Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hi, everyone. Welcome to identity crisis to show about news and ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute in partnership with the Jewish telegraphic agency, um, you hit occurred, sir, president of the shell apartment Institute, North America, and we're recording on Sunday, January 4th, 2021. So a peaceful transition of power has taken place in America in spite of a great deal of fear and anxiety about that process. Uh, I don't know about you, but in watching the inauguration earlier this week, it was on one hand, cold and lonely and a whole bunch of ways to not see huge crowds, uh, in Washington, to see the, the speed with which the whole process took place. It was also still emotional and quite patriotic, uh, watching the visible trauma of the Capitol in the background, kind of looming over the whole story. And at the same time, a lot less pomp and circumstance, you know, watching Tom Hanks freeze outside the Lincoln Memorial, as he tried to kind of hold together, the story was, uh, was powerful and evocative.
Speaker 0 00:01:01 And now the work begins a whole series of executive orders. Some of which we'll may talk about today, a cabinet secretary hearings, and from our perspective, what are some of the issues I want to talk about is that the Jewish community has already began a process of pivoting institutionally towards a new administration, a different set of priorities. And so what I hoped we would do today is do a little bit of looking forward what we might expect, what, what, how do, what, what to look at as the kind of agenda of the first hundred days from a Jewish communal perspective, as well as to look back on the turbulent Trump administration, uh, and its legacy and its relationship to Jewish community and Jewish interests and on all of these issues, there's really nobody better, uh, to be able to talk to then Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation league, who was kind enough to be available on a Sunday, uh, to record identity crisis the best, first of all, Jonathan, thanks for making time.
Speaker 0 00:01:54 So, uh, so chocolate, let me start from a little bit of, I guess, an unusual place, I guess, before we jump into the, the heart of the agenda, you know, prior to coming to the ADL, I know you served in a senior role of the Obama administration. You were also, I believe part of the Clinton campaign and the Clinton administration. And I just want to start with, um, with your insights on the process of how, uh, the agenda is going to get created, how the, how the priorities of this administration are going to be defined in this, uh, in this hundred days. I mean, this is a big, it's always this consistent metaphor of the first hundred days as having huge impact on evaluating the effectiveness of a presidency and also giving kind of a tell of what the, uh, the administration is going to work on. Needless to say, the transition was so complicated here, that there, there, you know, there there's more vulnerability about that first hundred days than perhaps ever before, but if you could start with, um, helping us understand how that process of shaping priorities is going to take place, how do we listen for who's going to have influence in the president's ear, um, as we, as we look at this administration coming into play well.
Speaker 1 00:03:00 So I think it's a really good question. I think in some ways also I hate to say it's the wrong question, because the issue of how will the priorities be set for the first hundred days that question was answered months ago. So the fact of the matter is that the presidential transition doesn't really start, you know, on November the fifth, the day after the election, or even, uh, January the 21st indeed the, the development of the priorities of the new administration and the game plan for the first hundred days typically is set, you know, during the summer, after the candidate wins the primary and successfully obtained the nomination, that's a process that's formalized at the convention, but as usually fairly apparent long before, and it's during those early days that the new candidate starts to assemble the people who will constitute the leadership of his, or I suppose her transition. And they start to then assemble the broader team and they start to do the roadmapping of what the new administration will look like and what the first hundred days will be. So while it's true that there were a number of meetings that the transition took with different stakeholders from, you know, other elected officials to community leaders, to, uh, other kind of interests. They went in with a pretty well-developed hypothesis about what their first hundred days would be
Speaker 2 00:04:31 Now, events,
Speaker 1 00:04:33 You know, exogenous events will help to shape that. And there's no doubt that the attack on January the sixth was the reason why, you know, the incoming director of national intelligence, Avril Haines in her testimony, but for our Senate confirmation on January, the 19th said that this would be a particular area of focus. And then the new white house spokesperson, Jen Saki on Friday, you know, in just her third, just her third, um, press conference articulated that they were going to put a full, they were, they were going to pull, put a full push on the issue of domestic extremism. And that director Haynes would lead that process note. She was just confirmed in that role. So again, I think where it not for January the sixth, this issue might not have commanded the attention of, you know, the director of intelligence as her first big decision on the job. But the reality is that you had other priorities where
Speaker 2 00:05:35 Laid out, you know, quite some time ago. Now
Speaker 1 00:05:38 That doesn't mean to say that they can't change on the margins. And I think they do. And as it happens, the handoff between the Trump administration and the, by the administration was historic as, were so many things, the Trump administration, because they shattered yet another norm on the way out the door by
Speaker 2 00:05:58 Literally not cooperating, you know, not recognizing that there was a new administration coming into play and this was well-recorded in the media. So I do think the one thing that is quite different than the past is these guys did not have the benefit of a running start. That in fact, they had to find their way to their offices and start figuring things out on day one, because they didn't get the typical handoff that you have on the other hand, as it turns out, you know, it would appear that the byte administration has really put an emphasis. Um, let's see, I would say not necessarily on kind of let me put it like this. It would appear that a large number of the people chosen to run different federal agencies or for senior roles in the white house were selected not only on the basis of expertise and on the basis of perhaps diversity, but also familiarity.
Speaker 2 00:06:57 You can look at the foreign policy team. You look at many people run the agencies, and there've been some notable selections that seem a bit have puzzled some people because they don't seem like necessarily the single individual with the most experience in a specific domain. So take the incoming head of the veterans affairs administration, Denis McDonough, who is not a veteran, never served in the military, never run a large bureaucracy, some would say, well, why in the world would he run that? But on the other hand, he was had senior roles at the NSC and the first part of the Obama term. And then in the second half of the administration was the white house chief of staff where he worked with guess what most of the people around vice-president Biden, including I'm sorry, president Biden, including the president himself. So I think what you've seen is even though there was such a disjointed, non handoff from the Trump people to the Biden people, the Biden people have minimized or mitigated the potential downside by choosing individuals who were deeply familiar, not just with the way the executive branch works, but with one another, which means there's less of a learning curve than you might have in a typical administration where you assemble a team of, you know, top flight experts from all different walks of life or as president Obama did in his first term or quote unquote team of rivals, this is a team of peers and that should facilitate their ability to, uh, again, diminish the, the potential discombobulation that the Trump people would have otherwise left them.
Speaker 0 00:08:28 Yeah. I mean, it, it, it is striking in that sense. It both, both, uh, I like that that phrase, a team of peers, there does seem to be a kind of theory of democracy, or at least a theory of stability that the Biden administration is bringing in, which is in contrast to all of the rhetoric that swept president Trump into power, which was on, we're going to drain the swamp. We're going to get rid of all of the insiders. We're going to demolish these bureaucracies. We're going to bring in a total Renegade group of people. Uh, there's a kind of counter-argument, which is actually bureaucracies and expertise and background are actually necessarily necessary for the flourishing of a stable democracy. And I, I tell you, like, I th I think this is a really interesting Jewish question, which is around, um, do American, what do American Jews see as the infrastructure that helps keep American Jewish Jews safe? And, and it is increasingly a partisan question as is everything Jewishly, but there is a strong American argument, a democratic argument. And in some ways, Jewish historical argument that says, actually you want a roughly stable, consistent, uh, bureaucratic structure, which will ultimately be in benefit of the Republic and in some ways and benefits the Jewish community. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:09:40 Look, I think Trump made this argue about draining the swamp. Um, and this was one of the, whatever, the arguments for his candidacy in the first place, but it turns out he was, he managed to be both a creature of the swamp and having administration that from day one demonstrated an absolute disregard for all the kind of ethics and norms that made previous administrations, you know, notable. And just from day one, he completely completely abandoned the premise of transparency. So president Obama, for example, really look, it doesn't really matter if you're a Democrat or Republican. These are simply things that happened. So president Obama, for example, had a very public schedule, published the logs of who came to meetings at the white house, right? President Trump disregarded those things on day one, he stopped publishing the visitor logs. So you didn't know who he was meeting with, but for his random tweets, president Trump stopped sharing his public schedule on many days, or just had quote unquote executive time, whatever that meant.
Speaker 2 00:10:51 I mean, if you read, acts as a Politico or even the New York times, so many reports that executive time for president Trump meant watching television from the residence, president Trump decided to forego the ritual of the white house press conference, the daily press briefing. I mean, these were all kind of rituals that created some better understanding of what was happening in the oval office was happening on the compound. So he said he was going to drain the swamp, but in fact, he ops vacated and he acted in a way that was entirely inconsistent with the kind of transparency. I think people had hoped you would see from him or that prior presidents had, you know, the ritual that they had created. I think the second thing I would say is that, uh, it turns out that he said he was going to, you know, reform government.
Speaker 2 00:11:38 He tried to destroy it. We shouldn't forget that his senior advisor on day one, you Huda, wasn't some notable Sage of, of like James Baker from GOP white houses and how they worked. Okay. It was Steve. It was Bannon who said, you know, in a very famous interview, he'd given before he was on the campaign. I'm not a Republican, I'm not Democrat Republican, I'm a Leninist was the way he was the way he described himself. So, you know, I don't think I'm breaking any news here. When I say Lenise are not exactly known for preserving institutions, but it turns out that the preservation of institutions is actually pretty important. And I think we could think about institutions two ways, like the institution of our Republic, the institution of our democracy is not just, you know, a set of like neoclassical buildings in DC with ionic columns or Doric columns, right?
Speaker 2 00:12:35 Although we look at them and we'll go, there's a Supreme court, there's the Congress there, the, you know, the federal agencies, but number one institutions are actually sort of entities like a free press and civil service and, uh, an independent judiciary and a nonprofit sector and so on and so forth. And those institutions are both functions of, you know, hundreds of, years of precedent. And they're held together by a set of norms and values. That's like the invisible firmament that keeps the whole constellation of our government. And frankly, our society together, this, this liberal democracy and Trump basically took his sledgehammer to that aided and abetted by people like Steve Bannon, whose goal was Neil ism. If you will, not anything more than that, no more complicated theory of government than that, other than burn it down. Well, I'll tell you two things. So number one, we're blessed.
Speaker 2 00:13:34 And we can talk about it that the Republic that our liberal democracy was able to withstand the kind of damage that the president and his henchmen did. And I would say, secondly, it turns out that institutions kind of matter that again, they look like these big monolithic buildings in DC that seem impregnable or in vulnerable, but it turns out they're very vulnerable and they're very susceptible to deep damage. And so then we need to ask ourselves what we can learn from what it means to bring in someone who's such a rule breaker and a norm shatter who wants to run a government. That's so opaque. And that, again, doesn't hue to the standards that predecessors Republican and Democrat have set over hundreds of years. And then you draw the parallel. Guess what? I mean? The thing that turns out is that the people who benefit the most, or I can think of a particular people who have benefited enormously from the, from the, um, what would you call it from the institutions and from the liberal democracy that we so enjoyed today.
Speaker 2 00:14:39 And those would indeed be the Jewish people. And it turns out that for the Jewish people, institutions are what have also allowed us, I think, to persist and persevere to not just hundreds of years, but thousands of years. I mean, we have essentially an incrementalist tradition, right? So we have the Torah as this institution, and then we have the Talmud that helps to interpret it and, and, you know, modernize it for the times in which we live and are even, you know, if you look at the reform movement or if you will, the, the reformation of the modes of observance, even those are very incrementalist in their nature too. And they don't tear everything down, they build upon the past and they again, seek to maybe modernize it so that it evolves in tandem with, you know, society, but it's just, it's striking how we could see very quickly you to that the destruction of norms, the eradication of systems, the demolition of institutions, like that's bad for democracy and it's bad for the Jews.
Speaker 2 00:15:46 And I, and I think this administration will always be remembered by the bookends, if you will, of Charlottesville and Capitol Hill, these two explosive manifestations of violent white nationalism, where if you will, the first instance, uh, Charlottesville, uh, ostensibly that was a rally about, if you recall about the preservation of Confederate statues in Charlotte, in, you know, in this college town in Virginia, and it ended up with Jews will not replace us and white supremacists with Tiki torches, like a who's who of the American Neo Nazi movement descending on that town. And again, the Jews became the source of their ire flash forward to January the sixth, 2021. This was a stop the steel rally. And you ended up having, you know, these, these individuals with camp Auschwitz, sweatshirts, and six M w E T shirts rampaging through the Capitol and their supporters online gleefully exclaiming, you know, we've overtaken the Zionist occupied government. Like it shouldn't be lost on us that these two moments where norms were shattered and institutions were broken. Somehow we became part of the focus of that. And I think it just as emblematic of how much we have to lose as a people, if we lose liberal democracy as a system and the values that come with it,
Speaker 0 00:17:16 I couldn't agree with you more. And, and one of the better ticks I saw on this is, uh, is, is an Octa passively say the institutions will save us it's to actually figure out how to be active supporters of, uh, uh, an advocates for those institutions that I I'll say for us for another time, I feel this is one of the biggest Jewish educational challenges of the next generation is how to rebuild the fabric of an American Jewishness from a narrative and ideas and values standpoint that understands the interweaving between Jewish values.
Speaker 2 00:17:47 You know, you, you heard it, there's been this conversation been,
Speaker 1 00:17:50 I was talking to a member of Congress, uh, you know, on Friday about this, you know, there's conflicts, but, well, where do we go from here? And I think, of course, as it relates specifically to dealing with the threat of a white nationalism, the threat of domestic extremism, we need to not just identify arrest and prosecute the people who literally just defiled, just debased, you know, the seat of our democracy. And we need to use all of our might to, uh, interrupt the threat of domestic streams in a way that hasn't happened before. So you got to fight it, but it's also gotta be about healing and healing requires thinking imaginatively about what it means to repair, to use a term, you know, the breach in our society. And it means to recognize that some of what happened, I mean, some of what happened Genesis was so frightening because it represented what I'll call the normalization of extremism.
Speaker 1 00:18:47 We could talk about that, but in an environment where there are so many people who feel alienated or disjointed, they become very vulnerable, very susceptible, not just to like scapegoating, although that's a big part of it. I mean, the, the, the root of things like Q and on and conspiracy theories are because people feel aggrieved, but they also, you know, can be swept up into these movements in ways that I think are, as we saw happen during the six really terrifying. And so we need to think about, well, how do you heal for that? Which doesn't excuse anyone's behavior, but it does enable us to have kind of a more expansive conversation. And I'm saying all this to get to the point that one of the challenges we have is that we need education, not just anti-biased education, which I think is part of it, but we also need pro like pro society education, which starts with civics.
Speaker 1 00:19:42 And it's interesting to your point, we not only, I think, needs civics so that we better understand our democracy and its systems and what makes them actually work, you who to write, which is more than there are three branches of government and the cell a bill becomes a law. We need to understand that's the hardware government. We also need to understand the software. And to your point, there's an argument to me that we also need Jewish civics, right? So how do our institutions work and how do we interact rate with a liberal democracy? And how can we, I mean, if there's anyone who should know this, like Jews can not afford to be bystanders in this system, Jews cannot afford to sit on the sidelines and watch from the bleachers Jewish people have no choice, but to be on the field, because we, as much as, if not more than any other minority, have an awful lot at stake in how this game is played in
Speaker 0 00:20:34 Really conclude. Okay. But, so here's the complicating piece, which is, uh, roughly, probably half of Jews worldwide, a much smaller minority of American Jews, but a sizeable one, uh, would also look back at the Trump administration and say, this was the most pro Jewish administration in history. It's not my politics, but a set of issues, whether it's the embassy relocation, the exiting from the Iran deal, the, the close intimacy that the Trump administration had with an a 10 Yahoo government, the advocacy on behalf of, uh, normalization agreements for the state of Israel, with a number of countries, uh, in the middle East where it might've been unthinkable in a previous administration. And that's, I mentioned that, but also, you know, like the, the, the image that the last gasp effort that Mike Pompeo was trying to push through a secretary of state was a, um, uh, a much broader definition of the, uh, uh, of a definite the broad, much broader definition of antisemitism to include, uh, anti-Israel and BDS groups, which for a certain set of Jews, Jews and Jewish communities represents a fuller articulation of what anti-Semitism is.
Speaker 0 00:21:45 So you, you used the language of aiding and abetting, but Jewish community parts of the Jewish community, uh, significant part was, uh, was playing a major role in this administration saw S was scene by scene, was seen by this administration differently, uh, than any administration before. So how do we, and you actually, in your leadership kind of had to navigate a really impossible line, which was at times to embrace and endorse what the administration was doing around the embassy, for instance, while criticizing the administration for all the things that you've said so far around the giving license to white supremacy, the demolishing of institutional norms. So this is, uh, this is, it's not a slam dunk it's right. To the majority of, of, of worldview
Speaker 1 00:22:30 Entirely fair and entirely correct. This is complicated stuff. So I remember the December after December, 2016, I was speaking on a panel in, uh, Los Angeles. And, uh, I was asked for my comments opening. I said, look, I think this is a paradox. In some ways we've never had a president. I mean, just think for a minute, this president came into office with a Jewish son-in-law and a Jewish daughter, right. And there were Jewish grandchildren running around the, the, the residence theoretically, right? Like we've never in 240, some odd years had a Jewish president who was closer to the Jewish people in this, in this regard like that is, that was coming into the, this administration a pure and simple statement of fact that had never happened before he was closer to the Jewish people than any of his predecessors. And, you know, some people used to remark that, you know, Barack Obama once said that he felt like a reform Jew. I think that was a very famous kind of quote that was attributed to him. And, uh, bill Clinton was sometimes called like a Jewish president, but, you know, he'd never had one in this. And of course, Joe Lieberman ran for office as vice president and the 2000 democratic ticket and lost. But this president came in with again, Jewish family members among his closest advisors.
Speaker 3 00:23:57 Okay.
Speaker 1 00:23:58 And yet the paradox was, of course he was also coming in with having one with white nationalists. Like what being one of the constituencies that pushed him over the top, like that happened. And that's not, I'm not saying that for like dramatic flair, you know, candidate Trump would credential white supremacist media in 2016 for the campaign candidate. Trump tweeted out memes that came from white supremacists candidate. Trump, you know, use language that literally came out of the subreddits or the fortune discussion groups of these kind of very, not just bad actors, like incredibly anti-Semitic actors. Like for example, the term globalist, like president Trump didn't invent it. Steve Bannon borrowed it from white supremacist kind of lingo, or another example would be, you know, the, his calling his foreign policy America first, which literally came from Charles. Lindbergh's very anti-sematic crusade to not just keep America out of the second world war, but to marginalize Jewish people who wanted, uh, America to get engaged in stop the slaughter of the Jewish people of Europe. So it was a paradox coming in, you Huda. And I think as we look back over the last four years, I mean, the paradox persists in some ways. And I think it's so, so often
Speaker 3 00:25:23 It's very reductive
Speaker 1 00:25:25 To see things in a purely black and white lens it's simply is, I mean, it's convenient. And when you, when you're measuring world events in 280 characters, right, it lends itself to black and white, and there is no room for nuance, but as a people, as a Jewish people, I think you can look back on our survival over 2000 plus years. And again, on those aspects of our culture, which have allowed us to survive. Like again, the Tom that it's all about nuance. We know that life is not meted out in the black and white, but in the gray, in between, and with president Trump, we've got to recognize that two things, you can hold two things to be true. At the same time, there were things that he did that I would suggest objectively were good for the Jewish people objectively. We're like, so take, for example, moving the embassy, which is something you mentioned that wasn't president Trump's genius idea.
Speaker 1 00:26:20 It was bill Clinton's breakthrough idea from the 1990s. And it was an idea that was then championed by George Bush. And then by guess who Barack Obama. So only president Trump did it. So for Democrats to say that it was so awful that he did it while that was kind of standing policy. Now that being said many can then argue, well, it was the way that he did it without ringing any out of the Israeli to answer two state solution. And I hear that, and I frankly agree with much of that because I don't think we saw any progress on a two-state solution at all. So while I do believe the eternal capital of the Jewish people is Jerusalem
Speaker 2 00:26:56 And the like empirically
Speaker 1 00:26:58 The political capital of the modern state of Israel is Jerusalem. And it's standing democratic Republican policy to recognize these facts, the way that this president did it. I think he gets credit for doing it the way that he did it left a lot to be desired. And I think it was a missed opportunity in all fairness, uh, but take, for example, his executive order on antisemitism, which in many ways, if you read it, there are a couple of things about it that were notable. Number one, there is indeed an indisputable issue with anti-Semitism on college campuses. I know this because at ADL we track this and it's real. And yet after decades and decades and decades, the office of civil rights at the U S part of education had never once, never once brought a case about the civil rights of Jewish students, although cases had been, uh, you know, there had been an attempt to bring such cases. They never once pursued one,
Speaker 2 00:27:54 Like ever and clear
Speaker 1 00:27:57 Really there were cases that merited their attention, that they never
Speaker 2 00:28:00 Dealt with. The anti-Semite
Speaker 1 00:28:03 The antisemitism EO was based on a bipartisan piece of legislation called the anti-Semitism awareness act that Democrats and Republicans in Congress were behind. And it utilized the IRA definition of antisemitism, which despite the claims of some like is a definition that was developed by academics and scholars, not by like political operatives from the Likud. Uh, and it was developed by in a European context where I think frankly, there are more exacting about antisemitism in some way than the course, you know, partisans in the United States. So there was some, I think a lot of merit to that EO, but whether, and frankly, I'll also mention the Abraham Accords,
Speaker 2 00:28:46 Which again, despite, uh, the, kind of
Speaker 1 00:28:49 The claims of some way in what I'll call the echo chamber of the
Speaker 2 00:28:52 Beltway, that it was an arms
Speaker 1 00:28:55 Deal, or I've heard some other aspersions cast
Speaker 2 00:28:57 On it, again, as an organization
Speaker 1 00:28:59 That's been focused on fighting antisemitism for over a hundred years, normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors that will turn down the temperature on antisemitism
Speaker 2 00:29:10 Is only a good thing. And I am of the opinion that when more countries, frankly,
Speaker 1 00:29:16 Arab Muslim countries are invested in the state of Israel, it will help the state of Israel make better decisions. Vis-a-vis like their Palestinian neighbors let alone the rest of the region. So I see the error, the Abraham Accords as an incredibly important frankly, breakthrough that, you know, I think if you were to ask old hands like Martin Indyk or Dennis Ross, or Aaron David Miller, or Sony others who were involved in peace negotiation after peace prostitution, they would give Jared Kushner and the Trump people credit for it. So I think the Abrahamic cords are a good thing. I think the EO is a good thing. I think that, uh, uh, as I said, the moving the embassy was the right thing to do for an, all that being said, you who does, if we like Benjamin, Franklin said, you have a Republic. If you can keep it, if we lose the Republic, we lose everything.
Speaker 1 00:30:06 So I think the question you have to ask is if you were doing this like a double book entry, accounting, like debits and credits, you know, do they actually match up? And I'm afraid that what we saw happen on January the sixth was a logical conclusion of Trumpism played out, was a logical conclusion of again, damage deeply damaging in wounding our institutions. And I think in the long run for the good that the Trump administration did for the Jewish community, I do think that the administration will be remembered for its its corruption and its inaptitude and ultimately the harm that it brought in our democracy.
Speaker 0 00:30:46 So let's stay with that metaphor for a second. Cause I think it gets to the heart of the issue is the job of the Jewish community in a moment like this, to do that ledger, this was good for the Jews. This was bad for the Jews. Um, or as you know, my colleague, rabbi David, Seth, Kershner says, you know, our job is to call balls and strikes. It's not to be partisan, but to be able to say, this was good, this was less good. The problem is that we're the, in the polarized world in which we're living, uh, these are the, the efforts of the Trump administration. And in turn, the Biden administration are also part of ink of increasingly competing worldviews such that the ability to say, I like this piece of that worldview within, in relationship to this piece of that worldview is, is increasingly harder to do right.
Speaker 0 00:31:29 Where, um, you know, when I see Republican congressmen and senators weaponizing the Jewish community's opposition to aspects of the Trump administration's policy, whether on Israel or on anti-Semitism and, and taking and, and taking credit for, for the Trump administration's position on antisemitism to be critical of Jews who oppose it, it, it just like, you know, let me, let me abstract a little bit more if I can. So I would, you know, my personal view is liberal democracy and the American model is good for American Jews and liberal democracy. And the Israeli model is good for Israeli Jews and for world jewelry, but that means you actually have to advocate for liberal democracy in Israel and not just for ethnic democracy, it's not just, what's good for the state of Israel, just for the Jewish side of the, of the state of Israel is ultimately in the Jewish people's interests.
Speaker 0 00:32:22 So I just, as we're getting, but as we're getting pulled apart, the, to the, to the, to a lot of the Trump world, there was a kind of coherence between the America first agenda and the support of a kind of ethnic democracy agenda in Israel. So I don't know how we do that, that kind of cherry picking of, well, they did this thing that was basically good for Israel, but I want to separate it from this larger ideological agenda, which is isolationists in certain ways is a preference to some ethnic groups over other ethnic groups. How do we, how can we still do that without ultimately, um, becoming dragged into or complicit into, uh, you know, the, the, this larger ideological polarization?
Speaker 1 00:33:06 These are hard questions. I mean, I think ultimately it's interesting to use the, the, the metaphor that of your colleagues, like at the ADL. I think our goal is to call balls and strikes as it relates to anti-Semitism and hate not to privilege one political party or the other not to choose when Canada and the other, we say, look, this is how we see it. Um, it's not always easy to do that. And I do think like, look, I know that there are many on the left who derided ADL, because we said positive things about something. So the Trump administration did that being said, there were people in the Trump administration and their kind of fellow travelers on the right, who just uphold the ADL for all the criticism that we lot launched. Um, yeah, I mean, that happened, that continues to happen. We're too liberal for the consumer on the conservative side and too conservative on the liberal side.
Speaker 1 00:33:55 I think that question is, is how do we, how do we try to, again, mitigate the polarization and diminish this kind of level, this divisiveness. It's just, I think so damaging to our community, it's like, you know, an arm being a body being stretched by arms, you know, and ultimately if you stretch too far, the arms will rip off the torso and the person dies. And so I think that we can't afford to continue with this. It's just deeply unhealthy for our body politic and it's even unhealthy for the Jewish community as it relates to this administration. You know, one of the last things we did related to this administration was less than 48 hours after the siege on the Capitol, you know, siege, which I would describe as the most predictable terrorist attack in American history. I mean, cause the president laid the groundwork for this, with his relentless and unapologetic, you know, not just the denigration of institutions, right.
Speaker 1 00:34:53 And not just the demonization of his opponents, who has he perceived them as enemies, but the digitalization of the election, right? And if you really believe the election is not legitimate and you really believe your opponents are devil worshipers or whatever, uh, and you really believe the institutions are so, so flawed. You Huda then like, should it surprise us that tens of thousands of people to send it on the mall and then thousands and thousands of them Murat it up the Capitol steps. I mean, that's what their dear leader told them to do after again, brainwashing people to believe that some of the election had been stolen in this other madness. Anyways, with all that being said, we came out on January the eighth, last 40 hours later and we call for Trump, be removed from office. We did that. And again, I took a lot of heat and I know because I saw the hundreds of emails that I got hundreds and hundreds of emails for people who were so angry that we did that.
Speaker 1 00:35:49 Um, but I thought it was the right thing to do again, despite the things that he had done that I might argue were worthwhile. And in the Jewish context, I mentioned just a few, there could be some other positives he did that we can talk about that I thought may have made sense, but the overwhelming totality of this administration, uh, particularly with this final act seemed to me to just cross a line, a clear line that merited, you know, his being forced to leave office, not on his own terms, not running out the clock as he did, but being literally whether it was the 25th amendment or it was, you know, a successful impeachment process, even if he resigned himself, like he needed to go. Um, uh, so we did that and I think in many ways we will be, we were the first major Jewish organization to do that.
Speaker 1 00:36:39 And again, I'm sure it will cost me money and all the other stuff, but I feel like it matters more that again, if we're calling balls and strikes, we need to be, we need to have clarity like on, uh, in terms of our moral compass about where we stand. And so again, even though, even though there may be some things that he did that we think were the right things to do over the course of four years, that doesn't negate or diminish the deep damage that he did in the danger. I think he put our country and in our community. And
Speaker 0 00:37:09 So the next big agenda around the question of polarization is related to the Jewish community, the Jewish agenda, et cetera, is going to be the Iran deal. It's already, it's already beginning, uh, the written pieces. I'm sure the back channels, uh, the ways in which we can anticipate that into Tanya, who administration is going to go to war the same way he did against, uh, against president Obama. Um, we know also that given that so much of the Biden agenda is basically reversing the Trump agenda and reentering, uh, reentering the commitments of the Obama administration. I think it's fair to say. And they've made this clear that entering the JCPO is a priority. How would you from your role suggest that we, who CA who, who are concerned about, uh, reducing polarization, uh, getting the Jewish community and its interests in some ways off the front page all the time, um, how, and, and not, and certainly not allowing for, uh, for political interest to weaponize Jewish concerns against Jews. Um, how do we, how do we confront this? What would, uh, what would a way in which to, to, you know, whether, whether you support the JCPA or oppose the JCPA, how does the ADL want us as Jewish community to manage this, uh, this major issue that implicates, uh, implicates world jury on whatever side of the ledger you're on?
Speaker 1 00:38:28 Well, uh, I mean, I think there are a few things. I mean, number one, I was saying a few minutes about the Trump in January of 2016, sorry. In December, 2016 seemed poised to be the administration close to the Jewish community in history, right? Precedent was born. Now, actually I dare say we may have a new president and president Biden who is, guess what, even closer to the Jewish community than president Trump. He also has children who are married to Jews. He also has Jewish grandchildren. His vice president is married to a Jewish man. They have Jewish children are Jewish stepchildren. If you look at the cabinet, the church, secretary of the treasury, the secretary of state, the attorney general three out of the four most important, the big forest they call them cabinet positions are ju are held by Jewish people, the chief of staff of the white house, who some call the most powerful person in Washington.
Speaker 1 00:39:27 He's Jewish. If you look at secretary Blinken state department, his deputy secretary nominee, Wendy Sherman is Jewish. Like if you look at the national security council, the deputy NSA, John Finers, you wish you could go on and on. So I think in one way, we just need to recognize that the Jewish people it's a sign of again, how far we've come in ways that would make our grandparents just, I mean, Marvel at that, we now have the ability to exceed, to succeed at the highest levels. It's remarkable. So I think one thing we just need to do is to recognize that the people who are helping to make these foreign policy decisions, even as it relates to Iran are not anti Zionist. They're not people whose interests are nickel to the Jewish people. These are people who actually are part of our community and who understand our community with the insight of insiders.
Speaker 1 00:40:18 Um, it shouldn't be lost on us that when Allie, my orcas and when secretary Blinken gave their testimonies in the center for the confirmation hearings, they talked about being the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. I mean, this is real. I actually, I forgive me. I think Tony is the step son of a Holocaust survivor, I believe actually, right? And it's, it's an Audi. My orcas is a grandson. So I do think that their views in many ways reflect the American Jewish, the modern American Jewish experience as, as immigrants, as the grandchildren of refugees or the children, et cetera, et cetera. So I think, secondly, I think we have got to, we really must implore upon, uh, not just, you know, prime minister Netanyahu and our family and friends in Israel, but again, people across the spectrum here in the United States to take a deep breath and withhold judgment, you know, I think the desire to leap out in front, again, to post that screed, to tweet those emotions is a very unhealthy impulse.
Speaker 1 00:41:29 And I think we, we, Oh again, there's a, this, this president and the administration has a mandate and the people making these decisions are from our community. And these people are, again, unlike some of the folks in the prior administration, these are people who've been working on these issues for decades. Now, some might say that new blood like Jared Kushner, the Abraham Accords came out of fresh thinking and that's fair. But I also think we have to give these people a chance. I think that, uh, there's there's can be no argument that the threat of a nuclear Iran is it's an existential threat to the state of Israel. It's an existential threat. I would argue for many of our allies in Europe and American interests around the world. I think these individuals recognize that. And I am as someone who forget the fact that I worked with many of these people in the last administration, if you remember you who to, I came out against the first version of the JCPO way, not because I was a nuclear physicist, like I don't know more about nuclear physics than the people who negotiated that deal.
Speaker 1 00:42:32 But what I do know is antisemitism. And what I do know is that Iran is the single largest state sponsor of anti-Semitism and the largest state sponsor of terror in the world. And so those things troubled me and I felt like the last deal didn't deal with it. So I'm willing to wait and see, and I will, you know, make my views known, but to give this, give this new leadership a chance to ensure that any new deal JCP plus your JCPO 2.0, reflects our concerns, not in a narrow sort of circumscribed way, but make sure that at its root, this deal is about reducing the Iranian <inaudible> threat and the region and the threat that it poses to Jews worldwide. So, but generally, right, like if we all just take a breath, if we all just take our phones and put them down, we all just resist that impulse to post or tweet that thought that leaps to our mind, I think we would all be much better off,
Speaker 0 00:43:29 Right? That's the balls and strikes we were talking about before. And, you know, it's, it's, it's not newsworthy if I come out in favor or against the JCPO way, but my, I felt like my piece of the work was figuring out how do I talk to my friends on the left to help them understand that their glee about the nuclear Iran deal was, was large, but I felt it was largely a reflection of their need to support this administration reflexive liberal by the Obama administration reflexively. Um, as opposed to figuring out, you know, maybe the fact that 85% of Israelis don't like this, uh, you know, should, should be a constraint on how we respond. Let me ask you one last thing and then I'll let you go, which is, you know, it just going back to the representation question. Cause you know, I, I see a lot of your work as kind of a, uh, a major ambassador against hate kind of wherever it materializes.
Speaker 0 00:44:17 And that, especially when you talk about advocating for a better America, it's on behalf of it in some ways of the Jewish community, but it's also on behalf of Americans, but there is a re you have a representational role w uh, you and other leaders of what you might establishment or organized Jewish community institutions to represent the interests of the Jewish community. There's a narrative that sometimes these organizations are more right-wing than the majority of American Jews. There was a weird little story last week. I don't know if you followed it. Um, it was covered in JTA that, uh, one of the people who's running AEPi, which is a member of the conference of presidents, of introduced organizations was, uh, well, it turns out was on the board of turning point USA, which sent eight buses to the rally. I don't need you to comment on the conference of presidents, but there's a story here of the organized Jewish community being further right than the Jewish community itself, which boasts somewhere between 72 to 78% for Democrats, pretty much across the line. So I just wonder if you could help us in your lap for the last question, like thinking about what it looks like to represent, uh, Jews in America, not just Jewish interests. I think this is what's good for Jews, but actually Jews as a, as a percentage of the electorate, what does that look like and feel like
Speaker 2 00:45:29 It is a great question. And I think that indeed it's fair to say that many, many of our Jewish institutions have a lot of work to do, to be more inclusive and to be more, if you will, representative of the community that we're serving. I mean, you know, it's not lost on me that if you look at the federations across the country, the vast majority by that, I think, I mean, all of them, like all of them, all of the major ones are run by men when half of our community is women. And indeed many of the largest, you know, communal organizations, uh, like ADL for a long time were run by, you know, white, straight men over the age of 65 to be generous, probably sets really 70 plus. And that's still a problem. You started to see some glints of change. You know, when I came on board at ADL, I was 44, which, you know, I mean, that was quite different than my predecessor, but it's not just about age.
Speaker 2 00:46:33 I mean, we live in a Jewish community, that's increasingly multi-racial right. And so we need to represent that we live in a Jewish community, that's increasingly intermarried, and we need to represent that we live in a Jewish community where there's a wide range of levels of observance. We need to represent that, um, let alone the political stripes. So it shouldn't surprise us that longstanding Centennial institutions take time to change and evolve. And, uh, you know, I think what we've seen in the last few years from the president Obama's election to the George Floyd movement, uh, you know, I would actually go back to Ta-Nehisi coats, this book to the George Floyd movement. I think you've seen a greater dawning in awareness of issues of racial justice. Um, and I think by the way, uh, vice president Harris, his election also is a sign of, I think our institutions have a lot of work to do to catch up with that look.
Speaker 2 00:47:34 And by the way, when we talk about diversity of the multiracial Jewish community, it's not just Jews who identify as African-American, who identify as black. It's also Jews who identify as Latino, right? It's also Jews who identify Ms. Rahi Jews who might identify as people of color. I mean, I'm very proud of the fact that Dr. Sharon is Aria my senior, our senior vice president ADL for international affairs. She's, uh, born and raised in Iran and came to this country as an immigrant. I don't think there's another Ms. Rye Jew in a position of authority in any, um, Jewish communal organization. Not that I've seen. And I'm proud of the fact that she's out there testifying before Congress and she's out there speaking to the press and she's, again, she's helps further our policies relates to supporting Jewish communities worldwide. Um, and I don't mean to, if you will tokenize her.
Speaker 2 00:48:25 I'm proud of the fact that we have made an effort at ADL. And, you know, I have Jews of color in leadership positions at my organization. We have, you know, my, on my board, we have Jews of color, you know, who identify as Asian-American or as Latino, um, or, uh, you know, um, middle Eastern, if you will. So I think we are part of, we need to do more to change our own organizations. And again, it shouldn't surprise us that some of the pressures for change aren't intrinsic, but extrinsic, you know, there was this effort launched earlier this year by a bunch of young Jews,
Speaker 4 00:49:03 Holler to push for a Jewish person,
Speaker 2 00:49:06 Your organizations, to diversify their leadership and their boards. I can't remember what the name of that was, but you probably saw it when the news broke about this, uh, in the summer of 2020. And I think just last week, you know, behold shown the longest in the organization, focused on the needs of Jews of color, um, announced that there was a leadership transition and their new executive director, their founding executive director stepped down and their new sec director is herself. A Jew of color, like change, needs to come. And some of it may, may require the pressure of outside activists and some that hopefully will win these organizations just simply do a better job. I also think by the way, we really do need to recognize that the nature of increasingly interfaith nature of our community, right? I think we need to recognize patrilineal Jews as being as valid as matrilineal Jews.
Speaker 2 00:49:58 And I say this not as a rabbi, I say this as a leader, who's got a lot of members of my leadership team and, and staff and supporters who themselves identify as just as Jewish as me, even if it wasn't passed down on the mom's side and observed the rituals and show up at Shoal. And he said it himself, not just religiously, but culturally part of our community, we've got to do a better job of embracing them as well as Jews of choice, who for a long time, again, have not been exactly embraced by the long standing institutions of our community. So I think it's a very good question. And I think ways that that could start is not only Jewish organizations adopting the what's, the word, the goals as laid out by that activist group, whose name I wish I could remember, but I would say additionally, like the conference of presidents could change the conference of presidents.
Speaker 2 00:50:47 Uh, I need to ask William what the process is for membership, but embracing more of the organizations that represent the span of our community. Not just long-standing conservative voices, but newer, maybe more progressive voices, smaller organizations that again, uh, have given voice to parts of our community that have failed too long, been marginalized or not embraced. And I ultimately will say that I think the fact that we are multiracial the fact that we are kind of interface the fact that we are, uh, have a kind of, um, richness to our community. These are sources of strength, not shame. And I think Jewish, communal institutions from synagogues to NGOs to others will we can revitalize and re-energize ourselves and reconnect with the next generation when we embrace the reality, that's right in front of us and, and, you know, place a premium on the value that it creates.
Speaker 0 00:51:43 Yeah. And, and I, I echo all of that. I would say if, if N if organizations like the conference, don't actually represent the center of gravity of where, who the Jewish community is and where it's heading, it's less likely that they, they remain the center of gravity, just because of history. It's more likely at the center of gravity shifts elsewhere. So it's not just, uh, it's not just morally right to, to make that shift. It's also, essentially in their own long-term interest. Well, John, Jonathan, thanks again for taking the time. Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation league. Uh, and thanks to all of you for listening. Identity crisis is a product of the Shalom Hartman Institute in partnership with the Jewish telegraphic agency. It was produced this week by Devinsky Coleman and edited by Alex Dylan with assistance for MIRI Miller and music provided by so-called to learn more about the Shalom Hartman Institute, you can visit us online, Sholom, hartman.org. We'd love 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 also write to us at identity crisis, the chill apartment.org. You can subscribe to our show in the Apple podcast app, Spotify, SoundCloud, audible, and everywhere else. Podcasts are available. See you next week, stay safe, stay healthy. And thank you for listening.
