Latest / In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch / Bari Weiss and Nellie Bowles

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Bari Weiss and Nellie Bowles · In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch

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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: I am Rabbi Ammi Hirsch of the Stephen Wise
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Free Synagogue in New York, and you're listening to In These Times.
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Last month at our synagogue's Spring Benefit, we honored Bari Weiss and Nellie
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Bowles with our Light of Freedom Award.
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Bari and Nellie who founded the Free Press, have made prodigious contributions
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to journalism and to a free and open exchange of ideas in this country.
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During the program, I sat down with Bari and Nellie to interview them about
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the free press, their Jewish journey, and several of the central challenges
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facing the American Jewish community.
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Well, this is really a fantastic honor.
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It's a little intimate conversation with some of our closest
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friends here in the synagogue.
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What you've done is amazing.
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I want to ask you first about the media.
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Empire that you have or are about to establish or are
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establishing the free press.
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I hope everybody, uh, has a chance to read the free press.
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You should be,
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you should be receiving it.
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We're, I love this room.
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This is very, we're turning this into a subscription drive.
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It's a fabulous contribution of course, to Jewish discourse,
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but to American society as well.
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Um, both of you left the New York Times.
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I don't think you originally thought that you would establish something as
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immense as the free press, but can you tell us about the circumstances of your
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leaving the New York Times and how that led you to establishing the free press?
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BARI WEISS: One thing I should say from the start is that we
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never would've met had it not been for the New York Times, so.
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For that, I will always be grateful to Ag g Sulzberger and his family for
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introducing me to my wife, and I would say like the greatest addition to
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the Jewish people since Ruth herself,
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NELLIE BOWLES: but also the New York Times, refusing to cover
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all of the interesting stories in the most interesting time, really
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created a market opportunity.
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Exactly.
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So we owe them a really a debt.
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: Nellie was already at the New York
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Times when you arrived, right?
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BARI WEISS: Nellie was at the New York.
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Okay.
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So for those of you who have no idea who we are, the TLDR as the kids
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say is, uh, I was working on the opinion desk of the New York Times.
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Nellie was, I think it's very fair to say like the golden girl, beloved
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by everyone at the newspaper, San Francisco lesbian, and with the
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politics that go along with that.
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And I was already hated from day one.
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Why It took me a long time to realize this, but it was Israel like pretty
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plain and simple, and to make a very long, complicated, but in a way, not
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complicated story short, because it's really one of the major stories of
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our epoch is that the mission that the New York Times claim to be pursuing
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was not at all the mission that it.
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Was pursuing at the time that we were there.
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In other words, the idea of pursuing the truth, holding up a mirror to the
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world as it actually is, and trying to reflect it back to people so they can
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make practical decisions about where to live and who they should be taxes to, and
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who they should vote for, and where they should send their kids to school that had
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been sort of quietly, subtly insidiously replaced with a different mission, and
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that mission was about ushering readers to the correct political conclusion.
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We each.
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Encountered this ideology in our own ways.
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Perhaps Nellie will tell stories about the kinds of reporting
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she was doing that ended up sort of not seeing the light of day.
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We each had our own moments, but the upshot of it was we both had gotten into
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journalism because we are chutzpadik people that like to pursue our curiosity
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and the idea that you can get paid.
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To go and talk to strangers and then report back to the public.
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What you find is like an unbelievable thing.
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The idea that we could get paid for that I think still astonishes us to this day.
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And you know, I ended up leaving in the summer of 2020.
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I. In the aftermath of, you know, a very hot summer politically, and in the
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aftermath of this decision to publish an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton, and
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again, to make a long story short, I was sort of bumping into walls, drinking
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at 4:00 PM telling Nellie that anything short of becoming the next Rupert
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Murdoch was not gonna be enough for me, and I needed to extract my vengeance.
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NELLIE BOWLES: I thought you should become a rabbi.
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I I was suggesting that at that time, go study.
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And,
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: but they, they did hire you and they
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knew, they knew your background.
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They knew your views.
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Yeah.
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They knew it was to the right of many of the journalists and the
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opinion, well, I was the most right
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BARI WEISS: wing person at the New York Times, which is to say
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on like a Scoop Jackson Democrat.
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: So why did they hire you in the first place
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if they had a very specific.
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Agenda that they wanted to push
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BARI WEISS: because after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and everyone in
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this room will remember the needle that night, everyone remembers the needle.
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You're all triggered when I say that word that told us that Hillary
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Clinton was gonna win by 99.8% certainty, there was a brief moment
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of reflection even at the New York Times of how did we get this so wrong?
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How did we, the paper that's supposed to be the most important newspaper in
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the country get the biggest political story of the 21st century so far,
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so unbelievably wrong, and I'll be blunt, I was a diversity hire.
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I mean, I might not look like it, but I was intentionally brought
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in to bring in sort of heterodox.
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Independent and gasp conservative views to an opinion page that would not otherwise
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know where to look for those stories.
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And they did a damn good job of it.
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So the problem wasn't the pieces I was bringing in and, and
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frankly, the problem wasn't even really at the top of the paper.
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There was cowardice at the top of the paper ultimately, but
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they wanted what I was doing.
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The problem were the colleagues around us and that was very
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much, and I think this is a great place for Nellie to come in like.
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Just tell the story if you would, just about Kenosha what happened
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when you went and reported on that story as a business journalist.
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'cause I think it kind of summarizes the whole, the whole everything.
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Yeah, I just,
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: just say Nellie, you, you were a star
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reporter for the New York Times.
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Like you, you were like this kind of debutante that came from San
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Francisco and it was going great.
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And then I met Bari Wise,
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BARI WEISS: I, and I will say when we got together, I said, this is
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going to be so bad for your career.
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And she looked at me, she was like, whatcha talking about like nothing
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bad had ever happened to her.
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And then everything happened exactly as I said this.
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Her roast,
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NELLIE BOWLES: no.
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Basically in 2020, the realm of things that you could report on was starting
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to get tighter and tighter and kind of the, the rules around what was
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considered kosher to be curious about were getting tighter and tighter.
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And so when the riots were happening, I was a business reporter and I
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wanted to go to Kenosha to see.
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The businesses that had been burned down and kind of report on the build back.
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And when I went there, what I realized was that actually the
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wealthy white neighborhood had not been burned down at all.
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Those businesses were fine.
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They had a business association that boarded everything up and it was the
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poor minority business district that had a bunch of like cell phone shops
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and stuff that had been burned down.
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So I, I reported the story out and they were all totally underinsured
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and so couldn't really be rebuild.
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And we were at the time being told that basically these.
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These riots were victimless that everyone had insurance, that that
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property destruction is not violence and and shouldn't be thought of as such.
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And that was being promoted by one of the top reporters at the time.
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And anyways, when I came back with that story, I. I, I basically hit a wall with
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it where I was told it it wouldn't be able to run until after the election.
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It was all of a sudden kind of this verboten topic to talk about, like
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all of my stories before had sailed through and then all of a sudden
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anything I wrote that was critical of the moment or that was documenting
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that moment, it became impossible.
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And then people were just being jerks about it and leaking my
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story list to New York Magazine and making fun of me, and it was just.
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It was like a crazy, like stassy time in all of Media New York Times, and
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our experience is not at all specific.
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It was the entire media ecosystem of New York went absolutely
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mad for a couple years,
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BARI WEISS: and I don't even think it's the story of the media.
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I think it's the story of just so many elite institutions in American life.
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It was like Harvard, you know?
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It was all of these places that we assumed huge to a certain set of values.
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Betrayed them and in some cases very publicly and in other cases, more subtly.
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The reason I think that story is important though, is I think a lot of Jews,
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especially that read the New York Times.
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And C, its bias against Israel and its blind spots to our
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community and our concerns.
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Imagine that there's, at least my dad imagines this, that there's some
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like secret cabal meeting where they talk about these sorts of topics.
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But really a huge aspect to the way the bias itself plays out is just the things
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you're not allowed to be curious about.
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And a lot of times those are the things that are politically inconvenient.
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: So there, it's like if you want to control the narrative, I guess
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there are two main ways of doing that.
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One is to present stories in a certain specific ideological way, and the second
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is not to report on stories at all.
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Exactly.
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NELLIE BOWLES: That's the key.
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It's the, that the facts that you read are probably accurate, but the things that
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reporters are allowed to be curious about.
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And what is uncovered, that's where kind of the bias comes in.
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And also when it comes to Israel and Jewish issues, the facts probably aren't
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even accurate in the story you're reading.
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: So would you say that, would both of you say,
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is it fair to say that you felt canceled at the New York Times?
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NELLIE BOWLES: I
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: didn't feel it.
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NELLIE BOWLES: And I think basically you self deported.
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You wrote your I self canceled, very self canceled, which is a really good way
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BARI WEISS: to go.
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NELLIE BOWLES: And then.
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You started the substack and you started writing and it
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started getting subscribers.
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And so, and, and I was still at the Times thinking, I'm, I'm gonna
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like, like white knuckle through this, this moment will pass.
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My bosses were really great and they were saying like, we're
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so sorry this is happening.
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We don't know what to do, but like, we're gonna figure it out.
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And the Substack started growing and it was making their salary and then
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it was making twice your salary.
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And I was kind of like.
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Uh, this seems like fun.
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And so part of this is a story of like the institution was getting toxic and
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the moment was toxic, but also all of a sudden we had these tools to build
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something new that was exciting and positive and fun and like the future.
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BARI WEISS: And I think that's one of the great stories of this moment.
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Like if one of the tragedies.
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And I think one maybe that a lot of people in our community are understandably
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still mourning, which is the loss of all of these institutions and frankly,
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just more generally like cultural morays that we took for granted.
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The positive story and the one that we try and really focus on, we never even
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think about the New York Times anymore.
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The, the positive story is the fact that this is a moment for builders.
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This is a moment for, and, and I think.
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People in the Jewish community are incredibly adep at building because we've
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had to do it for our entire history.
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This is a moment for that.
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And you know, neither of us are entrepreneurs.
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Neither of us imagine that we would do anything like this.
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And now we have a company and we have 55 people working for us, having never
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managed either of us, anyone in our lives.
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And I, I emphasize that only because.
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I, I emphasize that only because you in your own ways, especially
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maybe the younger people may not think of yourselves as being
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capable of starting something new.
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And like we are middle-aged moms that have a nine month old and a two
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and a half year old, and we did it knowing nothing about how to do it.
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And I, I really like to emphasize that because I think it's.
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An important thing to be clear about with people that like, there's a sense
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of like, who am I to do something?
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Ugh, we'll just keep our head down.
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We'll just go along with this thing that we kind of know is bad
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because could we start a new school?
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Could we start a new synagogue?
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Could we start a new art museum?
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Could we start a new nonprofit?
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Could we start a new publishing house?
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And the answer is yes to all of those things.
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We're just doing it in the area that we know how to do it in.
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But I think the broader message in American Jewish life right now is
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that we need all of those things to be built and maybe some of the
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people that are gonna start those things are in this room right now.
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: Just before we move on to just, if you could just tell us
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what is distinctive about the Free Press?
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What idea is it dedicated to and how is it distinctive?
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How does it differ from other media outlets?
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NELLIE BOWLES: I think I'm gonna butcher our slogan, but it's something like the,
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the fearlessness of the new world paired with these standards of the old world.
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So our first hire was a fact checker.
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Like it's the idea that we're going to report on things that led legacy media
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ignores or downplays, but we're going to bring still the legacy standards
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and the quality you would expect.
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Whereas I think in the, in a lot of the like wild world of Substack and various
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blogs, you won't find that pairing.
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So that's what we try to do.
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BARI WEISS: I think the other part of what makes us distinctive is
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we are unapologetic in our values.
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We believe in the American project and the goodness of America
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and the goodness of the West.
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And everyone that works at the free press signs onto that as one of our values.
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And we think that that is non-controversial and in fact
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essential because without a belief in the American project and a.
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Sense of duty to defend it.
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There wouldn't be a free press at all.
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There wouldn't be a business at all.
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None of our lives would be possible, and I think that the fact that that feels maybe
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radical to certain people in this moment says so much more about the state of the
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rest of the press than it says about us.
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I would say the other thing that makes us really unique
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is the makeup of our newsroom.
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We took a straw poll two weeks before the election, and this is,
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I guarantee you, it is the only newsroom in the country like this.
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A third of people voted for Kamala.
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A third of people voted for Trump and a third of people didn't vote.
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What does that mean?
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It means that a newsroom that is trying to reflect.
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The world as it actually is, reflects the country as it actually is.
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And we're incredibly proud of that.
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And I would say in a moment where everyone's getting more and more
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balkanized and in like these tiny little narrow niches where everyone
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agrees with them, we're trying to do something that didn't used to be radical
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in this country, which is showing that you can disagree with people.
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And still like them, showing that you can actually hear the strongest perspective
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from someone you don't agree with, but come away more educated because you heard
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the strongest version of the argument.
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NELLIE BOWLES: I was terrified when, when we did that poll.
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I thought it was gonna be entirely RFK write-ins.
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I was like, these freaks.
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It's gonna be, this is Maha.
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This is a Maha scene.
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: I wanna ask you about turning to Nellie.
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I, when we spoke last week, I told you that I. I personally as a rabbi, I never
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mentioned to people who have converted to Judaism that they converted to
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Judaism because that's the insistence of Jewish tradition, that you never remind
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somebody that they weren't born Jewish.
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But you said, well, I write about it all the time and I have something to add.
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So I said.
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You know, the, the only distinction that a convert can't do that a born Jew
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can do is be a high priest or a king, neither of which you really want to do.
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NELLIE BOWLES: When I found out about the cohans, I was,
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BARI WEISS: she was disgusted that she married just a normal Israelite.
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Well, I
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NELLIE BOWLES: said, well, I, I said, bear, do you have any of these, uh,
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any, you know, whatever, whatever.
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And bear was like, no, I'm an Israelite.
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And I was like,
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: anyway, Nellie.
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So since you insisted that I ask you about.
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Your conversion.
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You actually have written about it very eloquently.
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So could you, could you just share a little bit of that story?
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NELLIE BOWLES: Yeah, I, um, I kept a blog chosen by choice
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during my conversion journey.
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I think I, I wanted you to bring it up only because I
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think, I think it's really cool.
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Like, I, I am really proud of having converted and I'm really, I think thank
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you and, and there's sort of a way in which it's like, I know it's out of
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respect to not bring it up and all that.
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But in American Jewish life, in non-Orthodox American
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Jewish life, something like 80% of people marry non-Jews.
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So if there is a desire for continuity, then there needs to be a conversation
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about conversion and about opening up Judaism to these families.
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And, and it's not even to argue that it should be an easier process or
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anything like that, or that it should be somehow very fast or anything.
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And I actually think having it be slow and and hard is.
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Good.
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It's just that it should be talked about and like celebrated as a conversation
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that it's an okay conversation to bring up and, and then it should
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maybe be a little more transparent about how to do it and how it works.
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But anyways, I just always think it's really interesting to talk about and
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bring up, but it kind of makes people a little uncomfortable too, which I
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try at dinners to say things like.
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Have you thought about converting your wife and, and people look at me like I
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just said something really inappropriate.
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Which, which is, which is why I like to keep bringing it up.
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BARI WEISS: Ne Nellie's business after the free press, if there
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ever will be one she told me is to become like an Evangelical Jew.
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And I actually think it's a very good business idea.
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I mean, I will say like our entire orientation as parents is toward that.
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That like everything we do is about, and they're very, very young.
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But everything is about how do we give them a positive experience
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of what it is to be a Jew?
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How do we make them proud to be Jews?
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How do we, you know, end the day with the sheam?
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Begin it with mo de like in everything we do, we're thinking about it.
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And like Judaism is not an easy thing to transfer.
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Like the transmission of Judaism is very intentional and requires a lot
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of investment, like of time, of money.
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I mean, that's a whole nother thing.
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We could talk about the i, the, the, the, the No really the, the idea that the al
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NELLIE BOWLES: tuition, yeah.
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BARI WEISS: The idea that Jewish Day School costs what it does in a community
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like ours where there's so much capital.
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I do believe it's like one of the great scandals, don't get
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NELLIE BOWLES: me started our road tuition,
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BARI WEISS: but, but I, but I think that, um.
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Wow.
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Mom's
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NELLIE BOWLES: here.
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No, the motive is, guys, it's out of control.
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BARI WEISS: But I, but I think that like, it's not a guarantee that your
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children are going to just like Judaism.
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It's not like oxygen.
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It's countercultural in very profound ways, and not just
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because we live in a world that is increasingly hostile toward us.
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: What do you mean?
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Could give us a couple of examples of what do you, so you're gonna choose
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BARI WEISS: Judaism.
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You're not gonna choose something that's hard on its own.
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: Give us one or two examples of what
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you mean by counter-cultural.
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BARI WEISS: Judaism resists, I would say political extremes at its best.
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Judaism is based on a kind of like dialectical ongoing questioning and
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conversation In that way, I think it is very counter-cultural in this moment.
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I think Judaism is based, I mean a belief in.
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Chosenness feels very countercultural, whatever that means.
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Um, a belief both in the supreme importance and dignity of the
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individual, but also in a kind of communitarianism, is very countercultural.
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The idea that, you know, you don't need to be born a Jew, that Judaism is not a
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race or an ethnicity, it is a peoplehood.
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That is a category that in its.
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Very essence is counter-cultural in this moment, and I think at its best, Judaism
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resists a lot of the idolatry, if I can say that, of worshiping, whether it's
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prestige or money or any other thing that is very normalized in this moment,
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and I think that a lot of that's lost.
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You know, people think that Judaism is kind of like whatever they want it to be.
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Like it's Judaism is just tikun Olam, or it's just social justice.
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Those things are great, but that's just one piece of what Judaism is.
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And I do think that if looked at in a whole way, Judaism can really offer the
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most like, effective, wise, profound tools for how to be in a moment where.
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You know, all of those other things are happening.
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RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: So are we doing a good job in transmitting
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that to younger generations?
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And what should we be doing that we're not doing?
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BARI WEISS: This is just me, and maybe this is just a, you know, I'm 41.
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This might just be the way, what was happening in college, et
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cetera, when I was growing up.
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But I think that there was an attempt.
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A sincere and well-intentioned attempt on the part of a lot of Jewish leaders
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to make Judaism just progressive politics with a little bit of Hebrew slapped onto
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it, or to make Judaism just like easy for people, as if that was the thing that was
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going to work and attract young people.
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And it's like, why would I choose a sin?
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Like if I can go to Burning Man and it's like amazing.
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And this spiritual experience, why would I. Choose like Judaism over that,
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or if I can go to a climate change.
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To
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NELLIE BOWLES: be clear, bear has never been to Burning Man, but
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BARI WEISS: she has, and I know she loved it.
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I'm like the straightest person though.
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I've never done a drug.
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But my point is only like there's better versions of that.
21:52
There's better versions of environmental justice.
21:54
There's better versions of Pro-Choice, there's better versions of Burning Man.
21:57
There's better versions of all of that stuff.
21:59
And if Judaism is just a watered down version of a thing that
22:03
already exists in the world.
22:05
Why is that ever gonna attract people?
22:07
How do we attract people?
22:09
It's very counterintuitive.
22:10
It's to be more authentically Jewish.
22:14
That's actually the, to me, the secret because that is
22:22
like, that's the thing that has lasted for thousands of years.
22:26
And I find, and, and this is like one of the like green shoots of this moment,
22:31
that when people encounter that thing.
22:35
Young people.
22:36
They're profoundly drawn to it.
22:38
And we know more and more people that are coming back to Jewish life right now.
22:44
And they're coming back to as a result of traditional Jewish or now do you
22:49
think it's 'cause of October 7th?
22:50
They're a bigger thing than that?
22:53
NELLIE BOWLES: I think it's both.
22:54
I think October 7th for sure, but I think also you see it
22:58
in the, like the, you know.
22:59
Appeal of Catholicism right now to the young people.
23:01
There's a, there's return to religion as a practice, not like spiritual, like I
23:07
think the era of like spirituality and.
23:10
Like I'm, I'm spiritual, but not religious.
23:12
Now more and more young people are religious, less spiritual,
23:16
but, but I think October 7th is what tipped it, I think October
23:19
7th for a lot of our friends.
23:20
BARI WEISS: Yeah, for a lot of our friends.
23:21
But I think also having kids, and like my dad always says this, he's
23:25
like, we've got a great program, like Judaism is a great way to mark time
23:30
and to have a meaning in your family and to structure your family life and.
23:36
You know, I, I just find that that is very, very, very true.
23:40
And the deeper we get into Judaism and Jewish community, the more
23:45
into it I would say that we are.
23:53
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: I wanna ask you about some of the challenges
23:55
in the American Jewish community.
23:56
Uh.
23:57
Uh, Bari, you grew up in the tree of life, uh, synagogue in Pittsburgh, and
24:01
I heard you speak very eloquently about the pain that you experienced, and both
24:06
of you and Nellie, you're a graduate of Columbia University and Bari also.
24:10
So kind of you have these two focal points of the last, call it seven years
24:14
or so that really affected the American Jewish community and our relationship
24:20
with the non-Jewish community.
24:22
What's happening with respect to American society and American Jews?
24:26
The, uh, challenges that the American Jewish community is facing now are,
24:31
I think, unprecedented, at least since, uh, the end of World War ii.
24:36
Do you think it's more dramatic, it's more intense that anti-Jewish
24:42
animosities are deeper than they were say, 10, 20 years ago?
24:45
Or is it just our sensitivity to it?
24:51
BARI WEISS: I think the fact that we feel that it's unprecedented tells
24:55
us that we were living in a bubble.
24:58
The post-war sort of holiday from history moment, that holiday is over.
25:04
It was over before October 7th, but anyone that still believed that it wasn't.
25:08
Over has now been disabused of that reality.
25:11
And I think what's happening is that we are returning to the
25:14
mean of Jewish history in a way.
25:15
And we are having to have the tiniest, tiniest, tiniest
25:20
taste of what our ancestors.
25:23
Took as normal.
25:25
Um, there's some comfort in that, in that when you look at the
25:28
sweep of Jewish history, what we're experiencing isn't so bad.
25:31
I think we literally have a Jewish kids book that gets called.
25:34
It could always be worse.
25:35
And I think when Nellie opened that, she was like, what have I gotten myself into?
25:39
NELLIE BOWLES: Um, I, I was reading it and I was like, oh, wow.
25:41
It's just about how it could always be worse,
25:43
BARI WEISS: right?
25:43
It's like the guy has a coat and then it becomes a vest, and then in
25:46
the end it's like a single button and then he loses the button.
25:49
And that's the end of the book.
25:50
And then the book is over.
25:51
It's a very Jewish story.
25:53
Um, I say that only because it's always important to laugh about.
25:58
Uh, the terrible state of things, but also because it could always be worse.
26:02
I think what's also happening, and, and this is something that has been I
26:06
would say much, much more painful for my parents' generation than for me,
26:13
although it's been very painful for me too, was I was truly raised with this
26:18
idea that America was, and I still believe this, okay, but like immune to
26:23
antisemitism and when things happened.
26:27
Even Tree of Life, by the way.
26:29
Um, but when, like, you know, kids told me like, pick up pennies or where's your,
26:33
you know, like things that happen to kids.
26:35
My, the reaction of my parents was like, they should be so embarrassed.
26:40
Do they not know what country this is?
26:43
Like that is antithetical to what it is to be American.
26:48
I grew up in that myth, like it was almost like a two faith household
26:52
in the sense that it was completely Jewish and completely American.
26:57
And it was like a belief in Americanism and in a belief in, you know, the all,
27:02
we grew up with all of it like that Benjamin Franklin wanted the image on
27:06
the Great Seal to be Moses crossing the sea and the letter from George
27:09
Washington to the congregation in Newport.
27:12
And like that was all as much of a part of our family's ethos as like.
27:17
The Hagar and the Parsha of the week, and I think that one of the adjustments
27:23
of this moment is to understand that America's only exceptional
27:27
if our leaders and if our culture continues to believe in those ideals.
27:33
And that any culture, any country, any administration is only
27:38
human beings making a choice.
27:41
And I think that there has been a profound sense of, frankly, a loss.
27:47
Like we used to take that for granted.
27:49
We can no longer take that for granted.
27:51
Okay, that's our new reality and what are we gonna do to claw it back?
27:56
What are we gonna do to rebuild those guardrails?
27:58
How can we each do it in our own way?
28:01
And I think that's, I'll speak for me and Nellie, that that's a
28:04
thing that we are talking about.
28:06
Constantly in our life, in our professional life
28:09
and in our personal life,
28:10
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: when you were at Columbia, did, and I,
28:13
I I say Columbia because it's a mile from, uh, the synagogue and
28:17
you know, it's a New York City.
28:18
It could be symbolic or representative of a lot of elite
28:23
higher educational institutions.
28:26
October 7th in a sense, didn't necessarily create this kind of new hostility.
28:32
It uncovered, it gave license to this hostility.
28:35
Did you, when you were there, did you see any of that?
28:39
Did you sense any of that?
28:40
Did you consider that to be a barometer of the health of the United States?
28:44
NELLIE BOWLES: It's funny 'cause I, I, I was.
28:47
I think in the water of it, but kind of blind to it.
28:52
So I, I know I didn't see it, but, but Bear was also there and had
28:56
a really different experience.
28:58
So I know it was there.
28:59
I'm not gonna pretend it wasn't, but I wasn't so involved
29:01
in politics, to be honest.
29:03
Bear says this the most eloquently, I cannot add anything that's as
29:06
good as what, how she'll know.
29:08
Um, I, the only thing I add is that I find it sometimes frustrating
29:13
the conversation whenever it comes to antisemitism right now.
29:16
Is becomes kind of a debate between whether it's worse on
29:18
the right or worse on the left.
29:19
Like the conversation gets bogged down into that dichotomy.
29:23
Just like, which is it this, or is it this, is it this or this?
29:26
And it's sort of like, it doesn't matter, like it's, the point is
29:29
it's bad on both sides right now.
29:31
Bad things are happening certainly on the right, certainly on Twitter.
29:36
But also the left winging antisemitism matters enormously and like your kid
29:41
is probably more likely to encounter it when they're trying to get a job at
29:44
a gallery, which is more likely than they're trying to move to Louisiana and
29:48
work in evangelical Christian spaces.
29:50
And yeah, I think the conversation, it's just, it's frustrating that that's
29:53
where it goes instead of just like a, like a more productive place sometimes.
29:58
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: I, I want to just expand on, uh, what you just
30:02
mentioned, both of you about.
30:04
anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
30:07
What in your view is the nexus between the two?
30:10
Is anti-Zionism almost always, or always by definition, anti-Semitism.
30:17
And where is it all coming from?
30:19
It does seem much more intense as a result of October 7th.
30:22
This is the thing that I keep thinking about all the time.
30:24
You know, the worst day in the history of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
30:29
The most people murdered.
30:31
On one day and within 48 hours there were protests around
30:36
the world against the Jews.
30:39
Where, where did that come from?
30:41
Was that preexisting?
30:43
Is this animosity against Israel?
30:46
Really?
30:46
Does it harbor and betray an animosity towards Jews?
30:50
Part of that age, old centuries old hostility against our people?
30:55
Or is there something new here?
30:58
BARI WEISS: It came, well, this new version of it.
31:01
The anti-Zionism came from the Soviet, it was like the Soviets
31:04
won a posthumous victory.
31:06
People don't think of it that way, but when a young 19-year-old at Columbia
31:11
right now, and there are many of them I'm sure shouts that Zionism is racism.
31:15
Does she know that she is shouting the slogan of the Evil empire
31:19
that was destroyed long ago?
31:21
Of course not.
31:22
But that's what happened.
31:23
And I, I write about this in my book, but to make a very long story short.
31:28
A set of ideas that insisted that truth was relative, that morality was relative,
31:35
that you couldn't make a judgment and say that one culture was better than another
31:38
culture, and that to do so was racist.
31:41
They couldn't really know truth at all, and that everything was sort
31:44
of based on your lived experience.
31:46
This set of viewpoints, whether you call it post-colonialism,
31:50
post-structuralism, post nationalism, there's a lot of posts that stew of ideas.
31:59
That at one time in the late 1960s, let's say, I think we could trace
32:03
it all the way back to then, seemed like it was just a feature of a few
32:07
weird, you know, outposts at places like Columbia and Harvard and Yale.
32:13
It's like in the way that the coronavirus escaped the lab in Wuhan.
32:19
Those extraordinarily toxic, extraordinarily lethal ideas.
32:25
Not just came to subsume the entire university structure,
32:29
pretty much it came to subsume.
32:32
The culture and everything is sort of downstream of that.
32:37
And so when you go and you ask the average young person that's screaming
32:41
with a kafi, they don't think they're doing it because they hate Jews.
32:45
If they're shouting from the river to the sea, they have no idea which
32:48
river and what sea they are doing it because it has become successfully.
32:52
A plank of a kind of politically progressive worldview in which
32:58
there's any number of points of the orthodoxy and being opposed to
33:03
Israel is just one of those things.
33:06
So like, I wanna be very clear about how successful this has become when
33:11
people try and make a distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
33:15
Okay.
33:15
For like the 10 anarchists that wanna get rid of nation
33:18
states that live in Brooklyn.
33:20
Fine.
33:21
That's your exception to the rule.
33:23
And if so, I would ask you like, why are you starting with Israel?
33:25
Like maybe start with China, India, Pakistan.
33:27
It's never okay, but fine.
33:29
That would be like your one intellectually honest out.
33:32
But I would say that any sense that there was a distinction between those two
33:37
things, I think is absolutely foolish.
33:41
I think any Jews that spend any time trying to make Talmudic
33:45
distinctions between those two things have their heads up their ass.
33:49
Uh, bluntly.
33:51
I, we're not in the synagogue itself, so I can say that.
33:53
Um, but I, I would just say like wake up when people say, no, Zionists allowed.
34:00
They mean Jews.
34:02
They mean Jews.
34:03
They just mean Jews that are honorable and proud enough to say what pretty
34:08
much every Jew believes, which is of course we believe in the right
34:12
to our political sovereignty.
34:14
Like we believe in that for every other people.
34:17
Period.
34:17
End of story.
34:20
And
34:25
I mean, we've heard, we've, Nellie and I have been at all kinds of dinner
34:27
party conversations where people have all these different strategies, right?
34:31
We were at one where someone suggested we should just get rid of the word Zionist.
34:34
Like that'll do it, you know?
34:36
'cause we gotta get rid of the word because Israel exists and Zionism was
34:40
the desire to return to living of Israel.
34:42
And it exists so we can let go of it.
34:43
It's like they're gonna come up with another word.
34:46
They're gonna come up with another word, and I just feel that the most
34:52
fundamental and important thing to do in this moment is to be absolutely
34:58
unashamed and proud about who we are, about our Judaism, about our Zionism,
35:04
and make absolutely no apology.
35:07
For either of those things and anyone that wants to suggest that, that means that
35:10
we agree with everything the Netanyahu government does, or it's as absurd as
35:14
saying, I'm proud to be an American.
35:15
That means I agree with everything the Trump administration does.
35:18
Are you insane?
35:19
So I just feel that it needs to be without caveat, just.
35:27
Pride, courage, modeling that for each other, modeling that for our kids,
35:33
like to me that is the absolute table stakes for any attempt at trying to
35:40
not just roll back the antisemitism that's here, but transmission.
35:45
Like if, if the answer of like, why be Jewish is.
35:49
You know, to fight the people that hate us, or if the answer to why be
35:52
Jewish is, you know, any of these sort of defensive answers in the
35:56
negative, that's not gonna work.
35:59
It's gotta come from a much more positive.
36:02
And a place of pride.
36:03
And I know Ammi, that that's what you're doing all of the time.
36:06
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: All the time at Stephen Wise all the time.
36:13
I, I, I heard you, Nellie, I think you mentioned you were worried about
36:17
the glorification of violence that has increased in American society and
36:22
these slogans globalize the anti and.
36:25
Glory to our martyrs and Oh God.
36:27
NELLIE BOWLES: Yeah.
36:28
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: Who isn't worried about that?
36:29
Could, could you, could you elaborate on that?
36:31
What, what exactly you mean by that?
36:33
NELLIE BOWLES: Yeah, I mean, I think we're all seeing it.
36:35
You have students at American universities chanting glory to our martyrs.
36:41
It, it's, it's shocking, like it's beyond imagination.
36:44
I, I have friends who are basically defending the United Healthcare
36:49
assassination, not just basically, I mean, I think I definitely
36:51
have a friend who's a fan of it.
36:53
Um.
36:55
There has just been such a shift in, in the Overton window with what's acceptable.
37:01
And for me, I feel like there's an air of possibility now and I
37:06
mean like possibility of danger that I've never felt before.
37:10
And, and I definitely feel it now.
37:13
I mean, like we moved into a doorman building 'cause we were
37:17
getting a little scared being in a.
37:19
Cottage on the street in LA and um, that felt weird and not good.
37:24
But then I realized like, wow, if someone did something like you, you look at the
37:29
response to United Healthcare killing and it's like, oh, that would be the response.
37:33
Like, where
37:34
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: do you think that's coming from?
37:36
What is it?
37:37
Because humans are animals.
37:38
Like I don't,
37:39
NELLIE BOWLES: we, our base instincts are bad and they have to
37:41
be beaten into some, but is that
37:43
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: new?
37:43
I mean, we were al we always had those base instincts.
37:49
NELLIE BOWLES: I think the guardrails are cracking.
37:52
I was really excited about Elon Musk buying Twitter, and there was a lot in
37:58
the old regime that I really, really didn't like a lot of Censorious.
38:02
That really scared me too, but I think I was a little bit wrong about being
38:07
excited about that because seeing now the.
38:13
Death threats, the threats of violence, the, the way in which
38:16
that's now allowed to explode.
38:18
It is really scary and I think it is new and I think that, yeah, the, these
38:23
have always been part of human nature, but the ability to distribute those
38:27
threats and distribute the glee, let's say in the United Healthcare, killing the
38:30
ability to distribute that glee is new.
38:34
And really scary, and I think we don't know what that's gonna
38:38
look like as it gets bigger.
38:39
We don't know what that's gonna look like as you layer on AI and you all of a sudden
38:43
have it in more and more of your life.
38:46
BARI WEISS: But this is always why identity politics, whether it came
38:49
from the right or the left, was so dangerous because any politics, any
38:54
worldview that says some people are more deserving fundamentally of privilege,
39:00
but, or, or of life than other people.
39:03
Is a politics that will end in violence against certain groups, and that is
39:09
a politics that is antithetical to what America at its best is all about.
39:16
And I think you see that taking hold in so many places.
39:19
Why is violence against Jews on college campuses?
39:24
Basically kind of permissible where it would never be against any other group.
39:28
It's very simple.
39:29
It's because in classrooms and in the culture on campus, there is a view that
39:34
Jews are just, or white people that believe and support a white colonialist,
39:41
violent outpost in the Middle East.
39:43
Ergo, why should they, why should we even think of them in the
39:46
same category as black people or Hispanic people or gay people?
39:50
That's literally the logic.
39:52
And so if you just expand that outward, it becomes somehow permissible or
39:56
even heroic to go and murder someone.
40:00
That's the CEO of a healthcare company, and I think that we really cannot
40:04
overstate how significant, I mean, the, the, the positive way of spinning
40:08
this is that ideas really matter and the ideas that you encounter at those
40:11
most formative years of your life.
40:14
Truly make a difference right now, we're seeing that in the negative way, and
40:18
it's up to us over the course of the rest of our lives to make sure that it
40:21
comes out in the positive direction.
40:25
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: So my last question to both of you, to finish on a, uh, more
40:30
positive note, what do we have to look forward to in America in the next five
40:35
and 10 years and in the Jewish community?
40:37
What optimistic thoughts do you have for us?
40:42
NELLIE BOWLES: I think actually American Jewish life is gonna get AMA amazing
40:46
in this because I think that there's gonna be a lot of people who are sending
40:49
their kids now to, sorry, I'm thinking in terms of kids in schools, but there,
40:53
there's gonna be a lot of people who are sending their kids now to, to
40:57
Dalton, who start to rethink that.
40:59
And, and, and people who, no offense to anyone that goes to that school
41:02
in this room, offense to every
41:04
BARI WEISS: Dalton
41:04
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: parent here.
41:04
We, we have a lot of those, uh, kind of people here.
41:06
I'm
41:07
NELLIE BOWLES: looking
41:07
BARI WEISS: at each of, you have no idea what Dalton is and neither
41:09
do I just know it's a fancy one.
41:11
They're new.
41:12
They
41:12
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: came from California.
41:13
What did they know?
41:13
I've seen Gossip Girl.
41:15
NELLIE BOWLES: But, but, um,
41:20
no, and it's, it's the positivity of, of our friends getting more into Jewish life.
41:24
And it's the.
41:25
BARI WEISS: I mean positive things.
41:26
There's so many.
41:27
How can you be a Jew in 2025 and not be an optimist?
41:31
I mean, for real.
41:32
We are alive during the third Jewish Commonwealth.
41:36
We are alive during the Jewish return to political sovereignty
41:40
in the land of Israel.
41:41
We can get on a plane right now, Houthis aside, and go to
41:46
Jerusalem or Tel Aviv right now.
41:48
That's unbelievable.
41:49
That's in our lives.
41:51
So I think like that is like baseline.
41:54
We should be optimistic.
41:55
The second thing is that we are a, people that has like by every law of
42:02
history, should have been completely erased from the world, probably like
42:09
1900 years ago, and yet we are here.
42:12
I view that as something like a miracle, if not a miracle.
42:16
And.
42:17
So that is when that is your frame for things.
42:21
So many other things feel possible and I would just encourage everyone,
42:25
maybe just take a day and think that way a little bit because there's so
42:30
many things to feel negative about.
42:32
And when you get into that headspace, the idea of, to go back to the
42:37
beginning of this conversation, Ammi, of starting new things, of building
42:40
new worlds of, you know, bringing.
42:43
Lots of Jewish kids into this world right now, which a lot of people
42:45
we know are nervous about that.
42:47
All of those things just become much more possible.
42:50
America's celebrating.
42:51
Its 250th next year, as I'm sure everyone here knows, and we're
42:54
thinking a lot about coverage for that.
42:56
And also just the youngness of both America and Israel.
42:59
There's so many things to be built.
43:01
I feel very worried about many things happening in this administration.
43:05
But I feel like the possibility of normalization between Israel and
43:09
Saudi Arabia could happen in the next, like few months of our lives.
43:13
That's incredible that that could be happening.
43:15
And I think, you know, that's, that's another thing to be excited for.
43:19
I feel maybe more optimistic than I realized I did.
43:22
I don't know if that's the answer you were looking for.
43:24
RABBI AMMI HIRSCH: That's a good way to end the Light of Freedom Award.
43:28
Bari Wise, Nellie Bowles.
43:30
Welcome to New York.
43:31
Welcome to the synagogue.