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Do we still need to celebrate Jewish excellence? · Not in Heaven

• 0:04
  This is Bourge. The Woke Mediocrity edition. I'm Avi Fongle De, Montreal, and I'm here with Phoebe Multitobie in Toronto. We are your frozen chosen. On today's show, we are tackling the topic of Jews roles in society. Are we disappearing? Are we looking at the right metrics? We talked to Rabbi Heinzrappler to find out. And Phoebe and I get into her review of David Bernstein's new book Woke Antisemitism phobi. How's it going? All right. How are you doing, Aubi? Have a good poem? I'm good. I'm recovering. We had quite the shindig. We were recording this on Wednesday, so yeah, last night was quite the suarez at our home. We have always, like, a big, big porn meal, and it's sort of like a drop in sort of thing. Yeah, we went all out. I grilled flatbreads. We made all sorts of skewers of stuff, and it's kind of fun. But that means that made for a rough morning today. Oh, dear. And any interesting acid trips since last week to tell us about? No, but the amount of people that have approached me and, like, listen, if you need some, I have a source. And it's good stuff and it's real and oh, I can't tell you about my I want to tell you about my brother who does this and my cousin who does that, and he's a psychologist with this or that. It's kind of interesting that people come out of the woodwork when psychedelic use gets mentioned and discussed. And it's not just that you're imagining them coming out of the woodwork literally because of the no, I am not. Yes, because I have extensive experience with the use of psychedelics. Yeah, maybe next year. We'll have a poor trips to speak of, but not this year. This year was purely cocktails. Any good ones? I mean, when you're hosting, like, 30 to 50 people, it's hard to make cocktails, like, to order, like, Shake cocktails for everybody, so I tend to go the batched route. So I made, like, a punch, and then I made a big batch of negronis that I stuck in the freezer and just let it go. As, you know, people just pour for themselves. I did make a really interesting cocktail. I got asked by the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles for a poorer cocktail because they found out about me through a colleague, and I came up with a cocktail called Esther's Revenge. And it was like, what's the type of drink that Esther would use to make sure that Hammond's downfall would be assured? Right. And so it involves, like, this weird, like, syrup that I made with, like, all sorts of spices from the region and Iraq and all the things that I thought that she might have added there. And then I finished the cocktail with Garnish with eleven raisins on a 50 on a 50 cubit cocktail pick wow. Because it's designed to symbolize Haman and his ten sons, who were then hung from the gallows. Nice little fun line there. You can go check out the entire recipe. The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. We can put a link in the show notes, but they were nice enough to publish a cocktail. What's been what's been on your mind? What have you been hit? Did you do you have memories? Pour him memorable moments? No thoughts about pour him at all? Other than that, it sounds like a lot of excitement was had. But, yes, I did write about something this week. Yes, tradwives. I have a few thoughts about Tradwives, because I read so this isn't my nahas, this is my just chitchat about what's happening in the world a little bit, which is that apparently there are some women on TikTok who are trad wife influencers, and there was this really compelling interview with one of them. Hold on. What's the trad wife? Don't worry, don't worry. I'm getting for that. I didn't know, and I'm still not entirely sure. But basically there are women who are stay at home wives. They do not necessarily have children, and they are generally, I believe, in the United States, and they are social media influencers who post about, like, videos and so forth about their lives, where they, out of their understanding of tradition, stay at home and serve their husbands and do not work for pay. And there was this really compelling interview with one of them in The Spectator by Karen Kennedy. Carol Kennedy is a journalist, not a trad wife. The trad wife is Este Williams. And, yeah, it was a really interesting interview, but then it just had me thinking about this concept of a trad wife and wondering whether there's anybody Jewish in that world. And I Googled it, and the only person who came up was the person who I had also thought about. Who's abby Shapiro, the American political pundit, right wing pundit, Ben Shapiro's sister. So she's apparently a tradwife influencer, although she doesn't use the term tradwife, but basically somebody who posts videos selfies and so forth in the name of traditional values, but promoting modesty. So where this gets relevant for our purposes is I wrote about this, and then a ton of people replied with like, of course there are Jewish trad wife influencers. Of course, of course. I'm like, okay, tell me, who are they? Who are they? And some people did come through, and it seems like there's a whole world out there that we may 1 day explore. I'm assuming these are the women that sew their children's Porom costumes from scratch and make their own gasilta fish and things along those lines. Is that like, the trap? Meaning it's a return to tradition, right? Yes. I don't know if that's what they're doing. I don't know if that's what they're doing. Because that's the thing is it seems like there are it doesn't seem like this specific kind of homesteader aesthetic is necessarily something that observant jewish women who are influencers, who do exist are doing. Yeah. My sense is that probably Jews tend to be urban because of the need to be closer to community and closer to Jewish resources. And the women that would be enticed by this idea of becoming a tradewife probably want to live in large communities where they can have access to resources that they might not have might otherwise not have access to when they're living on the farms. And I think that there has been a specific move away from country living for Jews where it used to have Jews all up and down like the prairies and the American Midwest, like all these tiny towns had a Shoal or had something. And we are moving into increasingly urbanized religion and religious communities. And that is an interesting dichotomy. There maybe some sort of tension. Sure, let's hold on to that. I think that there's ideas here and let's explore that a little bit more, maybe in a future episode. I hope so. Yeah. I read your review of David Bernstein's new book, Woke Antisemitism, and he's been a guest on the show in the past. Tell us what your thought was about the book. Like, without getting too much into the review itself, but I had some thoughts. Okay, well, I'm just going to read the review now. So basically I came at this book as somebody who is sympathetic to the argument that there is left wing antisemitism and that left wing antisemitism often gets overlooked. And I also think that sort of the excesses of whatever you want to call it, call out culture, cancel culture, social justice culture, whatever you want to call it. Like, I think I'm sympathetic to these arguments. But then this book was just very frustrating on that front because the point of the book was ostensibly that sort of the progressive excesses are bad for Jews. Bad both in the sense of antisemitism getting overlooked in the kind of David Badial Jews don't count sense where progressive activists and the like don't consider antisemitism as one of the isms to worry about. But also the book is about so called Wokeness within Jewish communal organizations and how, in Bernstein's view, it has really been a bad thing for these organizations. So, fine, that's an argument and all that, but then there are all these personal anecdotes which I think are meant to make it a more colorful story and do in some ways. But then there were a couple that just kind of had me pause and wonder what the whole point of the endeavor was. One involving Bernstein's first ever encounter with political correctness as such. A woman with a PC pin, and he writes about this woman's hair, a Jewish woman at a Hillel convention, like a fellow college student he was a college student at the time who he talks about her frizzy hair in a way that I think in another context would probably be not so nice. So anyway, I was I'd like the record to state right now, even though it's an audio medium, that Phoebe's Brown hair is perfectly quaffed. Definitely you cannot catch me out of it. I have styled it because nobody will know. I have styled it especially for this podcast. That is why it looks definitely not like I just rolled out of bed. Absolutely. That's basically the gist. Interesting. So first of all, I don't know that antisemitism on the left is not like called out. I see that called out all the time. Maybe because the community that I happen to be in tents to be much more right wing and they're very happy to call up whatever antisemitism they see on the left. So I don't think that it's something that is not getting attention. I think that the problem often is just as much the fact that the establishment of the established Jewish community doesn't want to recognize that there is antisemitism on the right. To me, a great example of that is when the Conservative Party recently, there were members that met with avowed antisemite and there was like a real downplaying of it. There was like, yes, this shouldn't happen. But from the establishment Jewish community it was like, yeah, let's move on. Because the Conservative Party for a lot of people is the party that they want to vote for and whatever it is, and that there's a lot of downplaying. We see this in American politics. We see this. I don't think you see that in American people on the right. I think that's where it's different. I think it's because most American Jews are Democrats to the point that I think there's just this sense that the left is the safer side. That's one piece. And the other piece is that Jewish nonprofits like David Bernstein writes will have very sort of progressive, recent college grad type people who are shaping the culture. I don't think that that's I think it's probably a bit of this is a bit of a Canada US divide. Yeah. So the first thing, like I said, I tend to disagree with him that I think that there is antisemitism on both sides. That I agree with you. When you really are looking to call up antisemitism on one, you're essentially looking to mask the fact that there's anti Semitism on both sides of the aisle and that that's a significant problem. And then it sounds like everything else that he seems to be talking about is his problem with Wokenness in general. And he just maps that onto the Jewish community. And it really has little from what I've read of the review, I did not read the book, but we have had him on the show and I know sort of where his politics lie. It sounds a lot like he's just kind of pushing back against woke culture and mapping that onto the Jewish world. But it doesn't have anything specifically jewish to attach itself to. I'm really glad you bring that up because that, I think, is really at the center of the issue with the argument of the book. So I found there were that thing about the woman's hair and another thing about women seemed just a bit off putting, especially because half of Jews are women. Happy International Women's Day to all who celebrate from a day late, basically, but know exactly what you're saying. There are parts of the book that are about sort of trans issues or just like sort of hypersensitivity in schools or whatever that just seem like, okay, these are these sort of buzzwords. But they have nothing to do with Jews. They have nothing to do with antisemitism. They have everything to do with the fact that Bernstein has whatever politics he has, which is his right. But it just didn't seem to have anything to do with Jews. And I wasn't clear on why Jews as such should care. You know what I mean? I've mentioned this in the past the same way that I have a hard time with people who make any issue a Jewish issue, to show you shoehorn whatever topic you're loving and you're interested in and say, see, this is in Judaism also, and they find some way to do it. I have a hard time with people who are looking to call out x culture and call it out from within the Jewish community without the fact, recognizing the fact that not everything is about Judaism, right? And I'm not saying to the exclusion that there are definitely some trans issues that definitely significantly do impact and relate to the Jewish community in a real meaningful way. But not everything trans has to do with the Jewish community. Not everything about racism has to do with the Jewish community. There are things that are not necessarily in our big tent and we should just leave those alone and you should attack them as whatever it is that you don't like, but just leave the rest leave the Jews out of it sometimes. Yeah, I think this also comes up in terms of because all of these issues, right, they could impact people who happen to be Jewish. But are they Jewish issues as such? Not necessarily. And if you want to make that case, you have to actually make that case. And I think there's this danger and I saw this also ages ago when I reviewed Barry Weiss's book about anti Semitism. This was kind of an issue as well, where people want to make Jews these kind of symbols of liberal democracy. And if you're pro liberal, you're pro Jewish. If you're pro Jewish, you're pro liberal in the classical liberal sense. And I think no, I think that my version of what it means to fight antisemitism would be fighting the idea that Jews are an abstraction and some sort of symbol of ideas in the broader culture. No, Jews are ourselves. We have our own many different ways of being Jewish. But this is not like to be a symbol for broader society isn't something we should encourage, if that makes sense. Meaning that we're not the lens by which we should see everything? Well, more just meaning that you should support Jews because Jews are people. Not that you should support Jews because Jews are canaries in the coal mine for liberal democracy. Yeah, I have a hard time with that one also. I think that there's been a lot of other canaries in coal mines that we choose to ignore. But as soon as it becomes our canary then we're going to wave the flag and say, see we're in trouble and that's not a good look. The only canary that I care about is the canary that's mine. Oh, pun. Good pun there. I think sometimes you just have to be and do your thing as a Jew however that is, and move on and don't feel like you are the ultimate lens or the ultimate apotheosis for all of western civilization. And when that happens sometimes and we see that happening, then that's a problem. And I don't know, that's my thought and my hunt is you would probably have a whole different set of issues with the book. Issues with his book? Yeah, probably. Maybe I'll get around to reading it. I'll put it on my stack. The review enough was interesting and my stack gets larger and larger every day. But you are a person of the book, right? I am a person of the book. Absolutely. Onto our main interview with Rabbit Haim struckler right after we hear from our sponsor. During World War II, the Nazis began a little known program of extermination for their own children. In Peter Kleinnaut's new mystery thriller The Unwanted, 14 year old Hana Ziegler is being driven by her grandfather and her psychiatrist to a euthanasia center. 16 year old Silky Hartenstein graces the COVID of Nazi propaganda magazines. Avi Krysler is a Munich police detective rounded up for dacao and a patrician father hopes his son David McAuliffe will be elected the first Catholic President of the United States. In The Unwanted in the aftermath of war, revenge brings these four people together in ways unimaginable the unwanted. Do not skip to the last page. Find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. For several decades, Jews were used to seeing books with titles like Great Jews in Sports, Great Jews in the Arts or other similar books. These often served as Barbara misfit gift fodder or an opportunity to cavell a bit about our achievement in society. But in a short piece for the Jewish journal Tradition, heimstratler points out that these books have all but disappeared and wonders what it might mean for the Jewish community that we no longer collectively celebrate our achievements. With us to talk about this is the author of the article. Jaime Struggler is the Rabbi of Congregation renault in tneck, New Jersey, and a former contributor to the CJN when he was the rabbi of Shari Shamayam in Toronto. Jaime. Welcome to Bonjour hai.
• 17:47
  Thank you. Thank you, Abby. Thank you, Phoebe.
• 17:49
  So one of the things that you said in your piece is that for a long time we were quick to point to greatness in the community, but we're easily willing to disregard various misdeeds. And so I found that this resonated with me a lot because I think a lot about the tension between the message we receive about being the chosen people and the fact that there is a large share of people who don't act in a chosen manner. So how do we accept and move forward as a Jewish community with the possibility that Jews might be a normal people, that you have to choose to be chosen, so to speak?
• 18:17
  I think it's a great question, Abby. And there is, I think, a certain defensive posture that we take as a people in light of the history of antisemitism. And in the article I speak about two types of antisemitism more than antisemitism and less than antisemitism. And for much of our people's history, there was what we'd call less than antisemitism, namely that we were seen by our haters as being somehow subhuman, somehow less than others. And so in that environment, we were very quick to promote ourselves almost as a collective defense, to say Juice can do that too. We also have baseball players, we also have actors, we also have politicians. And that was seen as being a ways to both promote ourselves in the eyes of others, but honestly, more importantly, inside ourselves that we were protecting some piece of our soul in some way. And I think that what we're finding today is that there's a different type of antisemitism which is becoming, you might say, even dominance, which is more than antisemitism. And this type of antisemitism says that the Jews somehow are all powerful. They control this, that and the other. And within that context, to be able to have a book saying great Jews in X, Y or Zed Z would be almost like a threat to our people's existence if we were to promote such books. Because we don't want to be so special anymore. We don't want to be great, we want to be just. We're not so privileged, we're not so out of the ordinary. And that's, I think, a signal to something which reflects, you might say, that this chosenness problem that many of us feel today. And that is that to be a Jew is to be part of something which is a great story, a great destiny that we have as a people. And the question of how we achieve that destiny, whether it's something that we achieve by being different or whether we achieve that destiny by being aligned with general society, is an ongoing challenge that we have to face as a people.
• 20:47
  I find that that tension right there is very much still hovering in the background of so many of the discussions that we have, in that we have attempted to be normalized by society for so long that the second that we were or as soon as we were and we started feeling antisemitism. We needed to push back and reminded people that we were still other. And that tension that you speak of is at the heart of where that is. In that are we really part of the community and say there are great Jews in sports, really, we're part of what there are artists, as you said, all of this stuff. But then as soon as there are problems from general society to the Jewish community, we like to remind people, no, hold on a second. We're not like you. And when somebody hates us, it's not like you're hating just another person. You're hating an entire group and that they were a minority and all that. And it's almost like we succeeded too well. And I wonder if you thought about this, what happens the unintended consequence of succeeding too well. That when the antisemitism comes up, right? There's a problem there.
• 21:51
  So I think you're bringing up an interesting point, which is a bit of a bit of nuance in what we're facing. And that is that I think that when we become integrated and then we still face hatred, I think there's almost an expectation that the hatred would somehow have stopped if once become normalized and that we almost want to be normalized to a certain extent. And when hatred then comes and says that, hey, you're not going to be outsmarting antisemitism. This thing that has existed for our people for millennia is not going to be solved with great Jews in books that somehow even within Western society, even with the advent of a Jewish nation state that somehow antisemitism is still hanging around, it's a little bit of a shock. And we do have to confront antisemitism and make clear that we too are being hated here and that that hatred has all sorts of manifestations which are in no way worse and in many respects far worse than other forms of hatred that exist today. And so we do have to put that out there. But I think we put it out there reluctantly that there was almost this hope going back a generation that really never again would be never again. That somehow if we educated everyone about the Holocaust, if we put out enough books that said, hey, the Jews are not less than that, we are just like everybody else who do contribute to this world and they would stop hating us, it hasn't worked.
• 23:40
  So in a sense that what you're saying is that we try to not be another and we'll always be another. And that is I'm okay with that though, right? I'm okay with always being an other, right? Because I think that every group is always an other. We're always an other to somebody else. And you might be the dominant, but you are often a minority in something, right? If you say to yourself, who are the Muslims in the world? Well, they're a minority of the global population. Christians are a minority in certain societies. Jews are a minority in a lot of other societies. And the fact remains that the hatred is not I mean, there is a particular antisemitism that's there, but the problem that needs to be fixed is hating other minorities or others in any given society. And that that's not a distinctly Jewish problem. That's just a problem that society has.
• 24:33
  You're suggesting that antisemitism is one type of hatred among other hatreds.
• 24:38
  Yeah, I sort of do think that. And I'm not sure that there is a uniqueness that groups that hate other groups will always be finding minorities to hate. And it didn't work as you said. And I agree that it doesn't work to normalize to say that we're going to be as part of this dominant culture, because you're always going to be another and there always will be others in society. We don't look for like a hegemonic group of people in this world. We look to and we celebrate diversity. Right? You might be from New Jersey, you're back in New Jersey, but you have to remember that we believe in the multicultural aspects of our society in Canada, not the melting pot aspects of society. In order to celebrate multiculturalism, though, you have to be willing to accept others and that antisemitism is just one hatred amongst many. Yeah.
• 25:30
  So I would just add that the history of Western society and you might say the hopefulness of generations ago. The thing is, in the John Lennon song Imagine, there was sort of this hopefulness that eventually difference could disagree, disappear and that whatever otherness there was would not have to lead to division and hatred and the society that in which we live. It's almost reached a point where, like, you're saying that there's always going to be this otherness in one way or another. And that's something which is of great concern to us. But I think also on a historical level, there is something about the otherness of the Jew which is distinct among the various types of othernesses that have existed within history. And you're almost like trying to normalize antisemitism. You can't normalize the Jews that will normalize antisemitism, and that Jews are no different or antisemitism is no difference. But even there, I think that there's something about just how antisemitism finds a way to morph, even this morph from from less than antisemitism, more than antisemitism. It's just there's something about this thing that is almost beyond beyond other stories. And if I'm going to put like sort of a religious layer onto this we are the Shabbat after Shabbat Zakhar, and we are right after poor. But you might say that there's something metaphysical about antisemitism in terms of whenever a group or any person tries to disturb an equilibrium, there's going to also be a reaction against it. And that when the Jews come into the world and we are here to do something, we're not just here to be like everybody else, that when we represent the ideas of the Torah as we represent ideas of ethical monotheism and FedEx and mishpat and so on, there's going to be a reaction against that. And you might say that antisemitism is that reaction to a certain degree. And in finding a theological way to approach this metaphysical impossibility, that somehow, whatever we do, there's no way to stop this hatred. I think that there's something hopeful in recognizing that it's a function of who we are in a way that validates our mission in a way that again, once again differentiates us from within the human story.
• 28:18
  So first of all, I loved your article. It was really interesting. And the way that Jews in has a tendency to claim as Jews anybody with even a really tenuous connection to Jewishness and more specifically to kind of claim anybody an antisemite would consider a Jew. And not to think about whether people are not even just Holocaustically Jewish, but whether they consider themselves Jewish in any way, shape or form. And this came up fairly recently in the last couple of years when the forward claimed Ella Emhoff as a Jew. And then she or her representative said something like, no, actually, she's not Jewish. Her father is Jewish, but she does not consider herself to be Jewish. And he only apparently got involved in his Jewishness when she was no longer living in the same home as he was. So I was just wondering whether how much there is or should be a shift away from that way of defining Jewishness within the Jewish community.
• 29:20
  If you get Hand that's a great question. And I think there's a whole, I guess, a cultural piece both internal to our community and also outside our community where people try to claim Jews or to take on a certain story to legitimize who we are.
• 29:44
  There's a website actually I don't know if you know about this. It's a website called Isjewish.com. And I discovered this recently, and you can type in somebody's name and they just tell you. And I don't think it's exhaustive or comprehensive, but it's like they just tell you, is this person Jewish or not? Based on liberal Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, which parent is Jewish, which parent is not? And it falls into very much exactly what we're saying here.
• 30:06
  Adam Stanler Hanukkah song.
• 30:08
  Right, exactly.
• 30:09
  That whole thing. We have to ask, why do we do this? Why do we play that game? Why is that something which is so important to us? And I think that comes back to a certain degree to our desire to claim people as being part of the US. And in being able to pick out the various stars of this world and say, well, they're one of us, well that makes for us that much bigger and makes them much feel more special. But I wonder the degree to which this is a thing in this upcoming generation. I very much think that in past generations the idea of claiming Jews off of waivers to utilize the sports metaphor was something that was very, very important. But I think that the trend which I'm finding in the lack of publication of the whole Jews in genre, I think we're going to find something similar when it comes to this claiming Jews off waivers phenomenon as well, that there's going to become less of a need for us to be playing that game. I don't think the game means as much as it once did. And I think also, as I mentioned in the article, there's a certain problem to playing the game only one way when you're only looking for people on the up and you're not taking claims to responsibility for them on the way down. Because there are plenty of Jews who've done horrible things and the degree to which we as a community take ownership for our criminals and I'm not talking about the Jewish gangsters that somehow being a gangster is somehow not a problem in today's ethics, but I mean, like the real problematic people.
• 31:59
  I did have a question about that exactly because I thought that was so interesting, the idea of that you can't take credit for the good Jews without sort of taking blame for the bad ones. But I was wondering when people take credit for Jewish success, do you think in like this Jews in type of framework there's any implication that their Jewish identity, values, past background, whatever played a role in their success? Or do you think it's just sort of like coincidence? You know what I mean? Because what you're writing about in terms of Jews who have acted badly, it's like sort of where did we like a where did we go wrong kind of thing. But do you think that with the Jewish success there's a where did we go right? Or do you think it's just kind of like isn't it neat that this person's great great grandfather was Jewish and they have a Jewish last name?
• 32:47
  I think it's a combination. I think for each person it's different. I think that a lot of people isn't that cute? I think that there's a lot of our identity which comes from collective Lincoln. And so if a person feels that their Jewish identity is somehow a signal of being less than. So if you see a great Jew do great things like winning Nobel Prizes or winning MVP awards, whatever that might be, you feel like, okay, I'm up in the world. But even like in subcommunities that this also plays out the phenomenon around the Yu basketball team last year and then winning all those 50 games in a row, whatever it was, even within the modern Orthodox world, there was a certain feeling of, okay, now we can play basketball, too.
• 33:39
  Well, that's what I just one quick question. Do you think it's different if it's in something like sports, where there's a stereotype that Jews would not be in it, versus something like Nobel Prize winning, where I think the stereotype at this point would be the Jews are overrepresented or represented beyond our numbers, or whatever in that. Do you think it matters? Because I'm also thinking that Phoebe's dancing around the fact that there's no book called Great Jews in Business. Well, no, that is literally my notes. Okay, so literally, you're going to laugh, but literally, my note to myself for this very interview was that you don't ever see a list, like, in a Jewish publication. In other contexts, you would of like, Jewish bankers. Right. You do not see top Jews in banking as like something a Jewish publication. Now, an antisemitic person might make such a list and publicize that, but that would not be so. Yeah, that was yes, avi. Exactly. Great minds. I always think about the quote from Bengurion that Israel is never going to really be a real nation, not just until we have the Jewish this and the Jewish that, and then he quotes the Jewish thieves and the Jewish prostitutes, right. That's when we'll know we'll have a Jewish nation. And when you bring in this idea of misdeeds, you stop and think for a second, why shouldn't we own this fact? If we want it to be normalized, if we really want it to be part of general society, we should say, of course we have criminals. Our criminals are the best criminals. Right? And yet we shy away from that. Of course we have criminals, but we don't say that because we have shame. Right. And it goes deeply to this sort of pride and shame in who we are as a nation. And I think that that's not just rational and being able to say more than or less than I think that that goes really to like familial roots, where you don't want to talk about the brother that did something wrong, but you rarely want to write them out. Isn't there that expression like Ashanda for the Goib? Is this not an expression? Sure. Yeah. There you go.
• 35:47
  The construction of identity and how each of us makes our own self, utilizing Judaism as one ingredient in terms of how we bring that in. And we want that Judaism to have a certain color and have a certain meaning, to, for our own purposes, that I should feel a certain pride, a certain sense of I'm a good person, and the degree to which we whitewash that identity by only including in that concept of my Judaism, only the the heroes and not the villains. I think that's that's a bit of a challenge. And now I was sharing this idea with the group a couple of weeks ago, and some of Mr. Hannon said, but great Jewish criminals or not so great Jewish criminals is not going to sell them any books because people don't.
• 36:45
  I don't know about that. There's several people that have made large careers writing about Jewish criminals, but like, the Swashbuckling gangster of your is different from the Bernie Madoff. Right. Exactly. There's distance enough that you could kind of have a bit of glamour to it as versus just pain.
• 37:03
  Exactly. And I think that's really a problem of our literature in that we have been so much on the defensive for so long. I think we've lost some of that Isaiah Jeremiah skill, the ability to really bring out our failures and to have communal conversations about that. Because I think that there is a certain piece here of collective identity that we all have to own together, and we have to be able to say, gee, how's our brand doing? And we sort of just say, like, don't talk about Bruno. Don't talk about Bruno. I don't want to hear about Bruno.
• 37:44
  I hear, but I actually think it's different. I think that the criminals of yours, the Swashbuckling, as you said, Phoebe, the, the gangsters of the 30s, there was a lot from what I've read, there was a lot of pride in their Jewishness they were even at the time, and people loved the SEC. Of course. Lansky. He's a Jew. He's one of our people. But Lansky himself took pride in his Jewishness and had a lot of Jewish identity around what he was doing. He was the kind of guy that felt like he could be a criminal and still go to Schul. And nowadays, the Madoffs and the other criminal and the Epstein, first of all, not only are they sometimes directly doing significant harm to the Jewish community, they have so little to do with the Jewish community that they're, Madoff, have more to do with Epstein. Maybe, but I think Madoff was pretty not nicely. Oh, sure, I'm saying he embezzled directly, but he wasn't a Shillgoer. People didn't think of him as this like, hey, we're going to, you know, we're going to make you the person of the year for this synagogue or the museum or whatever, the Jewish Museum. Nobody was calling him up like this for his philanthropy, for his Judaism in that way and that that is a significant distinction between the Jews on the way down in today's society. What do you think? If you think that this is not necessarily the right way to work on antisemitism and deal with our identity, what should we be thinking in terms of the future? What would be the ideal sets of books to give bar and Bot mitzvah girls? And what's the way to combat antisemitism within identity? Thinking about it in the context of these things in your framing, I think.
• 39:22
  That we do need a certain Jeremiah Isaiah type literature that's going to ask hard questions about what it is that we're not doing well. And again, I'm not sure whether the booksellers are going to be publishing such books because I'm not sure what the market is for introspection. But we do have a very long legacy of self critical works, and I think that very often we're not prepared to write these works because we're so embattled. We always feel like to have that type of introspection puts us at risk. But with a long historical lens, I would question when has it ever been better to ask these sorts of questions? When have we had it so good that we're able to think self critically and to engage in conversations about how it is that we behave relative to one another, relative to gentiles? And this is a conversation worth having internal to Canada, to the United States, to Israel. These are important questions to be bringing up and to have a framework by which we're able to say, gee, even if we're not on the top level criminals on these things, how are we doing with making the world a better place? Is that something that we really are doing? Or we just say that we're doing that and it doesn't really pan out? And is our performance living up to our publicity?
• 41:01
  What about Jewish mediocrities? Because I feel like they're really impressive Jews, and then there are really evil Jews, but there are also I almost wonder if, like, one way of pushing back against antisemitism that you actually do see is when somebody will talk about Jews and money and somebody will be like, I wish that's kind of a thing, though. And I almost wonder if that's some of something that people already use and maybe could use. But then that also has its downsides. You don't want to say nobody wants to call themselves mediocre, but there are Jews doing everything, including nothing particular. I'll be the first one to say, I'm plenty mediocre. I'm right there with you, Avi. I'm right there with you. We the podcasters will stand up for the mediocre Jews. Absolutely.
• 41:53
  I think that in this whole typology of the great Jews in who are the buyers of these books? Obviously it's not by Mitzvah Gifts, by.
• 42:01
  Mitzvah Gifts for Jews 90% who will.
• 42:04
  Likely one day be mediocre on whatever level. Now. I think, in a person's self perception. The whole celebrity culture in which we're all swimming often means that there's something of great psychological difficulty in accepting the mediocrity in some way and that it would be great if we stopped talking about one another as leaders and started talking about one another as just as, like, souls and people and so on. And I think that the culture of you're going to save the world, every Bar Mitzvah, somehow you're going to change everything. You're going to be a leader. I'm not sure how healthy that is. I think that it's much better to be able to convey to our children and to ourselves that we each have the capacity to do good and to do bad. That's a critical piece in our communal self perception to really take stock and ask ourselves, after 30 years or 25 years of a tikkun olam narrative, how have we done to collectively on that point? I'm not sure how statistically to go about tracking that sort of thing, but I think that you can write a couple of good articles with some good anecdotes and talk to various people about how it's going. I'm not so sure that we're going to come out so swimmingly on that.
• 43:30
  One the real way to do it. And actually this is a colleague of ours, Avi Orlo. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He's very involved in the world of Jewish camp and he has a few really excellent essays on his website about Jewish followership and that we've spent so much time and really probably millions of dollars at this point on Jewish leadership institutes and Jewish leadership and how you can be the next Jewish leaders. And we're not training people that, you know what, there are many, many more followers than there are leaders and you have to be a good follower before you can even think about being a good leader.
• 44:00
  I think we do have good Jewish followers out there. I think that often they don't get the attention that they deserve. And I think that I often see this in terms of presiding at funerals and hearing the stories of rank and file Jews who just do good and not everyone's going to be an influencer and you're going to have plenty of meeting in life. And I think I say the primary meaning of life comes from those simple relationships where you're able to put in a good word, pick up someone's day with a smile and just help pick people up. And I think that we do share those messages, but we often know we don't share them at perhaps at Bar and bought mitzvahs then I certainly hear them at funerals. And those messages really are valuable to be able to say to people that you can live a good life without having millions of followers. It works.
• 44:54
  I think that's a beautiful statement to end on. Heimstrackler the rabbi at Rnadi Stral in tneck, New Jersey, just wrote a piece in Tradition magazine about Jews in and thank you, Climb, for coming on and you're welcome back any time. Thank you so much. This was great, obviously.
• 45:11
  Thank you.
• 45:11
  Will you stick around and give us a Knock US of the week?
• 45:13
  Sure.
• 45:17
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• 46:01
  So I want to begin by just saying that around my Chavez table, I've created a little Minhug. Typically, rapids don't try to create new minhage game, but this is for a family culture sort of thing. We go around the table every Friday nights right before Kittish, and we ask everyone, what are you thankful for that happened this week? So I'm not sure it's necessarily a nahas point, but I think that it certainly reflects something of great importance in terms of the importance of gratitude, about feeling, not taking things for granted. So in thinking about what I'm going to be sharing around my table this Friday night, I say that I get a lot of knockets from my people, from my community, and it comes through it in all sorts of different ways. And so I had great nakas on perm, just being there out of my kidneys, perm hagea and seeing the smiles on people's faces, seeing how they interacted with one another, being able to really be Miss Samaya as a community. And I think that for me, as a rabbi, you get nakas in a slightly different way than Rank and File, but I think rank and filming also from us too, being able to be a part of a healthy environment where people just make each other smile, make each other feel good in a certain togetherness. And those feelings come quite often, but often I think we sort of pass over them very quickly as we try to muscle in for that little kiddish schnitzel or the bomb bar or whatever is there on the table. But to be able to step back into, to feel the room, to feel the noise, to feel the the energy of people just living Judaism together, that that's my Najas.
• 47:55
  Beautiful. Thank you. My NHS this week is very simple. I found a piece of Judaica that is going to be fun. We are thinking already poor is behind us, the Seder is ahead of us. Those of you who have been listening for a while, I'm not sure if you heard this TV before, but I've mentioned this in the past. I do have a thing for very complicated puzzles, like just jigsaw puzzles, which started in the pandemic and I just didn't want any ordinary ones. I was starting to find the really like, hard, difficult ones. There's a Judaica company that does these, like, very cheesy chintzy Judaica like, especially around passover where they put print matsa on everything, like matza tablecloth, matza ties, matza one piece bathing suit, like stuff like that. But they made a 1000 piece matza puzzle. That sounds so cool. I imagine it's going to be insanely difficult. But I'm up for the challenge and I will report back because it is ordered and it is on its way and when it is done, we will have to clock in. It might be not before Russia Shana, but there's 1000 mini pieces of Matza and we have to put them together. That is fantastic. And I'm feeling very inspired to go out and order the exact same thing. And have we should have a race. Yes, the great master puzzle race. Don't open yours until we both have them in touch in that we'll report back to everybody. That sounds amazing. Phoebe, what's your knockouts this week? So. Mine is a New Yorker article by Rachel Aviv called Agnes Callard's Marriage of the oh, my God. I read this. Okay. I have so many Jewish, apparently Agnes collard. So we are on topic here. I'm sorry, I cannot make her Canadian as well. I do not have that power vested in me. Oh, my goodness. Right? It is everything. Tell everybody that Nakas first and then we can yes. I suggest reading this article. It's about a philosophy professor and her husband and then her new husband and they all live together and she has interesting notions and it's just a heck of a ride, that article. Maybe you would have to read it for yourself to get the full picture. But basically it's about the state of marriage today, perhaps as viewed by somebody with both very idiosyncratic and also very sort of if she were a man, this would maybe none of it be surprising. Well, yeah. So I found it fascinating that this entire discussion ensues about this woman and her relationship and relationships and everything that happened there. And I don't want to get too into it. This is anarchist. This is not for critique. But I found the most fascinating piece of it is like how do you talk about love when you are a philosopher who is used to analyzing and being incredibly analytic about everything and then on top of that, the entire side piece of it, which is that she talked side piece is well, pussy. Yes, it is that she is autistic, which adds this other element of analytic and specific focus. But it blew my mind the entire interesting way in how do we talk about love when we analyze it and the feeling versus the analysis. Yes. I highly encourage everybody, please go read this piece. So we both encourage both navas. What's plural of novice? Navas I believe. Yeah. Thank you. This has been a great show as always, Phoebe. Thanks, Avi. Thank you for listening to Bourgeohi for the week ending March 11. Shabbat parashat Kitisa. The show is produced and edited by Zach kaufman. The executive producer for CJN Podcast is Michael Freeman. Our music is by so called we are a project of the Jewish Living Lab and are distributed by the CJN Podcast Network. You can listen to all our past episodes on our page at the CJN Cabonger, and you can subscribe to the podcast and automatically receive all episodes on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love it if you told a friend about Bonjour Hi. It's one of the best ways we get new listeners. As always, you can email us with comments at bonjour at the CJN CA. I'm avi fongold. And I'm CJ malt bobby.