TJS S6 interlude: The Crisis of Israeli Sovereignty

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It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, said James Monroe, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Oh Lord, let us be a people, and let us represent your sovereignty in the world. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Season 6 Interlude, On Sovereignty, live. All right, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on your time zone. My name is Justin Ellis, Executive Director of Fuel for Truth. And thank you for joining us for our latest webinar with Rav Mike Foyer on the crisis of Israeli sovereignty. Without further ado, Rav Mike, thank you for taking the time to be with us. And, you know, I'm really looking forward to hearing what you have to say on a lot of these issues.

Thanks so much, Justin. I'm excited to touch on such an important and fundamental topic. And I want to say, even before I get started, I'm very excited. There have been tumultuous days. There have been, for many people, frightening, troubling days. I would add into your list of the events, not just the protests and the questions of judicial reform. I would add the surge in terror. I would add the burning of the village of Hawara in there. They all revolve around the fundamental questions underlying the state of Israel and its sovereignty, which is what we're here to discuss. And that's why I'm actually excited and even optimistic, because no matter what stance you take on all those questions, the reality of hundreds of thousands of people, they say perhaps even 20 percent of the state of Israel, depending on how you count, is out in the streets expressing its concern about the nature of our society is a good sign.

It's a sign of social health, even with all the divisions. I just want to say that before we even get started. So our topic today is sovereignty. And before we can really dive into what I want to present, which is a specific model of sovereignty, big picture, I'm going to present that model, and then rather than use it to analyze the current events, I'll wait for people's questions in order to prompt what's really of interest. So I'll present the model. Hopefully the model will spark people's questions either specifically about the model or how it applies to the events today, and we'll roll from there. Before we can even present the model, we have to talk definitions. Because, you know, there's a fundamental problem that all educators, I'm also a personal counselor, all parents, all spouses and friends face, and that is the problem of the signifier and the signified.

What's that? It means that the words I use, if I do some hard work and I clarify what I mean, they can express exactly what I mean. But when you receive them, they may not mean to you the same thing they mean to me. Because words aren't little boxes that I can put meaning in and hand off to you. which then allow you to open them up and see, you know, words are a connection. I'll give you an example to illustrate. If I asked everybody listening right now to picture a tree, and we could all look into each other's minds, we would see different things. You might have the dogwood that used to be on the tree lawn, and I might have the oak that was in my backyard, and another person's thinking of a ponderosa pine.

It doesn't matter, because they're similar enough that we can all identify the tree. But if we get a little more abstract, and we talk about government or mom, or God, it's highly unlikely that we're going to recognize in that word the same thing that everyone else shares. Now, this is a problem, like I said, which goes across the board. It requires building a shared language in order to make sure that we're really communicating. And you'll see before we come to the end that this is not just some throwaway intellectual introduction. It really lies at the heart of what sovereignty means. We'll come back to it, but I want to sort of give it as my introduction because we need to define the term. When I say sovereignty, you look it up in the dictionary in English, most often you'll see a definition that revolves around the idea of supreme authority.

Usually emphatically linked with power, in terms of power over. If I'm the sovereign, I have power over often a piece of geography, sometimes a group of people. But in its journey through the English language, it really saw its idealization in monarchs, hence sovereignty. The best example you can look at in European history is, of course, Louis XIV, who is famous for many things, the Sun King, who has that sort of classic quote, at least it's attributed to him, which is, I am the state. I won't mangle the French language by trying to say it in the original, but meaning he was the sovereign, the ultimate authority, he had power over, and he was the true embodiment of that principle in the European culture.

And, you know, even once kingship ended in European culture, the theoretical underpinnings of how sovereignty was applied, reapplied through modernity, all the political experience we know with power to the people, you know, it still means that some people wield power. And the question that we're really here to discuss today is what's the framework within which they wield that power? What are the structures that guide it? What are the principles that underlie it? And of course, what's the vision that power is being applied in order to realize? And in order to pull us forward and not spend too much time on the introduction, I want to offer my own term. Because usually if you translate sovereignty into Hebrew, you'll find the word ribonut.

Ribonut is from the word ribon, which means a master. And it is, not unsurprisingly, similar to the way which sovereignty functions. it focuses on supreme authority linked with power. But I'm going to challenge that. I'm going to offer you that the real translation of the word sovereignty in Hebrew ought to be malchut. Malchut, of course, means kingship. Melech is a king in Hebrew. But the reason I think it's a better translation is not just my own need to have a sort of rooted term. First of all, it preserves the roots of the original sovereignty. A sovereign is a king, malchut, while at the same time offering us a term of a more organic, dare I say, indigenous language. And so therefore it combines the accuracy of translation with a depth of more sort of organic native meaning.

But most importantly, malchut illuminates the shortcoming carried by the connotations of both sovereignty and ribonut because they both communicate the notion of the power aspect, which we identify with mastery, while downplaying or completely eliding the element of responsibility. And if you take nothing else away from this talk, then I want you to remember that sovereignty is power plus responsibility. Without a sense of responsibility, it's simply just power, and you might as well call it what it is. Now, in order to understand the importance of that and to lead into this unique structure through which I want you to understand the different dimensions of sovereignty, I'm just going to give you a working definition of malchut, which is an important term.

If we ever have a chance to learn Torah together, we could discuss it at blank ad nauseum, honestly. But for now, just know that malchut in the general world of Torah is the capacity to hold the pieces in right relationship. Now, to explain, that can happen in my person. We call it identity. I have a self. All the pieces of me, when they fit together, have a healthy identity. It can happen in a leadership situation, like a classic king. The king is able to balance the powers of the kingdom and the economy and the military and the citizenry. He holds, or she, the queen, holds the situation. Then, of course, in Jewish tradition, there's what we call malchut shemayim, that there's really only one creation, and God is the context.

We say in Hebrew, right, humakomo sheolam, God is the place of the world. Now, in order to explain why Malchut is different than Ribbonut and add this element of responsibility to the pure element of power, you need to understand that Malchut requires, first of all, a deep sense of commitment to all the pieces, of whatever situation, to myself, to my group, to creation. Commitment. It has to have the power to hold them on. There is no sovereignty or no Malchut without power. And there has to be a vision of how they ought to fit together. And this, sadly, is what we see so much lacking today. So commitment, power, and vision are what make up Malchut. Now, if you ever want to work on a personal plane, I could show you that this is a path that you can really cultivate in your own leadership.

For now, it's important to me that we just recognize that language matters in general. And when it comes to Torah, it often offers us untapped resources for conceptualization and action. And that's what I want to do right now, is offer you a new resource for a structure, for maulut, for sovereignty. And then, like I said, through your questions, we'll apply it to the present day. So here we go. You ready? Three pieces. There are three dimensions in which sovereignty is exercised. And there's a working premise I have, that there's a purpose to sovereignty. You can say power is an end unto itself, that sovereignty is an end unto itself. Fine. But I actually think that's not the way it works. Sovereignty is always operating in order to express some values and vision in the world.

On the personal level, I have some conception of myself, and I'm trying to hold it together just to make it happen, right? If I'm a business leader or a president or a prime minister, I have some conception of the way in which my society ought to function. There are values and a vision. And of course, on the divine level, we'll leave that in the hands of God for now. So that's my working premise, that the purpose of sovereignty is to express values and vision in the world, personally or collectively. And there's a core assumption, which is that there's always a dance between autonomy and the common good within social structures. As soon as you bring multiple people together for any purpose, each one's on their own program, and there has to be some sense of what holds them together.

By the way, I'm guessing that most of us, if not all of us, live in what we call a civil state, right? The modern democratic liberal society, right? It came into being, basically, in order to protect individual rights while fostering some sense of common good that could hold the glue together. Right now, America is really struggling with that common good. And that's one of the reasons that the discourse of individual rights has ballooned so much that it threatens to tear the country apart, and Israel is also experiencing the same. Because in my humble opinion, this balance between the autonomy of the individual and a definition of the common good are really what people are talking about on the streets today in Israel when they're talking about protecting democracy.

Even though the two aren't definitionally related, what they're saying is, we've lost agreement on what the common good might be, so therefore we're not willing to let your vision of the common good swamp my individual rights. That's a lot of what's happening today. Okay, last caveat, and then we'll get to the definition, which won't take long, but it's going to hopefully require some brain power, is that I will often use in this context the term state as a catch-all for the collective structure that sort of exercises sovereignty. But we can't afford to take the nation-state as inviolate in this discussion. It's the default because the present focus is on the state of Israel. And we also live, of course, in a world in which the state, the nation state, is the sort of assumed standard of measure for the international community.

But it hasn't always been that way, and it won't really be that way forever. And frankly, an honest analysis of the present, as well as some sort of creative thought about the potential for the future, requires thinking of sovereignty as on a sub-state level, communal, institutional, as well as on the state level, of course, state power being what it is, and also what we might call the imperial or international transnational scale. Don't sort of limit yourself. There's a lot of pieces in play here. So I'm going to give you the three dimensions in which sovereignty is exercised, in which there must be some malchut. Because remember, there's always going to be some actor with a deep commitment, some power and vision.

At the very least, there'll be one with power. It might just be the re-bone, right? And if that's only power and no sense of responsibility, I think you get a lot of what we see today, unfortunately, in Israel. And if there's no vision, well, then where on earth is it that we go? Okay, you ready? Three dimensions in which sovereignty is exercised. I'll say them out loud first, and then I'll detail them. One is territorial, one is economic, and one is cultural. These are the three dimensions. Now, one by one. Okay, when it comes to territorial, this is the easiest to understand. You know, Max Weber, foundational sociologist of the 19th century, in his work, he coined a famous definition of the nation state.

It says that the state is the only human community society. He used Gaiman Schatz, which is a technical term for sociology. It's the only human community or society that lays claim to the monopoly on legitimate use of physical force. And he goes on to explain that the legitimate use of physical force is defined by its exercise for the purpose of maintaining order. This is the working definition of territorial sovereignty, a monopoly on the legitimate use of force to maintain order. On the civil level, we all know it as the police. On the international political level, or at least the border level, we know it as the army. There's a very important question, of course, how that relates to judges. Because the police are the enforcers and one of the questions that lies behind sovereignty is who makes the law But for present purposes territorial sovereignty doesn necessarily have any relationship to the type of government that is wielding it All you need to know is it's a monopoly and that it's legitimate.

And that's, by the way, the most deceptive term in that sentence. Because legitimacy is subjective. And when I walk the streets of Jerusalem, or I walk the hills of Judea and Samaria, I have a very different attitude toward the legitimacy of the use of force of the soldiers that I see than perhaps my Palestinian neighbors. Without even getting into political, they simply don't look, we don't look at the situation through the same lens of legitimacy. Nonetheless, a lot of the fight we see is about the question of monopoly. And, you know, when civil disorder gets bad enough, you can even lose territorial sovereignty within your own country, right? Today, in many countries, in Europe, in certain urban areas in America, even here in Israel, there are these sort of no-go zones, places where police are either afraid to go or politically it's not wise to go.

That's a loss of territorial sovereignty. That work, we got a definition there of territorial sovereignty. You know, it's the simplest one. A monopoly on the legitimate use of force to maintain order. Nobody else gets to carry guns and make the rules. Moving that aside to something a little bit more complicated is economic sovereignty. Now, economic sovereignty begins as a land-based society because, at the end of the day, the land is the primary source of all economic goods in sort of prehistory. And you know what? just like it's important to remember that the first murder was fratricide, right? Cain and Abel were brothers, which casts a funny light on all subsequent human associations. So, too, it's important to remember that the rabbinic take on the story is that they killed each other over the control of the land.

That economics is bound up with a sense of struggle unless we choose to cooperate. And so you get an arc in history from hunter-gatherer to agriculture to organizations of people, states, empires. conquest, tribute, taxation. And the reason I put the emphasis on taxation is because if you think about economic sovereignty at all today, most people associate it with the state because they associate it with the power to tax and the legal protections that a state provides for private property. But the reality is that your credit card makes you sovereign economically in the world today. You may have to pay your taxes, although as we all know, It kind of depends on how much money you make. You can sort of like price out at the bottom or the top, right?

But that little piece of plastic makes you an economic operator. Furthermore, we also know that there are transnational corporations which exercise economic sovereignty on an international scale. Also, if you look closely, the world is riddled with what are called special economic zones, right? places where states will give up their right to tax in order to get the economic benefits of industry. It's actually a complex map. Now, without diving into too much of the details, it's critical to me that you understand that when it comes to economic sovereignty, this is where much of the creativity is available. Because, frankly, it's in economic life that most people experience their personal sovereignty.

Even including civil rights like freedom of employment, freedom of movement, freedom of person not to be wrongfully imprisoned. If you conceive of your freedom of employment movement and your freedom of person as an extension of contract law, which it is on some level, I can't say a contract is valid if you have the right to imprison the other person with whom you've made this contract without any due process of law. If you conceive of it that way, we can actually open up whole new creative realms of how to divide between territorial sovereignty, a monopoly on the use of force to maintain order, and economic sovereignty. By the way, in this region today, it's already happening, the Palestinian Authority, there's some questions about territorial relationship there.

We can ask that later if you like. But they collect their own taxes, which means that they are economically sovereign within a chunk of what is contiguous territory within the state of Israel. So there are many places, but I just want to stress that because people experience, most people don't experience their personal sovereignty in relationship to the police or the army, although we know too many do in our present situation, but everybody feels it in their wallet. And that's why there's so much room for creativity there. I have some creative ideas, but I want to get the third piece out because I see, wow, time, it just slips through your fingers. So we have territorial, monopoly on the legitimate use of force to maintain order.

And we have economic, which is the control not just of the means of production, but the means of living, of making a living, private property, et cetera. Last but not least comes cultural sovereignty. And truth of the matter is this is the deceptive and complicated one. Why? Because it's the most elusive, but it's the most important. Let's go back to our three skills. And when it comes to personally, it can be my own identity. It's a freedom of conscience. I'm allowed to believe what I believe. I'm allowed to think what I think. And so long as my opinions don't directly generate harm like shouting fire in a crowded theater, I'm allowed to say what I want with us. On a collective level, it's the stories we tell.

And therefore, the social norms and the structures within which we live. It can be culture. It can be religion. It can be language. It can be the flag of your state. It can be your national anthem. It can be your control of education and the calendar by which you live. These are tremendous ways in which people also experience their own sovereignty. You know, I have some fairly right-wing friends. You might consider me fairly right-wing. I don't know who you are because I can't see you. And there's a popular term that, you know, the minister of our government, Smutrich, just recently sort of repeated that there are no such thing as Palestinians. Now, we can have a discourse about what he meant, and 100 years ago was there a Palestinian national identity.

Maybe it's worth it. Maybe it's not. But I got news for you. I could take you about 10 miles away from where I'm standing right now, and if you tap the average person on the shoulder and ask them, hey, where am I right now, they will say to you, well, you're in Palestine. And you'll look around, and you'll hear the language that people are speaking is Arabic. You'll see the flags in the building or the Palestinian flag. Right? There's a tremendous sense of sovereignty because the story within which they live, which is expressed by the crucial symbols that we share and the sort of cultural rhythms of life, are expressive of their own consciousness. Now, there are many models of what we might call multiple narrative societies, but there's one problem that I want to emphasize, and I think that will serve as a good stopping point to open up for a question.

What's the problem? Is that cultural sovereignty seems very soft. Territorial sovereignty, legitimate force, order, you have a monopoly on guns. Economic sovereignty, everybody cares about how their wallet functions. That's real power. Culture, it's like, eh. It couldn't be further from the truth. And in fact, I will argue that it's mostly about cultural sovereignty that's bringing hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of Israel today. And that's because of the principle of scarcity of identity. And I'll close with this. What is scarcity of identity? It's sadly the feeling that in order for me to be me, you cannot be you. I'll give you an example. Secular Israeli national identity and secular Palestinian national identity are in a zero-sum battle.

Either there was a war of independence and Israel was born, or there was a Nakba. And if your identity hinges on the legitimacy of your secular national story, it can't be both. For a secular Israeli to recognize the Nakba is to undermine their Israeli national identity. Now, obviously not 100%. It can be worked with. Identities are malibu, but I hope you appreciate what I'm saying. And amongst Jews, this is really tough, right? If you're a Jew, then I'm not. For me to be a Jew, you can't be. We're gatekeepers. Who's a Jew? This is a sense of scarcity. And I've got news to you. Identity battles are life or death. When people feel their identity is threatened, they will rise up in the way in which you are seeing on the streets of Israel today.

So therefore, there's a question, which is how can you cultivate a true sovereignty of consciousness, of culture, using all the tools of wisdom and language and actions that we have from our tradition to build a cultural sovereignty which is abundant, which is, again, to remember the pieces of Malchut, committed to all the pieces within your purview, which has real power to hold them together and has a vision of how they fit. So these are the three elements, the dimensions in which sovereignty is exercised. Territorial, economic, and cultural. And they have applications across the board. I'm happy to hear now whatever questions people would like to ask, either about this structure or about how it applies to the present situation in Israel today.

Well, Rob, first So thank you for offering that enlightening explanation here. As some people kind of consider their questions and use the Q&A function to express them. You know, I think one thing that might be helpful for understanding the cultural sovereignty battle that we're seeing today. And like you said, I think a lot of this has to do with scarcity, certainly supply and demand. Right. If you want to think of a sociological economic marketplace. Right. That has to that's tied directly into the demographics of a society. And to understand what's going on today, I think it's very helpful. And I'm sure many of our participants know this, but I think it's helpful just to lay out as far as the story arc is that if we look at Israel's sociocultural trajectory or the evolutionary waves that I like to frame in which I brought us to the present, you know, we had for the first, you know, certainly pre-Zionist era in the first 30 years, we very much had a very specific type of society.

the founders of Zionism and the provisional government and the state of Israel, had obviously a very homogenous understanding of themselves, what the state was going to be, how it was going to interact with the world, et cetera, et cetera. I always like to make this joke. For those of you who are familiar with the 1990s fashion in the United States, there's this very famous African-American brand called FUBU, For Us, By Us. And I think Israel, when it was first established, was very much Faba, for Ashkenazim, by Ashkenazim, but a very specific type. of Ashkenazi. Secular, atheist, socialist in its economic and political leanings, right? This was Mapai. This was David Ben-Gurion. We fast forward to Menachem Begin's, you know, revolution in the 1970s, obviously brought into power predominantly by a wave of Mizrahi voters, working class voters, you know, that really started Likud's, you know, dominance of the Israeli political spectrum.

I think that's now starting to shift right now. That's not to say whether Likud is a part of it, But we are now at a point where the growing aspects of society, both numerically in terms of culture, dominance, is now being much more expressive of Dati Lumi, of the national religious sector, of Khoredim, of ultra-Orthodox, certainly much more traditional Mizrahi Middle Eastern values. values. That's the direction this country is going. And, you know, I think as you started to point out, I'd like to hear more about this. Those that are predominantly protesting in the street, especially in Tel Aviv, are representative of, let's say they are the ideological inheritors of that first wave, the wave that is now kind of dying down, or like that wave is starting to crash, the flame is not as bright as it used to be.

What can we learn about who's protesting, why, and certainly a lot of the questions that are being asked when it comes to the current dynamic based on that wave? And, you know, what do you kind of see from that? So it's a great topic. First of all, I'll offer you an important image. It's crucial to know that the pioneering model, right, the kibbutznik, like you were speaking about, the true mapionic that really led and built the country in its first three decades, you know, the kibbutz only ever supplied 3% to 5% of the population. But as an ideal, as an image, as a cultural icon, it still fires imagination. So why do I say that? Because that really gives an important understanding of what cultural sovereignty is.

It's a story that enlivens, even if most of us never actively participate in it. And that story in Israel is over. The idea that a cultural driver can be that ideal of the pioneer on the land, it's happening anywhere. It's on the hilltop youth, you know, in Yudan Shomran, and it doesn't have the same, let's say, cultural connotation. Now, to the larger sort of shift that you described, it's entirely true. It's not all about religion. And I think that I would sharpen and say that there's a tension between the universalistic, pluralist stance of a liberal civil state and an ethnic, almost tribal stance of a Jewish state. Right. This is this tension that is often communicated between the democratic and Jewish characters of the nation.

And the reality is, in the last election, the most religious, traditional, yes, ethnic, tribal makeup of any government ever elected in Israel was brought to the fore. And I think that the specific question of the judicial reform, which obviously intersects, nonetheless has become a trigger for a sense by the more secular, pluralistic, less actively Jewish part of the country, which is demographically on the decline, as you pointed out, to try to rise up and say we will not be erased. and on one hand i have a lot of empathy because you know like i said identity conflicts are life and people have a right to live a good just you know you know fair life on the other hand they made a big mistake a big mistake because you know as daniel gordis actually pointed out one of his articles early on after the election um if you watch your lapid advertisements in in the lead up to the election the idea of Zionism and much less Judaism do not appear He said all the right words about human rights and civil rights and democratic but he never actually said anything about what it is to be a Jewish state.

And the reality is even a large section of the non-traditional part of the country desires something called a Jewish state. And so therefore, if we're going to start to build risks and move out of this scarcity zone, the most important thing that the people in the streets can start to do is ask themselves, what does it mean for them to be Jewish? Take ownership. I have a goal. I think that 100,000 American Jews could solve most of the problems that Israel faces today. Anybody who's listening now happens to be in America, wants to sign up, you can be one of the first. And I don't care if they're conservatives or progressives or they're orthodox or they're reform. I care that they care that they're Jews.

And that they bring their creative sense of what it means to be a Jew here now, because there's a desperate need to take Judaism out of the hands of the professionals like me and put it back into the hands of the average person as something that matters. And then give them the tools to decide what it means to build a more diverse Jewish identity. And I think that that's what will hold our country together. Within the sovereign framework that you offered, those three tiers, what do you believe we are seeing with the attempt of judicial reform and certainly those that are attempting to stop it from actually creating sort of defined expressions of sovereignty? Right. How much we obviously covered the cultural in terms of what this is kind of arguing about.

But how much of this do you think ties into the territorial or the economic or even certainly debate as to what those are supposed to be within the state itself? The territorial, I think it just needs to be said that Israel has been in an awfully indistinct realm in its territorial sovereignty, basically since the Oslo process. I mean, say what you will about the conquest of 1967, but that was from a territorial sovereignty standpoint, it was very clear. Israel was in charge. Once a competing sovereign was created in the early 90s, the Palestinian Authority, right, that began to erode. And yet the biggest challenge is we never actually made a decision about whether we were willing to give up that sovereignty, whether we were not.

And because of that, it's pushing on a split within Israeli society, right, on the collectivist vision driven by a sense of security and sort of tribal solidarity, and the more universalist vision driven by the idealism that every human being has equal rights and deserves dignity, etc. How does that play into the court? It's important to understand that historically speaking, the court was the bastion of individual rights. Back in the good old days, and I say that with scare quotes that you wouldn't believe, of the undisputed labor rule, Van Gurion was far from a liberal. In fact, he was a statist of extreme proportions. And because of the collectivist vision and the demands of building and defending the country in its first decades, the court took a very strong stance in protection of individual rights and often specifically of minority rights.

As governments shifted, the court kept that stance. But the left culturally moved more toward a stance of individual rights, and therefore they were more strongly aligned. So in terms of this framework, the last piece you see intersects in all because the court's one of the means of exercising sovereignty. Perhaps I should have said that first. it is therefore it will express itself in territory will express itself in economic and will express itself in cultural the means of exercising and this is one of the things i didn't say explicitly because i didn't want to overburden the theoretical but notice the three dimensions of sovereignty territory economic and cultural are you can have all kinds of tools to exercise you can be a democracy could be a dictatorship you could be you could be an oligarchy rolled by the court you could be all of them and you still have to exercise sovereignty in all the The court is expressive of a specific stance on the tension between the individual and the collective.

I'll stop there. I thought I had just, you know, to make this, you know, I think you actually just started to touch on this. Wanting to make this as practical as possible, meaning relevant, timely, current, given what we see going on in Israel. And I think for many people, they have not seen this in their lifetime or certainly never even thought that there would this be this type of intra-Jewish tension would exist in our state, given our broader history of the past 2000 years, especially. but also well then people are very young or they forget very quickly because we saw it in 2005 oh no i mean you'd be surprised i mean even with the classes i teach when i mention to people you know we had near two decade military occupation of southern lebanon you know be like huh so it's amazing how people forget um so the reason i bring that up is when it comes to um at the present time at least as of yesterday and anyone can tell me if this has since been updated since we started this conversation here.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has suspended or paused, delayed these judicial reforms, or certainly trying to push them through within his government and the mechanisms that are available to him within the Knesset. What I have seen that I've found to be the most fascinating, and I kind of want to hear your take on this, is that when it comes to a lot of the prominent individuals in the Jewish and Israel space, prominent organizations, both within Israel and without Israel. A lot of what I've seen when it comes to the calls for halting this process, to delay it, to pause it, to kind of bring the nation together for a discussion, has been less focused on what we kind of see in the broader media and even from, let's say, U.S.

government officials and others who have said that this is a crisis of Israeli democracy or democracies eroding. Most of these quotes that I've seen or most of these positions that I've seen expressed is more about this internal strife is what's the most intolerable aspect of this, that this is more dangerous than anything else. And therefore, we want this to take a pause because we've seen what sinat hinam, we've seen what that baseless internal hatred has done to us historically. I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on that based on how that has gotten us here or where it may take us once these reforms continue to be revived. Yeah, it's a great question. I would I say, number one, remember, when sovereignty falls apart, insecurity sets in, and that's when inner tension emerges.

It doesn't matter what – if your territorial sovereignty falls apart, it can lead to civil war or uprisings, depending on – right? Your economic sovereignty falls apart. People get poor. They get desperate. But we're dealing with the problem is the cultural sovereignty is falling apart. is that the story, like you point out, the dominant story of Israel used to be the pioneer, you know, an ancient people in its youth, once again, you know, secular and free. Well, that bubble burst a long time ago for many reasons, right? And unfortunately, the religious aspect of our society, which is now the rising aspect, I'm not going to make justifications or explanations for now. It has cultivated a counter identity as opposed to an embracing one.

We're the Jews and you're not. You can even, God forbid, hear the types of phrase of calling secular Israelis Hebrew speaking goyim, right? Hebrew speaking non-Jews, right? And so practically speaking, I think that the Jewish organizations you're speaking about are correct, that the real danger is the divisiveness. But it's a symptom of the lack of sovereignty. if we had a story which held us together with a sense of abundance yes we're all jews we all have a destiny a vision a mission don't remember remember the malchut sovereignty consists of a commitment to the pieces the power to keep them together and a vision of how to do so if we had those three that we shared then these disputes would be creative don't forget machloka l'shem you know constructive conflict is the driver of jewish culture but only when there's a shemayim when there's an embracing context that can hold us together?

So that's, I think, a short answer to these all very big questions, I would say. Not to put too much pressure on you, but given that you, you know, I think are very clear in terms of the problems that you see or that you have identified, have you taken that next step in proposing solutions to address them and what some of those might be? So, you know, I'll give you a one out of the left field, economic. And economic sovereignty, I think, is one of the most important places to work in our relationship with the Arabs of the land. So, for instance, I have an idea that I call the Jordan Valley Trust. Imagine creating a corporation, land-based, in the Jordan Valley on both sides, from the Jordanian side and the Israeli, with three primary investors, the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority or whatever, you know, reconstitute as the Palestinian representative, and the Jordanians.

You'll get some Gulf investors. You'll get private shareholders. Right. And you're going to use it as an incubator for a sustainable technology. Now, that alone, you know, with all this economic zone power of trade, et cetera, has a real potential. But you know where the real, real creative idea is, is a company like that could issue the equivalent of a passport. One of the biggest problems that Palestinians face is the inability to travel. Right. Imagine a corporation that was wealthy and powerful and respected enough that it could issue a travel document that people would respect because they were identifiable, the corporation could represent them internationally. But this is a way to use economic sovereignty to start to pave the way to a different type of life.

Whereas territorial sovereignty could remain between the Israelis and the Jordanians or however you want to work it because it's on both sides. Notice I specifically said both sides of the border. In another realm, the number one most important thing, I believe, is to strengthen the transnational identities that we're dealing with. The Jewish identity, not to the exclusion of Israeli identity, but just it's broader. Also amongst the Arabs of the land, the Islamic and Arabic identity as opposed to Palestinian secular nationalism, which is, you know, like I said, it's almost a zero sum game. when it comes to its relationship to Israeli nationalism, right? In order to then say, wow, two people could be walking in the same place, and one can think of it as Palestine and the other one can think of it as Eretz Israel.

On some level, as long as they both live a decent life and respect each other, what difference does it actually make? On the individual level, I'm not getting into the important questions about education, right? There's important questions about, you know, the exercise of territorial power. But on the cultural level, as long as one story isn't inciting, meet the violence against the other, then why not? And there's a richness available there. And so therefore, cultural sovereignty has a tremendous role to play. And it's got to be abundant. It can't be zero-sum. territorial i think that the simplest solution right now is that um you know the israeli army and the police um uh are a are somewhat unique institutions in that they with the exception of the haredi world and even then a little bit they represent the entire diversity of israeli society right and they're a place just like in america at least historically speaking and even today where there's there's a code of ethics and an entry into society which are based purely on personal performance.

Obviously not purely, but you get my point. And therefore, there's a potential for exercising territorial sovereignty in a way in which all citizens, regardless of race, class, religion, or creed, right, could feel participant in the structures of power. I think that's very important. You had brought up sort of the Palestinian element of this or the broader Arab element of this. And one thing, you know, because we're dealing with, you know, what I kind of already framed as sort of a crisis point or something that is very unfamiliar, very frightening, very uncertain for certainly the majority of Israelis, but even the majority of diaspora Jews as it pertains to the state of Israel. I think one thing that most people have not thought about, but for me, it's very, very clear.

You don't hear anything from Batak and the Palestinian Authority. You don't hear anything from Hamas. You don't hear anything from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Iran, Hezbollah, any of our, you know, frenemies or outright enemies about what's going on here. What does that tell us more than anything else about how our enemies view us? I'll tell you one thing. Our sovereigns. Yeah. Well, one thing is, is we should always remember that our enemies are not stupid. There's a lamentable tendency amongst people in general to assume that people who oppose them are stupid, and it's a mistake. They have nothing to gain at this moment because the one thing that historically has held the diverse tribes of Israel together more than anything else is external pressure.

And to allow that external pressure to fade into the background, listen, there are many bad actors out there who would love, God forbid, to see our society fly apart. I don't think it's going to happen. And I have some opinions about the politicization of the army, etc., but I don't think it's going to happen. So that's on one hand. On the other hand, there's a very sort of interesting dynamic internally within Israeli politics vis-a-vis the Arab Israelis, citizens who vote and have their parties, which is that one of the challenges that the left faces today is that the Zionist left is shrinking. And their ability to lead the country from an electoral standpoint, I wouldn't say it's gone, but it's fading fast.

So they have a choice. They can either sort of move toward the center and see themselves as partners with other sort of center-right and try to shore up the middle? Or are they going to allow themselves further to the left And if they going to run the country they do it together with the Arab parties Now without weighing in on anything other than a simple reality is that is not the Zionist vision The Zionist vision was a national re of the Jewish people to create a state vehicle for our destiny. It wasn't even necessarily a state. We'll just say vehicle for our destiny. And I believe it's very important to have Arab parties in the government all the time because they represent, I don't know if it's quite a fifth, but a significant chunk of the populace.

But as a vehicle for the realization of the national vision of the Jewish people to have a ruling coalition which depends upon the Arab parties, that's not the Zionist vision. So therefore they're faced with a real dilemma. That's not a similar... And like I said, the Arab parties in Israel are politically sophisticated. They know this. And they have nothing to gain right now from sticking their noses in this. Let the Jews duke it out and see what comes. certainly also it's a mistake last thing i'll say it's a mistake to think that the um this is really a gross generalization but i think it's worth saying it's a mistake to think that the that the arabs of israel look to the court as their protector right jews think the court is the protector of civil rights of individual rights gonna save us from the religious crazies and the et cetera but the the arabs of israel have experienced the way in which law simply becomes power of the majority of the minority for 75 years.

And the court has aided and abetted much of what they consider to be oppression. I'm not going to get into whether it is or not, but they certainly experienced it as such. And so therefore, it's a mistake a lot of liberals make was, why aren't the Arabs backing this? The court is there to protect them. I'm not so sure that that's the response you would get from the average Arab Israeli. That's fair. With the pause or the delay. I don't know which term we want to use. I've been calling it a pump fake right now. Yeah, the pump fake for our basketball fans out there. And for the people that really know BB. Yeah, there's also an interesting final four going on. So that's all the more. Oh, right. Yeah, it's timely.

One of the things that I've heard as far as a concern with, and this is obviously from those who are proponents of the judicial reform or of these broader changes that are coming with elements like Smoltrich, Ben Gavir, you know, different Democratic Party is exercising more of their influence in government and state structures, is that with the pump fake of the reforms, how much of this then becomes, it's not even the right word, but how do you think this may encourage or influence those that are protesting to say, you know what, we accomplished what we believe to be the most immediate threat. What else can we accomplish given this momentum we have? And I always look back to the example. I was living in Israel in 2011 and 2012 when, you know, Israelis found out that Israeli cottage cheese was more affordable in London than it was in Tel Aviv.

People were striking in the street, tents protesting everywhere. And that became the initiative of, oh, we were able to resolve this issue. What other costs of living crises or things that we find unjust, what else can we accomplish with what we have at the moment? And when that example offers two lessons, which is one, they accomplished nothing else except for a brief political career for stop, Shafir. And yet they kept going anyway. I have some concerns about that. If you look in the media, the so-called leaders of the protest, and I question what it means to be a leader of a protest, which is a lot of it is spontaneous grassroots, but OK. So-called leaders of the protest are already saying that they're not stopping.

Furthermore, you have to understand that the political leadership of the left, Yair Lapid, Bening Gantz, were almost invisible. Certainly, they were almost invisible during this whole protest. And so they weren't really leading it. And the question becomes, what elements of Israeli society are driving it? And, you know, we could go from facts to conspiracy theory like that. So I'm not going to necessarily hypothesize, but I will point out that you're one of the dangers of this type of protest movement is it is not intrinsically democratic. It is impressive that this number of people care and I'm proud, even though I disagree with them. I should say go on record that I think the court desperately needs reform.

I think that the way in which our government has gone about it has been politically foolish. I don't really understand what's driving it. And I think that the degree to which they're pursuing the reform is extreme and unwise in certain ways. The court, the country as a general, I think needs a constitution. That's my stance. Constitution now, not right now, but we should start the process while, you know, while the situation is live. But the protest movement, politicizing the army, shutting down through unions, things like basic services like the hospitals and the airport, are tools of crisis. They're not tools of democratic change. I'm not saying that to say that they're illegitimate, but in the end of the day, if you want a functioning democracy, what you need to do is build the grassroots movements to win elections.

And one of the unspoken dangers I see also in this is that that's exactly what the right has done. You know, you spoke about Lebanon. I was referring to the disengagement, which I personally participated in. That was the last time I really bothered to get out on the streets, to be honest with you. And I watched as my friends and neighbors, et cetera, were beaten with clubs and run down with horses. And they were completely and absolutely vilified and demonized by the media and the politicians. And nothing happened. In the end of the day, even though Sharon tied the democratic system in the knots and the court ignored the violation of the human dignity and liberty of Israeli citizens, it happened. And so the right said, wow, well, protesting doesn't work.

We tried in Oslo. We tried in disengagement. Let's actually try politics. And here they managed to elect the government. And the danger here is if this government is unable to do a reasonable version of their policy, what's left? In the democratic process. So I have real concerns about this sort of blood in the water you're referring to, you know, the idea that that angry groups of people can force policy. Even though, like I said, I'm proud of the care that's driving it. One question that we have from someone that I think is interesting is that I think that we've seen some of the symbolism that's been used in some of these protests as being very American or very Western in their orientation, whether that's, you know, like the use of like pride flags in these protests or like hands-made tail costumes.

Like, how much of this do you think is this a reflection of how this segment of Israeli society very much sees themselves as Western American European? And what does this mean in terms of the fact that they are kind of borrowing or appropriating external symbolism, external ideas, instead of kind of tapping into deeper and more traditionally Jewish ones and achieving their aims and goals? it's an excellent question i think it goes to the heart of what this is actually about which is that um i don't know if it's an appropriation i would say to a certain degree that the the liberal section liberal progressive section of israeli society which has risen up in the last couple of months feels itself to be part of the same society as liberal progressive american society it is not a nationalist in the narrow sense culture, right?

And feels often that a culture at least has much more in common with the people who generated those symbols, be it the pride flag or the handmaid's outfit, than with the more sort of ethnically, tribally Jewish. And that is a lot of what the debate is about here, right? And there's also the piece that historically speaking, the Zionist project and then the state of Israel has always assumed that in order to survive in the Middle East, it needs a sort of called the great power patron. It was Great Britain, with a little bit of time that it was France, right? And then, of course, the United States, at least since 1973. Probably fair enough to say that, you know. And that relationship is eroding right now, you know.

And the question becomes, are we able to finally integrate ourselves into this region i got news for you this is not a region that's filled with liberal progressives nor is it a region where where where judges overrule forget parliaments let's talk about kings you know um it's not not that i'm saying that that we should just like when in rome do like the romans do that jews that never goes well for them um but what i am saying is that is that to a certain degree we're looking at a fundamentally different culture which is finding its feet in leading the country. And you can say it's leading the country down the tubes, or you can say it's leading the country astray, and that's your right. You can look that way.

But you can't say that it's an intrinsically false way of going. And that's part of my concern, is that there is an implicit and often explicit cultural judgment of elitism and superiority, and that is supercharged by claiming, of course, American culture is still the leading culture of the world. And so, yes, I think that whoever asked that question is spot on, that this is part of the cultural sovereignty battle. And that's why I said that if liberal progressive Jews want to heal that rift, they need to find a way in which to communicate their liberal progressive Jewish vision. And I think American Jews have a tremendous capacity to do that. I don't think Israelis are so familiar with it. One last question we have as we run out of time.

I think a lot of this kind of boils down to one, you mentioned the importance of having singular definitions or at least consensus in our terminology. Yeah, not too singular, but consensus. Yeah, yeah. We have to be able to use terms together. 100%. One thing, both for, let's say, internal and external reasonings, that Israel, by and large, has kicked the can down the road when it comes to some of these important questions in terms of what this national vehicle is supposed to mean, what is it supposed to do? Every important question. But let's boil it down to two. What conversation does all the facets of Israeli society, including, by the way, even the Palestinian or the non-Jewish sector of it, when it comes to defining what a Jewish and democratic state even is in the first place.

What is the purpose of being a Jew? That is the question nobody wants to talk about. Even the religious don't want to talk about it. They have malice slogans about redemption and, you know, Mashiach. If you can't tell me what the purpose of being a Jew, then I can't justify for you why there should be a jewish state anymore survival is not enough we are mission-oriented people and it's time to actually discuss what it is we are here in creation to do even if you don't believe in a creator that's the number one did you ask me for two no that was it but you know perhaps number one and also in terms of the democratic that's very important Because the question becomes, is how do we strike a balance between the need for collective tools of decision making and values and et cetera, and the protection of individual rights?

Where is that balance between traditional Jewish stance? You can take one example on questions of gender and sexuality. You know, the Torah, historically speaking, has been very conservative on those questions. Right. Obviously, you know, the Tel Aviv side of Israel's culture is very progressive. I think that there's a lot more space for dialogue between them, but it has to be a genuine dialogue in which both sides. Remember, a real dialogue means that two people encounter each other with the assumption that I may not be the same person when I walk away. And that's what Israelis are afraid of. I think that it also oversees. We all want to shout our opinions and get the other person to change. We don't recognize that in order to get another person to really listen, I have to open myself to being a different person also.

And that's what makes us afraid. And that's why there needs to be this abundance of identity, which can underlie a true, healthy cultural sovereignty. Well said. Rob, like you said, time flies when you're having a good time. I wanted to thank you again for joining us today, beginning to answer some of these difficult questions or certainly to even express your thoughts to give. Like you said, you know, when we come into whether this we're going to call this a dialogue conversation internal or with someone else. Right. It's with the idea that we may or could or should be different once it's over. And I certainly hope this helped facilitate that for the people who joined us today and who will be listening to this later on.

Before we sign off, I already mentioned your fabulous podcast that everyone should be listening to the Jewish story on all major platforms. when it comes to following you in any other capacity or getting in touch with you what's the best way for our audience to do that you can email me at rav mike boyer at gmail.com you can find me on facebook pretty available there rob mike boyer i'm not on whatsapp so don't waste your time rob mike.com also is my website people can reach me there beautiful thank you so much for the opportunity my pleasure and thank you for being here again and everybody Also with Pesach next week, wanted to wish you all a Chag Pesach Sameach. And when it comes to, you know, I will not be surprised if anything that we just discussed today enters the discussion of your Seder table.

I hope what we have talked about gives you some clear understanding, greater confidence, or at least is helping you formulate your own views when it comes to how our past has created this present and where we may be able to go in the future. And, you know, B'shrat Hashem as soon as possible. Amen Thank you everyone and looking forward to seeing you next time Fuelfortruth.org to learn more about our organization and any of our programs and I hope to see you in the future