TJS S3 Interlude - Redemption Rant

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Our sages say, three things come when you're not looking. A lost object, a scorpion, and the Messiah. Now, I definitely am looking to recover things that I don't know are there. I wouldn't want to get bit, and please God, let it be soon, let it be now. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Interlude, a rant about redemption. So, I don't know about you, but my head is spinning from the events of our day. The Trump plan, the third election, the environment, take your pick. And instead of trying to give you some sort of coherent approach to everything that's going on in the world, I happen to get a few good questions from listeners lately. So I thought I'd take the opportunity in this interlude to maybe answer them, and in that way, try to lay out some of what I'm thinking.

I do want to say what follows is more of a rant than a coherent presentation. And though everything I say is really what I mean, as always, I do reserve the right to contradict myself. So here we go. First question was, of course, inevitably, what do you think of the Trump plan, the deal of the century, as they call it? So before we get to the substance, I always want to add a little bit of context. Let's not forget, if you've been listening to the Jewish story, at least since season two, then you know that this concept is not new. It's simply another iteration of partition plans of governments past. It's founded on the notion that the way to find peace in this region is to split the pie. And the only question is how to do it.

We saw that that was the hallmark of British diplomacy once it shifted away from their, by the way, international obligation to establish Jewish home in the Mandate of Palestine. And the question I want to ask right now is, seeing as past governments from Ben-Gurion onward have been amenable to the notion of partition, is that a question of pragmatism or is it an expression of an exile mentality, which is really an assumption of weakness and therefore a necessity of taking what we can get? If you look back, and I'm not going to drag you through it all, but if you do go back and listen to the last third of season two, you'll see that Ben-Gurion in particular, and he really sort of embodies the entire pragmatic labor government mentality, was always willing to cut a deal.

The Peel Commission of 37 was terrible, but he said we'd take it, because even in the letter that we quoted back in a previous show, I can't remember quite which one, but he wrote to his son that you take what you can get as a springboard to the future. I mean, Ben-Gurion, on one hand, was a pragmatist, but on the other hand, he was a pragmatic messianist. He really believed in the expansion of the Jewish people throughout our land, but he knew that it was a process which happened through steps. So that was 37. Then, of course, there was 47, the famous partition plan, which notably, like the Peel Commission, was rejected by the Arabs. Then one could say that all the peace deals since then have basically been founded on the same notion, that the solution to the problem here is a division of the land.

and one might actually, before you get into the details of this plan, good, bad, tilted toward Israel, etc., etc., whatever you want to say, you might want to ask the more foundational question, is that if this method has failed up to now, then why are we banging our heads against the same wall? Is it because, pragmatically, we realize we can't get everything that we want and that we might as well cut the best deal we can now? Or is it simply because we have a smallness of consciousness and vision which is a product of that exile mentality. Think all the way back to Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, if you're familiar with the story, when he escapes Jerusalem, right before its destruction of the Second Temple, and he meets Vespasian, then general, soon to be emperor.

And when Vespasian becomes emperor, he grants Rabbi Yochanan three wishes, basically. And the thing that Rabbi Yochanan doesn't ask is for him to go away. He doesn't try to save Jerusalem. And the reason given by the Gemara as he recognized that he had to save Pulta. He had to just save a little bit. Are we still in that mentality that we need to save a little bit? Or are we ready to go for broke? That I want you to contemplate, leaving aside right now what the question of going for broke would look like. And on that note, another feeling I get, and this really I've got to give credit to my dear friend and spiritual companion Zev Ornstein, is that you could look at this Trump plan as almost a test. A test from God, if you will.

We've had 50 years to actualize the revolution of 1967. We haven't spoken about it yet in the Jewish story, but we're going to get there. I really see it as a spiritual, political revolution for not only the Jewish people, but potentially for the world. We've had 52 years, in fact, since then. And right now, we're looking at the most pro-Israel president ever. Whether you love him and think of him as the Messiah, or you hate him and you think he's the devil, You can't deny that President Trump has been more actively pro-Israel than any president who has preceded him. So now we've got that. It's 52 years since the revolution. And here we are being offered the best that we can get. It's time to see what we've actually done with it.

In other words, when you look at that map, nothing on the map is offered to us which we haven't already taken. or vice versa. Anything which we decided not to claim as ours is now being taken away. That deserves some thought about, again, this smallness of mentality. Do we assume that the only way to solve this problem is to slice the pie differently? Or are we capable of recognizing that there's an abundance of potential in this land which can serve the needs of everyone living in it? Okay, which brings me to the next piece of context here in this rant. That's the context of Palestinian existence. Let's face it, as much as there is a core on the right that likes to shut its eyes, put its fingers in its ears, and say, nah, nah, nah, there are no Palestinians, they exist, they have a culture, they have an identity.

The problem is that in particular the Palestinian national movement is founded all but entirely on the rejection of the Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael. If you listen to season two, I've tried to do a good and honest job of tracing for you the roots of Palestinian nationalism. And so the question is, what do we do with that? How could we ever come to sort of any sort of either equitable or even pragmatic deal with people whose very national existence is founded on rejection? I mean, look at the Fatah emblem. It's got a gun and a grenade. Now, I personally would say that religion is the answer, that the Arab peoples of this land are also Muslim peoples, and there's much more there which unites us than divides us.

Ah, you'll say to me, what about the jihad? Well, the jihad is a very important question, which we'll come to practically in a moment, but I'll just say this, that the truth of the matter is, we live in the 21st century, and any person of faith who founds their worldview on a belief in a God who created the world, who didn't just walk away after that act, but continues to interact with and communicate with humanity is going to be forced to face the fact that there are lots of other people in the world who look at that very differently. Either they call God by a different name, or perhaps they have a different God altogether, or maybe they think that this God thing is just psycho-emotional thumb-sucking, and you all better man up and face the facts that we live in a void.

No matter what, those of us who live a life of faith must accept the fact that we cannot reshape the world in our image. That, in fact, I would argue is not our task. I would say that the Jews through exile have long been forced to acknowledge this, even though we're playing the long game, right? But we're not looking to shape the world in our image, let's just remember. We're looking to shape it in God's. We'll get to that perhaps later. Christianity, after, let's just say, 1,500 years plus of very bloody struggle, I see as having sort of reached that point of maturity where they accept the fact that a life of faith doesn't mean that you need to rule the world. The question is, is Islam ready to enter the 21st century in that respect?

Where is the Islamic enlightenment? I can't answer that question. You know why? Because it's not in my hands. I'm not a Muslim. All I can do is pray and perhaps, by the way, try to create the context within my country of a very clear tolerance for very specific forms of expression, which could help bring it about. But the truth of the matter is, there's much more to say about Palakzidian existence, but it's not in my hands. Except for the fact that, as we'll get to when I speak about what I envision, I happen to be holding the responsibility for the lives of a couple million people. Okay, last piece of context, credit where credit is due. I do want to say that one of the most important shifts that is offered by the Trump plan is a shift in language, which really affects a shift in conception, which speaks to a very important truth that has to be said.

We're not giving back land to the Palestinian Arabs in this deal. We're giving it away. And you may think that's a great idea and we haven't given enough, or you may think it's a terrible idea and God forbids us to give it away. But let's get this straight. There was no country of Palestine which we dropped out of the sky and stole. And that big lie, which is being propagated more and more every day, which has been in fact adopted by people who think of themselves as university-educated, intelligent, enlightened people, is one of the great barriers to ever making peace in this region. Truth is the absolutely necessary precursor to making peace. And by the way, there's some hard truths that need to be spoken to us here in the Jewish side of the land of Israel as well.

Perhaps we'll come to that at some point or another. So that's one piece. The other one is just accountability. accountability of the Palestinian national movement, let's face it, the billions of dollars poured into the movement have not created the government in exile or the proto-government that the Zionist movement created that could just step in and rule a society in an equitable fashion. Rather, it has just created terror, chaos, and wealthy corrupt people. So those are two very important points of truth. I guess the last one is the one I just referenced. It's like, Let's face facts here, people, as Jews. What is it that we want? The problem I see of the last 52 years is that the Israeli government and the Jewish people have tried to have our cake and eat it too.

The ecstatic sense of divine revelation, which gripped this nation in 67, led to a certain portion of us saying, well, you got to respond when God makes the call. The land is all ours. It led to another portion saying, this is the perfect bargaining chip. This is the keystone to peace. and it led to a government which waffled in a shameful fashion and allowed us to both take the land and not take responsibility for the people living in it. That just needs to be said. We have failed in our responsibility to all the inhabitants of this land, Arab and Jewish alike. And since our society is stacked in favor of the Jews, it is after all the Jewish state, the Arabs have suffered on a daily basis far more.

You may hate me for saying it but I think that one of the great truths that needs to be spoken is that we have failed in our moral responsibility which comes in being the sovereigns on this land because we haven asserted true sovereignty I all for ending the occupation Trust me, nobody is more for ending the occupation than I am. Now, what would result? I might differ on that fact. So let's go there, as long as I'm rambling. What exactly do you envision, Mike? That was one of the part of the question. It wasn't just, what do I think of the Trump plan? And the other part was, what do I think of the Trump plan and what do I envision? So one answer is simply grow, grow, grow. The whole region around us is stagnating.

We're looking at the breakdown of the post-colonial structures at an alarming pace. I mean, look at the population numbers for Egypt, by the way, and its economy. They are seen as a pillar of the region, and that's awfully shaky. And yet here, for all the sort of criticism, which is due to Prime Minister Netanyahu, One thing has to be recognized is that we are a thriving, growing country. Oh, there is economic inequality. There are environmental problems. There are political disasters. But nonetheless, we need to keep bringing more life to the region. And it might just be that this in and of itself is the solution. Keep growing and wait till things shift around us. That's one thing I would say is we need to think about sustainable growth.

We need to think about the health of how we grow. But number one response, grow, grow, grow. Politically, we need to question the nation state as an intrinsic unit. Now, I don't want to go through the history, but let's just recall that the nation state did not drop from heaven. Humanity has known many other forms of political organization which preceded it. And I assume just from the nature of things that will know others that will follow it. Now, you might say, isn't that a case of shutting the door after us? I mean, after all, we Jews fought and died and begged and pleaded and connived and did everything else we could to get our own nation state. And now we want to deny one to the Palestinians. Well, you know, maybe yes.

History does work like that. You can miss the boat. On the flip side, by the way, and I've put this question to a couple of my more right wing friends. Since the state envisioned by the Trump plan for the Palestinians has no control over its international borders, no ability to wield force in terms of a military force, has limited ability even to control its economy just by the nature of where it's positioned, what kind of state is that? Are we really just worried about the language? If it was an autonomous Palestinian territory, would we really see it as any difference? Is the problem that the president of the Palestinian state will be able to stand up in the UN and condemn us together with Venezuela?

That needs to be thought about. Is this just a question of language? So I'd say sort of last but not least, is there some sort of practical plan which wouldn't involve giving away our land, but would involve a recognition that somehow the situation needs to change for the better of everyone in it? Well, I'll just give you what I like to think of as the Fleischer plan. Those of you who listen to me on the Yishai Fleischer show might have heard it before, but those of you who haven't, it's worth thinking about. And I give him the credit, though I think that some of the pieces may have come out in conversation. Number one, there needs to be a track to citizenship for all people between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

Let's face it, one political entity has to unite the people here in order just to wield the power and divide the resources in a way in which it's going to be healthy and sustainable. A trek to citizenship, however, is going to be a process which involves accepting Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and internalizing the values of democracy which keeps it stable. That's one side. Another side is real minority status, real civil rule. Nobody wants to rule over the courts or even the daily political lives of the Palestinian Arabs. What we need to do is make sure that they can't be an existential threat to our existence. And that may sound downright medieval to you, but the idea of true minority status is something which has been considered in the past before.

And don't throw the apartheid word at me because that's not what it was. Number three, as a third part, Tract to citizenship, a true minority status with cultural and economic sovereignty, just lacking territorial sovereignty in the classic sense. The third piece would be Jordan, or even the Gaza Strip, as an embodiment of national life. You want a Palestinian state? Why put it in the heartland where it's simply going to lead to war? Jordan, after all, was more than two-thirds of the original Palestine mandate. And as I saw some of the quotes in response to the Trump plan, the irony, oh, the irony, Jordan and Palestine are one people. Okay, great. Let's follow through on that. But I would say there's two caveats to this plan.

First of all, no one is forced to leave their home. We don't need to repeat the traumas of the past on one another. I say forced if people, through economic incentive, want to go where they will. So, well, it's hopefully a free world. But number two, and most importantly, we need to put our energy, and this one actually needs to precede everything else. We need to put our energy into fighting the hatred and fear within our society. Vis-a-vis the Arabs, that means zero tolerance for jihad. We don't need preaching Jew hatred and death to the Zionist entity from the mosques within our sovereign territory. But most importantly to me, because I'm most concerned about my people, is zero tolerance for racism and hatred within our own society.

And I'm sad to say that we need to own the fact that were we to attempt right now to give real minority status to the Arabs living within our own land, we would be thwarted by our own fear and hatred. And these are the hallmarks, the scars of exile. We need to let go of this fear that we're going to be erased, that will disappear. here, and we need to replace it with a profound awareness of how precious it is to be a Jew in the world today and to have the Torah. The other way of saying this is that all those terrible organizations that are fighting assimilation, as they call it, within Israel, as if it's assimilation, because of course, we are the majority culture. Anybody who is assimilating is assimilating into us.

They're fighting racial mixing. If you want your children to marry Jews, then the best way you can do it is by making Judaism the most awesome, compelling thing in the world. And then, by the way, both trusting them and accepting the fact that we don't get to make the rules. So, I'm ranting here. Bottom line, the Trump plan is perhaps well-meaning. But it's fundamentally written from America's perspective. Which, I mean, in all fairness, as well it should be. if we're not willing to develop a vision of our own and to articulate a way in which we as a sovereign people can both rule over this land and serve the purposes of justice and peace for all the inhabitants between the Mediterranean and Jordan, well, then we're always going to be a colonial subject.

That's what's going on. This is the same playing out of the colonial mentality that the Middle East is just a piece on the board of an international game and we're bit players. We have to develop a vision of our own. Which leads to the next question I got, right? What on earth is happening to Israel's political system? Now, I'm not a political scientist, just another angry citizen who knows a bit more about history than is perhaps good for me. And I have to tell you, at this point looking around me, I want to scrap our political system. And when I say our, with all due respect to my American brothers and sisters, I'm talking about Israel. It's not that I don't think you guys need a bunch of reform over there, but I left.

And I came here 18 years ago for two very specific reasons. The first and foremost was Kirvat Elohim. I just wanted to be close to God, and I still do. And I have to tell you that the lived experience of a Jew in the land, striving to figure out what the Torah says to us in the 21st century, is the most intense experience of Kirvat Elohim that I can find available. The second reason that I came here was that I find the skill of American life overwhelming. I mean, how could I ever hope to be an idealist, to build a better society in a place that's made up of more than 300 million people? I just figured that the numbers in Israel alone offered a better chance, not to mention the fact that we're still in quite a molten state here.

It's often missed that all the problems we have, all the wars and the struggles, are also a tremendous benefit. Nothing is yet set in stone. Witness the fact that the United States thinks that they can redraw our sovereign borders. But I got to admit that when I arrived almost 19 years ago at this point, I didn't know nearly as much about the history of formation of Israel and its government as I do now. You can go back to some of the earlier episodes of this season, I think it was 7 and 8, if I'm not mistaken, to hear my take on the failure of our aborted constitutional process here. but I have to also say that right now I'm contemplating throwing together a webinar on the political system, the process of formation, what's happening right now and visions of change.

If you're interested in that, I could use the incentive. Let me know, are you up for a webinar before the elections, which is first week of March, or at least around the elections, on what on earth got us to where we are and what could possibly lie ahead in the political system? Send me an email or hit me up on Facebook. It'll help me make a decision. But for now, I see the problem with our system as fundamentally structural. And it's really a product of history. Parliamentary democracy was a product of mass society. The democratic ideal is very powerful, but it was born in the Athenian city-state where there were very few people who actually constituted the demos. In modernity, the limitations of communication and transportation, not to mention education and economics demanded that direct democracy remain an illusion while representative government become the reality.

That being what it was, was I think about as best as you could do. But here in the 21st century, we've begun to see that the rise of the political class, this professional politicians who represent our interests has actually become the death of freedom. Let's face it, just like everybody else, a politician's primary job is to get reelected. Now, it's true that, of course, they have to get reelected to do any good. And in fact, they may get reelected by serving the actual needs of their constituency. That's a nice idea. But in a culture where consciousness is mass produced, not just mass produced anymore, but it's actually tailor-made and brought to you through your own personal feed, which has been extensively tracked and hacked, a feed that gives you the illusion of control and individuality while actually reducing you to a consuming object, in that world, the political class that wields that power of media has become the enemy of freedom.

You know, Benjamin Rush is an interesting figure in American history. He was one of the signatories of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. You should look him up. He's got a great character. But he made a very important observation about the nature of parliamentary democracy, the so-called Republican model, and its relationship to freedom. He said They possess it only on the days of their elections After this it is the property of their rulers Now granted here in Israel we seem to possess that power more often than most these days We're headed for our third election, and Rahman al-Hitzlan, there could be a fourth that follows. Just imagine what it would be like if the next decade were simply a constant stream of elections until we figured out what we want.

now I have to say though that sounds both disastrous and somewhat appealing my real worry though is that the political process is giving us an illusion of choice much like that of by the way consumer capitalism and the freedom it seems to offer am I really free just because there are 18 different types of toothpastes from which to choose in the supermarket and am I really free to shape a democracy by choosing between political parties. I mean, what exactly is the difference between them? You know, Herbert Marcuse put it in even more harsh terms than Rush did. He said, free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. In his eyes, political freedom means a liberation from politics over which we have no effective control.

Now, I wish I could tell you that this rant was going to culminate in the offer of a new model of political organization. Like I said, I'm not a political scientist, but I would like to stir the pot and challenge you to imagine how things might be otherwise. So what should we do? In order to do that, I want to give a nod to some revolutionary thinking. You need to crack open Hannah Arendt's book on revolution. It's comparative analysis of the French, Russian, and American revolutions. And there she points out that it was only in America that things went even half right. Because her assertion is that the purpose of revolution is human freedom. But not just negative freedom, meaning freedom from governmental restrictions on my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But also, and most crucially, the purpose of revolution is positive freedom. The right to shape the world. the ability to create a free political space where we're subjects of our political life and not just objects. And in the tension between negative freedom and positive freedom, she points out, and this was back, I think, in the 60s, I'll look at the cover later, she points out the edge of the pit on which Western democracy is teetering right now. Because civil rights, in the eyes of Hannah Arendt, are not the substance of freedom, but rather its precondition. Equality before the law is critical, but it should allow us to be equal participants in shaping our lives through the political process.

And if this becomes confused, and civil rights become the definition of freedom, much as they have done today, the purpose of government is soon seen to be protect me from other people not like me. And the result can be a government that bans sugar sodas, dictates gendered language, and forces people to bake cakes. all the while gathering ever more power and control out of the hands of the average citizen. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that these things are intrinsically bad. Full civil rights aren't just good. They're absolutely necessary as a precursor to political freedom. But when we abdicate actual political freedom, when we abdicate the ability to participate in our political life to a class of professional politicians in return for the promise that they'll protect us from the people not like us, what follows quickly on the heels of this is the paternalist state, which knows better than you and I.

And then, authoritarian government is going to move quickly in behind. It's true you don't like it, but we're doing this for your own good. I dream of a participatory democracy, a politics as the process of running my own life, not just voting for the people who will do it for me, who have, of course, their own interests, Now this may have been impossible in the 19th and 20th centuries, but if Republican democracy was a product of the Industrial Revolution, then participatory democracy can emerge from the Information Age. As Arendt says, what has been concealed by the terrible catastrophes of the revolutions of the 20th century is nothing more than the first true revolutionary hope, and perhaps of all societies of peoples on the earth, for a new form of state, one which will allow each person in the midst of mass society to participate in the public issues of the day.

She's envisioning a revolution which leads to a society in which the institutions of political freedom become a common project, which is an end unto itself, not a means for attaining and protecting the private freedoms, you know, my rights, my social justice, etc. This is way beyond the political discourse, which seems to be the ideal of our day. It's the creation of a sphere of real public action and self-organization. We need a revolution in thinking. Freedom is not a right. It's a duty that has to be exercised or it's lost. One which needs to be shared with the largest section of society possible at the grassroots level. And on some level, we all know this. This is why the business world and the non-governmental world often appear to be the most effective elements of democratic society.

Now, I'm going to throw a word out there, a concept. For those of you who are looking for a new way of organizing political life, you should look up the idea of network governance. But for now, I want to say the future really depends on our ability to reconcile between prat and klal, between the particular and the universal, which is the hallmark of redemption. More on this later. It shouldn't be surprising. Practically speaking, we need a revolution in education, one which doesn't train our children to produce and consume useless goods, but rather gives them the freedom to speak, the tools to understand, and provides the context for meaningful action within society. Bottom line, we need a revolution in consciousness.

And I'll just end this section with another quote from Hannah Arendt, who says, No one could be called happy without their share in public happiness, that no one could be called free without their experience in public freedom, and that no one could be called either happy or free without participating and having a share in public business. So the last question that I'm going to deal with what I got is, when does the revolution start? Now, before I answer the question, I want to say I'm a little bit wary of revolution. As a historian, I mean, look back. The revolution has had, let's just say, a mixed bag of results for the Jews. The French Revolution brought us citizenship. It entered us into modern European society.

But don't forget, as we spoke about extensively in season two, the price of entry into modern culture was that we check our culture at the door, right? That we were allowed to be human beings, but not Jews. And that went hand in hand with that arrogant belief of modernity embodied by the French Revolution. That reason was going to wash away the dark superstition of religion. Well, no Jew at this point should let them take the Torah away from you. I'm also wary because of the Russian Revolution. You know, also back in Season 2, we spoke about that vision of global communist revolution and the sway it held over the imagination of several generations of Eastern European Jews. Marx seemed to offer them a way to have their cake and eat it too.

They could combine their Jewish idealism with a newly enlightened intellectual posture posture, because he presented revolution as universal and inevitable, as the chief fruit of world history. Communism, basically, was secular messianism at its finest, and it was going to allow the Jews to have redemption without the demands levied by our ancestral God. Well, it may have sounded good to them, but we all know how that ended, for Jew and non-Jew alike. What about the American Revolution? Well, that was actually the context for the question that this listener sent me, because last week I finished a series on the Jews of the American 60s. If you haven't listened yet, go back. It's a whole lot of fun. And how so many of those Jews were swept up in the sense that revolution was at hand.

In fact, they weren't just swept up. Many of them were driving the bus. In my eyes, the convulsions of the 60s were really a continuation of the core American revolution. I mean, what could be more American than the courage of the civil rights movement? and even the craziness of the yippies, because they added something to Marx and the French that was uniquely American. The recognition that revolution isn't just a change of political systems. It's not just an expression of an economic structural issue. It needs to be a radical overcoming of the consciousness which we've inherited from the past. That was what the new world represented after all. And that proved to be much more difficult than either the Puritans or the optimists of the 60s realized.

Habby Hoffman actually warned us from the outset. He said Jews, especially firstborn male Jews, have to make a big choice very quickly in life, whether they go for the money or go for broke. It's the Messiah or the middle class, he warned us, and though Hoffman himself actually held out on the radical path until his suicide in 1989, most of the yippies with him went on to become yuppies. That's not to dismiss their efforts or their accomplishments. I mean, American society has certainly changed since 1960. But in many ways, the problems we face today within American and Israeli society, within global society, are much more difficult to engage. Combating segregation to the lunge counter was much more straightforward than uprooting structural racism, stopping the war in Vietnam a more clear target than ending the arms industry.

Earth Day is cute and sweet, but it's not enough to stop late-stage capitalism. You can commercialize the environmental movement, and it's certainly not going to hold back the oceans when they come for us. Now, you might tell me, don't worry, the 60s revolution isn't over, that the progressive politics and the tikkun olam vision that drives a good chunk of American Jewry is its inheritor, and it seems to be quite energized right now. Listen, more power to you, but I'm skeptical that change can come from within the system as we know it, and even more so that freedom could come from it. Another quote from Marcuse in One Dimensional Man, where he says, The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves, but they're slaves, for slavery is determined neither by obedience nor the hardness of labor, but by the status of being mere instrument and the reduction of man to the state of a thing.

So I have to admit it, I've given up on revolution. It's not going to happen. But don't worry. Redemption might just be on the horizon. I saw perhaps the most upsetting thing I've ever seen on social media the other day. It was a BBC commercial. And don't worry, it had nothing to do with the politics of the Middle East. It posited the notion, just imagine, that all of the human species disappeared. It happened to be nice to say well how that happens is not so important Let just think about what it would look like And then it goes on to describe how the fact that once all the power stations ran out of fuel they shut down And since it the BBC how the London tube would flood because the pumps remove so much water, how plants would begin to crack through the pavement of the highways and the animals would return and the nuclear plants would melt down.

And this whole unraveling at the end of it all, it says, would this be return to Eden? Do you know how disturbing that is? It used to be the utopians dreamed of world peace and the achievement of human perfection. Now they're fantasizing about an end to human existence. This is a really bad idea. We've lost hope, people, and I think that part of that loss of hope is rooted in the original arrogance of revolutionary thinking, the belief that we can work it out, that humanity by itself has the capacity to perfect creation. And that's why I wanted to devote the end of this rant, if you're still with me, to redemption. Because our sages teach, The prisoner can't free himself from prison. Now that may seem somewhat infantilizing, and I know that the modern parts of ourselves reject this notion that we should be dependent upon God or others in any way.

At the same time, it might just be a realistic assessment of our situation. And as a counselor, I can tell you that the more I interact with people, the more counseling sessions I do, the more I try to help people own their own story, I see that there's a fundamental and profound psychological truth to the need we all have to step out of our own story in order to find freedom. You know, a classic scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Shalom, in his analysis, his tremendous analysis, I'll happen to send you a copy of the paper, the name of it's evading me right now, I think it's the messianic ideal in Judaism, but his analysis of our messianic thinking points out there's a primary tension between messianism as a complete break with the past, that there's this utopian vision which offers hope in the classic sense, and utopian vision of hope is, basically sums up in the sentence, what is does not define what will be.

Ayin lo ra'ata. No one can even imagine what it's going to be like. There's a tension between that sense and between the sense that what we're really looking for is a restoration of things as they once were, or perhaps ought to have been. And the benefit that that sense of restoration, that we're going to rebuild the temple, that we'll have a king again in the Sanhedrin and prophets, is that it offers a continuity of identity, which is a critical tool for integrating our past and present into a healthy future. And I would say that the type of work we've been doing on the Jewish story of narrative reconstruction, of trying to connect the dots of the events of the past in a way in which perhaps will bring us to a different future is the way in which we can negotiate between these two, between a break with the past and a future which comes when you're not looking, as we said in the opening quote, and a sense that we are just an evolution of the past.

And that, I hope you realize, is what we've been at. Okay, last thought, since I'm really just looking at bullet points here, is that a critical piece in the redemptive process is the integration between the particular and the universal. You know, Rav Kook, in his tremendous essay, the Ma'alach Idiot B'Yisrael, the progress of ideals within Am Yisrael, actually envisions the third temple, the whole era, let it be soon, let it be now, that we're dreaming about as an integration between the particular and the universal, which should strike you as quite important in a world which is ever more struggling with that notion. And more than anything else, he sees our return to the land of Israel as a people, as the return to a state in which we are responsible, finally, for building all the structures of our lives, on the personal, on the national, and ultimately on the global level.

And that's not just a revolutionary shift. It's the keystone to redemption. As Rav Kook says, Redemption depends on the ability of the national spirit of Am Yisrael to awaken and arise in its rebirth. that all depends on our capacity to receive the highest divine light to let that divine highest light become the actual soul of our lives in many ways he's echoing the 37th chapter in Hezgiel the famous dry bones prophecy in which the prophets called upon by God to sort of call out to the bones which stitch themselves together But then he says, I will put my breath into you and you shall live again. I will set you upon your own soil. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and acted, declares the Lord.

This is critical because revolution might bring us physically back to our land. It might awaken us from our shattered state of exile. But it can't breathe a life into us which we've never known before. That depends upon redemption. Redemption is its own type of revolution. It's a revolution of consciousness. Why? Because the religious mindset, which is really a product of exile, and was a critical stronghold for survival, don't get me along, I love my religion, is nonetheless too narrow by definition to receive the fullness of the divine light. And so is the nationalist mindset, which broke the mold of exile and served as our re-entry vehicle into the land. Rav Kook's vision of redemption is an integration between the national and spiritual ideals into a vessel that can receive a light, a consciousness which we have never imagined.

It's beyond what we can conceive. It's actually like the Rambam says right at the end of his great halachic work in the Mishnahh Torah. At that time, speaking about the Messiah, there'll be no famines and no wars, no envy, no competition for the good of life will be pervasive. All the delicacies will be readily available as is dust. and the world will only be engaged in knowing God. We will then achieve knowledge of the Creator to as high a degree as humanly possible, as it says in Isaiah, for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So how are we supposed to make that happen? Part of the answer is actually obvious. Just like the Rambam said, we need to use technology to free the spirit, not to enslave it with meaningless consumption.

We need to end war, famine, and competition by making all we need as readily available as the dust. Not so we can all be slugs on the couch, streaming Netflix and ordering toys from Amazon that will be delivered by drones to our front door, but in order to free ourselves to fill the world with a God consciousness. This is the real work of Torah. By the way, I want to make an invitation. Come join me at Pardes. We'll do it together. Or if you can't make it there, reach out for me for spiritual counseling or for one-on-one learning. this is the mission. I'll just give you one more thought to close. And in my eyes, it's a doozy. The real shift has to do with something that many of us who pray the traditional liturgy actually say three times a day.

In that liturgy it says, That God recalls, he remembers the acts of chesed, the loving kindness of our forefathers, and brings the Redeemer to their children. it's not faith it's not righteousness it's not even religiosity which will bring redemption it's chesed we have to stop holding back because only in a world where our actions aren't dictated by a limited conception of what is possible is redemption ever going to dawn and there was one last question actually I received and I want to end on that which is how could I possibly be an optimist about redemption knowing everything I do about Jewish history. Well, you know what? I'll answer like this. I see Emunah, or at least one aspect of Emunah, as a historical obligation.

I am bound by good faith to those who came before me, who kept the faith in much darker times, and whose faith carried us to this fantastic place in which we find ourselves as a people today, that we could even be bothered by the Trump plan, is not only a tremendous miracle, but it's a testimony to the faith of those who came before us. Imagine having faith in redemption living in medieval France. I also see, by the way, Imuna as an act of maturity in our day. It's funny because some people often see it as a childish, psycho-emotional thumb-sucking, but I would say, how could we possibly balk at this stage of redemption? Oh, I know everything seems really difficult, but I'll give you my favorite metaphor.

When you're on a boat in the water, you know someday you'll be on the land. you're not particularly bothered by the process. That's exile. There in 13th century France, okay, God will redeem us. How's it going to happen? Don't know. Just got to stay on the boat and not drown. When you're on the land, oh, let it be soon, let it be now, then you're actually redeemed. The most difficult part in the process of redemption, as is true with a boat, is when you have one foot in the boat and one foot on dry land. Because then every ripple on the water, every gust of wind, every inconsistency on the shore feels life-threatening. and that's where we are right now so have a little faith and be mature in that Amunah last but certainly not least I'll tell you that the only way I can have Amunah is by aligning myself with the ultimate injunction which drives the Jewish people choose life because even if you want to call me a fool and you want to accuse me of psycho-emotional thumb-sucking for believing in a paternalistic God I got news for you choosing to work for redemption or even for revolution beats laying down and dying.

I don't want my fantasy for life to imagine what the world will be like once humanity is gone. And that is critical because as Marcuse said, it's only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us. And I hope that these thoughts have stirred something in you and I want to thank you for listening. I want to thank in particular those folks who helped make this happen and I want to invite you to join them. You can go right now to my website, jewishstory.co. Oh, in the upper right-hand corner, you'll see a button there that says Be a Patron. You can click on through for a little bit of per-podcast support. I also want to take this opportunity to dedicate this show to a friend, a supporter, and a mensch of a guy, to Seth Whiteberg.

In honor and gratitude to the Abishter for another birthday. Mazel Tov ad mevishrim. I also want to thank the Land of Israel. I want to thank the Land of Israel as a land and also as a network. thelandofisraelnetwork.com for creating a platform that allows me to reach so many fantastic people. I want to thank the Pardes Institute, P-A-R-D-E-S dot org dot I-L for building an educational institution that gives me the privilege of teaching a bunch of fantastic Jews. And I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story.