TJS S6 interlude: The inner tension of the present moment

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Everything about me is a contradiction, said Orson Welles, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions. We live between two poles. There's a Philistine and an Esthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles, you just recognize them. Those are words to live by. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Season 6, Interlude, Some Thoughts on the Present. You know, I pride myself on the fact that my students and my children are both quite confused about what my politics actually are. Truth be told, even my wife couldn't tell you with any certainty who I voted for in the last election. And that's not because I don't like to talk about politics.

On the contrary, you know, there was a point in my life when I was living in Boston and I was a fresh balachuva, newly religious, and I discovered that my from-from-birth compatriots there didn't actually share my liberal Jewish assumptions, that I would talk raging politics around the Shabbos table, so much so that a friend of mine banned me from this type of conversation. And it was such an important move in my life, but I kept that ban self-enforced through several years of marriage, even. I used to be ruthless around my Shabbos table, shutting people down and preventing them from talking about politics so I didn't have to wade into the muck. It's harsh, I know. But we used to speak a lot more Torah in those good old days.

Nonetheless, I'm getting a lot of pressure from the folks out there who are telling me they want to hear my thoughts on what's happening in the world now. Even though I feel like, having spent so much time immersed in the depth of the Jewish story, that politics really are the newspapers which are going to be tomorrow's fish wrappers. I know it's a dead metaphor, but you can figure out what I mean. Nonetheless, the issues at play right now are important enough. And really, to me, it's important enough that enough of you want to hear what I have to say about it. And by the way, RalphMikeFoyer at gmail.com. Send me your thoughts, your feedback, your innermost interests. And I will do my best to try to address them.

So that I'm going to do. Nonetheless, I tried to sit down and actually compose something coherent. And what came out was just gobbledygook, I'll be honest with you. It was a mess. So instead of trying to do it on my own. So what you do is you reach for a friend. So here I am with my good friend, Eitan Ben Abraham, creator of the Aleph Male brand. Not just your average beard oil, but a whole approach on Jewish masculinity. To help me out, something we've done before. Because what I'm going to do is actually metaphorically hand the mic over to you, Eitan, and ask you to actually interview me and free me up from the need of actually having any... So I'm going to ask you about you. Yes, exactly. This is all about me, and you're just a prop in my world.

I hope you're aware that that's what's going on right now. Mike, anytime. Thanks for taking the time. It's like Shariyem from Masadid. Whoa. For those of you who didn't understand that, I'm glad you didn't. For those of you who did, I'm ashamed. All right. Let's let it rip because the people are waiting. So first of all, Mike, we just need to get some context here. Talk about politics. What are you talking about? Well, you know, when you read the papers, everybody's all riled up. Israel has a new government. and depending on who you speak to it's the final ascendancy of the right they've all been waiting for it's the death of democracy they've been fearing and then there's this sense of an enormous rift between American and Israeli Jewry as if we have two peoples on either side of the Atlantic add to this the sort of point specific but quite powerful struggle over the Supreme Court in Israel which is going on right now I don't think you've got enough politics to fill an interview The politics that you're talking about.

Those in general, the politics I'm speaking about, I'm speaking about what's happening in Israel today and how it is both perceived by American Jewry and how it influences the relationship, quite complicated and long-term relationship, between American and Israeli Jewry. Okay, so stop right there, because before we go into all of those points, which are like burning points for people who are concerned about the Jewish people and politics, here's the question I want to ask you. Okay. You were born in the United States. I was indeed. You're a citizen of the United States. I am still, although every once in a while for tax purposes I fantasize about chucking it. Okay. But you are nonetheless a citizen. A proud American even, I would go as far as to say.

Yeah, God bless America. And you are also a Jew. Mamish. And you are also Israeli. Yes, I am. How many years have you been living in Israel? I've been here for 21 years. And so how many years were you in the United States? Well, I am 48, so you can do the math. Another 27 years. Sure, it's 21 and a half, 26 and a half. So what that means is that you have absorbed the culture and patterns of thinking of both the United States of America and the cultures and patterns of thinking of Israel and of being a Jew in Israel. To some degree, although in fairness, I would say that I've never made great efforts to be Israeli. And my understanding about how human cognition works is that without enormous efforts, we learn what we learn in context of what we already know.

Meaning I was American when I got here, deeply so. And so therefore, my grasp of the Israeli culture and politics, et cetera, is as an immigrant. Nonetheless, I think I got a decent insight. Really what I want to get to is like, who are you in terms of all these questions? That's always what you're interested in, but I want to talk about politics. Yeah, but this makes a difference because I think this has to do with... You want to sharpen the question then? As both an Israeli and as an American. As a Jew in Israel who was an American Jew for over two decades, how do you feel when you look at the current state of politics in Israel vis-a-vis the Israel and the U.S.? That's a great question. And I'll tell you one word.

And why do you feel that way? Okay, fine. Yeah. The word is conflicted. why do I feel that way? Part of it is in the kishkiz, right? It's really in my guts. It's not a rational feeling. It's like I absorbed, with my mother's milk, classic Jewish liberalism, right? To be a Jew in America for most of its history is to be liberal, both in the classical sense, the belief in individual freedoms, right? And democracy with a small d, although with a big d as well, you know. But also in liberal in the sense of mildly left-wing and universalistic, right? The more progressive aspect of the liberal world. So that I absorbed as an infrastructure. And I remember when I moved to Israel, I literally felt the world shift under me.

I didn't become more right-wing or particularist, right? I just felt like the world went off the rails during the second intifada. I don't want to go through that story now. So I feel conflicted because on one hand, there's a genuine conflict of values here. That the Jews are indeed a particular ethnic group. whose boundaries need to be tight and protected. On the other hand, our message and purpose in the world is universal. And therefore, we need to have also a very porous consciousness to be able to connect to every aspect of creation and people. On a simpler, less abstract level, I grew up in a world in which, you know, I'm okay, you're okay, and it's good to be me, it's good to be you, you're free to be you and me.

And I like that. It feels nice. It feels friendly. On the other hand, here I am in Israel and I see that some of the darker sides of that is erasing the depth and intensity of Jewish commitment to Torah and mitzvot. It endangers literally our borders if we were to open them universally. I'm conflicted. I think one of the reasons that I have what to offer to the current debate is not because I feel one side or the other, but because really I feel both. Can you say more about that and maybe what's on top? What's on top, I would say, is this sense I have that there's a deep rift growing between Jewish Americans, American Jews, etc., and Israeli Jewry and the state of Israel, which has a lot to do with a misunderstanding that we share this thing called Judaism.

What do I mean? Is that, you know, once upon a time there was no Judaism. There was the Torah, there were the people, and there was the land. the Torah people in the land are the three vessels of the covenant remembering that our purpose is to hold God and creation together that's why we were put in a place we're not the only ones doing it, but that's why we're here Judaism, the reduction of that covenantal relationship to a religion was a very important stage of survival and exile and it's brought amazing things I mean to disparage it in no way but the problem is that as a product of history right? we've been on very different historical arcs American Jewry and Israeli Jewry for the last hundred years so what Judaism is in America is not what Judaism is in Israel and why am I harping on this?

because Judaism and the Jews are not so easily disaggregated so you have these people in America who call themselves the Jews practicing Judaism or not, but they define themselves by Judaism And you have people in Israel calling themselves Jews, practicing this thing called Judaism or not, but they're also defining themselves by the land. They're Israeli. You understand that the land as a vessel is absent from exile, by definition. Judaism is an indirect relationship to Torah. And so there's this ism and schism energy that I'm really worried about. Because ism and schism come into the world together. As soon as you boil something down to an ism, you're immediately, consciously or not, starting to exclude people from it.

Right? The other way to say this is that so long as there's no orthodoxy, you have heterodoxy. As soon as you have orthodoxy, heterodoxy becomes heresy. I have to say who's not authentic, legitimate, in the club, in charge, etc. And my concern is that there's a power struggle, unbeknownst to most Jews, going on over what's legitimate Judaism. In America, by and large, again, it's a gross stereotype, But I think in terms of the continuum between the universal and the particular that exists in the soul of Am Yisrael, America is the universal face. It's the universal face. Can you unpack that when you say that a liberal Jew with universalistic values? What does that mean? Yeah, sure. In my last linear podcast, in the introduction, I spoke about the fact that the American Jewish community has pursued as the sort of means of survival, as a strategy, safety in diversity.

There's a sense that to be a Jew is to be just like everybody else, only more so. And therefore, hate against one is hate against all, so we're going to fight all hate. We're not going to fight necessarily just particular Jew hate. So you're talking about like social justice. It's become, that's a manifestation. Remember social justice in the Jewish world is called what Tikkun olam Tikkun olam which is half a phrase Because the original phrase is to establish the world to fix the world in the kingdom of God That piece, kingdom of God, has been taken out. Why? It's a little bit too particularistic. Because you can fix the world by saving the whales, by greening the forests, by voting progressive, and yes, indeed, by giving the Palestinians a state.

But those things aren't necessarily talking olam b'malchut shaddai. That's a different task. That's a more particular task, because then we have to ask, well, if God chose the Jews and gave us the Torah, what does it mean to have the world established within the kingdom of God? So just to reflect, in terms of this dissonance that's happening between, let's just call it the American and Israeli Jewish communities. The universal in particular faces. Right, the universal in particular faces. And in terms of understanding that originally there was no such thing as Judaism, there was the people, the land, and the Torah. The three vessels of the covenant. Right, the three vessels of the covenant. In terms of those two parts of you, in terms of that conflict, that you have inside of you, what does the part of you that's that universalistic, liberal, social justice, universal side say, looking at what's happening in Israel?

That it's harsh, that there's a cruelty to it, that there's a trauma response embedded in the way in which we relate to anything which is not like us with a sense of fear and defensiveness. Those are the fears that I have there. I mean, the other parts of it is... Can you unpack it even more? Unpack it more? Listen, there's a deep wound. And it is a natural trauma response to curl around our wound, to protect it. right? The problem is that when we take that posture of curling around our wound, we build our entire life around that, which hurts, right? And one of the beauties of growing up as an American Jew in suburbia is we've never been so free. There was nothing, okay, yeah, maybe a little bit of prejudice here and there, but realistically speaking, there was nothing to be afraid of.

And that's an incredibly liberating feeling, which allows me to be who I am, not in reaction to or fear of or in you know but to be genuinely who i am of course we see that that doesn't always work and there's a challenge there i'm supposing you're going to ask me to respond from the other direction in a moment but but from this direction it's it might my question is is that why are you building your identity around the pain and the wound you so you're saying you're you're you're you're a liberal universalistic part of you looks at what's happening in israel and says listen you guys are just constructing a self based on a historical trauma. Yeah. Why are we driving out African immigrants? Yes, I understand there's a challenge to keeping a Jewish state, etc., but really, without even asking where they came from and how they got there, why are we reacting with fear to Jews who want to practice Judaism in ways which I don't see as halachic, rather than saying, oh, this is a competition, this matters to them, maybe we need to engage.

You understand? Again, I'm totalizing because you asked me what it looks like from the other side. It's part of you. And that's the part of me, and also the part of me that says that I feel like we'll inevitably end in a ghetto, it'll be an armed ghetto, we'll be guarding the walls as opposed to being locked in. Nonetheless, it's a narrowness which can't possibly appeal to a world which is increasingly about integration. And so, again, I'm speaking to this part of you, right? This part of me that's concerned about Israel becoming an armed ghetto, that is concerned about the cruelty that's happening, about how African refugees are being treated, like all these different... And the fear around gender issues, the fear around who has a legitimate voice within the politics of our society.

Again, not that these things aren't issues, but I'm looking at it from where the conflict, I just see the pain and the fear and the retreat into narrowness of vision. And that's what frightens me. And that part of you that is frightened by that retreat into narrowness of vision, what does that part of you want? what does that part of you value? What does that part of you want? That part of me values freedom in the classic liberal sense that people should be able to be who they are. And even if I not only don't like it but actually disapprove and think it's wrong I still think there's a value in creating a society where people who are doing no harm ought to be who they are. I recognize that that question of what means no harm is a complex one.

And also human rights. It sounds like human rights is also in there. Of course. I mean, because of the upholding of liberty. That's the core American value that I fear for. Because I don't actually see liberty as an intrinsic value to be such a high standard in Judaism. And I don't see it as such a high standard in Israeli society, which has been a military society for 100 years. We've been fighting a 100-year war. And again, there are good reasons, but you asked me to take one side of the argument. Yeah, yeah. And now, okay, so I hear that underneath all of those liberal, universalistic Jewish concerns, is this value of liberty, which is rooted in a value of human rights. And an experience of being an American growing up and being able to be whomever, really, I wanted to be.

Right, and underneath that is sort of like the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yeah. Right, from our founding fathers. And underneath that is actually like all human beings are made in the image of God. Yeah, no question. So you're touching on what I see to be the Jewish part of the universalist, which is that there are no mistakes in creation. There are processes. There are challenges. There's even evil. But there are no mistakes. And so therefore, for us to discount, exclude, you know, categorically, deny intrinsically, touches me as a vodazar. Okay, and now let's turn to the other side. So what's that other part of you? The part of you that's been living here that understands the people, the land, and the Torah.

So I'll go from the idealistic to the realistic. The idealistic part is that we are a people with a mission which demands intense commitment and focus and cannot be diluted if it's going to be achieved. ultimately it's a mission in service of all creation, which of course means all humanity, but that we need to get on the ball. And in order to do that, we need to laser focus, a concentrated environment. And the non-Jewish elements, and even the Jewish elements which aren't focused, need a huge bearer. We need a tremendous clarification, and that's an internal dialogue, which means drawing strong boundaries. That's from the idealistic. Practically speaking, just to unpack that idealistic nugget that you just shared, when you say that's an internal dialogue of like how to relate to foreign elements, can you can you unpack that a little bit?

What do I care what the UN thinks? Why do I care if the United States government has an opinion about our our Supreme Court and who's in charge here? Why should we really even consider the way the world looks at our relationship to one another and to the Arabs of this land? We need to do what it is that we feel is correct in our mission. Okay, and from this idealist perspective, with this laser focus, how does this part of you look at American Jewry? They're off the rails. Parents of American Jewry. They're off the rails. It's just like Hellenistic Judaism in its day. They're in the process of fading into a larger global culture, which is not a bad thing for the larger global culture. Hellenistic Judaism contributed enormous amounts of culture and refinement to the Greco-Roman world.

but a good chunk of it also became our enemy in early Christianity. And that's one of the things that worries me, is that American Jewry has the deep inside itself, whether it's aware or not, a deep desire to survive, which is true of all organisms, but since Judaism has been around the Jews, forget ism, the Jews, the people have been around for so long, that's a deep, deep notion. And what I fear is that their means of survival is going to be throwing us under the bus, right? Because they are the face that wants to be liked and accepted. They are the face that wants to be just like everybody else. That the particular elements and the demands, the obligations, right? That's the inverse, is that all your love of liberty and freedom and pursuits of happiness, etc., aren't there in the Torah.

The Torah talks about chivim, talks about obligations, right? And with the exception of orthodoxy, and even there I have some questions in terms about the participation in the national drama, but with the exception of orthodoxy, the notion of obligation as the core foundation of what it means to be a Jew has been lost in American Jew. I mean, when I worked as a Hebrew school teacher at a certain phase of my life, I was told explicitly in the conservative movement, you may not speak about obligations. I was dumbfounded. I was like, well, how do you relate to the Torah if you don't actually... They're not ten suggestions. They're not ten good deeds. They're ten commandments. And so, furthermore, I see an old historic process of the substitution of current mores, philosophies of the time and ideals, for core elements of the Torah.

I'm not going to get into the whole debate of what's an authentic Jewish value, But it's very clear that American Jewry has taken liberal and now even progressive values and worldviews and read them into the Torah. It's not that they're not there. Because the Torah, you know, was written in a way in which all creation can be found within it. But in a way in which seems to me to be so clearly in service of the society which is hosting them. It's the ideology. But it's in service of the society which is hosting American Jewry. And I'm sorry to say they're hosting American Jewry. as opposed to in service of our mission. That's a very important difference, which is why I would say, give me a million progressive American Jews.

Send them here. I'm all for it. And we can duke out the question of whether those progressive values actually belong here. I'm a progressive in many ways. I don't want the world to stay where it is right now. We have places to go and things to do. I want change. I want growth. I'd even go for a revolution, which is one of the reasons that I'm kind of excited as much as I conflicted and horrified by what happening right now Things are changing Old things are breaking In historical art that good but it painful and it worries me Like I said the other piece by the way I will add from the Israeli consciousness is that there's a fundamental difference between being a people who has taken upon itself the obligation and the commitment to protect itself than it is to be a minority and a majority culture that you're assuming will treat you well.

We live as a military outpost in this world. To pretend that Israel is not a military outpost is to deny its reality. I live in suburbia on the edge of a battlefield. It's not tanks and gunships battlefield, but it is a battlefield nonetheless. And yet I live in suburbia. And so, because why? Because it's a hundred years war. It's a war of civilization. It's not just a hot war with a front and a home front. And so that is very different than the American consciousness. And it's brutal, and it's got ugliness to it, too, but it's also got tremendous power and clarity. And, in my opinion, it's bound up with our mission. We are a people. This is our land. And we're meant to fulfill the Torah here, not just for our sake, for the sake of the Creator and creation.

So in terms of these two sides, obviously, I think you understand, and I think we need to go with the process of we're kind of doing a thesis, antithesis, synthesis. True, but I do want to do justice to the specific questions. And so the first specific question in terms of these two parts of you is sort of the rift between American Jewry and Israeli Jewry. And I think it kind of just embodied the two sides to a certain extent. And so now, as Rav Mike, the being who transcends these opposites. I don't know if transcends. Let me try to integrate. Transcendence sounds like too much. Certainly, I'm not transcending on live mic. How do you bring the synthesis? How do you bring the synthesis of these two sides?

Because basically what you've just done is verbalize the two sides. That's the first topic. The first topic was American Jewry and Israeli Jewry. So now those are the two sides. Now how do you as Rav Mike, RavMike.com, jewishstory.co, how do you personally reconcile and hold those two tensions? It's a good question. And I'll say this. It's important to understand that there's a difference between Beor and Yichud, between the clarification and the unification. Right? Clarification is all about distinction. We want to say this is pure, this is impure, this is kosher, this is, you know, treyph, this is permitted, this is forbidden. and that's very important. The distinctions between American Jewry and Israeli Jewry are important and substantive.

That being said, if we leave it at that stage, then there's nothing that unites them that brings them together. What can bring things together without demanding that they give up what they are? Remember, you can always bring things together through homogenization. I could say, oh, why can't we all just get along and we'll find a compromise? The answer to that is, no, no, this is a genuine battle which is meant to go on not necessarily to be resolved so the question is what's the vessel that can hold it that can actually hold these opposites without demanding that each one give up what intrinsically opposes that's what Rabbi Nachman calls Shalom yeah, he's taking that from our sages not surprisingly and so I would say on a practical level that Parmi feels that if American Jewry wants to be part of this process they need to pick up and come home because as much as we live in a global world and a mobile world and communication, etc., part of the problem is that American Jewry has become comfortable relating to Israel as a place over there which they have a say in.

And not only just, which is fine, we're all Jews and all, but they lost track at a certain point that it's also like a real nation state that has politics and social issues, etc., etc., And in a sense, probably the best example I could give you of how this has happened is the original concordat between the leadership of American Jewry and the leadership of Israeli Jewry, which is something I spoke about in an episode long ago called the Ben-Gurion-Blaustein Agreement. Jacob Blaustein was the head of the American Jewish Committee, the largest Jewish organization in America. And Ben-Gurion was obviously prime minister. and American Jews were not so happy about the 1950 call for everybody to pick up and come home because there's no point to Judaism outside of Israel.

Because American Jews weren't refugees. I mean, maybe technically they were at one point. They didn't live like refugees. Their life was only getting better in 1950. And furthermore, nobody likes it when somebody else makes you feel inadequate. You know? You're not really Jewish if you don't live here. You're not really, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So what was the Concord doc? It's very interesting. It's worth reading the whole document. But what I wanted to point out right now, I have a quote here. just to share with you is very important. What does Blaustein say? He says, As an American citizen and a Jew, I'm gratified that the Israeli people want democracy and, in my opinion, will not accept any dictatorship or totalitarianism from within or from without.

There's no question in my mind that a Jew who wants to remain loyal to the fundamental basis of Judaism and his cultural heritage will be in the forefront of the struggle for democracy against totalitarianism. What he just told you is that to be a Jew is to be a liberal American Democrat, which means that the support for Israel, whether people were or not, was contingent. And American Jews could feel good about essentially expressing loyalty to a foreign nation because that foreign nation wasn't just their home team, but it was expressive of their Americanism. The reality is this is a very different region. And you'll look around, you'll see democracy is a thin element of this region at best. Furthermore, democracy is not an intrinsic value.

It's a set of values in a governmental system. So if you want to know what the vessel that could potentially unite these two faces is, it's to bring people actually physically together into the same ship of state. how is that homogenization on the side of of the Israeli Jewish community because have you seen our Knesset you know the Knesset is the ultimate expression of the vessel I'm speaking about there's only one place in the entire world where every type of Jew speaks to each other one place in the entire world and that's the Israeli Knesset right because you could bring those universal faces and those values of the liberty and and the cloud general etc right into the heart of the prot in the particular.

And you can duke it out within a vessel which is strong enough to hold it. I believe that the state of Israel is strong enough to hold both of these faces. And I feel that one of the reasons people are panicking and that rhetoric around the loss of democracy is because American Jews in particular associate Israel with their image of a liberal, even though, by the way, Ben-Gurion was not a liberal Democrat. Let's just get that straight. And, by the way, was not a fan of the court. he thought the Supreme Court was the worst idea ever he thought the idea of non-elected elitists overruling the duly elected parliament to be the height of the anti-democratic but what I'm saying is that if you want to take two opposites in and have an existing productive relationship you need a vessel that unites them there is no vessel that unites American and Israeli Jew right now not Judaism because like I said that's become a divergent and a source of conflict beginning.

Not the state of Israel because it's a nation state. It's an ethnic nation state. Whereas in America you have an ethnic minority in a majority civic state. Nothing unites them. So what unites us? Without something a vessel that unites us, so of course there's going to be a conflict. You follow? That's why it's not just homogenizing. You're saying that the synthesis is not like an intellectual synthesis. The synthesis is like a physical... No, and I want to be clear on that. We are the people of the Torah. The Torah is an organic system. not a philosophical word. Philosophical Greco-Roman philosophical systems reach their perfection in abstraction, in intellectual synthesis. Where the Torah is an organic system, it reaches its perfection in embodied expression.

We've got to live together in order to make that synthesis, not figure out how to think about it. Yes, the thought is relevant. We're Jews, we work with our mind plenty, but in the end of the day, the Torah is meant to be lived. Which is why also, by the way, Judaism, isn't necessarily serving us so well. We're getting back to the point where you have Jews, Torah, and land. Let's live it, people. So wait, to be honest, Mike, I feel as if you're, because you're living in Israel and you just ended with that point, it's almost like you're falling on the side of that part of you that's like, just get over here. I did jump ship from one to go to the other. But I want you to understand, you asked me a question, and I gave you a specific answer, which is what can allow them to integrate?

The answer is there has to be a vessel. And my answer is at this point in Jewish history, the only vessel that could unite us is the state is the actual i guess i guess i guess my inner american liberal jew says no rub mike okay but you're talking to me not you wait which part of me is talking with wait like that that part of me says that's not enough that's not enough like make aliyah that's way too simplistic like make aliyah i'm sorry rub Mike, now I'm just, this is me coming out. All right? Like, making Aliyah is not an answer to the rift between American and Israeli Jewry. That is not the answer. Sure it is, if you understand what it means to make Aliyah. It means to bring your whole self here, to invest yourself in the national mission, the way in which all your thoughts and feelings and opinions will find practical expression.

I'll give you a very simple example. You know, American Jewry is upset about the lack of pluralism in religious practice here? You know why there's a lack of pluralism in religious practice in Israel? Because the people who care about religion are traditionalists. That's who's here. If the people who cared about religion here were reformed rabbis and, you know, conservative rabbis and etc., etc., if they were the ones here, then it's a democracy. You know, you would see a different face of religion. Similarly, I'm going to just, you got me now, the law of return, this has been a hot-button topic lately, right? the law of return of course if people aren't aware is the law passed first in 1950-51 and it's been amended etc that basically gives every Jew the right to become a citizen of Israel upon arrival and there's something called the grandfather clause which says that really the definition of a Jew for the purpose of the law of return is that you have one Jewish grandparent, something which contradicts the essence of Jewish law for the last 2000 years and when it was made as such there were many voices that warned that would be a mistake right now there's a proposal on the table to change that back to the traditional definition of what's called matrilineal descent, that your mother is Jewish.

Right? That is going to have a huge impact on the relationship between American and Israeli Jewry because... And how do you feel about that? I think it's time. I think it's time. I think that the construction of the law of return with the grandfather clause was to keep the doors of Israel open to the refugee Jews of the world especially of course the Soviet Union but not exclusively so And I think that the phase when Israel was a refuge for Jews is over Certainly, American Jewry is not seeking refuge in Israel. And at this point, to join the society here should be a choice of making real Aliyah. And that's what I meant. Is you're joining a mission, and you're going to add, yeah, bring the progressive, universalist, bring it, please.

I would love it. I would love more in the mix. Even if I don't ascribe to it, I would love to engage it here in a vessel that can hold it in a productive fashion. Now, it might be, practically speaking, there will need to be a grandfathering, meaning everybody should sign up and say, I still have the right to make Aliyah before that law is changed, etc. I don't know, that's practical politics, which matter. But I think that also as a nation-state, just like every other nation-state, Israel has a right to define its own immigration policies. And American Jew doesn't like that. Why? Because they feel like they're being excluded. Well, folks, the door has been open for 100 years. And I understand. Not everybody can do it.

It's not simple. I'm not making guilt or bashing. I'm just pointing out that this touches on the core of the definition of what it is to be part of the Jewish people. All right. So I want to be sensitive to the to some of the other hot, hot topics that that are part of what what's under the umbrella of politics. So so what's what's the next one? And maybe in like now you can do now that we've done a long version of it, we can do like a short, a shorter version of like thesis, antithesis, synthesis on like the new government, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. And the synthesis is your perspective, is then holding the two sides and then your perspective, because I think that's your mojo. Okay. Do you have a specific question you want to ask in order to focus it?

Sure. Like Smutrich and Ben Gavir, for one. That's not a question? The rise of maximalist Jewish ideologues in the echelon of Israeli political power. I mean, I think the simplest answer to that is the understanding. No, no, give me the thesis, antithesis. The thesis, antithesis, antithesis is that there's a tension in Israeli society between what's called Jewish and democratic. Those are the democratic small d, right? Those are the universalist and particularist polls within Israeli society. And I think that this last election showed that it forced to choose, that the Israeli electorate will choose Jewish over Democratic. Not necessarily because of any substantive understanding of what Judaism or democracy are, by the way.

but because ask me a question because there's a fear there's a fear both of losing control there's a competing narrative here the Arabs have become the Palestinians, have become the indigenous peoples of this land and there's a fear, which isn't just in the narrative that when Romulah and Ludd burst into flames during the last operation, Shomayi Chomot, the guardians of the walls, people were shocked but you know what? Ben-Gurion and Shmutzich weren't shocked because they understood that we have let another narrative undermine our presence here and that it is coming at an actual cost to our security. And so therefore, identity is always a life-of-death battle. And so people don't want to give up being what it means to be a Jew, even though, again, like I said, substantively, it's far from clear to the average is what that means.

And democracy, you know, it's a least bad option. But isn't there something tragic about that? Isn't there something tragic in that, that we're being forced to choose? It's a false dichotomy, so yes, it's a tragic choice. I think that if we are able to awaken the deeper wells of Jewish identity and make this a more Jewish country, not through Judaism, not through religious, forget coercion, but in the depth of engagement with the Torah, with the Tanakh, with the land, with peoplehood, and celebrate our culture, and not just the past, but engage it in the present in real and substantive ways, then a more liberal democratic stance will only produce good. But the problem is, is right now, the posture, at least within Israel, is like secular, liberal, democratic, and the particularist, tribalist, ethnocentric.

And by the way, you put Smutrish and Benavir on that poll, but don't forget that the fastest growing population within Israel is in the Haredesha world. in the so-called ultra-Orthodox world who have succeeded in fantastic ways of building a society which is thriving and built on Torah, but see democracy not at all as a value and don't even necessarily, as a community, value the ship of state. That's unreal. And don't forget that the whole chaos that we're in now, the last 15 years almost, of political chaos have all surrounded around the Talal law and the attempt to make a compromise that would integrate the Hredi world better into Israeli society through the army. And that Talval was struck down by the Supreme Court.

Which I do want to take a minute, because I know you've got to go, and just say, since this is like, let's see, Chodah Hanit, the tip of the spear right now in people's eyes. This is the tip of the iceberg of the conversation. No, but this is where it's actually becoming practical. People are panicking about the Supreme Court. Just a couple of things that need to be said. First of all, Israel has no formal written constitution. which you know we're not the only country in that respect although we're one of the few it's an issue and maybe some other time we can talk about I have very strong opinions on how a process to create one might look but practically speaking the problem isn't the lack of a constitution it's the fact that the court arrogated to itself the power to dictate what will or will not be constitutional law back in the early 90s and put itself it dug its grave at this point by taking power which one could argue was never intended, putting itself in direct competition, and now, unfortunately, we have a Knesset, which feels that the way to solve that problem is having an unrestrained Knesset.

When the reality is, and this is my American side speaking, is that we can learn a lot from the American, from the French system, about how you make a government which has checks and balances. But that would require a process of social conversation, a constitutional process to make a social contract. Because a court can't dictate law on that level. That law needs to be a social compact. It needs to be a covenant between the people. And that's really what's lacking right now. And so, I mean, if we're going to maybe do a wrapping up, although you may have one question I would say, is that if there's not a physical vessel that, you know, American Jewry is willing to pick up and move here, because I know they're not, God willing, more will come, you know, but then what I would say is that there needs to be a new covenant.

When I do counseling work with couples, there's a three-step process I work through people. de-escalation, rebuilding communication, and a new covenant. So the relationship between Israeli and American Jewry can be seen in the same way. There needs to be de-escalation. This whole rhetoric about destroying democracy and it's like my way or the highway. If we don't go this government, then I'm going to take my ball and go home. Drop all of it. Also, Israeli politicians, Benny Gantz threatening the Civil War, and this guy, Tzviko, what's his name, from the Otzma UD saying that the opposition leaders are treasonous and should be arrested. Everybody just take it down a notch. De-escalate. Then, rebuild communication.

We need to build a common language between American and Israeli Jews. And it can't be Judaism, I told you. That's the divide. It can't be Zionism either, by the way. It's also become a divider. It needs to be the Torah, the people, and the land. And then, ultimately, a new covenant. What does it mean to be a people? Are you in or are you out? That's what I got. Any other questions? Yeah, I feel like my inner American Jew is crying. That's okay. It hurts a little bit. But your inner Israeli Jew should know that the trauma response of retreating into the ethnic nation-state with heavily armed walls that we can, thank God, defend is a failure of mission as well. That we desperately need the universal energy, the sort of open hopefulness, the connectivity to creation, which is the best face of American tikkun olam Jewry.

We desperately need it. But we need a vessel that can hold the two of us which is why I suggested in the beginning that that vessel is give me a million progressive Jews. You can leave the conservatives and the ultra-Orthodox and the Orthodox back in America. They'll be fine. Give me the progressive Jews who are disgruntled. The ones who feel that Israel's gone off the rails and it's not a place that they can love anymore. Great. Come here and fix it. Let's duke it out. I'm all for it. Even though I probably disagree with what you want the place to be. That's fine. That's fine. I'm happy to disagree if there's a vessel that holds us. If we can't do that, then we need to come up with a covenant. And it's not going to be Judaism anymore.

It's not going to be Zionism. I'm not really sure what it would be. So I guess that would be a topic for further consideration. So if I were to sort of summarize the two takeaways that kind of hover over this thesis antithesis, two parts of you. the first is one form of resolution is actually to come here and be in the land. Because that's a vessel that can hold us in our convictions. And at the same time, if that isn't going to happen, then there needs to be de-escalation. Rebuilding communication, meaning there needs to be a shared language, which is deeply lacking right now. And then ultimately a new covenant. All right, I'm going to take the mic back, if I may. and I really appreciate you helping me out and articulating this and it went a lot more personal than I intended.

You went off the notes, but you and I can duke that one out later because I think it was worthwhile. I want to thank you for taking your time and energy. I went off the notes because I wanted to get underneath when everything was fine. That's why I asked you to do it. I even empowered you to do so. Eitan Ben Avram, Aleph Mail. How can folks, by the way, find your brand? Where should they look? AlephMail.com, Instagram, AlephMail, A-L-E-P-H-M-A-L-E, Jewish Sacred Masculinity, walk the earth with God. Most motivation, masculinity, and beards. And the most glorious beard you've ever seen. If you haven't seen it, you've got to look now. Go to the website. What your beard looks like doesn't matter. It's still glorious.

I'm Rav Mike Foyer, of course. RobMike.com. RobMikeFoyer at Gmail. You can go to my website. www.jewishstory.co Built, of course, by Eitan himself. Right? And if you want to be a patron, give a little bit of your hard-earned morning to help this show happen to be free and widely available. In the upper right-hand corner, you'll see a button that says Be a Patron. Click on that. Give a little bit of per-podcast support. I want to thank all the folks that are already giving their money to make that happen. I want to thank the Land of Israel Network. That's thelandofisrael.com. They're building a center for global transcendence in the heart of the Judean Mountains. I want to thank the Pardes Institute, P-A-R-D-E-S dot org dot I-L for throwing the doors of the Beit Me Josh open as wide as possible.

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