Transcript [00:00] Daniel Gordis: And that's the difference between the left here. [00:01] The left here at the end of the day serves in the army. [00:04] The left here at the end of the day is proud of serving in the army. [00:07] The left here, except for a very small sliver, [00:10] the left here no longer talks at all about a two-state solution. [00:13] That's like the tooth fairy. It's like Santa Claus. [00:20] Ben Chertoff: This is The Honest Take, the show that goes past the headlines to find [00:24] out what's actually true about Israel and about the people covering it. [00:28] I'm Ben Chertoff, and my guest today is Daniel Gordis, [00:32] a two-time National Jewish Book Award winner and the author of We Stand Divided, [00:38] a book about the rift between American Jews and Israel that came out years [00:44] before October 7th made that rift impossible to ignore. [00:48] And today, we're asking if it can be closed, [00:51] and what each side would have to understand about the other before it could [00:56] be. [01:02] Ben Chertoff: Before we get going, if you haven't subscribed yet, [01:05] now's a great time. And a quick rating goes farther than you'd think in terms of [01:09] helping new people find us. Okay, let's get into it. [01:14] For most of the last century and a half, American Jews worked from a quiet bargain. [01:20] We're a faith, not a people, and America is the promised land. [01:25] It was a smart bargain, and it opened a lot of doors. [01:28] But Daniel Gordis thinks the last three years ended that. [01:32] He's been making some version of this argument for a long time, [01:36] that Jews in America and Jews in Israel aren't just disagreeing about policy. [01:42] They're living two different kinds of Jewish life. [01:45] One community built a religion that could fit comfortably inside America, [01:50] and the other built a nation and walked back into history with everything that [01:55] costs. He put that into a book in 2019, [01:59] and he'll tell you himself which part of it held up and which part didn't. [02:04] This summer, he took the argument to Israeli readers in a Hebrew essay whose [02:09] title says it plainly. The Jews are a nation, and America is not Zion. [02:15] We start there, and with an unlikely companion piece. [02:19] A Rosh Hashanah sermon from an American progressive rabbi that reached him in [02:24] Jerusalem in a way he didn't expect. [02:26] From there, we get into what it actually means to argue about this war with a son [02:32] who's fighting. Why the Israeli left and the American left are almost different [02:38] species. The conversation Israelis are having at their own Shabbat tables that [02:43] most Americans never hear, and where he draws the line on Jewish anti-Zionism. [02:49] He draws it pretty hard. And then, of course, the question underneath all of it. [02:54] If the gap can be bridged, how? [02:57] And what does an American Jew actually owe Israel? [03:00] Daniel Gordis, welcome to The Honest Take. [03:04] Daniel Gordis: Thanks, Ben. It's great to be here. [03:05] I do appreciate the invitation. [03:06] Ben Chertoff: So you had written a piece recently. [03:09] Your friend, Rabbi David Ingber, had sent you a link to his Rosh Hashanah sermon, [03:13] an American rabbi speaking to an American congregation, [03:15] largely about American Jewish problems. [03:18] You listened to it twice, the second time with your wife, [03:21] who said it was one of the best sermons she had ever heard. [03:24] And you wrote that it was a balm. [03:28] And these are your phrases, this is your phrase, [03:32] these have been agonizingly lonely years for many of you who live there, [03:36] there being Israel. What did an American rabbi see about your life in Jerusalem [03:41] that you hadn't been hearing from anyone? [03:46] Daniel Gordis: Well, let me say first of all that I'm not, you know, [03:49] I'm not a copious follower of American sermons. [03:51] So when I speak about this, it's not to suggest that I've listened to all the [03:54] other really I'm sure great ones that are out there and that they didn't pass [03:58] muster. That's not the case at all. [03:59] David and I are very close friends. [04:00] He sent me the link. I listened to it. [04:02] But here's what struck me about it. [04:03] David is a progressive rabbi. And I think that David is perhaps the most courageous [04:09] progressive rabbi in America that I know because he has been able to look squarely [04:14] in the eye of the values of his progressivism and the values that are held [04:19] by the majority of his progressive congregation. [04:22] And to say, we still care about those values. [04:24] We still care about the marginalized. [04:26] We still care about the weak. We still care about the disenfranchised. [04:30] But not when that is language that gets used to undermine the legitimacy of [04:35] Jewish, of thinking about or speaking about or recognizing Jewish suffering, [04:39] Jewish, et cetera, et cetera. The typical trope in the progressive world that I've [04:43] heard over the course of the last few years is to sort of say, yes, [04:47] a terrible thing happened on October 7th. [04:49] And yes, Israel is defending itself. [04:51] And yes, Israel is fighting a war on seven fronts. [04:53] And then comes the but. And then we talk about violence on the West Bank, [04:57] or then we talk about the destruction of Gaza. [04:59] In other words, it's sort of like, you know, [05:01] when I go to Canada or Australia for conferences and all of these talks have to [05:05] start with, we want to begin by acknowledging that we are on this unceded [05:08] territory of whatever indigenous tribe. [05:12] It always strikes me as really kind of, you know, [05:15] virtue signaling of the worst order, because if you care about it that much, [05:18] give them the land back. I mean, you know, [05:19] they'll just give some speech on some campus and whatever. [05:22] And this also felt like a kind of virtue signaling. [05:23] Yes, I know Israelis have suffered. [05:25] Yes, yes, yes. But, and now I'm going to lambast Israel for the things that it's [05:29] done. And David did not shy away from saying that having power as Israel does [05:33] raises very serious moral questions, that some of the things that have happened in [05:38] Gaza need a lot of exploration at the very minimum. [05:42] But what David did, I think, was he said, on a certain level, [05:46] and this was not his language, it's mine, but we're in this together. [05:49] We were all asleep at the watch. [05:52] And he used the image of the shomer quite repeatedly through the sermon in a very, [05:55] very effective way. We were asleep at the watch when we didn't listen to the [05:59] lookouts who were on the Gaza border. [06:01] We were asleep at the watch when we went for a smaller army. [06:04] By the way, under Gadi Eisenkot, among other chiefs of staff who were very much [06:07] in favor of a smaller, smarter army. [06:09] We were asleep at the watch when we moved two very big chunks of the army away from [06:14] the Gaza border the night before Simchat Torah, [06:15] moved them over to the West Bank because we were afraid about West Bank violence. [06:18] But American progressives, David was saying, were also asleep at the watch [06:22] because we didn't understand how the language that we have embraced about the [06:27] marginalized, about the disenfranchised, about the weak and so on and so forth, [06:30] was going to be used to turn against us. [06:31] And this was one of those moments where I didn't feel that it was, yes, but it was, [06:37] we're in this together. We were all asleep at the watch. [06:39] We all face very serious enemies. [06:42] They're not the same enemies. We have all made some mistakes. [06:45] They're not the same mistakes. But somehow he was able to somehow speak to the [06:51] Jewish world en masse in a way that I have not heard from other American rabbis. [06:56] And again, I'm not a copious follower of these sermons. [06:59] I don't mean to dismiss anybody else's. [07:00] But I will say that my wife and I, the same wife who listened to the sermon, [07:03] I only keep one of them around. [07:05] My wife and I went to dinner last night with another couple, [07:08] a very sophisticated couple. And he actually had also heard David Ingber's [07:13] sermon. He's Israeli. He's been living here longer than we have. [07:16] We've been in 30 years. He's probably been in 36, 37 years. [07:20] And he said, you know what? That sermon spoke to me as an Israeli. [07:25] And that was exactly the feeling that I had. [07:27] Somehow I felt included. I felt embraced. [07:31] He's way too sophisticated to say, you know, [07:33] we need to love our Israeli brethren too. [07:35] He's much, much better than that. [07:37] But I thought it was a magisterial, [07:39] really a majestic self-examination, which did not involve [07:44] dismissing the pain of anyone else, of Palestinians, of Israeli Jews, [07:49] of people all over the world. So that's what spoke to me about it, [07:53] that it recognized the victimization of Jews as a whole all over. [07:57] Ben Chertoff: I think that difference between whole and part, the divide, [08:03] is going to be key to our conversation today. [08:06] In June, you published an essay in HaShiloach, [08:10] the Hebrew title in your own English is The Jews Are a Nation [08:15] and America Is Not Zion. So I want to start there because that is the [08:21] crux of what we're talking about. [08:24] Can you unpack the second half of that title for an American audience? [08:30] What is the claim in America Is Not Zion? [08:34] Daniel Gordis: Well, this claim of America Is Not Zion actually goes hand in hand [08:37] with the first part, too, which was the Jews are a nation. [08:39] And the basic claim that I made there is that there's been a kind of a thrust of [08:44] American Jewish life really since the mid-1800s with the rise of Reform Judaism [08:50] after the German immigration to America in the mid-19th century, [08:53] where the explicit sometimes and implicit at other times claim was that in [08:59] order for Jews to make it in America, we were going to have to recraft Judaism, [09:04] whether it's the way that Judaism was practiced or it was the things that [09:07] Judaism believed or the ways in which Judaism spoke. [09:10] We were going to have to recraft Judaism in the model of American cultural life, [09:14] religious life, intellectual life, and so on and so forth, so that we get embraced, [09:18] so that we get accepted. So one of the things that the Reform movement did, [09:22] and I made it very clear in the article, but I want to say it here as well, [09:24] the article is not fundamentally about Reform Judaism. [09:27] Reform Judaism was the first major movement to get started here. [09:30] So they're the focus of that part of the argument. [09:32] But it's not about Reform versus Orthodox versus Conservative versus [09:35] Reconstructionist. It's about American Judaism writ large. [09:40] And what they chose to do, first of all, was to say that the Jews are a religion, [09:44] not a nation. You know, in other words, so that when Will Herberg, many, [09:49] many years later, would write a book called Protestant Catholic Jew, which is, [09:52] I think the book came out in the 1950s or 1960s. [09:55] That's what he was saying. We're all the same, basically. [09:56] We have different faiths and we have different theologies, [09:59] but we're all religions. And that fit perfectly. [10:01] When Will Herberg writes Protestant Catholic Jew, [10:03] meaning we're not some other nation. [10:05] And so therefore, when Woodrow Wilson goes around and speaks at ceremonies where [10:11] Americans are receiving their citizenship, and he says, [10:14] you cannot be a hyphenated American. [10:16] You can't be a German American. [10:17] You can't be an Italian American. [10:18] You can't be a Polish American. [10:20] And he says, again, in very gendered language that we would not use today, [10:23] he says, any man who thinks of himself as part of America and another nation at the [10:29] same time is not man enough to stand under the Stars and Stripes. [10:33] And that was what American Jews wanted to avoid at all costs. [10:36] They wanted to say, we're not another nation. [10:38] That's why Zionism was so fraught for American Jews, [10:42] because at exactly the same time that Woodrow Wilson's going around saying that, [10:46] the early Zionists in Europe were saying, American Jews, wake up, join the party. [10:50] We want to build a country. And American Jews are really torn. [10:53] On one hand, it sounded like a very good idea to many of them. [10:55] On the other hand, and what, we're going to endorse the creation of this new [10:58] country, even if it's very far away, and cast aspersion on the depth and the [11:03] breadth of our Americanness. And then when people like [11:07] David Ben-Gurion gets into it with Joseph Blaustein, [11:12] who back then was the head of the AJC, [11:14] and Joseph Blaustein was a very impressive guy. [11:16] He was the first Eastern European Jew to be the lay head of the AJC. [11:20] It was a major breakthrough in American Jewish life. [11:22] Now we take it for granted that all these organizations are run by the descendants [11:25] of Eastern European Jews, but it was not the case back in the day. [11:28] And Blaustein says to Ben-Gurion, when Ben-Gurion keeps pressing for aliyah in [11:32] the first years of the state, Blaustein says, we're not looking for another home. [11:37] America is our Zion, which is another way of kind of accommodating the Woodrow [11:41] Wilsonian. And by the way, Teddy Roosevelt said the same thing. [11:44] This was not only Wilson in any way. [11:46] So when I put those two things in the title, it's a way of saying, [11:49] I understand why early American Jews wanted to make that claim, [11:53] that the Jews are not a people. [11:55] We're just a religion, Protestant Catholic Jew. [11:57] And America is our Zion. But in fact, that is not true. [12:01] We are a people, and America is not Zion. [12:05] And to whatever extent we wanted to pretend that those things were not the [12:09] case for a very long time, I think what's happened since October 8th and on has made [12:13] it very clear that the pretense has to stop. [12:15] So it was really an argument for rethinking what I would say is the [12:20] fundamental thrust of much of American Jewish life, [12:23] which was to accommodate the contours and the content of what American Judaism [12:29] is to the cultural milieu of America. [12:32] It didn't work. So now we ought to just be who we want to be. [12:37] Ben Chertoff: You left America. [12:39] You raised your children in Israel. [12:42] And on October 7th, your son was called up and now you're babysitting grandchildren. [12:49] Here's what I want to understand. [12:51] When a decision gets made in Jerusalem to go into Rafah, to take the deal, [12:56] to not take the deal, [12:59] again, for an American audience, what actually changes for you that doesn't [13:03] change for a Jew in Teaneck or, in my case, Brooklyn, [13:08] who has a strong opinion about it? [13:11] Daniel Gordis: Right. Well, look, I mean, we've been very fortunate. [13:14] We only had really one kid in most of the time. [13:18] My son-in-law was also called up to intelligence. [13:20] So he was away, but we weren't worried. [13:23] The son that I was mentioning was called up to the real thick of things. [13:26] But we have very close friends just down the block who have five kids, [13:29] and they're all married. So either their sons or their sons-in-law at one point, [13:32] all five were in. One was very badly wounded, lost an eye, [13:36] and is back in again. And my son is going into milu'im, reserve duty, on Sukkot. [13:42] They have three little kids. So his wife is moving in from the larger Tel Aviv [13:46] area, Givatayim, into our house with the three kids because it's very hard for her [13:51] to do it alone. And on Sukkot, there's no school. [13:53] So to be one mom with three little kids and no school, [13:56] it's really kind of hair-raising. [13:58] Now, my son works for a big tech company, [14:00] so he doesn't have a small business that's going to sputter. [14:05] He's not running his own little tech startup, [14:07] and he's not running a flower shop, and he's not running a bakery, [14:09] and he's not running a restaurant. [14:11] But thousands of people are and were. [14:13] So when somebody gets called up, there is all of the logistics of who's helping the [14:18] spouse and who's helping with the kids. [14:20] If there's a business, who's going to keep the business going? [14:23] But look, I mean, the major issue is the dreaded knock on the door. [14:28] I mean, there are literally people who leave their doors open so that when the [14:32] people show up, they can't knock on the door. [14:34] That is a real thing. People, I've actually shown things on my, [14:39] on my Substack where people have said, yeah, I knew they were coming. [14:43] And I told my younger kids, leave the house. [14:45] You know what they're going to say. [14:46] You don't need to be here for it. [14:48] And I also, they said, I left the door open. [14:50] I didn't want them knocking because we always hear about the knock on the door. [14:53] So there's a small level of terror and dread, [14:56] and it gets very exhausting and very debilitating after a certain amount of [15:01] time. But, you know, we're hardly in this alone. [15:03] There's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of families at the peak of this who are in [15:07] this at the same moment. [15:09] We've been very fortunate that he's been fine, but we have a lot of friends whose [15:12] kids weren't. [15:14] Ben Chertoff: Do you think there's an inversion there that there's something [15:18] that an American Jew can see about Israel because there is that critical distance? [15:23] They don't live there, some clarity that distance buys? [15:26] Or is that just a story we tell ourselves? [15:30] Daniel Gordis: Well, no, that I think is a very fair and insightful question. [15:35] I think there are things. I mean, for example, people will say, [15:40] if not necessarily me, but if one was discomforted by what was happening in [15:45] Gaza, if one really wasn't certain that 90 percent of the buildings needed to be [15:50] blown to smithereens, would you go out and protest? [15:54] And there were some like namby-pamby protests that were held about this, [15:58] but they didn't go anywhere. And part of the reason that they didn't go anywhere [16:01] is, are you going to go protest against the war that your kid is fighting at that [16:06] very moment, a 45-minute drive away from your house? [16:09] Now, our kid at that particular moment wasn't 45 minutes away. [16:12] At that point, he was in the north. [16:14] And he wasn't really in the thick of it at that particular moment when we had decided [16:17] we were going to join a protest. [16:18] But we didn't go. So we didn't, I just didn't have it in me to go and say, [16:22] I mean, I was a, it wasn't an anti-war protest. [16:25] It was a let's have a national conversation about what we're doing [16:28] protest, which is far too nuanced for most protests in any event. [16:32] So it wasn't going to be that successful. [16:34] But we didn't go. I think it's very hard to go protest the government that has sent [16:39] your kid to war. I mean, I don't know exactly. [16:42] I mean, I really don't know. It would be interesting to ask an American historian, [16:44] how many parents of GIs were involved in the anti-war movement in Vietnam? [16:50] And I'm going to guess that it's a relatively small number. [16:53] It's just very hard to say. My kid is over there facing enemy fire, [16:56] but the whole enterprise is fundamentally problematic or rotten to its core, [17:01] which I'm not saying this was in any way, but I'm just saying. [17:03] So I think that not having a kid in may give you a certain latitude and [17:09] freedom of thought and and freedom of self-examination to think more deeply [17:13] about how we feel about what's transpiring. [17:16] I think that's a very real possibility. [17:19] By the same token though, having that distance means that it wasn't your home [17:25] that was attacked. [17:28] You know, on October 7th, after the sun went down and everybody was on the phone, [17:33] my son says to me, do you guys have a lock on your mamad door? [17:37] And then we're all over Facebook. [17:38] Everybody was selling this new thing of pipes that you stick. [17:41] Because mamads didn't have locks on them. [17:46] There was no need. The mamad was to save you from shrapnel or back in the day from [17:51] Saddam Hussein's gas. Nobody was going to open the mamad door in your house except [17:55] for you. All of a sudden, that became the new issue. [17:59] So my son said to me, did you see these things on Facebook for these new mamad [18:02] locks? And I said, I did. I actually went online for one of them and they're all [18:07] sold out. He goes, well, Abba, you have to find another one. [18:09] You got to get it. And I was like, you know, first of all, you're called up. [18:12] You really don't have to micromanage my life when you're fighting a war. [18:15] I said, but seriously, Abba, you know what? [18:17] Gaza's like almost an hour drive from here. [18:19] And nobody's coming here. He said, Abba, Gaza's an hour drive from you. [18:24] And East Jerusalem is a 15-minute drive from you. [18:27] If they come to you, they're not coming from Gaza. [18:29] They're coming from East Jerusalem. [18:30] And you don't know that they're not coming. [18:32] So buy the damn lock, which we did. [18:34] And we've put it on and whatever. [18:35] But my point is, I think that on one hand, [18:38] being far away definitely gives you a certain, I think, [18:42] very healthy distance to be able to look at things in perhaps a somewhat more [18:46] objective way. On the other hand, this isn't objective. [18:50] We were attacked. Our homes were under threat. [18:53] We were sitting outside at shul, literally 75 meters from the window that's right to [18:57] my right here on Simchat Torah morning. [19:00] And we heard the bombs and we heard the explosions and then we heard the planes [19:03] and then we heard the sirens. And that's also a part of having a clear-headed [19:08] appreciation and appraisal of what the situation is. [19:11] So I think, yes, being far away can give you very healthy distance. [19:16] And not having a kid in can really make it much easier for you to do an analysis of [19:20] what Israel should or shouldn't do. [19:21] And perhaps people in my situation and many hundreds of thousands of other [19:24] parents and siblings and spouses couldn't. [19:27] But at the same token, being far away, I think, [19:30] also lessened the sense of the immediacy of the threat. [19:35] which, I don't know how much that translated across the ocean for people [19:39] that, you know, like us in Jerusalem, who are not on the Gaza border and so forth. [19:44] Ben Chertoff: Yeah, I feel like there's a nuance that gets lost. [19:47] You just mentioned the word nuance. [19:49] I imagine that's frustrating. [19:53] Daniel Gordis: So much about the world is frustrating. [19:55] I mean, I wouldn't even know where to begin, right? [19:57] I mean, this is not a great time for humanity. [20:01] It's not a great time for the post-World War II world order, [20:04] which seems to be crumbling. [20:06] I think many of the leaders to whom we point fingers are actually more symptoms [20:10] than causes as a whole to do. But it has been frustrating, [20:13] and that was part of the reason that I wrote in my introduction to posting David [20:17] Ingber's sermon that these have been very lonely, they've been lonely times, [20:21] you know. And I, I don't mean to disparage anything or anyone here but we have a very [20:25] close friend in America who called me after the first round of the war was [20:29] coming he's a very well-known American layperson. [20:31] He goes, I'm coming to Israel. And I said, oh, that's amazing. [20:37] What are you coming for? I thought I was going to say wedding, bar mitzvah, [20:40] business meeting, whatever. He goes, well, you know, because of the war. [20:45] And then I almost said, but the war's over. [20:49] Like, and I know there weren't a lot of flights, [20:51] but like a lot of people came as soon as it wasn't dangerous. [20:56] And I understand that. Why would you possibly, or a parent, a spouse, [21:00] and a grandparent, and a partner in a business, [21:01] why would you put yourself in the front of the fire there if you're really not [21:07] contributing anything? But look, I'll be very honest here. [21:10] On October 7th, I knew several people who were very accomplished Jewish [21:16] professionals who'd been in Israel over Sukkot, visiting kids, grandchildren, [21:21] siblings, whatever, visiting. The war breaks out on the morning of Simchat [21:25] Torah. There are no flights. These are people who have spent their entire careers [21:29] trying to get American Jews to be deeply committed to the Jewish people and to the [21:33] state of Israel. And they spent a fortune of money taking boats from Haifa to Cyprus [21:38] so that they could get out of here. [21:41] Now, not everybody did that. Some people called their parents, especially, [21:44] and said, I'm staying. And the parents said, good for you. [21:46] Go do what they need. Go pick avocados. [21:49] Go do what somebody needs. But there were a lot of Jewish professionals. [21:52] And again, I understand them. It was scary. [21:54] It was very scary. But at a certain point, [21:56] we didn't have the luxury of taking the boat to Cyprus because I wasn't going to [22:00] leave my children and grandchildren behind. [22:03] This was home and it was under attack. [22:05] And I think that if it's not your home when it's under attack, [22:08] that's not a criticism of anybody. [22:10] Every Jew has a right to live anywhere on the planet that they want to, [22:13] if they'll have them there. [22:15] It's just it's also different. So that's the lonely part. [22:19] Nobody can step into these moccasins, so to speak. [22:22] Nobody can step into these shoes. [22:23] Don't expect them to. But it still does mean that we live an emotional, [22:29] fear-laden life that no matter how much one reads about it, [22:34] someone who's not in it really can't understand in the same way. [22:39] Ben Chertoff: Now, to the flip side, in the diaspora, anti-Semitism is exploding, [22:44] and it can feel very lonely here as well. [22:49] So the cheap version of the Israeli view of that is that, [22:54] you know, Zionism won. Classical Zionism was right. [23:00] The diaspora is temporary. [23:02] You have written that you reject that view and you flagged it [23:07] as something which you predictably reject, [23:12] which suggests that you're tired of being expected to hold it. [23:16] Why do you reject that view? Why don't you hold it? [23:21] Daniel Gordis: Well, I reject it in part. [23:23] I reject, I try to reject answers that I think let people off the hook of thinking. [23:29] So I think that to a certain extent, both Herzl and Jabotinsky, Herzl of the left, [23:34] more or less, and Jabotinsky of the right, more or less, [23:38] were both vindicated in the last three years when they said Herzl died in 1904, [23:43] so long before the Second World War, but Jabotinsky lived to see the beginning of [23:46] the rise of Nazism. [23:48] And they both said, it's going to end really badly. [23:51] You better get out. And Herzl had one scenario in mind that Jabotinsky had a [23:56] much more accurate scenario in mind because he lived several decades later and [23:59] he was able to see what was rising up. [24:02] And I think in that regard, they were both right. [24:04] I think they were both right that there are dangers to diaspora living that [24:08] we've had to take account of in ways that we did not have to take account of prior [24:13] to October 7th. Now, that said, it's just too easy and it's too simple to strut [24:19] around and say, see, that classical Zionism is right. [24:21] Because it's not exactly as if Zionist life is safe. [24:25] I mean, you know, I mean, we have been in the bomb shelter in the last three years, [24:29] more times than I can begin to count, [24:32] sleeping with children and grandchildren and, you know, [24:34] and fans because it was hot and and coffee makers, [24:38] because who knew how long you were going to be stuck in there. [24:40] And, you know, it's not safe here. [24:43] I don't feel every day that we're going to die. [24:45] But so you can't just say in a cavalier way, oh, yeah, [24:48] Herzl and Jabotinsky were right, because anybody with half a brain on the other [24:51] side is going to say, yeah, well, are American Jews in bomb shelters or are [24:54] Israeli Jews in bomb shelters? I think that all of the easy answers to this tend [24:59] to be, all easy responses to this tend to be overly simplistic and therefore [25:05] fundamentally wrong. Classical Zionism made certain claims that have been proven [25:10] true. But Zionism, and especially Herzl, I mean, Herzl in his novel Altneuland, [25:15] the Jewish state doesn't have an army. [25:17] I mean, they love us so much. We have, you know, scientific laboratories, [25:22] we have theological conference grounds, but we don't have an army. [25:26] So Herzl was also very naive, and Jabotinsky was very naive in certain kinds [25:30] of ways. I think by the same token, [25:34] just as it's too facile and it's therefore too easy to say, yeah, [25:39] classical Zionism was right, because it's much more complicated than that. [25:42] The other Zionist response is, you know, the American rising up of hatred of Jews [25:47] in all sorts of ways, politically, culturally, [25:51] in every industry that you can look at. [25:53] It's not because of Israel. They would have hated us anyway. [25:56] And I think that there is some truth to that, too. [25:57] In other words, when you look at all those matching tents on the campus of Columbia [26:01] University, they didn't all get bought spontaneously and end up with exactly the [26:05] same tents and the same colors lined up in exactly the same way. [26:07] This was very planned and that had nothing to do with October 7th or 8th. [26:11] In the same way that Sinwar responded to a feeling of weakness inside Israel, [26:16] these people responded to a sense of vulnerability about Israel because Israel [26:19] was now striking back. But they had been planning this for a very long time. [26:23] So there was some truth to the classic Zionist case, I think, which is that, [26:27] yeah, I mean, the non-Jewish world doesn't like Jews very much very often. [26:32] And I think, you know, I'm in my late 60s. [26:34] I grew up in that bubble. The Holocaust was, I was born in 59. [26:39] So the Holocaust was far enough back that there were plenty of survivors, [26:43] but the ash in the sky had dissipated. [26:47] It wasn't cloudy anymore, but it was recent enough that everybody knew you [26:51] couldn't say bad things like that about Jews anymore. [26:54] I mean, that was also near, by the way, I grew up in Baltimore where the racism was [26:57] so thick you could cut it with a knife. [26:59] And people knew back then in the 70s, especially in the 80s, [27:02] they didn't love blacks any more than they had before. [27:04] But then you couldn't say those things anymore. [27:06] And I think partly what happened as a result of the erasure of norms in America [27:11] and then throughout the world is that all of a sudden you could say anything that [27:14] you thought. And if you can say anything that you think, and you still hate blacks, [27:17] you're gonna say things about blacks. [27:18] And if you can say anything you think you hate Jews, you're gonna say that. [27:20] So it did bring it out. But look, I think it's also fair to say that the other [27:26] side of this is that Israel did contribute to this. [27:29] And I'll say what I mean by that. [27:31] I don't mean by that, that what Israel did in Gaza was sinful, genocidal, wrong, [27:37] and therefore it brought this out. [27:38] I mean that Israel invested exactly zero effort in trying to tell its story to the [27:43] wider world. From the beginning of the war until now, [27:47] the Bibi Netanyahu government did not have one single spokesman whose job it was to [27:51] speak to the English speaking world. [27:52] Now, Naftali Bennett, who wasn't in the government, could go on the on the BBC all [27:56] the time and do a very good job of kind of, you know, [27:58] shredding whoever it was who was. [27:59] But he wasn't part of the government to explain what we were trying to do to save [28:05] civilian life. Nobody did. To explain what we were doing to try to make sure that our [28:10] soldiers weren't going to get injured by booby-trapped buildings, [28:13] and therefore the buildings had to be brought down. [28:15] Not everybody would have bought it. [28:17] But I think that this notion that, ah, they're not going to believe us anyway, [28:20] so why bother telling? Or we're so clearly morally superior that why would I lower [28:25] myself to the point of having to make my own case? [28:27] I think that came back to bite us. [28:29] So I think it's much more complicated. [28:31] It was partly Israel's comporting of itself that led to [28:37] this, but largely not. And I think some of the classic Zionist argument has [28:43] been buttressed by this, but not all of it because life's also dangerous in Israel. [28:47] So somewhere in the grays, I think, and this is true in life in general, [28:51] I think somewhere in the grays is where truth tends to dwell. [28:56] And our job as thinking human beings is to meander around in the darkness of the [29:01] greys and try to find what parts of the truth we think actually capture the [29:06] complexity of the moment. [29:09] Ben Chertoff: In 2019, you published We Stand Divided, [29:13] the rift between American Jews and Israel. [29:16] It's seven years later and October 7th later. [29:21] And you had written recently that you wish that that book had come out more recently. [29:26] Um, what, what turned out to be right and what did you get wrong? [29:31] Daniel Gordis: Uh, the truth? First two thirds were right. [29:35] And the last third was wrong. And now I'll come to my own defense. [29:39] I didn't really want to write the last third, but I was told by people, no, [29:43] you can't end on this, you know, very dark American Jews and Israeli Jews really live [29:46] such different existences. We don't understand each other. [29:49] You have to put in a whole thing about how we can actually build these bridges. [29:53] And I was like, okay. I mean, because so many people said it to me. [29:56] My editor said it to me. My editor's boss said it to me. [29:59] My close friends were very well-known writers said it to me. [30:01] You got to add this. So I wrote something. [30:04] I didn't really have my heart in it when I wrote it. [30:06] I didn't really believe it when it came out. [30:07] I think it was a lie. I just thought it was very not compelling. [30:10] And when the book came out, people go, oh, you didn't believe that. [30:12] That was obvious you didn't believe that. [30:13] So that part was totally wrong. [30:16] But I kind of knew it was wrong. [30:18] The reason I wish the book had come out now is because I think the fundamental [30:21] claim about about American Jews and Israelis living sort of DNA, [30:27] you know, so basic that it's DNA, different lives. [30:31] American Judaism being fundamentally animated, as I said before, [30:34] by creating a religious experience that is embraceable by the wider [30:40] American context, whereas Israeli Jews are fundamentally a nationalist experience [30:45] rather than a religious experience. [30:47] American Jews, I think, living largely until October 8th outside of history. [30:54] You know, this notion that, you know, [30:58] America was kind of a safe harbor where Jews would watch history, [31:01] but no American Jew ever went to war because she or he was an American Jew. [31:07] American Jews went to war because they were Americans, right? [31:11] They went to Second World War, they went to Korea, they went to Vietnam, [31:13] they went to... But because they were Americans, [31:15] nobody as an American Jew ever had to go to war because they were a Jew. [31:19] Israelis go to war because we're Jews. [31:21] And the whole idea of Zionism was to get the Jews back into the thickness and the [31:26] messiness of history. So, American Jews, I think, [31:29] wanted to sort of sidestep a little bit history. [31:32] And America offered a hugely safe harbor from history for a very long time, really, [31:36] into the last three years. Israel never offered that. [31:38] Israel never wanted to offer that. [31:40] So, I think that my fundamental assessment there was [31:45] basically right. Now, when the book came out, [31:48] Judith Shulevitz reviewed it in the New York Times. [31:51] So that's all you need to know to know what the review said. [31:54] And she didn't like the book. OK, that wasn't terribly surprising. [31:58] But what she said, I kind of haven't read that review in many years. [32:01] But what she said, something was the book was not about the Palestinians. [32:04] I mean, the book was just not about that. [32:05] It's like saying I wrote a book about America and it wasn't fundamentally about [32:08] racism. Yeah, I can write a book about America that wouldn't be fundamentally [32:11] about racism. I couldn't write a history of America without writing about racism. [32:16] But I don't have to write every single book that I write about America. [32:18] It doesn't have to be about racism. [32:20] Not every book about Israel has to be about the Palestinians. [32:22] My book was not about the Palestinian issue. [32:24] And I noted that specifically in the text where she did not read the whole book was [32:28] clear, but it doesn't matter. But she said, if you're not going to deal with the [32:31] Palestinian issue, you're not going to convince many people. [32:33] And that was the eyes through which American Jews looked at Israel back then. [32:37] It was either you're telling me why there's going to be a two-state solution [32:41] or Israel is born in original sin, or your book is delusional. [32:45] And I did not say that Israel is born in sin, [32:47] nor did I talk about a two-state solution, [32:48] because it was about something else entirely. [32:51] And I think that if the book had come out, you know, post-2023, [32:55] there would have been much more interest in trying to understand the fundamental [33:01] chromosomal difference between the experience that Israeli Jews have and [33:04] American Jews have. But obviously, nobody was going to reissue the book and all that [33:07] kind of stuff. It had already come out in paperback. [33:09] I mean, that wasn't going to happen. [33:11] So I still think that I fundamentally got the basic part right, [33:15] which is about American Jews wanting an escape from history, [33:17] Israeli Jews wanting to be in history, [33:19] American Jews being fundamentally religiously inclined, [33:22] Israeli Jews being fundamentally nationally inclined, [33:25] Israeli Jews tending instinctively to the right because of the situation in which we [33:30] find ourselves, American Jews tending instinctively to the left. [33:34] So for a whole array of reasons, I think that fundamentally it was basically [33:37] correct analysis. Needless to say, eight years later, seven years later, [33:40] if you don't rewrite the book, of course, you change a lot of things. [33:43] But I think that the fundamental analysis was basically on the mark. [33:47] Ben Chertoff: Do you think you can accurately map the political left and [33:50] right from America onto Israel's left and right? [33:55] I mean, aren't those somewhat fundamentally different lefts and [34:01] different rights? [34:02] Daniel Gordis: They're completely different. [34:03] And I'll give you two examples of it. [34:05] I was part. I don't think I'm left. [34:07] I think I'm center. which means everybody to the right of me is a Neanderthal and [34:11] everybody to the left of me is a self-hating Jew. [34:13] But, you know, I really do think that I'm basically pretty centrist. [34:15] But, you know, people might argue with that. [34:17] But I really do think of myself as a centrist. [34:19] But, you know, we went to all the protests. [34:21] We went to all the anti-judicial reform protests in the heat and in the rain. [34:25] You know, one or two times we were sick in the middle of the winter, [34:27] but we didn't go. But basically we went to every week we went to the protests. [34:30] And as everybody listening to this knows, [34:32] everybody at those protests had Israeli flags. [34:36] I mean, everybody had an Israeli flag on a pole by their front door. [34:40] That was kind of like where you kept your weapon, you know, [34:42] but your weapon was an Israeli flag. [34:43] And I'll remind Americans listening to this that when there were the protests in [34:47] Portland and Seattle, the people protesting there were not trying to save [34:51] America. And they weren't trying to make America be its best. [34:54] And they weren't carrying American flags. [34:57] They were disparaging the very essence of what America was. [35:00] And they were saying that America was born in sin. [35:02] And it became a pro-America, anti-America. [35:04] There was nothing pro-Israel, anti-Israel about these protests. [35:08] It was disagreement about how to save Israel. [35:11] That's the first thing. The second thing is, I think that, you know, it's funny, [35:14] there was shortly after the war began, I got a call from a European journalist who [35:18] I've met in some context, I already forget what it was. [35:20] We didn't know each other well, but we like had each other's email addresses. [35:23] And she wrote me and she said, I've just come to Israel from wherever it was, [35:26] Sweden, Germany, I forget already where it was. [35:29] And she said, you know, I've been following all these leaders of the protest [35:32] movement and I want to interview them now about what they think about the war in [35:36] light of the protest movement, but I can't reach them. [35:39] And I wrote her back and I said, because they're in cockpits, you know, they're, [35:43] they're in cockpits and they're in tanks. [35:45] They, and that was not hyperbolic. [35:46] It wasn't sort of metaphoric. That's where they were. [35:49] They were actually in cockpits and in tanks and they just weren't around to have [35:53] a conversation, chit chat with some, you know, Swedish or, you know, Norwegian, [35:57] whatever it was, was journalist. [35:59] And that's the difference between the left here. [36:00] The left here at the end of the day serves in the army. [36:03] The left here at the end of the day is proud of serving in the army. [36:06] The left here, except for a very small sliver, [36:09] the left here no longer talks at all about a two-state solution. [36:13] That's like the tooth fairy. It's like Santa Claus. [36:16] I mean, we know that little kids like to believe in the tooth fairy and Santa [36:19] Claus, but grownups don't. And I think in large measure, [36:23] significant portions of the American Jewish left, [36:26] and certainly the American left writ large, [36:28] still the baseline starting point is that there has to be a two-state solution. [36:32] Would that be a good thing or a bad thing? [36:34] I don't know, but it's kind of like world peace. [36:37] It would be probably a good thing. [36:38] It's just not going to happen. And so the question is a very legitimate question. [36:42] So then what do we do instead? That's a fair question. [36:45] But I think American left and Israeli left are just fundamentally very, very, [36:49] very different. And it's unfortunate the American [36:55] left never asks itself why the Israeli left is so different and what the [37:00] American left might learn from that. [37:03] But. [37:04] Ben Chertoff: I think there's also a mapping of American racial [37:09] politics and history. And as you know, the original sin, [37:14] as you've said several times of slavery, [37:18] which is not analogous to the situation in Israel, [37:24] or at least not in how I see it. [37:28] How does that play into, I mean, do you see the same thing, [37:32] especially with the progressive, the very progressive congregations in America? [37:39] Daniel Gordis: You know, I don't know so much about how the American progressive [37:42] congregations think about America, just because I don't live there anymore. [37:47] And I think it would be a little bit of hubris for me to assume that I know what [37:51] they think, because I don't really know what they think. [37:53] But I would imagine that many of them buy into what I would call the Howard Zinn [37:56] view of America. You know, Howard Zinn wrote a thousand years ago, you know, [38:01] that one volume history of America, which was basically it was all about race. [38:04] The entire lens was race and slavery and oppression. [38:06] That is part of the story. And if you read Jill Lepore's singularly magnificent [38:12] volume about American history, certainly racism and slavery and all that plays a [38:17] huge role in her book. But it's not Howard Zinn. [38:20] It's not a huge dumping on America saying the whole thing is rotten. [38:23] I think there have been, you know, a few very left-wing Israelis who have argued [38:28] that the country was born in sin. [38:30] They tend to have moved out of the country. [38:32] They tend to live in Europe and elsewhere. [38:35] But even Israel's quote-unquote, you know, left-wing historians, for example, [38:40] think Benny Morris, for example, who is a brilliant man and an excellent [38:45] academic, who was seen as being part of the left because he's part of that new [38:49] historians group and re-examining the Zionist narratives. [38:52] When the second Intifada came out, he gave this very, [38:56] very memorable interview to Haaretz. [38:58] You can find it online, but he gave an interview to Haaretz in which he said that [39:02] Ben-Gurion's biggest mistake during the War of Independence was not kicking out [39:07] all the Arabs. Now, that is not what an American Jew expects to [39:13] hear from a left-wing Israeli historian. [39:16] And it may be that just like I felt very lonely and exhausted these last three [39:20] years, maybe Benny Morris was just really at the bottom of his tank. [39:23] And I don't know if he would say that again today. [39:25] I mean, I just don't know if he would say that. [39:27] But he definitely said it, and it's in Haaretz. [39:28] He didn't retract it or anything of the sort. [39:30] I think that there's much less self-hatred [39:36] about the project itself among the Israeli left than there is among the American [39:41] left. There's very few people here who argue Israel was created in sin. [39:44] I think people would argue that Israel was a great idea, an important idea, [39:48] a necessary idea. Herzl was right. [39:51] Jabotinsky was right. Ahad Ha'am was right. [39:53] Statehood was going to be very problematic for the Jewish soul. [39:57] HaRav Kook was right that the religious were going to need the secular. [40:00] They were all right. They were all right. [40:02] And yet we have the train has left the tracks periodically. [40:06] And when the train leaves the tracks, people don't say there shouldn't have been [40:10] a train. They just say that we got to get the train back on the tracks. [40:14] And I think that's a really very serious conversation happening now among Israelis. [40:17] I can tell you, I hear this all the time. [40:19] Every Shabbat meal that we're invited out or every time we go out to dinner with [40:22] friends, it's how much longer can this go on before we have to really ask ourselves, [40:27] is the project screwed? Like, is it not necessarily that it was a bad idea from [40:32] the start, but as it becomes so derailed that you can't even see the tracks [40:37] anymore. I think that's a very, that's a very real conversation that people are [40:41] having. People desperately don't want to have that conversation. [40:45] But they're much more reticent to have that conversation, I think, [40:50] than their progressive liberal partners on the [40:56] other side of the Atlantic are, who I think are much more willing to have that [40:59] conversation about America. [41:02] Ben Chertoff: I, I have to say, that is a scary conversation. [41:05] The idea of that conversation is scary to hear as a diaspora Jew, [41:09] because there is a sense of [41:14] the necessity of Israel to be there. [41:19] Maybe that's, you know, I'm interested to hear your thoughts on what [41:25] October 7th did to the split that you wrote about in 2019, [41:29] that there were these two communities [41:35] from very different ideas and different priorities about a Jewish future, [41:41] with the exception of a very vocal, progressive, [41:47] left-wing Jewish anti-Zionist movement, which I really do think is [41:53] the minority in America. [41:54] Daniel Gordis: Oh, it's for sure a minority. [41:55] Whether or not it's growing is an open question, but OK. [41:58] Sure, yeah. [42:00] Ben Chertoff: You know, American Jews did show up in giving money and sending [42:05] material in in having rallies. [42:11] You know, has something happened since that moment of of October [42:17] 7th that has changed, do you think? [42:21] Daniel Gordis: So much has happened. [42:22] You know, so many of our assumptions have been called into question. [42:26] The notion that, for example, you know, the old Biden, the Biden before Rafah, [42:33] but, you know, this Biden is the last of the, you know, [42:36] the last of the Mohicans of that kind of Democrat. [42:38] You know, when Biden came here early on in the war and he talked openly about that [42:43] black hole in your stomach when you lose a family member, everybody knew here. [42:48] I mean, he'd lost he'd lost a wife. [42:49] He'd lost a son in a terrible accident. [42:52] We knew it was very authentic and people felt really supported on Emek Refaim, [42:56] which is the main drag right near my house. [42:58] There were these gigantic posters, like, you know, 20 feet tall. [43:00] Thank you, President Biden in English. [43:02] I mean, people really felt very cared about. [43:05] I think that, and the people that didn't love Biden, of course, you know, said, [43:10] well, when Donald Trump comes back, this is the same Donald Trump who moved the [43:13] embassy to Jerusalem and helped us recognize the Golan Heights and all of [43:16] that. Obviously, that has not played out the way those people thought it was going [43:19] to play out. So I think that America has become, [43:22] has come to feel much less predictable. [43:24] And as J.D. Vance says recently, you know, [43:26] Israel's needs are not part of America's calculus. [43:29] He said in a pretty gross way. I think people recognize like, wow, [43:32] we are in a very different world. [43:33] And I think it's hard for Israelis to completely separate American political [43:37] discourse from American Jewish discourse because it's America. [43:41] And so I think, yes, people did show up. [43:44] A lot of money was sent. People came and they volunteered. [43:46] It was really, it was really extraordinary. [43:49] I mean, it was really unbelievable. [43:50] We would go to these farms, my wife and I and, you know, [43:52] pick avocados or lay pipes for orchards and discover muscles that could hurt that [43:58] we didn't even know that we had. [44:00] The next morning, you try to move and, you know, [44:02] you're so stiff because we're city folk. [44:04] And there were always lots of foreigners doing the same exact work. [44:08] And, you know, all we had to do is get in the car and drive 45 minutes. [44:10] These people had to fly here. I mean, it was really very extraordinary. [44:13] And I forget how many billions of dollars were raised. [44:14] Israelis felt very, very protected. [44:17] But I have to say that I think what Israelis are frustrated by now is, [44:22] look, it's very hard for an American Jewish leader. [44:26] I don't envy rabbis in America these days who have to speak about Israel from the [44:30] pulpit. That's what I thought was so brilliant about what David Ingber did. [44:33] He was very clear that Palestinian suffering is very real. [44:36] And he was very clear that the capacity to use force brings with it tremendously [44:41] complex moral questions. And yet it for one second didn't feel like he was bashing [44:46] Israel in any way, shape, manner, or form. [44:48] That's what I thought transcended all the previous divisions. [44:50] But I think the majority of discourse, [44:53] people are very nervous about whole, you know, [44:58] so full-throated defense of Israel's ability to conduct this war and [45:04] so on. And I'll look, and I'll say this, Israel's making it much more difficult. [45:08] What's going on in the West Bank, in Judea and Samaria, is an abomination. [45:14] And if at the beginning people were hesitant to use the word Jewish terrorism, [45:18] and I don't know who's listening to this where people fall on that, [45:20] but I'll just note that Mike Huckabee, and it would be hard to find a non-Jewish [45:25] better friend of the state of Israel than Mike Huckabee, [45:27] whether you like his politics or not. [45:29] Mike Huckabee is a friend of Israel. [45:31] Mike Huckabee and Michael Oren and Bret Stephens, [45:37] all three different, very different types of people, [45:39] but they have all now advisedly used that word terrorism, [45:42] which the government has not sought to put a stop to. [45:46] I don't personally think that Bibi relishes it, [45:48] but I don't think he's willing to sacrifice one vote on the right to put a [45:51] stop to it. So he's just looking the other way. [45:54] And it's an abomination. And I think that when that happens, [45:59] American Jews say, well, where are all these Israelis. [46:01] Well, obviously they're okay with it. [46:02] And I actually do ask myself, by the way, again, to go back to that gray, [46:06] to try to get through the bright and the dark and to get into the gray. [46:09] I asked friends recently, well, why are we not protesting this? [46:13] I mean, we're all sickened by it. [46:14] It's disgusting. And I actually literally can't even watch the news when they report [46:18] it. I have to turn it off. I just can't. [46:21] So why are we not protesting? And I asked somebody that yesterday, the day before, [46:25] and they said, we're just so tired. [46:27] Everybody here is just on empty. [46:30] Now, that's not an excuse and it's not a justification, [46:32] but I think Israelis are exhausted and the full throated critique of Israel [46:38] is coming through in a way that feels unsettling. [46:42] Look, I know we talked about sermons that I thought were phenomenal. [46:45] I'm certainly not going to name names, but there were people that wrote in the [46:48] American press about how they were going to give a sermon about West Bank violence. [46:52] I didn't listen to those sermons. [46:54] They might've been brilliant. But here's what I thought to myself when I read about [46:58] Rabbi X says that she or he is going to be giving a sermon about West Bank. [47:02] I asked myself, what are you going to try to accomplish with that sermon. [47:06] Like, does anybody in your congregation not think that you think it's bad? [47:09] Does anybody in your congregation not already think it's bad? [47:13] So you're going to tell them that it's bad. [47:15] Okay. We also think it's bad. Now they go home from Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur and [47:19] they heard a harangue about how West Bank violence is out of control in Israel. [47:24] It is out of control. Don't get me wrong. [47:26] It's out of control. But what's the value of preaching about that to your [47:29] congregation on one of perhaps the three times in the year when you're going to [47:33] have their undivided attention. [47:36] That's the message. Israel really is sullied by this disgusting phenomenon, [47:40] and it is a disgusting phenomenon, and it does sully Israel. [47:44] I guess the Israelis say, really, that's what you want to talk about? [47:47] I mean, you don't want to talk about, for example, all the 22, 23, [47:51] 24-year-old widows who are getting remarried with little kids, [47:56] and men are willing to marry them, and they're building new lives and they're [48:00] marrying their dead husband's best friend. [48:02] I mean, there are phenomena here about the love of life and the embrace of life, [48:07] which I think is a much more Jewish, you don't need a genius and you don't need a [48:12] rabbi to tell you that West Bank terrorism is a bad thing. [48:15] It's a horrible thing and it's got to be stopped. [48:17] And this election is partly about that. [48:19] It's not only about that, but it's partly about that. [48:21] But the Israeli love of life or the willingness to continue serving, [48:27] the stories, the very real stories about guys who sneak out of the hospital. [48:33] In some cases, they take out their IV. [48:34] They literally take out their IV, they put a Band-Aid on it, [48:37] and they sneak out of the hospital, and they go back to their base. [48:39] I mean, I'm not saying that that's a smart thing to do, [48:41] and I'm not saying we want to do G.I. [48:43] Joe, but there is a love of nation, and there's a love of life, [48:47] and there's a devotion to the other here that is equally part of the story. [48:51] And I think what takes the breath away from Israelis very often when they think [48:56] about American Jewish discourse is, why are you talking about the most morally [48:59] obvious thing in the world? Well, who's gaining anything out of that? [49:02] Why do you feel you have to make a check mark next to that? [49:05] I don't know, I don't get that. [49:06] So I think that's where part of the frustration comes from. [49:09] Ben Chertoff: Yeah, especially during the High Holy Days, which is... [49:12] what does this have to do with anything? [49:14] I don't know if you saw... [49:15] Daniel Gordis: What's the point? [49:15] Or why is it the message that people need to hear? [49:15] What did they learn? Right. [49:19] Ben Chertoff: Right. I don't know if you saw the news recently of the [49:25] Yom Kippur services in Prospect Park in Brooklyn with [49:30] our Brad Lander making it all about the sin [49:36] of Israel and atoning for the sin. [49:39] It's or Gaza, the sin of Gaza, I guess. [49:42] Yeah. Yeah. [49:45] Daniel Gordis: As David Ingber pointed out quite rightly and very nuanced and very [49:48] beautifully, when they come for us, they're not going to care whether you were [49:53] sitting in the Park Avenue synagogue or in Brad Lander's community in Brooklyn. [49:58] They're not going to really care which petition you signed. [50:01] They're going to come for all of us. [50:04] And people say, but of course they're not coming for us. [50:06] That's hyperbolic. That's exactly what the Germans said. [50:09] It's exactly what the Jews of Berlin said. [50:11] So again, I think that, you know, I don't take that whole thing very serious. [50:14] It's not morally nuanced. But at the end of the day, [50:17] our enemies don't care about those distinctions. [50:21] Ben Chertoff: Yeah, there's the old joke I heard soon after October 7th. [50:25] It was, you know, what does Moshe say to Abraham as they're being pushed into the [50:29] gas chamber? At least we're not Zionists. [50:33] Daniel Gordis: Right, exactly. Yeah, I hadn't heard that one, but exactly. [50:37] Ben Chertoff: Yeah. So the, the... [50:41] Is this structural and back to, you know, [50:45] the third part of your book that you had written in 2019? [50:50] Is there a way to bridge that that rift is how [50:56] do we move forward as an as an am? [51:00] Daniel Gordis: So the answer to that is I don't, there has to be, [51:03] there has to be a way. [51:06] I think rabbinic leaders like David Ingber are shining the light in the right [51:10] direction, which is, is not, it's not a binary option of a one or a zero. [51:15] It's not right or wrong. It's not black or white, [51:16] but it's complex and it's nuanced and it's painful. [51:19] And that's life. [51:22] I think the way forward is we have to know each other much better. [51:28] I mean, And I think Israelis know very little about American Judaism. [51:31] That unfortunately remains true. [51:34] When the three Ivy League presidents were called to Congress to testify, [51:40] all the Israeli headlines were about, what does the word context, contextual mean? [51:44] It was like written out, you know, kuf vav contextual. [51:47] You know, what does that actually mean? [51:48] And I think Israelis were like, oh my God, [51:50] like the presidents of American universities won't say that calling for [51:54] the death of Jews is a violation of Harvard standards of speech. [51:59] I think Israelis took much greater interest in American Jews and their [52:04] travails as a result of that. There's no question. [52:08] We need to know each other better. [52:10] We need to have, I think, a more nuanced and embracing understanding [52:16] of the challenges that the other face. [52:18] And here is the, I mean, it's not good news, [52:20] but it's the good news in the bad news is that what we have in common now is that [52:24] we're facing very dire enemies. [52:26] We're facing very serious enemies. [52:28] and they really want to do us in. [52:30] In other words, the Iranians want to actually annihilate us. [52:34] But the people on the far left in America want to make America uninhabitable for [52:38] Jews. It's very clear. They want Jews not to be able to get published, [52:41] and they're having some good success on that front. [52:43] They want Jews not to be comfortable in the academic scene, [52:46] and they're having a good deal of success with that. [52:49] They want Jews to be embarrassed about wearing a chai, [52:51] and they want Jews to be embarrassed about saying that they support Israel, [52:55] and they're having some success with that. [52:56] They want Jews to start dropping out of birthright because they don't want to tell [52:59] their friends that they're going and they're having some success with that. [53:02] And the Fuenteses and the Carlson and the Tucker Carlson's and, you know, [53:08] the whole array of those those people. [53:10] Candace Owens, who's always a favorite, always entertaining. [53:15] They really want ill for us. I mean, I mean, [53:17] Candace Owens is classic like Nazi ideology. [53:20] I mean, it is really just classic. [53:22] The Jews are to blame for everything. [53:23] And from saying that as a black woman who's very articulate to a progressive [53:29] world, from there to a guy gunning the people down in a synagogue parking lot is [53:34] not a huge road to traverse. So I think that, you know, [53:37] we both have enemies that actually want our physical harm. [53:41] And I think, therefore, the question that we have to ask ourselves together is, [53:44] so why do we care? Why do we want to survive? [53:46] What are the Jews trying to bring to the world? [53:48] That's not a conversation you want to have with, you know, Ben Gvir. [53:52] And it's not a conversation you want to have with Smotrich. [53:54] And it's not a conversation you want to have with the Haredim, [53:56] because they just don't think in those terms at all. [53:57] But I think the vast majority of Israelis do want to ask, [54:00] what do we want Israel's contribution to the world to be? [54:03] What do we want Israel's, how do we want Israel to be seen in the world? [54:06] And what are we going to do to make that happen? [54:08] And American Jews could begin to ask, what do we want the Jewish people's [54:11] contribution to the world to be? [54:12] I mean, Tikkun olam is not it. That is just pablum. [54:15] It doesn't mean anything. I think Protestants do tikkun olam, [54:18] Buddhists do tikkun olam, and moderate Muslims do tikkun olam. [54:21] Making the world a better place is a kind of universal drive. [54:24] It's not what Jews are about. So what's uniquely and distinctively Jewish that we [54:27] want to bring to the world? And in what way does having a nation state help us [54:30] bring that message to the world? [54:32] And in what way does having a nation state undermine our bringing that message to the [54:36] world? And what would happen if Israelis and American Jewish leaders and Israeli [54:40] rank-and-file and American rank-and-file began to have these conversations in ways [54:44] that perhaps technology makes possible that I haven't thought of, [54:48] which really began to understand how each of us is a huge contributor to the [54:53] potential of what the Jewish world could be. [54:56] Each of us faces very serious dangers as we try to re-imagine this Jewish world. [55:00] And each of our models is fundamentally flawed. [55:03] Also, Israel's comportment of its battle with the Palestinians is far from perfect, [55:07] to put it very mildly. And the American Jewish instinct to try to remake Judaism [55:12] always to make the goyim happy, so to speak, is not wise, to put it mildly. [55:17] So there's plenty of conversations here. [55:19] What we need are leaders who want to model it. [55:21] Leaders who really don't want to speak from a pedestal down, [55:24] but really want to engage in a different kind of discourse and dialogue. [55:27] And perhaps it's the fact that both communities are in such grave crisis at [55:32] this moment. Perhaps it's the fact that maybe this will lead to that. [55:36] My niece, who actually does speak Chinese and Mandarin, [55:39] tells me that this whole thing about the word for challenge and opportunity or [55:44] crisis and opportunity in Chinese being the same word. [55:46] She goes, I don't know who made that, but it's just totally wrong. [55:50] But she goes, it's like not even close. [55:51] Like there's just two different words. [55:53] There's crisis and opportunity. [55:55] They're just different words. But anyway, everybody always says the Chinese have the [55:58] same word for crisis and opportunity, which apparently is not true, [56:00] but crises can be opportunities. [56:03] And I think that our shared sense of vulnerability and our shared knowledge, [56:08] we've made profound mistakes. And to go back to where we started, [56:12] our shared sense to kind of echo David Ingber, [56:16] that we didn't listen to the Shomrim. [56:19] We didn't listen to the Watchmen. [56:20] We didn't listen to the young women on the border with Gaza who were talking about [56:23] broken cameras and breaks in the fence and SIM cards getting lit up. [56:27] And we just didn't listen to them. [56:28] And they died. They died because we didn't listen to them. [56:31] But by the same token, there's lots of people in America who've been saying for a [56:35] very long time that this progressive language was going to create a cultural [56:39] world in which Jews were not going to be able to survive. [56:41] And they were right also. We didn't want to hear them. [56:43] So maybe if we all acknowledge the profound mistakes that we've made, [56:46] the profound errors in judgment that we've made, [56:48] the profound deafness to the calls of the Shomrim that we're all guilty of, [56:53] maybe we could begin to build the relationship better. [56:57] I don't have any magic, you know, let's meet here and talk about this and let's [57:00] meet there and talk about that. [57:01] I don't know how it works, but I hope that there's some grain in there that people [57:06] who much wiser than I and much more creative than I could begin to take and [57:09] build something new. [57:12] Ben Chertoff: What can an American Jew do this year concretely to help [57:18] get that gap bridged? And, you know, [57:22] what does the American Jew owe Israel? [57:26] Daniel Gordis: So now I'm going to sound like Ariel Sharon for a second. [57:29] You know, I actually respected him a lot. [57:32] I don't think I ever voted for him, but I'm not sure. [57:34] But, you know, he was a very impressive and crazy guy at the same time. [57:39] And his craziness helped win the '73 war and his craziness got us out of Gaza. [57:43] And some people would say, yeah, that was crazy and insane. [57:45] And that's how we had October 7th. [57:47] I mean, so it depends on how you look at it, right? [57:49] But Ariel Sharon used to annoy Jews no end by coming to America and saying, [57:53] move to Israel. Now, I know that that's ridiculous and people take great offense [57:58] at it. And that's what got Jacob Blaustein to tell Ben-Gurion, America is our Zion. [58:02] So I don't want to step into the same land, you know, [58:06] minefield that all these Israeli predecessors have stepped on. [58:08] That would be very stupid. However, [58:11] in a time when you and I are having this conversation, when the election is, [58:15] I don't know what, 30, 31, 32 days away, and it's very close. [58:19] It's very, very close. And we might lose. [58:21] Those of us who want change might very well lose. [58:24] I hope we don't. I think we're not going to, [58:29] but I'm much less confident that I was three or four weeks ago, [58:32] and a lot can change in 31 days for the better, but also for the worse. [58:35] But let's be honest. If a million American Jews came to Israel with the same liberal [58:41] democratic values that even, you know, the people in the Republican Party and the [58:46] American political right hold near and dear, this election wouldn't be close. [58:51] And so again, I don't want to do the Ben-Gurion, Ariel Sharon thing and say, [58:56] you must move to Israel, otherwise, whatever, but it would make a difference. [58:59] And I just have to be able to say that I said that. [59:01] So now that I said that, I don't expect it to happen. [59:04] You know, I understand we made aliyah. [59:06] It's hard. You know, if you don't speak the language, [59:08] you have to rebuild a career when you leave your family. [59:10] It's very, very hard and it's expensive and housing is ridiculous. [59:16] You know, we have one kid that lives in America, [59:18] has a lovely home in a very nice American city with like five bedrooms and a front [59:22] yard. And we live in a very modest Jerusalem apartment, [59:24] which actually sells for like five times the value of his house. [59:27] I mean, it's expensive here. We get it. [59:29] I understand all the reasons not to do it, et cetera, et cetera. [59:33] But an American presence here in terms of numbers would make a difference. [59:36] Having said that, look, I think the following is going to sound [59:41] really, really ridiculous. But you could say, you know, [59:47] come to Israel, but instead of staying at the King David Hotel, [59:49] go to an Airbnb and then knock on your neighbor's door and have coffee with them. [59:52] I mean, come on, let's just be serious. [59:53] That's not going to happen. So, but you're not going to to come to the King David [59:56] Hotel and sit by the pool and order cocktails and learn very much about [59:59] Israel. It's a very nice hotel. [60:00] It's a very nice pool. And the cocktails aren't that bad, [60:02] but you're not gonna learn anything about Israel. [60:04] But here's what I really do think. [60:05] I think that Israeli literature is a vast wellspring of insight into the Israeli [60:10] psyche. Things like, just let's say, for example, [60:14] David Grossman's To the End of the World, I think it's what it's called in Hebrew, [60:17] it's Isha Borachat MiBesora, but it's about a woman who runs away from her house [60:21] that the army can't find her to tell her that her son is killed and her son is [60:23] killed. Or to, there's just, I'll take another example, [60:29] which seems trite, but Fauda season five, you know, [60:32] a lot of people don't like it because it's a lot of shooting and blood and guts and [60:34] all that. It's not actually not that all that violent. [60:36] I've seen many Netflix shows that are just as violent, [60:38] but if you follow Fauda through seasons one through four, you know, [60:42] there's always a little plot. And sometimes, by the way, [60:45] this is very serious, especially in the early seasons, [60:47] it's hard to tell who's crazier. [60:50] the terrorists or the counterterrorism unit. [60:53] And the fact that Israeli production produced that and that it became the [60:59] leading television show in Israel tells you that Israelis are thinking about that. [61:03] Like, how insane do you have to be to be the king of the jungle? [61:08] Do you have to become an animal to be a king of the jungle? [61:11] Israeli, there's a lot to be learned from Fauda. [61:13] And in Fauda season five, formerly secular characters are all of a sudden, [61:18] are all of a sudden religious. And formerly G.I. [61:23] Joe guys are broken shards of human beings. [61:27] Why would they show these kinds of characters? [61:30] Because that's what happened. There are formerly G.I. [61:33] Joe guys who are shards of human beings. [61:36] And there are formerly secular people who are religious and formerly religious [61:41] people who are secular. There was on the cover of Makor Rishon, [61:44] I think two Fridays ago from the day that you and I are having this conversation, [61:48] A little snippet on the front page, which was a kind of a link to a much longer [61:52] article in one of the magazine sections. [61:54] But it was an interview with a woman, I believe, from Be'eri, [61:57] but one of those secular kibbutzim that was horribly destroyed on October 7th. [62:02] She did not, obviously, die, this woman. [62:04] She gives an interview to the paper. [62:06] And she said, I was one of those people who went to Gaza and brought people out [62:12] and took them to Ichilov Hospital. [62:13] Right. And I was one of those people who was collecting money to send to these [62:17] nonprofits so that people in Gaza could get food and this and that. [62:20] And I was the ones that was putting balloons up in the air with little things [62:23] on it. You know, we look forward to peace and then have the wind blow it across. [62:26] And she said, and then I was the one that watched who came across the border. [62:29] And it wasn't just guys in Hamas masks. [62:32] She said it was rank and file Palestinians from Gaza, [62:36] the same ones that I drove to Ichilov Hospital. [62:38] And she said, they have lost the right to live in Gaza. [62:46] All of them. They all have to go. [62:48] Now, they're not going. I understand that. [62:50] You understand that. They're not going anywhere. [62:51] But I think that American Jews would do well to ask themselves, [62:54] how does a committed leftist get to the point where she says they have [62:59] collectively lost the right to live in Gaza? [63:02] That comes from such a brokenness. [63:06] And I think what Americans just need to try to learn to understand is the depth of [63:11] the brokenness here, the depth of the exhaustion, [63:15] the depth of the fear. [63:20] You know, from the minute that our kid goes in in a few days till the minute that [63:24] he's out, you get into bed at the end of the day. [63:27] And, you know, my wife could tell you the percale count of the sheets. [63:30] I'm not quite sure what it is, but I know it matters. [63:33] And, you know, the temperature is set exactly like we like it on the whatever. [63:36] And we have our little ear things that you sleep in and they make the right sounds. [63:40] And it's exactly the way that we want it to be. [63:42] And where the hell is he? [63:45] And what's he doing? And his kids are across the hall in the kids' bedrooms. [63:50] And what happens if, God forbid, [63:53] I mean, how do you go to sleep? [63:55] Really, how do you go to sleep? [63:56] I just read a statistic somewhere about the percentage of Israelis who are on [63:59] sleeping pills, prescribed sleeping pills. [64:01] It's obscene. It's crazy. I don't know if it's 60%. [64:05] It's something obscene. But how would you sleep? [64:09] And I think that somehow Americans, even when they're angry at Israel, [64:13] even when they're embarrassed by Israel, which I also am very often embarrassed by [64:17] Israel, need to also understand the brokenness and the exhaustion and the [64:23] fear and the sense of abandonment. [64:27] If we can try to get in each other's heads a little bit, [64:30] maybe we can understand each other better because we are facing both of us very [64:35] serious dangers. They're different dangers. [64:37] But I think, as I said before, I hope there's an opportunity here to begin to [64:41] understand each other better. [64:43] Ben Chertoff: What about the Peter Beinarts? [64:45] You know, you wrote in March asking whether a third of young American Jews [64:50] being anti-Zionist or non-Zionists means they should be written out of the [64:55] community. And you're framing, it was a question. [64:58] It wasn't an answer. Do you have an answer? [65:04] Daniel Gordis: I don't have a clear answer because I have very smart friends on both [65:07] sides of that divide and I take them seriously. [65:10] So they know a lot more about American Judaism than I do at this point. [65:14] Some of them say, yeah, they have to be shunned completely to make clear that that [65:17] is a complete non-starter. and some people said, [65:19] bring him into the tent and they're going to hear other things and they will soften [65:23] and whatever adolescent rebellion is going on here will begin to dissipate. [65:27] So I don't know the answer to that. [65:28] But I will say about Peter Beinart. [65:29] You know, I used to do a podcast with Peter Beinart. [65:31] We did a podcast for, I don't know, a couple of years, [65:34] maybe a year or whatever it was that was sponsored by The Forward. [65:37] It got a little tired at a certain point, [65:39] I think because we just kept rehashing the same issues. [65:42] But I could have a conversation with Peter because I think Peter was a [65:47] very pro-Israel's existence as a Jewish state person, [65:51] who was also deeply critical of Israel's conduct of its conflicts. [65:56] And I am somewhat critical of Israel's conduct of the conflict, [66:01] not nearly as critical as he is. [66:03] But we were both believing in the same thing. [66:05] The minute that he wrote that article in, forget where he wrote it, [66:09] He wrote the Yavne article in whatever magazine it was where he said, basically, [66:14] we're done. I'm not in favor of a Jewish state anymore. [66:18] Then I really couldn't have anything to do with him. [66:20] And I would personally now not be on a panel with him. [66:21] I would not engage in a conversation with him. [66:23] I would not debate him, which I did many times. [66:25] We debated at Columbia. We debated at Harvard. [66:27] I would never do that again. Look, [66:29] I think that I don't know what the policy of the American Jewish establishment [66:35] should be. But I think that people who have now begun to make their living [66:41] off of decrying the sinfulness of the idea of a Jewish state [66:46] really have become enemies of the Jewish people. [66:49] And, you know, he's got every right to do it. [66:51] I don't want anybody to do anything bad to him. [66:52] You know, they should hurt him, God forbid. [66:55] But I find it morally contemptible. [66:59] I find it Jewishly Benedict Arnoldian. [67:04] And I find when he does these podcasts and he's got his little Talmud volumes in the [67:07] background there in this very nicely arranged shelf, [67:11] it's just like, you know what? I wish he would spend more time reading those books [67:14] and less time making podcasts. I find it very sad to me. [67:17] It's just very sad. I don't know what happened there. [67:19] People have all sorts of psychological explanations and this and that. [67:22] I don't have no idea what happened, but it makes me very sad. [67:26] And I think the anti-Zionism thing is really cutting off one's nose to spite [67:30] one's face at the end of the day. [67:33] If what has happened here, again, I don't want to fall into the old-fashioned [67:35] Zionist trope, but if what's happened over the last three years has not convinced you [67:39] that Jews need a place where they know that if God forbid they need to go, [67:43] that they can go, well, then nothing is going to convince you. [67:46] But I think it has convinced a lot of people of that. [67:48] That does not mean that what we did in Gaza was necessarily right. [67:51] It does not mean that what's happening in the West Bank is okay. [67:53] It's completely not okay. [67:56] But if you're still going to make the very essence of your Jewishness, [67:59] being anti-Zionist, understand that that is a massive adolescent rebellion. [68:04] It's like that very famous book, you know, Get Out of My Life and Drive Me to the [68:07] Mall. You know, it really is, because what are you going to do? [68:12] Are you going to change Birkat Hamazon when it says, [68:14] Boneh b'rachamav Yerushalayim, amen? [68:16] And are you going to change the Amida when it says, you know, [68:19] V'kabtzenu yachad me'arba kanfot ha'aretz? [68:21] They try to. Yeah, but you're going to change everything. [68:23] You're going to change the seder. [68:24] You're going to change, you're going to rewrite all of Judaism. [68:27] And then are you going to rewrite the halacha that outside of Israel, [68:31] you need to put up your mezuzah in the first 30 days, but in Israel, [68:34] you have to put it up before you go to sleep because by definition, that's home. [68:37] I mean, so much of the Jewish tradition is about this. [68:39] If you want to spend, you know, people used to say that when these secularists, [68:44] when these secularists would come to Israel from Europe, you know, [68:47] the Bundists or whatever, they had to be in Israel because they had to flee, [68:50] but they were really opposed to Israel and they were opposed to religion for sure. [68:53] So they would sit outside and eat on Yom Kippur across the street from where people [68:57] were walking into shul smoking a cigarette to show how much they didn't care. [69:02] But of course, that showed how much they were aware that it was Yom Kippur. [69:06] If they really didn't care, they wouldn't be doing anything davka on that day. [69:10] They'd just be doing their thing and they wouldn't have to show anybody anything. [69:12] There's a certain davkaness to this. [69:14] It's adolescent. It's intellectually very unserious. [69:18] If you take all of the references to the land of Israel out, [69:21] there's not much left of the Bible. [69:23] There's huge chunks missing from rabbinic literature. [69:25] The liturgy is completely gutted. [69:28] And then what is the substance of your Jewishness? [69:32] What is it really about? That's not universalist pablum tikkun olam. [69:35] What is it? Where are the Jews actually unique? [69:39] And if you can't have that conversation, then why do you think that your children [69:43] are going to find this Judaism sufficiently meaty to engage with it? [69:48] It's a one-generation phenomenon. [69:49] What they bequeath to their kids is going to be so thin and so anemic and so [69:54] intellectually uninteresting that it will die out on its own. [69:58] Of that, I have no doubt whatsoever. [70:00] The question of what the American established Jewish community should do in [70:03] the interim with them, I don't feel that I have enough knowledge to say. [70:09] Ben Chertoff: So what gives you hope? [70:11] You know, we open this talking about David Ingber's sermon about [70:16] crossing that divide. [70:22] And what gives you hope going forward? [70:27] Daniel Gordis: It's hard, first of all. [70:29] I'm going to be very honest about that. [70:30] It is hard to be hopeful. You know, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, [70:35] used to make the distinction between optimistic and hopeful. [70:37] And his point was, you're either optimistic or you're not. [70:40] Hopeful is a command. You have to be hopeful. [70:42] You don't have to be optimistic because maybe you're not, [70:44] but you have to be hopeful. [70:47] I just had the huge blessing, the huge privilege of just right before you and I [70:52] started recording, I was at Yitz Greenberg's house recording him. [70:55] And, you know, his whole life story has been about the triumph of life over death, [70:59] the triumph of good over evil. It is part of his chromosomal makeup. [71:04] And he believes it so deeply to this day that good will triumph over evil, [71:09] even in Israel. And what is evil is evil, but he believes that it's going to be a [71:13] passing phase. I walked out of there inspired. [71:18] And I actually said at the end of our recording, [71:20] he just published this two volume compendium basically of his life's [71:23] thinking. It's really an extraordinary book put out by JPS and the University of [71:26] Nebraska Press. And I said to him in our conversation, I said, you know, [71:30] certain people, when they get down, they know that they need to meditate, [71:34] let's say, or certain people know that they need to go for a really good long [71:37] bike ride and they do it four times a week, [71:39] or certain people will know that they need to get in therapy or whatever. [71:43] I mean, there's all these different ways of handling one's downness. [71:48] You know, for me, bike riding is a way of dealing with it. [71:50] And meditating actually is a way of dealing with it. [71:52] And davening in a place where there's beautiful singing and a sense of communal [71:56] mutual reinforcement is one way of dealing with it. [72:00] But I also think that speaking to people like Yitz Greenberg is a huge bracha. [72:05] And it's a huge opportunity to be reminded there are people who are instinctively [72:09] much more hopeful than I think I am instinctively. [72:12] And I think we have to actually actively go out and search for, [72:16] to search for the things that can give us hope. [72:21] So, you know, we were at Yom Kippur services on exactly the same playground [72:26] where we were on Tisha B'Av in July of 2023, [72:31] when the Knesset had just passed, or August, [72:35] when the Knesset had just passed the first plank of judicial reform. [72:39] And people, it was on shisha b'Av, I still remember, you know, Tisha B'Av, [72:42] shisha b'Av, it was three days before Tisha B'Av. [72:45] And then people sat on the ground, grownups, [72:48] who I had seen at the protests every Saturday night for the better part of nine [72:52] months, sat on the ground and wept. [72:56] Literally wept. And one of the women who wept that night, [73:02] I can still see her in my mind's eye, kind of, [73:04] I can see her sitting on the ground on a little blanket in the middle of the [73:07] summer. We're about to read the book of Lamentations about the destruction of [73:10] Jerusalem. And as far as many of us were concerned, [73:12] the Knesset had just started the destruction of Jerusalem and people wept. [73:16] And that woman led Kol Nidre this past week on the same exact [73:22] playground in virtually, you know, 10 meters away from where she was that other [73:25] time. We have families in that congregation who've lost kids in this war, [73:30] whose families have lost kids who were hostages, [73:33] families who've lost kids who were soldiers, [73:35] families who've had kids wounded. [73:37] And yet we got together and we sang our hearts out for 25 hours on Yom Kippur. [73:43] I think one has to look at the wellsprings of the desire to live and [73:49] the wellsprings of a sense that we can heal and that we can rebuild. [73:54] And to look at, you know, my son could very easily pick up and take his family [73:58] and go abroad for a few years until this whole thing is over. [74:00] And he hasn't done that. He doesn't want to do that. [74:03] We know people that have, and they, by the way, have served much, much more, [74:07] many more days than my son has. [74:08] My son served, I don't know, whatever it was, [74:10] but it wasn't hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of days. [74:11] He just wasn't called up for that much, given the kind of stuff that he did in the [74:14] army. But I understand those people who felt, I just can't do it anymore. [74:18] And they've had to kind of take a break. [74:20] But I think what gives me hope is finding those people whose lives embody hope, [74:25] speaking to those people who are writing the books and singing the songs and [74:29] telling the stories and living the life and trying to create political change here [74:33] who believe that we can make this right. [74:37] I get a tremendous amount of sustenance from the work that I do in my podcast of [74:42] meeting people that I would otherwise not have met and of speaking with people with [74:46] whom I otherwise would not have spoken and hearing about their dedication and their [74:51] absolute confidence that as bad as things are now and as bad as things may be for a [74:56] while, we're going to see our way through this. [74:58] And I think it's a huge blessing to have those people in one society. [75:02] It's a huge blessing to have those people in your neighborhood. [75:04] It's a huge blessing to have those people in your synagogue community. [75:08] I think we all have to find the resources of hope. [75:11] This is a country which has shown tremendous resilience. [75:15] And it's shown tremendous love. [75:17] And its democracy is still a functioning democracy. [75:21] And the freedom of the press is still the freedom of the press. [75:24] And Israelis are hugely critical of this government. [75:27] And they're not afraid of being gunned down and not afraid. [75:29] I hope that doesn't ever change. [75:31] And they're not afraid of being arrested. [75:33] There are still a lot of things here that are [75:37] unthinkably wonderful for a country that was born in the circumstances in which we [75:41] were born. We're older than two thirds of the world's countries. [75:45] Everybody says we're such a young country. [75:47] We're not such a young country. [75:48] You know, compared to England and the Magna Carta, we're pretty young. [75:51] America and 250 years were pretty young, but we're older than two thirds of the [75:55] world's countries. But how many of those two-thirds countries are democracies? [76:00] How many of those countries have never had a contested election? [76:04] So I think it's a challenge. It's a religious challenge, [76:07] an intellectual challenge, a spiritual challenge, an aesthetic challenge, [76:10] but there's an obligation to try to see the miraculousness of what's been [76:15] constructed here and without being in any way oblivious to the very real [76:21] ills, and they are very real, to force ourselves to remember the enormity of [76:27] what's been built and the consequence of what's been created here, [76:31] and to simply declare that the rest of my life is going to be about making sure [76:37] that my children and grandchildren inherit something that is even better than I [76:43] got when I got here 30 years ago. [76:49] Ben Chertoff: Well, you've left me with something to be hopeful about today. [76:53] Daniel Gordis, thank you so much for joining us. [76:55] Daniel Gordis: Ben, thank you for really a fascinating conversation. [76:57] I learned a lot from your questions, and I appreciate the opportunity. [77:06] Ben Chertoff: Daniel doesn't claim to have a blueprint for fixing this, [77:09] and I respect that. What he offered instead was a place to start. [77:14] Before either side argues about what it's owed, [77:17] try to understand what the other side is carrying. [77:22] For an American Jew, that means sitting for a minute with what it's like to lie [77:27] awake while your kid is somewhere you're not allowed to know about. [77:31] For an Israeli, it means taking seriously that the ground has been moving under Jews [77:36] here, too. On campus, in culture, in places we assumed were ours. [77:42] Two communities, different enemies, different mistakes, [77:46] and one conversation we still have to have together: [77:49] what exactly the Jewish people are for. [77:54] On hope, he didn't pretend it comes easy. [77:57] It sounded less like a mood than a practice. [78:00] You go looking for the people who are still building, still singing, [78:05] still choosing to stay, and you let them carry you for a while. [78:10] That seems like good advice on either side of the ocean. [78:15] If this conversation gave you something to chew on, [78:18] do me a favor and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. [78:22] It's genuinely the one thing that helps people find the show. [78:27] Subscribe on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify so you don't miss the next episode. [78:31] And follow @HonestReporting on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, [78:35] and X so you can get the work behind these conversations. [78:40] You can read Daniel on his Substack, and We Stand Divided is available wherever [78:46] you get books. I'm Ben Chertoff, this has been The Honest Take, [78:50] and we'll see you next time.
