Speaker 0 00:00:05 Hi everyone. And welcome to identity crisis to show about news and ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute. Have you heard of Kurtzer president of Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and we're recording in the morning of November 5th, 10:41 AM. I mentioned that time, because right now in America, we're in a bit of a liminal space between the election that took place two days ago, and the results that we are still awaiting with a rise of partisan political tensions about the very basic activity of counting the American vote. A number of States are still outstanding, have not been called. And as a result in this moment, right now, when we're recording, we're in a little bit of a time capsule, it's possible that by the time that this podcast is being heard by all of you, the conditions around the American electorate will have changed. There will have been a president elected.
Speaker 0 00:00:52 There will hopefully have been both a acceptance speech and a concession speech, and we'll be at a different moment of time, but we are in a little bit of a time capsule in that our conversation today will reflect not knowing the result of that election, but our hope is, and really our goal for the podcast today is in as much as neither I, nor my guest are pundits about American political life. We will try to have spoken about a set of issues that transcend the particulars of who won and who lost and try to engage some of the larger Jewish questions that have emerged from the selection and that face the American people and the Jewish community. As a result, my guest today, I'm delighted to be in conversation with my friend and my colleague, dr. Elana Stein, Hain, who is scholar in residence and director of faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Ilana, thanks for coming on identity, crisis.
Speaker 1 00:01:39 Pleasure. I'm really looking for ways to make meaning in this moment. So thank you.
Speaker 0 00:01:43 Fantastic. First of all, I don't know how you are in moments like this. Are you anxious about the election? Are you anxious as you wait for results? What do you do to cope with that anxiety? Or are you, are you calm because the can, can can't fully control it.
Speaker 1 00:01:58 So I really enjoyed seeing someone's posts that they said they're nauseous, really optimistic. I think that captures the way that I feel and the way that I deal with it is actually by trying to transcend it and not follow every back and forth. I've been to the MoMA in the last day. I have been learning some Torah in the last day. I have not been, I've not been tethered to my phone as it were. How about you?
Speaker 0 00:02:24 I don't usually get into a zone like this, but I have just been obsessively, refreshing various news sites, have the TV on the background all day. Been very unproductive. It's interesting. We closed our offices at the shell heartburn Institute, North America on Tuesday as part of the free and fair campaign of a number of Jewish organizations that were giving their employees an opportunity, not just to have the time to vote, but also to volunteer. And I felt in retrospect, I was fine on Tuesday. I could have a perfectly productive Workday gotten my voting and there was no line, but I needed Wednesday off because I couldn't really focus on anything.
Speaker 1 00:02:57 I actually took Wednesday off so that I would be able to focus on what I wanted to focus on instead of having to focus on a humdrum, regular run of the mill day. Cause that I don't think I can.
Speaker 0 00:03:11 So now it's Thursday and we're both back at work and we're ready to try to talk about making meaning for the Jewish people out of this weird American moment. There are so many forces and variables that play here, not only a contentious partisan American moment, but obviously the pandemic lurking in the background of all of this is as we know yesterday, not only was it the day after the election, but it was the most new cases of COVID that have emerged in America since the pandemic. So let's, uh, let's try and build a little bit of a moral agenda for the Jewish community going forward. Let's start even with the build-up throughout the election, throughout the campaigns, what were the, what were some of the issues that you felt that you were seeing in the Jewish community in particular? We can come back to America more generally, but in the Jewish community and the lead up to the election, I know that you were thinking a lot about the performance of American Jewish identity in the political process, but what were you noticing and what was exciting to you or causing you concern?
Speaker 1 00:04:06 Or so there are a few things, but I guess I'll start with the relationship between religion and politics, Jewish identity and politics. You know, we tell ourselves this story, that American religion is privatized. I think we have a separation between church and state. And yet you look at how many prayers people wrote for the election, or you look at examples of people in religious garb at Trump rallies. And it's not just Jews. I mean, my friends on Facebook were quoting the Koran. There is something here about the relationship between religion and politics that at first, or for a long time, I've been thinking of as almost a mistake, like don't hitch them to each other, but I don't think that's actually true. Meaning. I think if we're going to talk about Jewish ideas of what religion is, religion is not private. It actually is something that should shape the public sphere and the public discourse.
Speaker 1 00:05:10 What kind of culture you're creating from the Bible to the rabbis? It's corporate religion is corporate. It's not just individual and it's not just confessional. And I would like to interrogate a little bit more, I guess, two things. One is why do I love when my side uses religion and Jewish values, but I hate when the other side does it. And I know the obvious answer is, well, I don't like how they're using it, but it might also be saying something about parts of my religion that I don't like that's worth talking about. And the second is what's the utility in not just saying, you know what, even within religion, their denominations, you've got your Republican denomination of religion and you've got your democratic denomination religion. Why don't we just do that? And I've actually been fighting against that because I want to believe that religion is bigger than that. But I'm also now thinking about the fact that actually at the extremes, they are different denominations. And at the same time, I'm worried about papering over the differences between people who vote Republican and the differences between people who vote Democrat because there's more there. So an interrogation of religion and politics right now, I think would be a great way forward for the Jewish community to think about itself.
Speaker 0 00:06:30 Great. So let's pull apart a couple of those pieces. The last thing you said about the extent to which these represent different denominations, I think is a really important insight. You know, we've talked together over the years about the increased irrelevance of the traditional denominational framework and the arising irrelevance of a totally different denominational framework, which isn't about questions. The Bible authorship as the dividing questions that really are political questions. I want to come back to that because it goes to the question of whether it's possible for these different religions to actually see themselves as part of the same corporate whole or not. It's a whole pluralism question. And by the way, one other alert, you can have denominations for a long period of time until they actually become different religions. So one of the pluralism questions is whether these just represent worldviews that are basically unreconcilable the first thing you said though, was about our instinct to think that the separation of religion and state is because religion is the realm of the private.
Speaker 0 00:07:22 I would put it a little bit differently, which is America seems to know that religion is always going to be a domain of the public, but is working really hard through a separation of church and state to try to remind people that it can't dominate the public. So it's an effort to try to constrain religion into a place that it doesn't dominate our conversation, but inside the Jewish community, that's never going to happen because what's the point of being a religious minority. If you have to pretend that religion is entirely compartmentalize bubble, but the piece that I want to pick up on most, and I'd love to go further is this. I like it when, when Jews on my side enact their religion and connection to their politics, but I don't like it when others do it. I'm not going to put you on the spot to give an example on the other side, but I'd love to know what is it that you like when it's in your side? Because I find myself kind of skiddish on both. I don't particularly like when Judaism is reduced to Judaism wants you to vote for this guy or the other guy, especially when sort of deeply imperfect human beings and that we're stuck with a two party system, which forces us to be as though we're like really, really in favor of this team over the other team, when, of course this things that I like. And don't like, so what's the version of religion and politics that you like. What's the version of it that actually appeals to you?
Speaker 1 00:08:44 Sure. So let me clarify. I don't like the version that tells you to vote for a particular candidate and that your religion requires. I do like the version of religious discourse
Speaker 2 00:08:57 And of religious tools to think about the values that are at stake. So when somebody says, when we look at our profits, when we look at the Navy, they basically say power at any cost is problematic from a Jewish, from a religious standpoint. That to me is a totally legitimate use of religion. That's in there. I read it on Shabbat morning in the haftorah, that's right in there, right? The question is, you know, what's the other side of that equation, meaning are there voices within Jewish tradition? And there are that certainly say that sometimes power at any cost is necessary, right? And I, and I think what's happening there. I mean, I'm going to be totally Frank. I have big problems with people supporting a candidate. Who's anti-democratic, who's, scandalously unempathetic who doesn't believe in the difference between truth and falsehood while wearing CC'd and feeling at a rally. I have a big problem with that period. And I'm going to just name that.
Speaker 0 00:10:06 Let's talk about that because there's an ends and means issue, right? Of if I believe that candidate X and we're talking about the president, obviously yes. If you believe that the precedent embodies a set of views and behaviors that you feel are corrupt, but that the president has been reliably good about the Federalist society order of judges that get you the perfectly decent human beings, ostensibly right? With moral character who have a very different vision of America and a very different religion and state aren't you basically saying, I don't like that. You're doing that with your citizen at that rally, even though you're basically now completing ends of means.
Speaker 2 00:10:44 So here's what I'm going to say. And this is why I think this is complicated. Right? I have two questions when I see that happening. Number one is, Hey, that's not fair. You're taking religious symbols that belong to all of us and you're making them partisan. That's not fair. You can't take to go in and use them like that because they belong to everybody. I'm just being Frank. Like that's really how I feel. And I'm sure that's how some people on the right field when they see people protesting in Italy. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I actually want to say, I understand that sense of discomfort. You're taking a symbol that is supposed to be common to everybody in your religious tradition. And you're saying I'm using it for this. But the second thing is I just want to be totally Frank. What I'm really bothered by is I'm bothered by the fact that there are voices within my tradition that are comfortable with someone like Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 00:11:38 That's what I'm bothered by it. I'm just going to be honest, meaning I'm uncomfortable with those voices within the tradition, unless I agree with them at that moment, I'm just being totally, totally Frank and it's real. And actually there's a sense of even revulsion. And I have to be honest, I'm not super comfortable with people wearing religious garb at any kind of protest. I'm not, I'm not certain that that is the way that these things are meant to be used. And same goes for rabbi Avi Weiss in a Soviet Jewry rally, same goes for a pro immigration rally. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it. You're taking something. And that to me is you're narrowing it in a way it's different than using arguments from your tradition. You're using Jewish objects. I know it's in order to inspire, but I worry that it becomes a prop,
Speaker 0 00:12:33 But you don't think there's a difference between a Soviet Jewry rally rallying on behalf of solidarity with Jews, a high new called Bay East rail. Like it's part of the prayers. We pray on behalf of those Jews who are in conditions against their will. And as a result, it's part of prayer. Is there a difference between this and that? And of course there has to be, there have to be otherwise you neutralize religion to have no voice, or you're a sincerity person, right? Prayer and ritual are actually active sincerity. That's how I live in the world. So I have to have some religious ritual vocabulary, which to do it. So how much is your resistance here? How much is it really partisan? I'm not antagonizing Justin antagonize. I'm trying to tease out what generates this discomfort because it's such a critical people who question, it's not just, I don't like your politics. I don't like how you're leveraging my religion for those politics. It's harder and harder to see ourselves as actually belonging to the same religion.
Speaker 2 00:13:31 I know. I think I will admit that a Soviet Jewry rally is different. And yet, what do you think is going through the mind of somebody who is wearing to fill in at a Trump rally, Israel, religious Liberty Jews? I'm not sure they think about it as any different, right. So what I'm saying is I'm in process of interrogating this question because I really am not sure. I just know there's something that instinctively bothers me about it. And the fact is that if the American body politic or part of the American project is to basically say, we know that religion is going to come into the public square, but we're doing our best to try to keep it out or to minimize its impact on others. What I wonder is in the religious sphere, how much do you want to keep politics out of that? And how much is that making religion irrelevant? Right? And then the question is, what if you're in the space between meaning you're at a rally, it's a Jews for Trump rally. And you're basically trying to say, we appreciate what he's done for the Jews. We're not making laws here. And we're also not insure.
Speaker 0 00:14:48 It seems to me, you have two available options to contest the collapsing of religion and politics and the version that you don't like, which are either to try to argue for a total secularity. Let's pull these things apart from one another. I'm uncomfortable with sits us at a rally. And therefore I'm going to say these should be separate enterprises and separate businesses. And by the way, a good section of the American Jewish left has said, no, we don't want to do that because then we lose religion. And the whole project of Reverend William Barber and rabbi Sharon brows has been, no, you actually need a Jewish left that speaks in as full-throated a voice about the sincerity of the religious tradition to advocate for a very different political world for you. I mean, even Reverend Warnecke, who's now in a runoff race for the Senate is running as a Reverend.
Speaker 0 00:15:33 That's not just his professional title, it's the driver. So that's one option is to try to secularize, but doesn't seem like the left is moving in that direction. And the other is a more full-throated. I just don't like what you're doing with my tradition. And I have a feeling a lot of it, that's what you're pushing towards. Cause I don't think you're a real separate thinker of religion. It's on one side and politics and the other, and I guess, and here I'll push even harder, you know, more than anybody, how abundant this tradition is with available opportunities to exploit, to take its materials and to make totally different political arguments in the world. And I really struggled with whenever anybody uses the phrase, not my Judaism, because it's actually weak. It's so selective to say, to pick the profits, for instance, as opposed to, I don't know, Deuteronomy Deuteronomy, it doesn't have the same vision as the profits in terms of what should guide the social order. So what do we do then with a tradition that is so multivalent and a Jewish people that has so many available political options in which we can thrive. How do we hold this tradition together in some way?
Speaker 2 00:16:43 I think that if you are willing, if a person is willing, if a community is willing to say, I'm going to use a tele at my rally and I'm not going to be scandalized when you do it at yours, then that's something. But I don't know what happens when those people find themselves in the same prayer space, not in a political moment. And they're all wearing tele tote. Does that come back into the spaces that are supposed to be a little bit less politically charged? And I think that's part of the possibility. Meaning if you want to say there really is, this is such a patients' tradition and there are parts of this tradition that I'm very uncomfortable with, but if I'm going to be conversant and I'm going to be somebody who uses tradition and religion, as part of my discourse, I have to be prepared for somebody else to be able to object on their own religious grounds.
Speaker 2 00:17:43 If we can do that, then I think we can stay together. And if we are spaces where we are able to look at the same texts and the same rituals and not have to, each of us give our valence to the exclusion of the other, if there are places not neutral is wrong, it's just not explicit. If there are places with what's most explicit as religion and what's less explicit is politics. I think if you can have those different spheres, then you can compartmentalize. You can do it. But I do want to just say it is a dangerous game. If you're going to be talking in the discourse of religion by definition, you need to be able to let in ideas that you're very uncomfortable with and you think actually tarnish the way that you would like your religion to be shared.
Speaker 0 00:18:30 Yeah. Unless you're willing as is oftentimes the case to be a very strong advocate on behalf of a very thin reading of your own tradition, which is actually, I think what gets played out a lot of the minute that somebody says Judaism says X or the Torah says why that is such a thin depiction of something, but it might be sufficient to be able to mobilize political enthusiasm to your side. Because now I'm speaking on behalf of a thin tradition,
Speaker 2 00:18:51 Let's go back to sincerity. How are you then using the tradition? Meaning the tradition is not an, it's not a means. It's not just a means to an end.
Speaker 0 00:18:59 Great. So now let's move from the ritual question of showing up at a rally to the Torah questions. So I think a lot about the difference between responding and leading. And I think part of what has happened based on the shock that the American left in the American Jewish left experienced after president Trump was elected in 2016 was a pivot towards a kind of constant culture of response. And I have a larger political grievance about it. Cause then you're not actually providing a vision of where you want to go. You're actually, you're constantly taking the lead from someone else about what you need to be talking about today. I think social media has that effect too. What's the conversation right now? Right? Like an hour ago we were talking about this, but no, no. Now an hour later, I'm bad at this on Twitter, by the way, like I find interesting things to say like nine hours after someone else tweeted and people are like, no, no we've moved on.
Speaker 0 00:19:45 We call that taking the local that's right. I like some of us only relevant local or Amtrak as the case may be. So it does seem though that the world of Torah, the world of it, let's talk about interpretation. The world of interpretation is also increasingly driven by the conversation in public policy. You see this happen all the time and listservs of educators are in Facebook. Groups of, is anybody have a source sheet on mass incarceration. Something is happening right now. And I need Torah. I need to excavate Torah to teach on it right now. I guess I'm curious as an educator, people come to you to learn Torah with you. I'm curious whether your own searching has changed, what you're searching for in the Torah, in response to this political moment and what you think people are looking to you for in this moment. Does it feel like a fitting out of, I just need something to respond to what's in the current news site.
Speaker 2 00:20:37 So I actually want to separate out your question into two. One is, is it only responsive or primarily responsive? The other is, is it a fitting out? Because, because it's too directed, it's too focused. And I want to start with the second question. Let's take mass incarceration for me a minute, or by the way, let's take the UAE agreement. It doesn't matter. What I want to do is I want to ask what is beneath, what are the roots of your question, right? Because the roots of your question, something that Jewish tradition is going to have something to say that so mass incarceration maybe be the roots of your question, has something to do with the fallibility of humans, judging other humans, something to do with objectivity and subjectivity, something to do with prejudice and bias, right? If I keep digging down and down and down, ideational I can get to a version of the question that isn't only about the way our current discourse defines it.
Speaker 2 00:21:52 Meaning our current discourse defines it in terms of race. Our discourse defines it in terms of a legacy of slavery. Current discourse defines it in terms of drugs. Our turn discourse defines it in terms of civil rights and the judicial system. Those things are all true. They're all relevant. But I want to know what is the perennial human question that is being adjudicated here. Once I know what that question is, first of all, that question will apply in many other situations as well. Meaning mass incarceration will be a case study of it, but it will be a question that is actually bigger than that. Even though of course, mass incarceration itself is big enough, right? And then what I look for, and this is why I spend so much time in the rabbinic tradition. What I look for is I look for ways to problematize.
Speaker 2 00:22:41 It's the simple answers. And if you can find texts and conversations within, yeah, and I'm going to go with the rabbis, if you can find, find texts and traditions within the rabbinic conversations that can actually pull out the big issues, then let's pull out the big issues and then people can push them different ways in terms of the, of that people are looking to me for right now. I think it may be different. Me and the Institute may be different because in some ways what we do as an Institute is we help people understand where they are. So we created this whole curriculum on the tribes of Israel, trying to figure out who are the different groups, who are the different players within Israeli society. And what's going on with each one of them. Tell me about the ultra Orthodox tribe. Tell me about the secular tribe.
Speaker 2 00:23:32 Right? I think American jury needs that for American Jews right now, who are the tribes and not just within the Jewish people, but who are the tribes within America? And that's something I think the Institute I think we need to do as for my own peace in the coming weeks, I'm going to be doing a Talmud series on character. And the reason I'm doing a Thomas series on character in the limits of the law is not because I want to say Donald Trump is this, this, this, this, this, it's not because I want to say civil discourse is this, this, this, this, this it's because what I see is an erosion of the importance of character in our society. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to interrogate different ideas within the rabbinic tradition of where character comes in beyond the law and within each one of those I'm going to problematize.
Speaker 2 00:24:23 I'm not going to just assume you should always go beyond the letter of the law. That's always the way, no, it's not. If you read the rabbinic tradition, they'll talk about places where it's actually dangerous to go beyond the letter of the law in places where you should. It opens a real conversation, a real debate where it's not simple because it, it hardly ever is. Then the third piece I would say is that there are certain things about this election season that had just revealed that there are things that get a pass that I don't think should get a pass and I'm not pluralistic about those things. So the fact that it's not a deal breaker, that somebody could be almost reelected or maybe even reelected, even though they're anti-democratic and they attack the free press. I'm not careless David, that there's no pluralism for me on that.
Speaker 2 00:25:09 And I want to know what kind of education does it take? And this is not just for the Jewish community, it's for the American community. So I don't know how to do that, but what kind of education does it take to remind people of the importance of democracy? What kind of education does it take to remind people of the importance of empathy? I think that answers your question. None of those are thin to talk about the importance of democracy is not thin. It's actually saying this has to be the floor that our country is based on, but to talk about things where there actually are problematics like cases of character, where it's not always black and white and not to be black and white about it, that gets rid of the thinness because it's thick, right?
Speaker 0 00:25:48 It correlates with something that I've found that I find one of the most thrilling types of feedback that I hear about Hartman teaching is when someone will say, you know, I came in and out of this classroom and I still have the same political views, but this forced me to interrogate, to challenge my own views, to define them, to articulate them more compellingly, to regard them through a different kind of ethical frame that I might've done beforehand and in doing so it's a kind of advocacy for the tradition itself, that the tradition isn't so easily mobilized in service of either what I agree with or what I don't agree with. I guess, you know, maybe this is too banal to even say it's just so much harder. My version of this Ilana has been something I've been teaching on for last few years, which is trying to make clear that the moral, the political and the partisan are not identical, that they live along a spectrum.
Speaker 0 00:26:37 That those moral disagreements we have with other people have to be much bigger than they are constructed to being. And then you narrow your way to political, which is strategies and partisan, which are teams in pursuit of those strategies. And mostly I make that argument out of political necessity. If you live in a world in which you construct everybody who votes on the other side as not sharing your moral worldview, you've now cut your world in half. And there's no shortage of violence real or otherwise. That is now permitted against those who inhabit a different moral worldview. That's how religious Wars get started is that we've been able to depict the other as not just politically wrong, but morally corrupt. Now, the problem is that that construct, and it correlates to the way that you described Torah. I don't not study in character because I'm trying to in a coded way, get people to vote a particular way, because I want to take seriously the characters, the defining aspect of the human condition, and it's supposed to be, but it has been palpable.
Speaker 0 00:27:38 I felt that since 2016, every time I've given a version of this talk, the palpable sense of the collapsing of those categories. Because either when you give that talk on character, and if you have Trump voters in the room, whether or not you think that you are telling them, I'm not, I don't care. I'm not ultimately don't care who you vote for. I want you to study character as part of Jewish tradition. There's no way in which they're not going to feel sub tweeted what you're really doing. You're not interested in the questions I'm interested in, which are, you know, Trump voters would say, character is one piece of conversation. And the other is the dignity of the American project. As we've long, understood it. And a deep suspicion that progressives don't respect the dignity of that American project. Now we can go back and forth. Is that legitimate? Is it not? But there does feel like a real collapsing of that and the risk of holding those things apart from one another on the flip side, is that the more I insist that I can be involved in a moral or a Torah conversation, that's not directly mapped onto this. There are people for whom I just lose their attention span because I'm in a crisis. Right?
Speaker 2 00:28:44 Well, first of all, I think it also has to do with my own character, which is, am I giving off a suggestion that I looked down on people who made a different choice. And to be honest, a lot of people do that. And I try not to do that. And I think that is also part of why people collapse these categories. I'm going to give you an example, which sounds like a Pollyannish example, but it's very real. My sub roots at my study partner of years and years and years, she voted Trump. I voted Biden. We had a cover to yesterday in the middle of this insanity. We don't really talk about it. So I said to her, you know, before we start, I know you're a Trump voter and I'm a Biden voter. I'm sure this is a hard time. So she's like, yeah, it's hard for all of us. And then we have like a conversation about checks and balances for a few minutes. And then what did we go into study character? We started studying
Speaker 1 00:29:42 A, so we started studying a passage in the tonewood about what it means to try to charge somebody else for getting something that didn't cost you anything sometimes helpful to be explicit.
Speaker 0 00:29:53 And when you were able to withhold from the inclination to say, you see, you see, you were able to hold back and say, no, we're studying Torah in a way that I know is going to flourish in the world. And I don't need, I don't need to,
Speaker 1 00:30:04 Because first of all, we have pretty similar worldviews to begin with. She and I, so that's very helpful. But beyond that, we said at the outset, you know, if she says three, she's like, Oh, I was just listening. And you probably don't listen to this person who says Ben Shapiro. I was like, no, I really don't listen to that person. Right. And no offense to everybody on the podcast who listened to venture, but it's okay. Like, people are allowed to have their own views on what goes, where, and I'm going to use that buzzword if we're not canceling each other for every piece of it, right. Then there is potential there. I think actually, because we were explicit at the beginning of our call, we just learned and we learned and we thought about it. And we thought about the stakes of what it is that you were learning, but it didn't automatically go back to the race for president right now.
Speaker 0 00:30:54 It's very special to, to hear about your hover to, to be honest, I think very few of us Americans and Jews have those types of study relationships with other people in general, much less. Those that are capable of withstanding. I felt it. I realized last couple of weeks, how the double tragedy of pandemic and politics right now has also deprived us of the technology in the Jewish community of the pest oscillator and the technology in America of Thanksgiving dinner, which would be right now, how great would it be in America right now that you have to sit across the table with your racist uncle, you have to, because that's what you're obligated to do. Or you have to sit across the table with the members of your family who think that you've lost your mind and they have to sit with you and they have to sit with you and that's, and you eat dinner together. And some of us get triggered and angry. And some of us, you know, do the work beforehand of this is what I know I'm coming into. This is what, not one of my strategies with a certain part of my family. As I stay in the kitchen, it's, it's really useful. Like I'm the caterer, but of course I love them. So that's part. So actually I'm, I'm using that to be able to express love for them.
Speaker 2 00:32:01 Hi, my name is Sabra Waxman and I'm the senior marketing manager at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. I wanted to tell you about an event next week, specifically for high school students. If you're interested in learning with Hartman on November 10th, at 8:00 PM, Eastern we're hosting a conversation and Q and a with slate, senior editor and Hartman, senior fellow Dahlia, Lithwick moderated by Justin Pines, our director of youth and young adult initiatives to register for this and other upcoming events go to Shalom, hartman.org, backslash events. Let's leverage of this a little bit, which is
Speaker 0 00:32:40 The whole pluralism question. I know many Americans are really not ready to do that work of, Oh man, turns out 65 million people voted for this other person who I think is going to be the downfall of Western civilization. And I have a lot of impatience for the kind of hillbilly Elegy effication of America post 2016. Like, Oh, you have to read this book because it'll help you understand all of America.
Speaker 1 00:33:03 Wait, can I ask you why?
Speaker 0 00:33:04 I felt it was condescending and preaching? And as a result, it made me defensive against the issue of inability to see another person or be in their narrative is not always your own failing. There are ecosystemic reasons why we don't see each other's narratives they have to do with where we live and how we live. Sometimes they're good reasons, which is, I disagree with you. I think you're wrong. So I don't, I don't think it's going to happen through that type of thing, but there's no question that the health of our people, our community is going to require this kind of bridge-building. And I'm curious a what your own patients is for that and what you think we have to do to get there.
Speaker 1 00:33:43 Look, I actually think that we need to be taking our cue from people who are actually more vulnerable by the kind of arguments that are being had in the country right now. So I don't feel so vulnerable. I'm going to be honest. I feel very fortunate. Thank God I have the resources that I need. I have the community that I need. I think that when you ask people of color, you ask people who are LGBTQ. You ask people who are factory workers. Meaning if you ask people who actually are in a more vulnerable state and kind of follow their lead on how you do this, I think that's much more powerful than me sitting here as somebody who feels pretty comfortable and confident that even if democracy continued to erode, I think I'd be pretty much. Okay. And maybe that's naive. I think I'd be pretty much.
Speaker 1 00:34:40 Okay. I just, I don't think I can lead the conversation on that. I think you actually have to bring in voices. I was very struck by a friend of mine who is a person of color who wrote don't paint. Anyone who voted for Trump as a racist, what are you even doing? People vote for a candidate for a lot of reasons. People vote on the basis of taxes. People vote on the basis of religious Liberty. People vote on the basis of what they think that person is doing to shake up what the usual norms are. Meaning don't do that. And that's what I meant earlier when I said papering over the different reasons why people vote a certain way. I think that's dangerous. Also. Now you might say what you were able to disregard in favor of will. I like his Israel policies. I find that scandalous.
Speaker 1 00:35:33 You also might say to me what you were willing to disregard in favor of somebody who's not going to have those same Israel policies. I'm scandalized by that too. Meaning I want to find the people whose lives and whose Liberty is at stake. And I want to ask them to lead the way on this, because they're actually the only ones who can speak with a different kind of skin in the game. And I think we need their leadership right now. And it's on both sides and I'm not talking about people who are racist, being able to say, well, I understand, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who really have different moral calculuses, but share the same basic floor,
Speaker 0 00:36:12 Right? I mean the obvious other piece of that, the problematic with that tactic of painting and other side as embodying worldviews that you've already invalidated is that it's not just that you can't talk to them, it's that you reinforced to them. You're very closed-mindedness and your inability to Mount a credible alternative. There's just no version of you're a racist that enables me to start a conversation with you about race. There's no version of it because now you've actually, you've decided this is the intolerable deviance. You are the intolerable deviant. I can't engage with you in any way. And in fact, I've assumed that you've now so clouded your moral vision, that there's nothing else that you're capable of seeing you see the world through a prism. That's that's not worth exploring, correct?
Speaker 1 00:36:54 Correct. I think I do want there and there needs to be, and this is what really bothers me about how close this election is and bothered that people are able to disregard the fact that the current president is unable to call out white supremacy. I am bothered by that. I think that should be a no-brainer and I think it should be a deal breaker and any other cute term you want to use, this should be a cynic one on like, it's just, and yet at the same time, there were clearly people for whom many people for whom that was not a cynic one on. So if part of my hope is that that becomes something that is a deal breaker. I need to be in a relationship, but it can't just be utilitarian. It also has to be like, tell me what's going on for you? Like, why was this okay for you? What's more important to you about this. And is there a way we can find, you know, some common ground and sometimes the answer is no,
Speaker 0 00:37:50 I'm not even sure. I agree with you Ilana about that as a cynic one on, because it's not because I'm more comfortable with racism. It's because maybe the line around pluralism and the ability to tolerate others, maybe it can never live through narrative. And it can only have a line of truth. When I believe that you're falsifying something. If I feel not falsifying something in the mythic spiritual sense, because almost all theories of human behavior are going to be mythic and spiritual. But I mean, truth. If I feel that you're lying, for instance, I'm not sure there's room in pluralistic spaces for climate denial. I don't have to understand the world through a perspective that doesn't buy climate science because it's science. But whereas if somebody says, I have a different theory of America, I have a different theory of how race works in America. I have a different theory of social and political advancement. I don't know how much I can. I'm a, how much it helps even on those issues to say, once you've accepted that worldview, I can't be in relationship with you,
Speaker 1 00:38:53 But wait a second, wait a second. Wait a second. I'm not saying that people are disagreeing about, you know, how race plays out in America. I'm talking about disavowing white supremacists. That's very simple. It's not hard. Meaning my point is that there are some things that shouldn't be so complicated is my concern. I agree with you that there's no room for falsification, but I got news for you. People could read what you just said about climate science and say, well, actually I have a different theory about how you should be reading it, but that's the way people, people can spin anything. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:39:34 I guess by pushback here and I listened, the last sword I wanna fall on is defending the president around his inability to condemn white supremacists. Not like that's not the horse on which I'm riding into battle, but the slipperiness is the president refused to condemn white supremacy. And therefore the president is a white supremacist. The president is a white nationalist and it is the prism through which he sees the world. And there's a huge difference between I'm upset at what the president did or didn't do in this particular moment versus he embodies this worldview and therefore I can engage with it. And then the next step, which is anyone who supports this precedent is there for implicitly endorsing that worldview or shares it themselves. And that I think is the slippage that becomes very inevitable around narrative, which I think is a little bit different than a slip of drawn truth. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:40:25 But where's allyship then where was anyone in the Republican party to call him out and not disadvantaged white supremacists, right? Meaning maybe it's not just about the president, meaning maybe what it is. It's about the culture, not actually realizing the stakes of what's going on. Maybe you're right. Let's not make it about who you choose for president. Let's not make it about that at all. Let's make it about what society tolerates, right? There's too much tolerance for racism. That's really a problem. If there's that kind of tolerance for antisemitism, I hear that. That's a problem.
Speaker 0 00:41:02 I hear that. But it gets to what I think is a larger question. I'd probably for another day of what has created a culture that makes us feel as though allyship is not, I want to stay in relationship with you. And I sometimes agree with you. And I sometimes don't what shifts us from character witnessing, which is one expression of allyship into color war teaming. And on that level. And one of the texts I keep going back to is if in fact, both the positions of Hillel and Shammai are these, and these are part of God's truth in ways that humans can access. Why does the positions of Beit Hillel when, and those have based on my loses is because according to the Tom MUTEK texts, they'd Hillel actually are better listeners. They put the positions at baseline way beforehand. There are bigger people, and that means they're not empirically correct, but it's something about human conduct that actually enables some transcendent ability to be identified with the right side. You may disagree with that. Let me give you one last question. I'll just acknowledge for the record, the fact that he allowed it didn't respond to that reading of the tummy to passage does not mean that she necessarily agrees with that reading and telling me to passage. That's fine.
Speaker 0 00:42:08 E-learning another time it has this wonderful saying in a number of stories of where you want to figure out like what's going on and what are the values of a study hall is somebody will say to the child and the study hope so clip Sue CLA what are you studying? And it's as though if you figure out what's going on in the school house, that tells a bigger story. So I feel like you're a walking. So clip Sukkot. What Torah are you studying right now? Because I know that whenever something's going on in the world, you're thinking with texts. So what's the text that you're thinking with.
Speaker 1 00:42:36 That's what I'm trying and I'm trying to do. Well first, I just want to say one last sentence on what we were just saying before, because I would be remiss if I didn't, which is I've dumped on shrimp here a lot, which that's just how I feel, but I want to just take the prism of what we were just talking about in terms of tolerance of like, what happens when left-wing anti-Semitism becomes tolerable in American discourse and people don't call it out and people vote for the people who do it anyway, and don't call it out anyway. But I just want people to like switch their frame for a minute for racism, antisemitism. Okay. Now we'll talk about what the verses, okay. Um, so there's this amazing, amazing, amazing rabbinic story. I got down in the Jerusalem Talmud first, and then in the Babylonian Talmud that my friend Hannah Kapnick introduced me to, and it is a story of King David trying to build the foundations of the temple.
Speaker 1 00:43:41 He wasn't supposed to build the temple, but he wants to build the foundations and he's digging down deep because he wants to these foundations to go all the way down to what the rabbis called, the abyss. The tome wants to go deep, deep, deep into the earth and he's digging, digging, digging, and he strikes something hard. I just can't dig anymore. And he still hasn't found the abyss. And it turns out that something hard that he found was a piece of pottery, which, you know, in the ancient world was kind of, it's like garbage essentially, right? Very cheap, found a piece of pottery and he wants to lift up the pottery. Cause he sees like, he's going to lift it up and he's going to keep digging. And eventually he's gonna find the abyss. And the pottery talks to him and says, you can't lift me up. He says, what do you mean? Cause you can't lift me up. I'm here subduing, the abyss, you pick me up. The abyss is going to come and flood this whole world. And
Speaker 2 00:44:32 You know, King, David has like a moment there. Who's like, Oh, you're telling me the thing that I'm searching for is actually destructive. Oh, look at that. When did you get here? How long have you been here? Who are you? And this piece of politics is I've been here since the revelation. When God revealed God's self at Sinai and said, I am the Lord, your God, the whole world was going to flood and God put me here to subdue it. And of course, David picks it up anyway. And the whole world floods. And there's a nice end to the story, which is, you know, one version is he prays and the water recedes. And another version of the story is somebody does some incantation and the water receipts. But the point is the water recedes eventually. But it's the line between our regular stable ground that we walk on and chaos is as thin as a piece of pottery.
Speaker 2 00:45:26 And if the pandemic didn't teach us that, I think the divisiveness in this presidential race could teach us that. I mean, to me, that's the verse. That's what I've been living with for eight months. And it's only more so. And I asked myself a lot, what's the piece of pottery, who's the piece of pottery and what kind of chaos am I going to bring about? If I lift it up and I try to move it and I try to change it. And I just think there's a lot of Torah there that people could take in different directions. Why did they pick it up? I think he picks it up because he had one idea and he thought that getting to the abyss was going to build the foundations of the temple that he still wanted to build. He had very pure, beautiful motivations. And this piece of pottery told him you're wrong. What you think you're going to do is actually going to be destructive. You're wrong. And I don't think he could hear that until it was too late. And so he didn't listen. I'm King David would have to listen to a little cheap piece of pottery for, we do that all the time. And it's, it's in this conversation that we're having about pluralism. It's in this conversation of who do we discard, who bothers us so much that we basically say, no, you are against my vision. My vision is this and you are blocking it and I'm going to move you out of the way. There is no moving people out of the way. There is no moving people in,
Speaker 0 00:46:54 Even those who seem the most irrelevant to us. There's no moving them out of the way.
Speaker 2 00:46:57 How about, especially those who've seen the most irrelevant to us because we're probably just trying to move them out of the way instead of trying to move them.
Speaker 0 00:47:04 Yeah. I assumed that the two reasons why David does, this is one. He believes that he can defeat the abyss. And they, part of the story is of the hubris of thinking that and in connection with that, maybe it's because if you think that the way that you're going to build an ideal society is by unleashing chaos and then enabling yourself to build on the foundations afterwards, bad news, that there's some amount of the, that we keep down. Not because we think that we're in some way infinitely defeating it, but because it's part of our world and our job is to not let ourselves be distracted by it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:47:38 Yeah. I think that's fair, but I think it's crazy that we're having this conversation right now when I don't know what kind of chaos is going to erupt in the next few days. And some things are already starting. And how do you put that genie back in the box?
Speaker 0 00:47:52 Well, thank you Ilana for that. Thank you for the tour that you live and teach in a body all the time. I'll just, I'll say to our listeners, you know, I started the show by acknowledging the liminality of the moment that we're in recording an episode prior to the results of an election. And it's very possible that when the episode airs, you will already know the outcome, but I advise us if I can be homiletical for a moment to remember the liminal moments, even in the secure moments, there are truths that limit on moments. Tell us about ourselves, our beliefs, our hopes, our fears, as much as if not more than those moments, when things appear much clearer. And with that, I want to thank you all for listening to our show this week and special, thanks to Elana Stein Hain for being our guest identity crisis is a product of the shell apartment Institute.
Speaker 0 00:48:36 It was produced this week by Devinsky common and edited by Alex Dylan, our managing producers, Dan Friedman with music provided by so-called to learn more about the Shalom Hartman Institute. Visit us online on cello heartland.org. We want to know what you think about the show you can rate and review us on iTunes to help more people discover the show and you can write to us as well and identity
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