.

You put it as, you might be so steeped in shame about your alleged disgustingness that you might even be grateful and you know, I, I commented on a.

Jewish influencers post recently who literally said on the post, I'm grateful that my Judaism is not, you know, built on a foundation of Zionism.

I'm grateful.

Wow.

Okay.

You know, and that's what the conversion demand of today is.

It's not convert to Christianity, it's give up Israel, convert to anti-Zionism.

Convert, convert to anti-Zionism.

Yeah.

Um, but.

You know, you, you say, you might be so steeped in shame about it, but I don't think these people feel shame or at least are not aware that there may be a, a, a deep seated shame somewhere in there that I don't think they feel like they've made a sacrifice.

So, you know, how do we confront that if again, you, you think it's freely chosen?

Right?

Those feelings of shame are not present in your conscious mind, at least.

It's so interesting.

I mean, I would almost argue that.

This person you were talking about does feel profound shame because she has been made to feel that Israel is the original sin of the world.

She's made to feel that.

Israel, it's not a country.

No, no.

It's something that is so much more, I mean, it is literally the worst thing on Earth.

I actually, years ago, I had this sense that there was something like really bad about Israel.

Just bad.

I didn't know what it was, but I didn't wanna find out if I looked too closely.

I was like, uhoh, I'm gonna find out and that will be bad.

When I actually did the research, I was like, wait a second.

This is a country right.

It was founded like every other, like so many other countries in the mid 20th century.

And it wasn't good, right?

With these countries were founded in war and partition, in bloodshed.

I'm not saying this is great.

Countries are founded in violence and maintained in violence.

That's what countries are, right?

And at the same time, I think Israel's a miracle.

I think it's exceptional.

I'm so proud of its story and it's the country.

And I think so often young people are taught that Israel is like a miracle that was founded in Moonbeams and unicorns and it's perfect.

And then they get to campus and people are like.

Basically it's a country and they're like, no, but not just, it's a country.

It's worse than all other countries.

And it's not.

That's the thing.

I really want to not just exceptionalize Israel, 'cause it is exceptional.

I wanna normalize it too.

And I think that she thinks that Israel is exceptionally evil, which is the source of her shame.

And she's like, I'm not one of those Jews who's evil.

And that's sad.

Yeah, if there is a shame there, I don't think she's in touch with it.

Yeah, I mean that's, that's the whole normalization.

I mean, Garra horn calls this the weaponization of shame where it's like the shame is so baked in that you just think it's normal.

You've just kind of internalized and accepted it and that that's a bummer.

And speaking of the, this notion of, you know, learning about Israel appearing in sunshine and moonbeams, one of the sort of reasons.

anti-Israel Jews will give for why they've gone in that direction is sort of that, where it's like, well, you didn't show me the whole truth, so now I'm anti-Israel, which I feel is like sort of a cop out.

Not really a real explanation.

I mean, it's a little immature, right?

It's like the.

It's like, okay, you didn't tell me the truth, so now the whole thing is bankrupt.

I'm throwing out the whole thing.

Whereas like a more mature thing to say is like, okay, you, you did something wrong.

Like you really didn't tell me the truth.

That is not acceptable.

I'm now gonna go find the truth.

I'm gonna go do the work and I'm gonna begin to have a mature understanding of Israel.

And that's, we have to grow up.

The thing that I think is so hard and confusing now is that we're confusing Zionism with like.

The current Israeli government.

Oh, that's, which is just so, I think that's what most people think it is.

Like to me, a Zionist, a supporter of the government and it's so maddening to me.

'cause I like, I keep saying over and over again like, I'm a Zionist.

Here's what that means.

What that means is that I think Jews have a right to safety and security in a state in their ancestral homeland.

And I believe they should have national independence and self-determination like Japanese people have in JA Japan and Laan have in Lavia and like I hope Palestinians have in Palestine one day.

That seems pretty reasonable.

And I feel this way because I know history and I know what happened.

When we ran the counter experiment of Statelessness Holocaust, two thirds of European Jews wiped out.

But how about also in the 20th century, the 850,000 Jews who had to flee persecution in Arab lands most to Israel, 2 million Russian Jews who fled persecution in Russia have to Israel, tens of thousands of Ethiopians.

I can go on and on of course.

So I'm just not interested in rerunning that experiment 'cause I know how it turned out.

At the same time, I look at this current Israeli government and I'm appalled.

I cannot stand Netanyahu.

I cannot stand this coalition.

I disagree vehemently with many of their policies, as do many Israelis.

I can hold both those things.

Just like I'm an American who's patriotic and loves my country and can't stand Trump.

Not hard.

It's a country.

It's a country.

I wonder if things would be different if instead of Israel it was called like Jew land.

You'd be like, oh yeah, the Jews belong to Jew land the way like the Japanese belong to Japan.

I feel like it would change things.

Social media campaign, general plat, you heard your hair?

Hashtag star J Land.

Okay.

Tell me about a concept you explore in the book, uh, of using Jews to think with.

The point of this is that throughout history, and this is actually an argument also made by David Berg and his book, anti Judaism.

The Western world, people have used Jews to think with, meaning they've actually used Jews to try to kind of understand the forces around them.

And Jews have been the negative foil against which they think about themselves.

There's a scholar named Bernard Harrison, who I think puts this really well, where he talks about this idea that like we, the majority are engaged in this grand moral project and the only thing stopping us are the Jews, right?

Like we sort of thought about what we wanna do here and actually like the Jews are helping us kind of understand what we're doing.

By doing the opposite.

So it's like we, the Christians are Christianizing, the Roman Empire.

Who's stopping us?

Those Jews who won't convert.

You know, we, the communists are bringing about the great brotherhood of man and the revolution and who's stopping us?

These capitalist Jews.

We, the Germans, are bringing about the great Arian racially pure father land who's stopping us race, polluting Jews today in America, you see on the right and the left.

On the right.

It is we white Christian Americans are bringing back white Christian civilization.

The only thing stopping us, these Jews who are importing black and brown immigrants to replace white people, that is the bonkers great replacement conspiracy, which I'm like, is it more racist or more antisemitic?

I don't know.

Right.

I think it's kind of equal.

And then on the left you have, you know, we, the great moral majority are doing anti-racism and anti-colonialism.

And the only thing stopping us are these racist colonialist Zionists, AKA Jews.

Right.

And you know.

Dar Horn, who's brilliant, and I quote all the time.

She says, you know, if you think there are sides here, you don't understand what's happening.

It's the same thing on both sides.

It just takes on slightly different, you know, language and form.

It's so easy to say, well, left wing's the problem, the right wing's, the problem, right?

But if you actually look at the two of them, the tropes are kind of the same, right?

The right is saying that Jews are doing a white genocide, and the left is saying they're doing a genocide in Gaza, it's like the same, it's like very similar tropes.

Speaking of the left, let's go there.

So you talk a lot about social justice and sort of social justice.

Jews like the most overused.

Phrase, today's tikun Olam.

Yeah.

And I feel like it's been sed in, in, in its use in, in, in, in the notion that like the primary goal of Jews is to take care of everybody who isn't Jewish and not Jews themselves.

Right.

And like, this is our excuse 'cause it's Tikun.

Olam.

I hear that a lot from anti-Israel Jews.

That's why I'm an anti-ISIS, Israel Jew.

'cause of Tikun Olam.

My job is to help everyone else like.

What the hell is that?

I know Jews who are deeply versed in Jewish thought and wisdom and text around social justice, and they follow those texts to do social justice in the world.

I'm like, okay, that's a social justice you, I have a lot of respect for that.

That's like some serious Judaism.

Those Jews are role models of mine, but when it sometimes takes on this.

Form that makes me uneasy.

Where it's like, you know, as a Jew, as a Jew who believes in social justice, I hold Jews to a higher standard.

What are you saying there?

Like you're saying that we're better, that we should be held to a higher standard.

And what are you saying about other people that's that best, condescending at worst, depending on who those people are, possibly racist.

Like, there's something about that that just, well, how, how is that different than like, you know, the responsibility that Jews bear with this, you know, the ethics and, and morals that we've been given.

Oh, that's, we are called to live to a very high standard.

I think all people should be living to high standards as they define them themselves.

You know, I'm not gonna say we're better than others.

There's something about that kind of like, as a Jew, I think Jew should do better.

It's like, than others.

I'm like, I don't know.

I think other people can, you know, live by high standards as well.

And it's, it's sort of, as you say, like that's a kind of a universal value, right?

Like do good in the world, like do charity.

That's not a.

Special Jewish idea.

That's a thing.

Like Christians have a very rich tradition of social justice, Muslims of and charity.

Muslim can do like they, but it's, each tradition has its own really beautiful, unique wisdom that is, should be studied by people in that tradition and lived out by people in that tradition.

We have that too, and the problem is, like Jewish law and tradition operates in polarities where you have to hold opposing truths and wrestle with them.

So the Torah says no fewer than 36 times, love the stranger.

It is unambiguous and the stranger is the non-Jew.

You love them.

You care for them.

You are a stranger in the land of Egypt.

That's real clear.

Don't try to tell me otherwise.

It also says, remember Alek, the Amalekites were the tribe that attacked the Israelites from behind Attack the weakest part of the tribe.

And there is a real horror of that in Jewish tradition.

So we're told, be open-hearted, be loving, be compassionate.

But remember there are people out there who are trying to kill you.

So be wary.

It's like when you're holding fast to just the Tulum pole, you're also forgetting the other part of that pole, which is like, and you know, there are people who persecute us and we need to actually be a little careful and a little wary.

So it just, you have to wrestle with both.

And it, it's a real anti extremist kind of measure because right, if you have to grapple with that other pole, you can't just be there.

You have to kind of be somewhere between them.

What does Jewish text or Jewish values say about, you know, looking at the, the Israel of it all the, the value of ensuring Jewish survival versus all the other Do good, be good, be kind parts of it.

This is tough.

You know, a lot of Jewish tradition came before we had a.

It's like we were powerless for most of our tradition.

Now we do have some power.

We have nuclear weapons in an army, and so it's like, okay, how do we wrestle with this?

And that's hard.

It's sort of shocking how absent that is from the Jewish American experience.

And it's funny, when I was on visiting college campuses and you know, all these Jews were telling me like, you know, this climate change club or this reproductive rights club, it has kind of an informal, no Zionist allowed policy, and we're just.

Not really wanted there.

And I was like, okay, that's unacceptable, obviously.

Right?

And you need to do what Jews have always done form your own climate club.

Yeah, I love this.

And like, make it, make it so inclusive.

Make it any, anyone of any background is welcome in your club.

And make it the best club.

Literally just make it the most amazing climate club.

That's what you just did, right?

Right.

We formed our own law firms and said, anyone's welcome.

If you'll work with Jews, we'll have you.

Right.

And then we made those firms awesome and everyone wanted to be there.

We can do that again.

And the key is, make it inclusive.

That is a kind of KU alum that's quite beautiful.

I love that.

And, and I like the way that you frame that in the book, sort of remembering these strategies, the way Jews have always dealt with antisemitism, but it's just, it's a muscle that we haven't had to exercise in a while, and it always.

Hurts.

It's a little bit painful to get back in shape, I think is how you put it.

It's, and look, we've spent a lot of time in the last 80 years in America trying to make ourselves comfortable, right?

Like that was, it's so much about like making sure that there were, you know, there was no Christian prayer in schools.

So we'd be comfortable making sure that things were equal so we'd be comfortable.

And I'm so glad.

And of course we should be comfortable.

Every minority group should be comfortable and should feel like America is their home.

No one should feel like they're a guest here.

And like, you know, to be a Jew is to be different.

That's just always been the case.

Like monotheism, thousands of years ago.

That was different.

Yeah.

The idea that every human being was created in God's image that was different.

And I think that we've lost sight of the fact that to be a Jew is to be different and a little uncomfortable to bring something different to the world.

So in a way, we've like both shaped the world with our ideas.

You know, this in the image idea underlies all democracy and human rights.

Law and we also like, are challenging a lot of the dominant stuff.

So it's a very, it's an, it's a wild tension of both, you know, shaping culture and challenging it.

To me, American Utopia looks like every, all of these groups in this melting pot have comfort in their own identities and, and a recognition from the whole that.

Yes, we all have these own identities and communities, but we're all part of this bigger one together, but we're not trying to be like each other or trying to make anybody be anyone.

They're not exactly.

We're each doing our thing, but we're all doing it in the same room, you know?

Yes, exactly.

Okay.

Israel.

Israel, avoid it in the first book.

Yeah, totally.

And majorly confronting here in this book.

So what was the decision like to not.

Handle it before and to totally handle it head on now.

So it's funny, my first book, I was so captivated by Jewish Ritual Ethics Spirituality.

I was like so excited to write about that and Israel just seemed messy.

But with this book, I was like, okay, Israel is a big missing hole in my first book.

And so much of the antisemitism I was seeing today on campus had to do with Israel and I'm, and I felt like I have to take this on.

Like I cannot be a coward about this now.

You know?

I was afraid last time.

Yeah.

When I actually started doing the research into history, I was like, turns out it's a country, right?

Turns out it's a country founded like so many other countries, and by the way, also extraordinary and miraculous and exceptional.

Right?

It's both things and I, I really in my book, wanted to kind of make both of those cases.

This really caught my attention in 1947.

You quote the, the British Foreign Minister as saying, for the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish state.

For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last, the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.

How do you live in peace if one of the two parties literally just doesn't want it, is diametrically opposed to it and will not stop until you're not there anymore?

It's tough.

I mean, it's like what do you do with that?

It's very tough and like the problem, you know, one problem I have is I see.

Those extreme forces in Israel today.

Like I see, you know, I see this in Israel.

I'm like, oh my God, this is not like, please don't do this.

It certain, it certainly has developed over this 80 year history, that's for sure.

I hate it when people say, see, look at these extremists in Israel.

Israel is by giving Jews power, will, will by nature, make them illiberal.

I'm like, that is not true.

I'm sorry if in 1948, you know, Arabs just said, okay, look, we tried, we tried to fight this.

We lost.

They're gonna have a state.

We're never gonna accept it or be happy about it, but we're gonna really put all of our efforts into building a thriving Palestinian state with all these incredibly talented, ambitious people.

That's what we're gonna do.

Would you have the right wing?

Lunacy that you have in Israel today?

No.

No.

I think mean, no, I don't think you would.

You could have gotten even way further down the timeline and I still don't think you'd have the right wing lunacy.

Every community has its illiberal segments, every single one.

We are not an exception.

Ours were pretty fringe and, but decades and decades of war and terrorist attacks and trauma.

It's not shocking that that stuff catches on, which, that's a re it's a response to trauma.

Look at us after September 11th, man.

I mean, the illiberal turn that America took after September 11th.

Right.

I don't blame Israelis at all.

Like I don't blame them.

Right.

But it is so, it's, it's enraging for me to see this stuff happening.

Really like to see it happening on our side.

I'm like, no, no, no.

We can't.

Let's not do that.

Let's not do that.

But it, you know, I, I think it's a very, it feels like an intractable problem.

Like to play devil's advocate.

I know you say it's understandable.

How unreasonable do you find it to go?

Well, if they don't want us here ever, right?

Well now we don't want you here either, and we're just going to get rid of you and then we don't have to deal with this anymore.

I think that's pretty unreasonable.

We don't need to do that, right?

Let's build a thriving Israel.

We don't need to occu.

We don't need to next the West Bank, build a thriving Israel.

We need to occupy Gaza.

Build a thriving, thriving Israel, and by the way, fight off any attacks.

Powerfully.

One of the great shortcomings that I think in Jewish education in America is not teaching about what you mentioned earlier, and that is the, the flight of 850,000 Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.

I mean, I didn't hear that once in, never in, and I went to Jewish Day School.

Jewish camp, and look, I, I understand the vast, vast majority of American Jews are of European descent.

It's not necessarily their story, but it is a.

Huge piece of the Jewish story.

Massive.

How do you think that like skated by?

Appalling to me.

Yeah.

Right.

Like it is, and I, I, I think there's some tivity, right?

There is some, and I, I find it appalling, right?

It's like, no, and actually this is half of Jews in Israel have the roots in Asian Africa, right?

Like that, that this is their history.

And just because it's a smaller minority in America, this is part of our people, right?

We are one people.

And it is like, this needs to be taught in detail and understood.

It's just so, it's embarrassing.

It's so weird to me.

It's like that we dunno about Ethiopian Jews.

Like how is that possible that we don't, it's such a key.

It's, it's part of our people.

They were Jews all over the world and all different backgrounds, and we don't know about them.

Right.

And I think that's a real problem.

Agreed.

Real problem.

Something you talk about a lot through this history is sort of the efficacy of anti-Jewish propaganda from the Germans, from the Soviets.

Then they're, they're putting stuff out in Arabic and spreading it to the Arab world.

It's so effective.

It has worked so well.

Why can't we do the same thing?

A serious question like, why can't we have proje propaganda in Arabic and spread that everywhere?

That's adorable.

I mean, first of all, this has been baked into the world's mind for.

Centuries, right?

So it's like, it's like this is a neural groove the size of a canyon.

So it's like not all that hard to shove someone into a canyon.

So I don't wanna give people that much credit.

It's not a new idea.

It's not a new idea, and I don't wanna give people that much credit.

Also, there are 16 million of us with an M, right?

And social media is a global phenomenon.

So even if all 16 million of us, even the babies got online and we're like.

Going posting all day long, there's still 8 billion other people in the world.

Like that's not how antisemitism has waxed and waned.

It waxes and waned according to when a plague breaks out, when there's an economic downturn.

Like people then turn to their old habits of blaming Jews.

So this idea that like if we just have the right social media campaign, we're gonna convince 8 billion people to love us.

It's like that's just, I think we need to focus more on being Jews.

And by the way, you can't fight antisemitism if you don't know Jewish tradition in history.

Because if someone's like Jonah Judaism's violent and ventral, and the Jewish God is angry and hateful, whatcha gonna do be like, I love Seinfeld.

It's like create retort.

Or if they're like, Israel's a colonial racist state.

Be like KU along like right.

Again, learn it because it's awesome.

'cause it's amazing 'cause it'll transform your life.

But if you don't care about any of that, you just wanna fight antisemitism.

You still need to have Jewish content.

100%.

Something that I have described a lot, but you really name the strategy is how the haters will use these buzzwords and inversion meant to create a reaction based, not in fact, but in deep feeling.

You sort of name an extension of that is it's brand's law of just like.

Throwing all this stuff out there.

The way I've always described it is it's a flaming bag of dog shit that like somebody leaves on your doorstep and they just ring it and run away and we have to spend all the time like putting it out, cleaning it off, do like it takes us an hour when it takes somebody one second to do this is the problem.

There is such an effort to delegitimize.

Israel and like one of the, you know, one of the ways people legitimate Israel is by saying, well, look, there was a Holocaust where you eliminate people.

So now they're like, oh no, actually, you know, who's doing the Holocaust now?

Israel conversion.

Oh, got you.

It's really, I may have to say I'm impressed.

It's really, it's like very impressive how good they're at this, but it's, it's so crazy how it works, right?

I mean then like again, neural groove, the size of a canyon, Jenna, like not that hard to shove someone in there The greatest.

Decolonization project ever.

You guys are the colonizers.

The people who got genocided so bad, the word was made up for them.

You're the genocides.

It's so like, and it really cut and dry.

It just doesn't help when you have extremists in the Israeli government who are saying that something like.

Please stop.

It's maddening.

And by the way, I feel like we need to also mention antisemitism on the right because like I know in my book I worry, I kind of like almost leaned a little bit more towards the left because that's, that's my part of the world, right?

I was pers I'm hurt personally.

But man, you look at maga, what is that?

A small group of powerful elites who are depraved are in a conspiracy to hurt you and your family.

They wanna vaccinate you, they wanna make your kid trans.

All this.

The leap between elites and Jews.

It's like a millimeter, right?

Tucker Carlson's made the leap.

Like that leap has been made, and I will say this, current administration, the efforts to undermine democracy, not good for Jews.

We can survive bad policy, we really can, but once people can do whatever they want, once there are no guardrails or rules, I promise you that's gonna be bad for Jews.

Like I see many Jews now who are like, oh, I love what Trump's doing on college campuses.

It's so great.

Okay.

If you love it so much, what happens when we have a president who's like, Israel is the worst country on earth.

I'm gonna go and defund every college that has an active, hello.

I'm gonna defund every college with an Israel studies department because they're supporting this monstrous nation of Israel.

Well, I mean, we've decided That's fine Now, so that president's being set, just understand that anything that's done for ostensibly for Jews now can be done against Jews later.

You heard it here.

Tell me about the distinction you make between social and political antisemitism.

So, political antisemitism is that idea of like, we're doing, we, the majority is doing the Grand Moral project and the only thing stopping us is the Jews, right?

So that was that whole entity of like Christians and communists and Germans and whatever.

That's the kind of antisemitism we're seeing today.

Whereas social antisemitism is like, Jews are dirty, cheap, crass ugly.

I don't want them in my club.

I don't want them.

Right.

Your day-to-day racism.

Exactly.

It's your, your day-to-day stuff, which like.

That still exists, but that's not what we're seeing today so much.

We are seeing that more, those political conspiracy theories about Jews, that they're great replacing white Americans, or that they are, you know, bringing colonialism and racism back to the world.

I mean, it's those kind of grand moral theories.

The journalist, have you read to Gerst expresses it?

Well, he says it's the idea that like, Jews are the one thing stopping the redemption of the world.

And that's, um, it's pretty, it's pretty ugly right now.

Yeah, I think a lot of people.

Um, fool themselves because they're not.

Social antisemites.

Exactly.

Then I'm not an antisemite.

I, I'm nice to all the Jews that I know.

You see this and that's why it's so confusing for these poor college kids.

'cause they're like, well this person has Jewish friends, or this person is Jewish and is saying that this powerful depraved state of Israel is, you know, stopping the redemption of the world.

And they're like, I'm so confused.

And the reason they're confused is because antisemitism gets upgrades.

Right?

The medieval Christian clergymen.

He didn't think he was some kind of dumb bigot.

He was like the elite.

He had centuries worth of sophisticated theology that told him that Jews killed Jesus.

They were depraved and powerful and terrible.

Several centuries later, the enlightened European gentleman looks back at that clergy man and says, oh, that guy's an embarrassment.

Right?

That is religious, superstitious, nonsense.

I am a university educated European, and I don't think Jews killed Jesus.

But I think they're of a degraded race because I have quote science to prove it.

Right, right.

That was the elite.

That was the upgrade and he was in his upgrade and everyone said, well, you are the elite.

That is so smart.

Of course.

Today, no one on a college campus is gonna say that Jews killed Jesus.

God forbid, they're definitely not gonna say that Jews are racially inferior.

Of course not today.

The problem isn't the Jews religion or race.

It's the Jews nation.

That's the new upgrade.

That's what the sophisticated, elite educated people are saying.

The problem is Israel, and the problem is when you're in the upgrade, you don't think you're an antis semi.

Right.

I'm not those people.

No.

I'm very sophisticated.

I took seven classes on this.

Right.

And my professors are saying that, you know, maybe in 20 years we'll look back and it'll be very obvious what was going on.

But I think this is kind of what we're seeing today.

You mentioned earlier, and this is sort of like the, the backbone of the book is this experience you had as a volunteer chaplain in a hospital.

And at the beginning of the book it's more sort of about how you felt.

So, you know, othered as the only Jew in this situation, and it brought a lot of this stuff into relief for you.

But at the end, what I really like to sort of.

The poignant stuff you talk about and how you tie it into bor, Halim, the, you know, the Jewish laws and values of visiting the Sikh and how it's geared towards putting you up close and personal with illness and aging and death and.

This very real Jewish way of dealing with these things in life and not hiding from them.

Yeah.

How much of that stuff and those traditions did you know pre chaplaincy and how much came through this experience?

You know, it's funny.

I think part of what attracted me to chaplaincy was I had studied some of those laws around the holy name around visiting the sick around morning, and I was very moved by them because as you said, the secular world is so disgusted by.

Illness by death and dying.

By grief.

By aging.

Like we're really told, like run like hell from those things.

Put some Botox in it, like inject chemicals in it, send a text.

We don't wanna be around it, but Jewish tradition says no.

You run right to that, right?

Like you run right to that hospital bedside.

You run right to that funeral, to that shiva.

You, you care for that dead body.

You wash it lovingly to kind of like lovingly birth it into death.

I just found that so moving when I was studying it in Jewish law and I just, you know, when I heard about chaplaincy, I was like, oh, that's what chaplains do.

They're like right in these like what are called thin spaces, where these moments and places where the boundaries between life and death and heaven and earth kind of thin out and they're very disorienting.

Those spaces, like they can be very scary.

They can be very lonely, you know, so often I.

The patients who I, who I see, like no one's acknowledging that they're dying.

That really struck me when you, the way you sort of put of like the, the person dying is trying to be strong for their people, and the people are trying to be strong for the person dying.

So no one's actually taking the mask off.

That's the thing.

Like how do we pull that mask off?

You know, I'll just be like, you know, it sounds like you're dying.

Like, how are you feeling about that?

That's a big thing.

Like it's a big loss.

Like, tell me about that.

You know?

How do we do that with our loved ones when we're not this third party?

Being able to say to someone like, okay, sweetheart, I think this is what's true, as mu as hard as it is to say like, this is what's happening right now, and like, how are we gonna confront this truth?

I've just been amazed at how relieved patients are.

When I just say, like, from what you told me, it sounds like you're dying.

It sounds like your time is limited.

What are you most scared about?

What do you want your dying to look like?

You know, that's prob, I mean, I would imagine that's what they want to be disgusting.

It's absolutely what they wanna be.

Disgusting.

I wonder if it has to be a third party in a way.

You know, it's like anyone can do this with, you can do this with the people in your life.

You can do it and it can be hard because like, you don't want this person to die.

So like if you name that, then you feel like, oh gosh, I'm gonna fall apart.

I'm gonna start crying.

Right?

And that will upset them, but they're upset too.

So maybe you let them fall apart.

Right.

It can be that moment where you kind of break through this wall that you've all been, you know, anxiously trying to hold up and just kind of like let it crumble.

It can be a very powerful moment.

Whatever it is, it's important to confront and, and I'm, I'm curious if you can share anything that might come to mind that you learned.

About death, about dealing with it, about speaking to loved ones about it?

Like some, something you came away with from your experience?

I think it's important to be honest about death with people.

I think, you know, one of the, one of the most painful things I saw was this woman who was actively dying when I went to see her really had like hours left and she had a.

A son who was an older teenage who had not been told she was dying.

And you know, I think they were trying to protect him.

And I, I get it, but this poor kid, he knew his mom was sick, but he didn't know she was terminal.

And at the point I saw her, she was really unable to communicate anymore.

So like, you know, they didn't get to talk.

Right.

And so I understand.

Look, when kids are really little, you have to make, you have to use your judgment, right?

But this, this kid was like 18.

When you kind of know you're at the end of your life, I think letting people know so that they can walk with you and be be with you.

I think for some people they're afraid to do it and they kind of regret when they get to the end that they didn't have other people with them on their journey.

So that's something I would kind of urge people to be, just to be honest.

To be open and to let people in.

So, as I said earlier, one of your main advocacy missions is text.

The, the, the beauty of text, a lot of this book is a love letter to the study of text.

Yes.

What does that look like at scale?

Like how do we fit that into our modernity for people who are not?

Jewish professional authors and aren't any yeshiva, you know, how do they, how do we do this stuff?

First of all, I, I really don't think that people have to like, sit around breaking their teeth on like Aramaic and Hebrew.

Like, I will never demand that people learn Hebrew.

I think it's great if you want to.

Wonderful.

But I think that is like.

Way that is asking way too much of people who have jobs and families.

Yeah.

You know what I advise people is like, look, start really basic.

Read a few introductory books, like read my first book, read a few introductory books, and maybe take an intro to Judaism class if you can, just to get.

The basics, right?

To get yourself kind of situated in this tradition, to understand the contours.

And then after that, there are ways to keep on learning and it's so different for each person.

Like some people really learn well by reading.

Some people learn well by listening to podcasts.

Like there are all kinds of Jewish studies, lectures, and podcasts.

Some people learn best by traveling, by actually going to a Jewish community and talking to people.

So you, you count all of these things.

Oh yeah.

Under this bubble, a hundred percent.

Just pouring over the Talmud a hundred percent.

And I.

I just, I get very frustrated when people are like, oh, Sarah, you're this nerdy egghead with a fancy degrees.

Of course you wanna learn, but Jews won't.

I'm like.

Sorry, I, you do realize that like if you go into any Jews' house, it's filled with books, right?

They're generally not about Judaism, but like they could be, they're really capable Jews.

They get degrees, they get high school degrees, college degrees.

They take classes, like Jews do, all kinds of things.

Like I'm pretty confident they can do that with Judaism, and I don't care what people do with that learning.

It's not my business.

There are so many ways to be an amazing Jew.

The one way to not be a good Jew is to be contentless.

The one way to, they actually, the one way not to do Judaism, I'm just gonna put this stake in the ground, is to know nothing.

Right?

That is the one place where I'm like, you know what?

You need to make an informed choice, engage with something, then you can make an informed choice.

So that's my argument.

So let, let's get specific, I wanna get specific about the text study part of it, like literal.

This 2,500 years of, of revision and interpretation.

Yes.

How do you get into that without being any yeshiva?

So Rabbi Joseph Kin has this wonderful two volume set of books on Jewish ethics in English.

English.

Mm-hmm.

No Hebrew.

And he, what he does is he, he has studied, studied a zillion Jewish text, very learned guy, and he goes through and he just gives you a very accessible take on what the general topic.

So maybe it's, uh, like you wanna learn about what does Jesus say about lying.

What does it say about how you help those in financial need?

You literally turned to the page a part of his book about that and he summarizes the Jewish wisdom and he has stories and he has anecdotes.

It is so accessible.

Okay, we're gonna, we'll, we'll link to that book in the show notes.

I think I told you this offline, but since our last.

Interview together.

You recommended getting the Jonathan Sacks volumes of the parsha of the weed.

Yes, and I and I, I did buy that set and I, I keep it by my bed and I don't read it every week, but when I have the time, I try to read and know a little bit about the parsha.

It's something I wasn't doing a year ago, so thank you for that.

We'll link that one too.

So, speaking of all of this stuff, yeah.

The last time I had you here, I asked you a very important question.

Roll the clip.

Have you ever considered, or would you ever consider, you know.

Educating or being a rabbi or something on, on that line.

I am planning to be a rabbi, actually.

New.

How's it going?

So for the past two years I've been doing like a preparatory course for it.

That Hartman Institute, which is hosting this rabbinical school, they've given for a few of us who needed a little more background.

And I'm starting in January with.

The actual program and it's, so you've done two years of pre-program work already?

Yep.

Like studying Hebrew, doing like a, you know, class each semester in, in tech skills.

And it's been amazing.

I mean, the teachers at Hartman are.

World class.

Just world class.

They are passionate, they are brilliant.

And my classmates are amazing.

You know, just real like diverse, interesting, brilliant.

Like it is, it's a joy.

It's the, it's the most incredible gift.

And look, I'm not gonna have a congregation, that's not my plan.

I wanna keep writing books and speaking and teaching, but to have this kind of really deep education, I think it's gonna make a huge difference.

And I'm like so grateful to be doing this program.

Awesome.

Just to shout them out, it's the, the Hartman bait me, Josh, for North American Rabbis.

And, uh, to shout out one of your classmates, shout out to Hillary.

What's up?

So what's the, what's your timeline like when will you be Rabbi Sarah?

So the program is three years, so it'll be 20, 20, 29, I think.

Okay.

20 thirty's.

It feels very far away.

It's a long road for you.

Long road.

I mean, it's, it's generally takes five years anyways, so now it's gonna take you a full five.

It's, that's the thing.

Yeah.

It's basically you're supposed to come in with a master's degree level of Jewish studies learning, so.

Oh, wow.

That's that.

Yeah.

That's intense.

So will you have a master's as well?

I mean, no.

Or they're just giving you the content?

This, the idea is like.

Between, between my books and learning and this prep chorus, I should have enough learning, learning Hebrew at age 48.

Not a joke.

Not a joke.

Jenna learning Hebrew at any time?

Not a joke.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wish I'd, I mean, I, I envy my day school friends.

'cause I think getting that Hebrew early on, huge.

So.

Since you are a rabbi in training, often I end the show with a lightning round, but today we're gonna end it with something I call rabbinic Roll Call.

Ready?

Okay.

I'm so bad at these things.

Remember the last time?

Yes.

It didn't go well, but go ahead.

This was, it was hilarious.

It was great.

Okay.

If I'm kosher and I bite into a cheeseburger, but I don't know, it's a cheeseburger, but I've already swallowed it.

Can I finish the cheeseburger anyway, since the transgression has occurred already?

I have no idea, but I'm gonna go with no, no.

Come on.

All right.

Why do I never see religious Jews wearing sunglasses?

Whoa.

I feel like I've seen religious Jews wearing sunglasses.

I live in LA on Shabbat, like my old neighborhood was very orthodox.

No one's ever wearing sunglasses, walking to and from.

Sho.

It's sunny as all get out.

No one's wearing sunglasses.

I have no idea.

Things that I've never thought about.

Jonah, can I wrap to fill in on my bionic arm?

Wow.

That's a fascinating question.

I'm sure that someone has looked into this 'cause it's actually, that's actually a really important question.

I hope the answer's yes, I hope so.

I mean, the answer, the answer has to be yes to that.

I'm, my answer is, is yes.

Okay.

In America, certain holidays, we do an extra day or like an extra thing as basically, I guess, punishment for not being in Israel.

Like what?

What is that about?

I think that's about, if I'm remembering correctly.

Back in the day, it wasn't always clear when the New Moon had come or like it took time.

Actually, I think when the New Moon came, you had to communicate it.

So just to be safe.

There was kind of that.

That extra day in, in further out lands.

Now we have like science and and time, so we don't, we don't need to, but we continue to do so to honor tradition.

But you know, I feel like we have a lot of those traditions where it's like we didn't have the technology when this was made.

Yes, someone was telling me that about Passover, that like, you can't eat lentils.

Because like they might have been in the same bag with like the, the, the bread at the same time.

But 'cause like you couldn't tell and you didn't know.

So we better just say, just so you can't have any of them.

Ah, it's that drawing the circle around the rah, you know, building the fence around the Torah to protect it.

It can, yeah.

No electricity on Shabbat.

What about solar power?

Um, doesn't solar power?

Let me know.

They to trans to make the e to make the, like the sun energy and to, and it doesn't have to use something like, I don't know.

I don't know how, so science is not my thing.

It's different than like the, like the starting of fire that a light switch does now or is it the same thing?

I don't know.

Okay.

No, I'm like a solar power engineer.

It's a terrible question for me.

Okay.

We go, here's, here's what Maybe this's more of your speed.

This is text-based.

Oh good.

It's great.

So Y cock gave Jacob the birthright because cock was blind.

He got faked out and thought he was Esau.

Then Jacob grows up.

He marries Leia because he gets faked out and thought it was Rachel Karma.

Is that the lesson?

Like karma's a bitch?

I think it kind of is.

I mean, it's actually very like, it does seem like the Torah is being like, Hey, when you are dishonest, then you'll be deceived.

When you're deceiver, you'll be deceived.

It's a very, yeah, the parallels in there.

Yeah.

Karma.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Here's my last question for you.

Okay.

Jewish American or American Jew.

You know, it's so funny.

Someone asked me this at a panel and I, I gave an answer I felt badly about, I kind of yelled at them.

I'm like, this is an annoying question.

Like, what is it?

It sort of is, it sort of is.

And then.

But it was a panel with Brett Stevens, and he basically made the point that the, that for him, the Jewishness came first and I was like, you know what, actually, I think that is true for me as well because as much as I hate to admit it, like my Americanness is contingent, right.

As you as Jews throughout history have known like their, their citizenship, their inclusion in their nation, their community, it's, it is contingent on the will of the majority.

And so that can be taken away from me.

You know?

And I, I hope it never is.

'cause I'm a very patriotic American.

I love this country, but my Jewishness can never be taken away from me.

Like that is the thing that is eternal and that is, you know, mine.

So I, I think I'd have to go with, I don't know which one is the one that's more Jewish, so then it American Jew.

Yeah, it's American Jew.

I think.

I feel the same way.

Yeah.

Tara from one American Jew to another.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for another brilliant literary offering and um, I, I'm psyched for everybody to read it.

Go out and buy it.

It's as a Jew.

It's out now and, uh, we'll have to have you back the next time we write another one.

Thank you so much, Jonah.

This was a lot of fun.

Good.

The book is as a Jew, it's an important read and it's available now.

Wherever you get your books, which we all know is Amazon.

If you haven't checked out the new beingjewishpodcast.com, why not?

You can find all of our previous episodes merchandise.

Sign up for my newsletter and a lot more.

And last, I'm hosting a Jewish themed international trip next February.

That's right.

Being Jewish travel is officially a thing.

If you want more information about the trip, head over to my Instagram at Jonah Platt, or the podcast at Being Jewish.

Podcast, find the post, follow the instructions, and get yourself on the list.

All right, I'll see y'all back here for the next Jewy episode of being Jewish with me, Jonah Platt.