Latest / In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch / David Baddiel

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David Baddiel · In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch

• 0:01
  I'm Rabbi Ammi Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, and
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  you're listening to In These Times.
• 0:06
  The world would be a better place with more laughter.
• 0:14
  And indeed, there's something very Jewish about comedy.
• 0:17
  For me,
• 0:19
  the world is comic.
• 0:20
  I think it's a very Jewish thing to find in not just the sadness of the world,
• 0:25
  but in the seriousness of the world.
• 0:26
  The
• 0:27
  son
• 0:28
  of a Holocaust survivor, David Baddiel, grew up in London, and graduated
• 0:32
  from King's College, Cambridge, before abandoning his doctoral
• 0:36
  studies to become a stand up comic.
• 0:39
  Now, a successful comedian, David is also the author of four novels, And the
• 0:46
  2021 best selling nonfiction book, Jews Don't Count, about the double standards
• 0:52
  employed by the progressive left when it comes to Jews and anti Semitism.
• 0:56
  David
• 1:05
  Baddiel, it's an honor to have you on the podcast.
• 1:08
  Welcome to In These Times.
• 1:09
  Oh, thank you very much, Ammi.
• 1:11
  It's an absolute joy and an honor for myself to be here.
• 1:14
  You're a comedian.
• 1:15
  I wanted to ask you about, uh, comedy.
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  You're, you're a special kind of comedian.
• 1:20
  I, I observe comedians all the time.
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  I think they have so much to add to our understanding of, uh, society,
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  but you have the additional element.
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  You're kind of like a philosopher and an intellectual.
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  You write books.
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  All your books are, they have comedy in them, but you use comedy
• 1:37
  to present very serious thoughts.
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  Uh, what's it like to be a comedian nowadays?
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  Uh, well, it's different for that very reason that it was, because when I started
• 1:48
  doing comedy, when I, you know, did open spots at the comedy store in London, when
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  it was, it was very rough, it was like the late 80s, and to get a gig, you had to go
• 1:57
  on at three o'clock in the morning, after all the other comics had done their stuff.
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  And like basically fight your way through the drunkest people in the world in
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  the hope of getting maybe two laughs.
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  Uh, and you just had to like duck the ashtrays that were being thrown
• 2:12
  at you and that kind of stuff.
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  Uh, and so the room for the deep philosophical sort of
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  observing and musings and nuance was not so available then.
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  Uh, and I just used to do a kind of rat a tat, you know, kind of
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  high energy joke, joke, joke thing.
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  And then luckily, You know, thank Hashem.
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  Although, as you know, I'm not, I'm not a deep observer of that, but thank Hashem.
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  Uh, I was successful enough to get to a position whereby people
• 2:40
  weren't throwing stuff at me.
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  Uh, I mean, if they were, it would be for other reasons, but anyway, uh,
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  something you have a bit of space, you know, once you're well known
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  enough as a comedian, you have a bit of space where people are like, okay,
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  he doesn't have to prove he's funny.
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  Cause when people go to a club and they've never seen a
• 2:57
  comedian before, they don't care.
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  They just say like, make me laugh.
• 2:59
  Right.
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  It's especially in Britain, in America, when I've done stand up in America,
• 3:03
  actually they're a bit more generous, but in Britain, it's like, you're not funny.
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  You have to tell me you are funny before I'm going to get any
• 3:09
  of my money's coming your way.
• 3:10
  Right.
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  So, whereas.
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  Once they've decided you are, because they've seen you and you're on TV,
• 3:16
  and whatever, then you can sort of, like, expand a bit what you're
• 3:20
  talking about, and it's, as long as there are laughs, and I've always
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  been keen that there should always be laughs, you can do different stuff.
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  So, for example, the last three shows I've done, are just stand up shows,
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  where the first one was about fame, the second one was about my family, and
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  the third one was about social media.
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  And I kind of, again, this is like the Mojus religiously decided that
• 3:46
  those would be thematic shows.
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  If I had an idea for a bit of banter that wasn't about that, I would chuck it out.
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  Because I wanted to explore those subjects, and actually the one about
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  my family Which was about my very unusual and weird childhood and
• 3:59
  which Jews in London liked a lot.
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  It had two runs in the West End.
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  It took in, you know, a very transgressive and weird childhood.
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  It took in the Holocaust, because my mum was a Holocaust survivor.
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  It took in my father's dementia.
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  These are all not obviously funny subjects, right?
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  But, for me, the world is comic.
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  And so, therefore, whatever you look at, you're gonna
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  find ways of finding it comic.
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  And that in itself is a positive endeavor, I think.
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  It's a very Jewish endeavor.
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  I think it's a very Jewish thing to find in not just the sadness of the world,
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  but in the seriousness of the world.
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  The funny.
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  So you've been a comic for, I suppose, around 30 years or so, at least.
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  Longer.
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  Longer than 30?
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  I'm
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  old.
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  I'm 60.
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  And my first gig was actually at school.
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  Uh, so at my school, there was like a show that the sixth formers, that would be the
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  sort of people about to leave the school.
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  I don't know what grade that is in America, but the sort of like 18 year
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  olds, the ones about to go to college, uh, they would do a show at lunchtime
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  for the kids and it was always terrible.
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  And I got to write it my year.
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  It was very, it used to be blued off.
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  And I got to write it my year, and I did a thing which I think is very important
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  in terms of my understanding of comedy.
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  Which is to say, not like, let's just sort of do something, whatever, just
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  let's think about this for a minute.
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  What do the kids coming to this show want to see?
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  What do they think is funny?
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  How can we speak to them about their world?
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  And I said, what we do is, we do sketches.
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  That take the piss, to use a British expression, of teachers who we all hate.
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  That's how we do it.
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  Because what are we really doing at this school in our spare time?
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  We're saying how much we hate the librarian, who's a puritanical Christian,
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  and who, it would be really funny to have a sketch where he's having sex with the
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  blow up doll on the photocopier, right?
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  And so we did that and it stormed it.
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  I mean, still my first gig, like utterly stormed it.
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  And then I, I got into real trouble at that school and was nearly expelled.
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  And, you know, from then on, that was basically the
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  rollercoaster of my life in comedy.
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  So what is that a little over 40 years?
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  How has comedy changed in that?
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  Four plus decades that you've been a stand up comic and a comedian.
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  Well, that's a very big question Are people more some people seem to be
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  much more sensitive now About their feelings and much less tolerant in
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  terms of giving space to comedians Is that just an impression we have or
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  is it if you found that to be true?
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  Well, I, that's, that's what people think and some of what
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  they think is correct, but you can hear different versions of that.
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  So, for example, someone I've worked with a lot, who's a comedian called
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  Frank Skinner, who was well known for doing very, very kind of blue material.
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  Very sort of a lot of jokes about sex, a lot of jokes that
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  he wouldn't be able to do now.
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  He has this idea, and he's a 67 year old guy, and he's actually
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  more on the road than I am.
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  He's always doing gigs.
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  Uh, that.
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  Part of your job as a comedian is to see where the line is, and if
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  the line changes, then you change to dance differently around the line.
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  Uh, and I think that has some validity.
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  I think it's no point in just complaining that you can't do exactly the same
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  material that you did 30 years ago.
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  Because people change, and times change, and that's part
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  and parcel of where we are.
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  At the same time, I would say that, um, part of what comedy needs to be able to
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  do is, uh, play about with what people consider to be offensive or not offensive.
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  And I think one of those things, and this is, I'm very big on this, is that we have
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  to be able to make jokes where you look at the joke rather than the subject matter.
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  By which I mean, People will say, you can't make jokes about X.
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  In our case, let's say you can't make jokes about the holocaust.
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  Obviously you can make jokes about the holocaust.
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  The question is not Not the subject matter, but the joke.
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  So you could obviously do a very unpleasant neo-Nazi extreme and
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  anti-Semitic joke about the Holocaust.
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  You could also do this joke.
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  Um, a Holocaust survivor dies after the war.
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  Obviously, he's a survivor.
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  He goes to heaven.
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  When he gets to heaven.
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  God asks the survivor to tell him a Holocaust joke.
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  So the survivor does.
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  He tells God a Holocaust joke and God says, that's not funny.
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  And the survivor says, well, I guess you had to be there.
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  And I love that joke.
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  I love that joke.
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  It's so deeply profound.
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  You as a rabbi might question it because it's basically an atheist joke.
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  It's basically a joke about where was God in the Holocaust?
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  Where was God in the Holocaust?
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  Exactly.
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  But it's, it's clearly not.
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  An inhumane joke about the holocaust.
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  It's a thoughtful joke about the holocaust.
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  And you only find that out when you tell the joke.
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  So I'm very much of the belief that the modern thing, which is a bad
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  reflex, which is, well obviously you can't do jokes about X, you
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  can't do jokes about, is not true.
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  You have to look at the individual joke.
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  Have you done jokes about rabbis?
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  I keep on asking our rabbis, our common friend.
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  I, I, I asked Dan Patterson who created mock the week and in the UK
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  and he keeps telling me blue jokes and I keep on telling him I can't
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  tell these jokes from the pulpit.
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  He's not, it's kind of blue.
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  Not very blue.
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  One of the first ever bits I did.
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  And actually, in Britain, this was unusual.
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  Like, in New York, obviously, in America in general, comedy, stand
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  up comedy, certainly after the war, for a long time was Jewish, right?
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  Like, it was like, so many Jews were doing comedy, and the big wave of new comedy in
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  the 50s and 60s was powered by Sid Caesar and Mort Sahl and Woody Allen and Lenny
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  Bruce, and they were all Jewish, right?
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  So when I first started doing comedy in London, I was
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  forefronting that I was Jewish.
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  That was much more unusual than it would be in America.
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  Uh, and I did a very specific thing, which now I think is amazing
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  that it got laughs, but it did.
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  Uh, which was to talk about how, if you go to a bar mitzvah, Someone
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  will stand up and tell a joke.
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  And something I noticed is that sometimes the punchline would be in Yiddish, right?
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  And so I used to make up this joke, and this is the joke.
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  It would be something like this, like, uh, Oh, a rabbi is
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  speaking to a foolish person.
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  And the foolish person says, Rabbi, rabbi, my foreskin has grown back.
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  What shall I do?
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  And the rabbi says to the foolish person, Let's call him Chaim, I don't know.
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  Chaim.
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  Moses said, when the light of the world is shining, you must
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  turn your faces to the ground.
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  And Joshua said, when the light of the world is dim, you must
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  turn thy faces to the sky.
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  But I say, Wenn der Putsch steht in der Jentl, dann hast du Soros
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  für den Knädelacken geschlagen.
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  And then I did this whole bit about just thinking, What?
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  What the fuck?
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  What have they just said?
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  And everyone is killing themselves laughing.
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  So I did that bit for mainly non Jews, and they would love it for some reason.
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  They would love it.
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  And actually, I wrote a film called The Infidel, which is about a
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  Muslim who discovers he was born a Jew, and that bit is acted out.
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  It's acted out at a bar mitzvah, so I know it's funny.
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  Uh, so yes, I've done jokes about rabbis, so that answers question one.
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  And your next question was, is there something specifically Jewish?
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  Well, what's
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  specifically Jewish about Jewish humor?
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  I would say there's a very broad reason why Jews get into comedy, which is
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  that Jews are storytellers, and Jews are storytellers because I think they
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  stand, tend to stand outside the main culture, not completely outside it,
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  but sort of like 5 percent outside the main culture, that they're Immigrating
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  into and assimilating within.
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  And so that gives them a good perspective on it.
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  And perspective often means comedy, right?
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  You often means irony.
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  If you're standing slightly outside something, you can sort
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  of see what's funny about it.
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  But the other thing is of course, Judaism, I've always felt, and I
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  wrote a book called the God desire, which is slightly about this is.
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  Not something which believes really in a massively higher spiritual plane.
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  I think Judaism is a religion about the here and now.
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  Christianity came along and it said, Oh, everything's about the hereafter.
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  Everything's about the wonderful, wonderful paradise to come.
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  Not about this life.
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  But Judaism is always about like, No, now, now you should behave like this.
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  And now you should also wrap this around your wrist and not eat this
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  food and that food or whatever.
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  Because I think it comes out of a community that was often under threat.
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  And often, therefore, I had to come up with all these ideas
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  for like, how can I feel safe?
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  Now here and now and I think the comedy is like that the comedy is like about
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  now I try to get this joke, right?
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  It's a joke about how the Dalai Lama is not quite who you think he
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  is because once his mother said to him Hey Sheldon enough is enough
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  What I love about that joke is it brings everything down to earth you see what
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  I'm saying Is that Jewish comedy brings everything down to earth and I think?
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  That's one of the things is that we always want to subvert we always want
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  to undercut and that's funny, right?
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  That's a funny
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  instinct.
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  Do you think our centuries of persecution angst and anxiety has
• 12:57
  something to do with Jewish humor, too?
• 12:59
  Yeah, because I think it's about like Well, A, how else are you going
• 13:02
  to deal with that stuff, right?
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  How else do you deal with, you know, I don't know if I get this
• 13:07
  joke exactly right, but there's a, uh, a joke about during the Nazi
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  era or the buildup to the Nazi era.
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  There are two Jews on a bench saying, one of them says, look, it's awful.
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  Look at them.
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  The Nazis are in power or they're coming to power.
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  It's terrible.
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  And the other one says, yeah, no, but they say we're in control of the world.
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  Right.
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  And we're always trying to find ways of dealing with
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  stuff through comedy, I think.
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  Um, I mean, I could, I could carry on and make this entirely about
• 13:35
  analyzing jokes and I am thinking about doing a show in which that's part of
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  what I do, is analyze Jewish jokes.
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  But I think that one of the things is, I started to realize that some of
• 13:45
  my early jokes fitted in, I thought, with ideas about Jews that I wouldn't
• 13:49
  necessarily want to perpetuate.
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  So, for example, I did this joke, it's a good joke, right, it's about
• 13:54
  how a friend of mine, which is true, close friend of mine was Jewish,
• 13:58
  and then they became a Buddhist.
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  So they were like a Jewish Buddhist, which is someone who believes you
• 14:02
  should renounce all your material possessions, but still keep the receipts.
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  And I did that joke, and then I thought, yeah, I shouldn't
• 14:09
  be doing that joke anymore.
• 14:10
  That joke's about Jews and money, right, and I shouldn't do that joke, yeah?
• 14:13
  Because I kind of think I don't want to reiterate that stereotype.
• 14:17
  But it's complicated because there's a very famous old joke which is
• 14:20
  about Jews and money, but I think this joke is completely acceptable
• 14:23
  because it's not an anti semitic joke, it's a joke about anti semitism.
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  I don't know if you may know this joke.
• 14:29
  Two Jews, Moses and Abraham, let's call them, are walking through, I think
• 14:32
  it's a Russian joke, they're walking through Moscow, and they're both poor
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  and they're both peasants, and it's been a hard winter, and they see a
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  sign Outside a church and the sign says, convert to Christianity, come
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  to Jesus, we'll give you 30 rubles.
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  And Moses says, I'm going to do it.
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  And Abraham says, okay, I understand it's been a hard winter,
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  but I can't, I can't do that.
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  Moses.
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  Okay.
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  So Moses goes inside, comes outside about an hour later and Abraham says
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  to him, so did you get your 30 rubles?
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  And Moses says, money, it's everything to you people.
• 15:05
  And it's such a great joke.
• 15:06
  It's such a great joke.
• 15:07
  And it's so moving at some level, because it basically says, Jews are frightened.
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  And if Jews were to magically not be Jews anymore, the first thing they
• 15:17
  would do is pick on Jews, because that's their experience, right?
• 15:20
  It's a joke about mob psychology.
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  And what I think is, that comes back to what I was saying about the
• 15:25
  individual joke, which is, you have to look into what's it actually saying.
• 15:29
  And in terms of your question, what is Jewish comedy, I think it's also saying
• 15:34
  this is what life is like, you know.
• 15:37
  So you wrote this, um, very serious book recently called, uh, Jews Don't Count.
• 15:42
  It's very well known.
• 15:43
  It's well known here in the United States too, I assume even more in, uh, the UK.
• 15:47
  Can I just say something, Rabbi?
• 15:49
  Sorry, I'm going to call you Rabbi,
• 15:50
  I like calling you Rabbi, uh, which is, um, I am proud of that book, obviously,
• 15:55
  in general, because I think it helped to change a bit the discourse around how
• 15:58
  people think about Jews and anti Semitism.
• 16:00
  One thing I'm really proud of is Harper Collins, who published it,
• 16:03
  never, they didn't manage to get a proper publisher in America.
• 16:07
  Uh, American publishers read that book and they were a bit
• 16:10
  like, uh, it's a bit British.
• 16:12
  This guy, we don't know who he is, et cetera, et cetera.
• 16:14
  And so they just kind of let it trickle.
• 16:17
  into bookshops in America, you know, in the way that they do
• 16:20
  with British books or whatever.
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  And it's now sold, like, 75, 000 copies in America.
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  And so I'm proud of that, because I think it's saying something
• 16:27
  that Jews respond to wherever
• 16:29
  they are.
• 16:30
  Since you mention that, before we even get to the content of the book, Jewish
• 16:34
  authors nowadays, in particular after October 7th, are complaining that
• 16:39
  they're feeling, if not expressed, at least subtle discrimination and some
• 16:44
  kind of bias on promoting their books.
• 16:47
  Did you experience that at all here in the United States or
• 16:51
  in the UK?
• 16:53
  Maybe.
• 16:53
  I mean, if I did, I maybe didn't know about it, because, like, when you
• 16:57
  experience a sense of being excluded, some of the time, It's the gigs
• 17:01
  you're not being invited to, right?
• 17:02
  And you just don't know about it.
• 17:05
  I mean, certainly, once I started talking about that subject, so just for anyone
• 17:09
  who doesn't know, Jews Don't Count is not just another book about antisemitism.
• 17:13
  It's a short polemic, and it's specifically about the fact that
• 17:17
  progressives, of which I would consider myself to be one, kind of, Progressives,
• 17:23
  and I thought this back in, you know, when I wrote it, 2020, and had been
• 17:26
  thinking it for about 10 years before that, have a brand, which is that
• 17:31
  they care about, you know, offence and racism and discrimination of all sorts.
• 17:36
  And yet some or other, they don't care so much about antisemitism.
• 17:39
  Why is that?
• 17:40
  Is that what
• 17:41
  you mean by don't count?
• 17:42
  Jews don't count?
• 17:43
  Yeah, that's
• 17:43
  what I mean by Jews don't count.
• 17:44
  Specifically, I mean that within a progressive worldview, where what
• 17:48
  counts most of all is your identity.
• 17:52
  And certain identities have to be raised up and protected and included
• 17:56
  and, uh, recognized and all the rest of it, that Jews are not in that move.
• 18:02
  They're not in that conversation at some level.
• 18:04
  That the people for whom, and I agree with this, by the way, the people
• 18:08
  that for whom their life is about seeking out the vulnerable and the
• 18:12
  excluded and the discriminated and the marginalized, Jews are just assumed
• 18:16
  to be not in that Venn diagram.
• 18:18
  Which is odd, because if you look at the history of Jews.
• 18:21
  It's a huge history of disempowerment, right, despite the notion that
• 18:24
  Jews are somehow powerful.
• 18:26
  We live, as Jews, in a cyclical history of disempowerment.
• 18:30
  And so the book is about that.
• 18:32
  I mean, when I first wrote it, so there was a lot of fuss in Britain at the time.
• 18:36
  And it was just after this that, uh, Jeremy Corbyn was head of the Labour
• 18:40
  Party and there was a lot of noise around whether or not his Labour
• 18:43
  Party had anti Semitic elements.
• 18:45
  So I was invited at that point on to sort of everything to talk about that.
• 18:49
  And to be honest with you, I sort of sometimes didn't want to just talk about
• 18:51
  that because the book felt to me to be about larger things than British politics.
• 18:56
  After October the 7th, I got asked a lot to talk about it,
• 19:00
  but it was complicated for me.
• 19:02
  Rabbi, because one of the things I say in the book, which I know some Jews
• 19:07
  who like the book have issues with this, is for me, I was keen to say,
• 19:12
  and another way in which Jews don't count, is that they are held responsible
• 19:16
  for everything that Israel does.
• 19:18
  And this does not apply to other minorities.
• 19:21
  British or American, Chinese people.
• 19:23
  are not held responsible for the behavior of the Chinese
• 19:26
  government towards the Uyghurs.
• 19:28
  No progressive person would ever, ever go up to an American Chinese person
• 19:32
  and say, before you say anything else, I need to know what you think about
• 19:35
  the behavior of the Chinese government and their human rights abuses.
• 19:38
  They'd never do that, it would be racist.
• 19:39
  But I, and no doubt you, and every Jewish person, certainly every prominent Jewish
• 19:44
  person, is always being asked essentially to clear the air about what they feel
• 19:49
  about the Middle East before they can speak about anti semitism or whatever.
• 19:52
  And the reason for that is The reason for that is, is that Jews
• 19:56
  are considered a special case, that they, that they don't count.
• 19:59
  Uh, that they don't count as a vulnerable minority.
• 20:01
  Why?
• 20:03
  Because of a sort of right wing assumption, even though that has
• 20:06
  bled into the left, which is that Jews are, uh, powerful, privileged,
• 20:11
  white, and in control of the world, muddied, rich, all the things.
• 20:15
  That would exclude them from the category of the vulnerable because these ideas
• 20:20
  that you you you don't impose, for example, a collective identity on all.
• 20:26
  people from a certain heritage.
• 20:28
  That doesn't apply to Jews, because if Jews are powerful and privileged,
• 20:31
  they're probably networking together, aren't they, in order to lobby on behalf
• 20:36
  of Israel or whatever else it might be.
• 20:37
  In general, you just don't have to worry so much about offending
• 20:42
  Jews as you do other minorities, because it's assumed That they're
• 20:46
  operating from a position of power.
• 20:49
  And all, the entire way that progressives think is about
• 20:52
  locating where the power is.
• 20:54
  But for me, and this is probably the key thing, is that implies
• 20:58
  a binary in the world between the powerful and the powerless.
• 21:02
  But Jews are a glitch in that binary.
• 21:05
  Because some Jews are powerful.
• 21:06
  I'm not denying, you know, some Jews clearly are powerful.
• 21:09
  Israel is the most powerful force in the Middle East.
• 21:12
  AIPAC is powerful in America, but that doesn't mean all Jews are powerful.
• 21:16
  And certainly the history would suggest that the notion of the powerful Jew.
• 21:20
  Leads to the disempowered Jew.
• 21:23
  Mm hmm, this glitch in the formula, it also pervades a concept of, and
• 21:28
  a perspective on race, doesn't it?
• 21:30
  Because, you know, the anti Semites of the right, they kind of look at
• 21:35
  Jews as some kind of alien force.
• 21:37
  They're not white, and they're a threat to white Western civilization.
• 21:42
  The anti Semites of the left, They actually think they're the
• 21:47
  epitome of whiteness, right?
• 21:48
  They're white and powerful.
• 21:50
  Yeah, so I say this in Jews Don't Count.
• 21:52
  I think I came up with it.
• 21:53
  I might have seen it on the internet, but I certainly popularized it,
• 21:56
  which is Schrodinger's Whites.
• 21:58
  Jews are Schrodinger's Whites.
• 21:59
  By which I mean, like Schrodinger's cat can be two things at once.
• 22:03
  Jews are simultaneously non white.
• 22:06
  Depends on the politics of the observer.
• 22:07
  We are non white as far as the far right goes.
• 22:11
  We are aliens.
• 22:11
  We have been for centuries.
• 22:13
  We've been an alien culture.
• 22:15
  And in the face of, if you're left, then Jews are extremely white because they
• 22:19
  are powerful and rich and privileged and can't possibly suffer from the same
• 22:23
  vulnerabilities as other minorities.
• 22:25
  And in fact, you see it all the time.
• 22:26
  Jews being described as white.
• 22:28
  And that depends on what your idea of whiteness is.
• 22:32
  I think that whiteness is primarily not about skin color.
• 22:35
  It's primarily about security.
• 22:37
  It's about whether or not you were secure in a culture dominated by
• 22:40
  that idea, and Jews have not been.
• 22:43
  We know this and we know that they've been categorized as non white.
• 22:47
  So two things that are very, very important.
• 22:48
  Number one is you mentioned race.
• 22:51
  Antisemitism is racism.
• 22:53
  This is apparently a harder idea to express in America.
• 22:56
  A few Americans were worried about me saying it, but it's very, very important.
• 23:00
  Antisemitism is racism because I am an atheist.
• 23:03
  Sorry to imply that again, Rabbi, I'm an atheist that would make no
• 23:06
  difference to whether or not I was sent to Auschwitz, it would make no
• 23:09
  difference indeed, to Neo Nazis who want to burn down my house because
• 23:15
  the racists don't care about religion.
• 23:18
  So the one thing anti Semitism is not is religious intolerance.
• 23:21
  But that's often a mistake that people make, or a deliberate mistake they
• 23:24
  make, where they want to downgrade.
• 23:26
  Antisemitism.
• 23:27
  And you say that knowing that there have been, there were centuries
• 23:30
  in Europe of, uh, Christian religious based persecution of Jews.
• 23:35
  Well, that's a complicated thing, isn't it?
• 23:37
  And let me tell you a story, not a very nice story, but, uh, in a place in Britain
• 23:41
  called York, you may know this, there was a massacre of Jews in 1190, following
• 23:47
  on something that was very typical, uh, in the history of Jews, which is that.
• 23:51
  Local aristocrats owed Jews money and didn't want to pay it back,
• 23:55
  so they started rumours that Jews were killing Christian babies.
• 23:58
  And that led to Jews being rounded up, and there were about 150 of them in a
• 24:04
  tower, it's called Clifford's Tower.
• 24:05
  And the people outside were chanting that the Jews should convert.
• 24:10
  And you might think, okay, well that's a religious thing.
• 24:13
  And most of the Jews committed suicide, rather than convert.
• 24:15
  About five Jews went outside.
• 24:19
  And said, okay, I pledged my life to Jesus.
• 24:21
  I would have been one of those Jews, by the way.
• 24:23
  At which point, those five Jews were killed anyway.
• 24:26
  And do you see what that means?
• 24:28
  That means that hatred of Jews is an in built racist thing, even in 1190.
• 24:35
  Because they didn't really care whether or not the Jews believed in Jesus.
• 24:38
  What they cared about was that this was an alien force, that they were
• 24:41
  psychopathically trying to destroy.
• 24:43
  And that's always been the
• 24:44
  case.
• 24:45
  And when you say racist, this is maybe one of the reasons why Americans, uh,
• 24:48
  kind of have, uh, some questions about it.
• 24:51
  I mean, half of the Jewish, uh, world is from origins that are not European.
• 24:57
  They are Jews, what we would call today, I guess, Jews of color.
• 25:01
  Yeah.
• 25:01
  So when you say racist, you don't mean.
• 25:04
  Well,
• 25:04
  this
• 25:04
  is, this is, this is the thing that's confusing for Americans because racism
• 25:07
  and racist is a word in America.
• 25:09
  That's been.
• 25:10
  Ring fence just for people of color, but, but racism is, I mean, obviously
• 25:16
  incredibly affects people of color, but racism is something that can be
• 25:19
  applied as we know to people who are not people of color as we understand them.
• 25:24
  Because let's look at Jews, right?
• 25:27
  It doesn't matter whether or not we are biologically or
• 25:30
  anthropologically or DNA terms of race.
• 25:33
  Some, I think we probably are.
• 25:35
  It's not important.
• 25:36
  What's important is that throughout history we have been racialized.
• 25:40
  It has been imposed upon Jews that we are an inferior race, and that's what
• 25:45
  matters if you're combating racism.
• 25:48
  If you can be categorized as an inferior race because you're
• 25:51
  Jewish, you clearly suffer racism.
• 25:54
  The Nuremberg Laws were racial purity laws.
• 25:58
  And so that's racism.
• 25:58
  And there's a fear in America that you're intruding on something you're
• 26:02
  not meant to intrude on, which is a preserve of people of color, by
• 26:06
  saying that you suffer from race.
• 26:07
  I mean, it's happened in this country as well, because for a long time,
• 26:10
  and still now, people will talk about anti Semitism and racism, as
• 26:13
  if those are two different things.
• 26:15
  They have slightly different qualities, not all types of racism are the same, but
• 26:20
  unquestionably anti semitism is racism.
• 26:22
  You know, I find that to be a very, very profound observation
• 26:26
  and your contention is This is a very ancient strain that takes upon
• 26:33
  itself modern forms depending on the circumstances and the eras of the time.
• 26:37
  Is that correct?
• 26:38
  That's completely correct, yeah.
• 26:39
  Yeah, that's, that's very profound, I think.
• 26:46
  You call yourself a, uh, fundamentalist atheist, I think?
• 26:49
  Did you use that term about yourself?
• 26:51
  My friend, Frank Skinner, who I mentioned already, who, I did a show about soccer
• 26:54
  with him, I've done lots of shows with him, he is a devout Catholic.
• 26:58
  And he hates me using the phrase Fundamentalist Atheist.
• 27:01
  Uh, he once rang me up and said, Please don't use that phrase, I hate, I hate it.
• 27:05
  Uh, I think it's because he associates Fundamentalism,
• 27:07
  obviously, with some very bad things.
• 27:09
  What I mean is, that I, you know, I've written a book, which you may
• 27:13
  not have read, called The God Desire.
• 27:15
  And in The God Desire, I put forward this idea, which is that I deeply, it's
• 27:20
  a very Jewish idea, I think, I deeply, deeply, deeply would like God to exist.
• 27:24
  I, I love life, and from when I was six years old and first became aware
• 27:28
  of death, and I think was praying to Hashem because I went to a very Orthodox
• 27:32
  Jewish school, so that was my immediate response was to do that, was to hope that
• 27:36
  somehow or other there would be a place where I could see my loved ones again
• 27:42
  and carry on living and blah blah blah.
• 27:44
  And now what I realize is that those things don't exist and
• 27:47
  that's why we've invented God.
• 27:49
  Because we all profoundly need that hope and I believe that so
• 27:53
  fervently that I think I am yes a Fundamentalist in that belief.
• 27:58
  So can I ask you?
• 27:59
  I hope you don't feel patronized by what I'm about to say I
• 28:02
  consider you a great Jew.
• 28:05
  Well, it's very kind of you.
• 28:06
  I don't feel patronized at all.
• 28:07
  I love that and You know, I you apropos joke.
• 28:11
  Okay, so I don't know if you've heard this joke, you know, the Orthodox Jew says
• 28:15
  Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad The agnostic Jew says, Sh'ma Yisrael, I
• 28:21
  don't know Eloheinu, I don't know Echad.
• 28:24
  The atheist Jew says, Sh'ma Yisrael, I deny Eloheinu, I deny Echad.
• 28:29
  Who do I care?
• 28:30
  As long as, you know, from my perspective at least, as long as they
• 28:33
  feel connected to Jewish heritage, Jewish tradition, Jewish civilization,
• 28:38
  and are invested in the Jewish future.
• 28:40
  From my perspective, they're the best Jews, especially in modern times.
• 28:45
  Well, that's kind of it.
• 28:45
  I mean, let me tell you something that happened, which I think It's a funny
• 28:49
  story, but it's quite profound in its own way, which is that because I'm
• 28:53
  quite well known in this country, I get asked to do stuff for the local
• 28:56
  community, and a few Chanukahs ago, I got asked by my local rabbi, a man I don't
• 29:01
  know, because I don't go to synagogue, except for weddings or whatever.
• 29:05
  Phoned me up, I don't know how he got my number, obviously because we
• 29:08
  do control the world, but anyway, he gets my number, he phones me up, and
• 29:12
  he says, will you come and light the menorah outside the synagogue this year?
• 29:15
  We always have some local, well known person who does it.
• 29:19
  And I didn't really want to do that, I was busy, and it felt like
• 29:21
  a little bit of a naff thing that I didn't really want to do, so I played
• 29:25
  what I thought was my trump card.
• 29:26
  I said, I'm so sorry to tell you this, Rabbi, but actually, I'm an atheist.
• 29:30
  And he went, so am I. And I thought, fucking hell, I mean, really, there's a,
• 29:33
  there's a lot more Jewish atheists out there than I realized, uh, and I told that
• 29:38
  story to another rabbi once, I do know quite a lot of rabbis, and he said, well,
• 29:42
  in a way, it's true, because in a way, you know, Judaism is much more about that
• 29:47
  connection that you just talked about, connections between Jews, connections
• 29:51
  between the culture and the traditions, and all the rest of it, And I feel that
• 29:55
  very deeply myself, without any notion that there actually exists a supernatural
• 30:00
  being who is involved in that.
• 30:02
  That isn't, I totally do not believe that that thing exists.
• 30:06
  But I do believe in, yeah, I mean, there's a bit in the, um, in the
• 30:11
  God Desire, where I talk about being at a funeral of a young boy,
• 30:15
  actually, and the father does Kaddish.
• 30:18
  And as he's singing Kaddish, I cannot but be moved.
• 30:22
  Not just because it's a sad moment, but because there are centuries of
• 30:26
  suffering and tradition and defiance.
• 30:28
  in that.
• 30:29
  And to be honest with you, I don't know if we were not a persecuted minority,
• 30:32
  whether I'd be able to feel that.
• 30:34
  I think if I was an atheist and Christian, I don't know, I don't think
• 30:38
  I'd feel connected in that same way.
• 30:39
  It's almost a contradiction in terms, right?
• 30:41
  Because Christianity is defined by belief.
• 30:44
  Judaism is defined by birth by, or by membership in.
• 30:47
  But also by
• 30:48
  culture.
• 30:49
  and tradition and family and to be honest by anti semitism a lot of people
• 30:53
  say oh you shouldn't define it by anti semitism that's negative i think that's
• 30:55
  not true that's like saying oh black people shouldn't sing the blues you know
• 30:59
  i've told you jokes about anti semitism part of being jewish is how you deal
• 31:03
  with centuries of suffering and centuries of murder and genocide and whatever
• 31:08
  and you know my family my mother was born in nazi germany My grandparents
• 31:14
  survived, but most of them didn't.
• 31:15
  My grandfather was in Dachau.
• 31:16
  How do you deal with that, right?
• 31:18
  You deal with it through comedy, but you also, it builds in you an absolute
• 31:22
  knowledge of the fact of your Jewishness.
• 31:25
  Whether or not you believe in God.
• 31:27
  That's my point.
• 31:29
  I don't know if you gave too much thought before October 7th,
• 31:33
  before you sat down and started to write this book about Israel.
• 31:37
  I don't think you ever considered yourself a Zionist, or a passionate Zionist.
• 31:42
  You're very happy, uh, in the UK and you derive your Jewish identity
• 31:46
  from what you just described to us.
• 31:48
  Yeah.
• 31:48
  Um, you know, Zionism, the state of Israel was, apropos your discussion about
• 31:53
  Jewish power, it was created to solve the problem of Jewish powerlessness.
• 32:00
  Do you think that that confuses Anti Semites, both from the right and from
• 32:06
  the left, because all of a sudden, from 2, 000 years of looking at this people
• 32:10
  as a powerless people, people upon whom we place actions, who are all of
• 32:17
  a sudden independent actors of history.
• 32:20
  Do you think it confuses them, disorients them?
• 32:22
  Do you think it's a factor?
• 32:24
  Do you think, do you think they look at Israel and And there's inevitably
• 32:27
  a connection to anti Semitism.
• 32:30
  Personally, of course, I'm all in favor of critique.
• 32:32
  I think Judaism is based on that.
• 32:35
  Democracy is based on that.
• 32:36
  I never oppose people criticizing Israeli policies.
• 32:41
  Even if I think they come from a bad place, it's still,
• 32:43
  it's a legitimate exercise.
• 32:45
  But help us understand the connection between, uh, anti
• 32:48
  Zionism and anti Semitism.
• 32:51
  So firstly, I should say, As
• 32:53
  regards my position, which, obviously, has undergone some shifting recently,
• 32:59
  but it's still my basic position, is that I think Jews Part of my thing
• 33:04
  about, is like, Jews should be like other minorities, and other minorities do not
• 33:09
  feel an instant connection, unless they do, some might feel they want to, but
• 33:13
  an instant connection with, as it were, their heritage country, and lots of other
• 33:17
  minorities feel entirely happy, and in fact, part of their thing is, I want to
• 33:22
  be seen as you know, a British Chinese person or a British person of color.
• 33:27
  And I don't, it's kind of, you know, racist to say all the time, Oh,
• 33:31
  but what about this other country?
• 33:32
  4, 000 miles away.
• 33:33
  That clearly means more to you than your present country, right?
• 33:36
  That's weirdly racist, but Jews have been sort of put in that position.
• 33:40
  And some Jews are.
• 33:41
  Okay with it because some Jews want to say how connected they are to Israel and what
• 33:45
  it creates in some other Jews, which again is not me, is an incredible anti Israel.
• 33:50
  That's an incredible thing of like desperately keen to say not in
• 33:53
  my name and Jews who are deeply ashamed about Israel or whatever.
• 33:56
  And what I am is a third thing, which is More prevalent than you might
• 34:01
  think, and gets almost no coverage from the people wanting to write about
• 34:04
  it, which is, it's a foreign country.
• 34:07
  It's a foreign country, I'm a British Jew, I spend very little time until
• 34:11
  recently thinking about Israel, and, you know, I just don't feel this deep
• 34:15
  connection that wants me to either feel, yes, Israel at all costs, or, I'm
• 34:19
  betrayed by these people with whom I feel this deep connection, I'm so ashamed.
• 34:23
  Neither of those things.
• 34:25
  Recently, it's been harder to do that because I'm not interested
• 34:30
  in reiterating that at a time when it might feel craven to do so.
• 34:34
  By which I mean, that is what I think, but I'm not going to come out and say that
• 34:38
  over and over again when it might start to look like I must disassociate myself from
• 34:42
  this country because of what it's doing, because I kind of think that's craven.
• 34:46
  What I think in the larger sense, to answer your question, is that
• 34:50
  People have said to me, Jews have said to me, but surely you
• 34:54
  recognize that Israel is a sanctuary.
• 34:56
  Israel is the place we all have in our hearts for when
• 34:59
  the Nazis come back, basically.
• 35:01
  And what I think about that is, I don't think that the way to
• 35:04
  challenge racism, anti Semitism, is by thinking, well, we can't do it
• 35:10
  really, so let's have the bunker.
• 35:12
  Let's make sure we've got the bunker, because I think my job, when I'm
• 35:16
  talking about this stuff, my interest is in challenging anti semitism.
• 35:20
  And I don't believe you can really challenge anti semitism if all the
• 35:23
  time you're thinking it's going to be too difficult to challenge, so
• 35:26
  I need to have this thing where I can go, where I can hide and fight.
• 35:31
  antisemitism.
• 35:32
  So that's not my process.
• 35:33
  My process is not to think of Israel as this sanctuary in the
• 35:37
  face of terrible antisemitism.
• 35:39
  Interestingly enough, I think that is why Israel was started.
• 35:41
  I think Theodore Herzl, who did think after the Dreyfus affair, there
• 35:46
  is no hope for the Jews in Europe.
• 35:49
  Obviously, he had a point there, um, and therefore we need a place
• 35:53
  to go and, you know, call our own to be safe and all the rest of it.
• 35:57
  But, this is the real answer to your question.
• 35:59
  I think one of my big shticks is Jews are imagined as powerful.
• 36:06
  Jews are the only minority that are imagined in what I call a dual status way.
• 36:11
  By which I mean, low status.
• 36:14
  Vile, stinking, thieving, dirty, alien, the way that all
• 36:18
  minorities are imagined by racists.
• 36:20
  But Jews have this other thing where we are also high status, i.
• 36:23
  e., powerful, privileged, moneyed, secretly in control of the world.
• 36:27
  And that's the thing that really causes all sorts of issues for
• 36:31
  us, especially with progressives, because some progressives kind of
• 36:33
  believe that, and next thing you know, attacking Jews is punching up.
• 36:37
  And the thing that makes that particularly acute Is Israel at the moment because
• 36:42
  Israel, it is a powerful country.
• 36:45
  It does have a powerful military.
• 36:47
  It is, you know, the force in the region that is in control in some ways.
• 36:53
  At the same time, I agree that.
• 36:57
  A nuanced view would be that this country is a place built by refugees,
• 37:03
  built by people who had nowhere else to go, built as well by people of
• 37:07
  color who were fleeing from Arab countries around there, who wouldn't
• 37:11
  let them stay once Israel started.
• 37:14
  So what does that tell you, Rabbi?
• 37:15
  It tells you that, once again, Jews are a glitch in the binary.
• 37:19
  Once again, Jews are both powerful and very disempowered, and that's the
• 37:23
  nuance that gets lost in the shouting.
• 37:25
  Let
• 37:27
  me ask you, um, you talk a lot about Jews carrying this internal sense of shame.
• 37:32
  Mm. Do you think there's a difference?
• 37:34
  I haven't really seen that.
• 37:36
  that much in the United States.
• 37:39
  I do understand that.
• 37:40
  As I mentioned to you, I spent three years in London and we go back all the time.
• 37:44
  I have a daughter in London and we have friends.
• 37:46
  Uh, I do feel a, a greater sense of insecurity on the part of British Jewry
• 37:51
  than on the part of American Jewry, but I don't really sense that in America.
• 37:55
  And I certainly don't sense that in Israel where I've also lived quite extensively.
• 37:59
  Yeah.
• 38:00
  So, help us understand this sense of shame, and do you think
• 38:03
  it's, uh, it's kind of universal?
• 38:05
  It covers all Jews?
• 38:06
  Or are you specifically focused on, uh, European Jews?
• 38:10
  Yeah,
• 38:10
  that's a really good question.
• 38:11
  I, I, I mean, I, I I have talked about how, particularly when Jews Don't Count
• 38:16
  came out, quite a lot of Jews wrote to me.
• 38:18
  And, you know, Jews wrote to me to say they liked the book, Jews wrote to me
• 38:22
  to say that they had issues with the bit about Israel, or whatever, some
• 38:25
  non Jews wrote to me, and this was my favourite part of it, to say, oh, I'd
• 38:29
  never really thought about the way I think about Jews in this way, and I'll
• 38:32
  try and change, so that was great.
• 38:33
  And then the last thing, which was perhaps the most surprising, was Jews who said,
• 38:38
  I've spent my whole life pretending not to be Jewish, nor just not telling people
• 38:42
  that I'm Jewish, and I've read your book, and now I'm going to come out the closet.
• 38:46
  And that would be both older Jews, who were probably inculcated with a
• 38:51
  Holocaust survivor mentality, so their parents were Holocaust survivors,
• 38:54
  and they said, don't tell anyone you're Jewish, they'll kill you.
• 38:58
  And more pertinently, young Jews.
• 39:01
  Who would write to me and say, Oh, I'm at university.
• 39:04
  I'm in rooms with people of my own age and I'm fighting the good fight on
• 39:08
  behalf of LGBTQ people and people of color, whatever, and then occasionally
• 39:12
  I want to bring up antisemitism and I'm too frightened because I think
• 39:16
  they'll just laugh at me or say it's not important or they'll bring up Israel.
• 39:20
  And your book has helped.
• 39:21
  It's helped.
• 39:22
  Because to some extent it speaks the language of, you know,
• 39:24
  modern progressive thought.
• 39:26
  So there's this different ways in which Jews feel ashamed.
• 39:30
  I think at the moment, certainly in Britain and Europe, there is a
• 39:35
  shame connected with Israel as well.
• 39:37
  I think it builds on the original shame, which is this notion that Oh,
• 39:41
  I, as a Jew, I don't have a right to talk about my own vulnerability.
• 39:45
  It's a weird type of shame because there's a notion that if I am vulnerable as a
• 39:50
  Jew, I can't own vulnerability because I'm, people will think I'm rich and
• 39:54
  powerful and then it's compounded by people will think I'm very pro Zionist.
• 39:59
  And so how can I talk about being vulnerable when this
• 40:01
  terrible thing is happening?
• 40:02
  I mean, a good example of this.
• 40:05
  Which is, by the way, a connection that shouldn't really exist, but does
• 40:08
  all the time, is, if I publicly talk about antisemitism at the moment, so,
• 40:13
  immediately after October the 7th, I went on Sky TV, and I was asked the
• 40:17
  question, how are things with the Jewish community at the moment, and I
• 40:19
  said, well, everyone's very anxious and fearful, because there were huge rises
• 40:23
  in hate crime, and all the rest of it, and on social media, which obviously
• 40:27
  is a bad metric anyway, but on social media, Immediately you just get how dare
• 40:32
  you talk about Jews feeling anxious or whatever when children are being killed
• 40:36
  in Gaza as if that's the connection I was making which obviously it was not, right?
• 40:40
  Um, so Jews I think feel ashamed because they assume they will be
• 40:45
  categorized as somehow oppressors.
• 40:48
  And so wanting to talk about feeling vulnerable or feeling
• 40:50
  frightened is very difficult.
• 40:52
  I think that still exists definitely in this country.
• 40:56
  I think in America in general.
• 40:59
  Jews have always been a bit more, you know, unembarrassed about being Jews.
• 41:03
  The Jewish Chronicle, which actually has become a bit more strident in recent
• 41:07
  years, but in my, when I was growing up, the Jewish Chronicle, which was the Jewish
• 41:10
  newspaper, was very British, very genteel.
• 41:14
  And someone once said to me that the headline every week in the Jewish
• 41:18
  Chronicle was basically, oh, they hate us, meaning the non Jews, they hate us.
• 41:22
  And I said, no, no, no, the headline is They hate us and
• 41:25
  let's not make a fuss about it.
• 41:28
  And I always thought that was true.
• 41:29
  Is that British Jews were like, please, please, let's just not
• 41:33
  worry, you know, about anything because we're just trying to fit in.
• 41:36
  And so I think that is a thing that Jews don't count was also fighting.
• 41:42
  I have two very brief questions, but they might be quite complicated.
• 41:46
  One, are comedians fundamentally optimistic people?
• 41:51
  And are you optimistic about that?
• 41:54
  The state of the world and our future.
• 41:56
  Uh,
• 41:59
  I would say what I am, this is a weird thing to say, but it's definitely true,
• 42:03
  is completely not an optimistic person.
• 42:05
  I think I'm a fundamentally depressive person who uses comedy to be functional.
• 42:12
  I think without comedy, I'd have thrown myself off that
• 42:15
  balcony many, many years ago.
• 42:18
  I wrote a book called My Family, which is at the moment not out in America.
• 42:22
  I'm furious it's not, but hey, it's a memoir.
• 42:24
  I can send it to you, Rabbi.
• 42:26
  And if you read that, you'll think, how is he?
• 42:28
  Not insane because my early life was insane.
• 42:32
  Uh, principally because my mother had an affair with a
• 42:35
  golfing memorabilia salesman.
• 42:37
  We can't really get into it now, but then she turned our lives over to golf.
• 42:40
  Our whole house was like a shrine to golfing memorabilia.
• 42:43
  I mean, just mad.
• 42:44
  But what I learned very early on was that the stuff that happens to you,
• 42:48
  if you look at it in the right way, is it becomes something to celebrate
• 42:51
  the damage, become something to celebrate rather than something to
• 42:54
  constantly be angry and upset about.
• 42:57
  You know, I'm very different in that way from, say, Prince Harry.
• 43:00
  Um, and, and so that's what, so I, but I know I, I don't look at the
• 43:05
  world at the moment optimistically.
• 43:07
  I look at it pessimistically, and I use comedy to help me get through that.
• 43:11
  Sorry, I'd like to be more, more optimistic, but that is the truth.
• 43:15
  So, here's my
• 43:16
  last question.
• 43:17
  Uh, mindful of that.
• 43:19
  Uh, how do you see Americans nowadays, mindful of the new administration?
• 43:24
  Uh, you're, the UK is in Europe.
• 43:27
  How do you think Europeans view Americans nowadays?
• 43:31
  Well, as a comedian, it's quite hard because I think that, I mean,
• 43:36
  I won't be the first person to say this, but you know, Trump and Musk
• 43:40
  and all the others are so cartoonish.
• 43:43
  That's what I think is they're like cartoons.
• 43:45
  They're like children, really.
• 43:47
  It's like, I think for years and years, especially in Britain,
• 43:50
  And Europe in general, we'd got used to politicians being these
• 43:53
  very, very adult figures, right?
• 43:55
  Very grown up, very, they, they were in suits, everything they
• 43:59
  said was scripted, there was a lot of decorum involved with them.
• 44:02
  And suddenly, I mean, we had a bit of it with Boris Johnson and blah, blah, blah.
• 44:06
  You've got these people who are essentially Five year olds, I mean,
• 44:11
  you know, in the bodies of very old men, in the case of Donald Trump,
• 44:14
  but five year olds just shouting, you're, I hate you, you're stupid, in
• 44:19
  response to questions, aren't they?
• 44:20
  That's what they do.
• 44:21
  It's like, literally, you put a five year old and he would say the same thing.
• 44:24
  He would throw, you know, something at reporters.
• 44:27
  You ask them a different question.
• 44:28
  They'll say, your dad stinks, which is essentially what he does.
• 44:31
  The other day, he did that.
• 44:32
  Did you see that?
• 44:32
  The Washington Post.
• 44:34
  Do you see that?
• 44:34
  On a plane, said to him, do you feel disrespected?
• 44:37
  It's a good question.
• 44:38
  By the fact that Putin, you're supposed to be trying to create
• 44:40
  peace, but Putin just bombed Ukraine.
• 44:42
  Do you feel disrespected?
• 44:44
  And what he did was say, where are you from?
• 44:46
  And then he said, the Washington Post.
• 44:47
  Yeah, you're failing.
• 44:49
  You're failing.
• 44:49
  I think you should think about that.
• 44:51
  That's what a five year old does, right?
• 44:53
  And, and Musk is just like, just, I mean, you know.
• 44:57
  Again, a five year old, this is a slightly weird thing to say, but I've
• 45:00
  just thought of it, a five year old in a, whatever he is, 48 year old man's body.
• 45:05
  Might choose to have like 700 children, right?
• 45:08
  That's another thing that you might do if you've got no sort of, like, ability
• 45:11
  to understand what being adult is.
• 45:13
  Uh, so it's weird, and it's destabilizing, and it's frightening,
• 45:17
  and it's generally not very liberating.
• 45:19
  You know, sometimes I think when disruptive things happen in the
• 45:21
  world, Oh, this is interesting.
• 45:23
  Where's this gonna go?
• 45:24
  But I think most of the time with this, you just think Jesus, this feels unsafe.
• 45:29
  You know, it feels like these guys with incredible power.
• 45:32
  It feels unsafe.
• 45:34
  And there's something I haven't mentioned, or not much, in this whole conversation.
• 45:37
  But of course, it's because of the technology that we live in now.
• 45:41
  You know, what has essentially happened and this is what I think about America,
• 45:45
  but not just America, is that trolls People online who, who got interest and
• 45:52
  audience via shouting abuse at people.
• 45:56
  About 10 years ago, they were like a silly fringe part of the internet,
• 46:00
  and now they control the world, right?
• 46:02
  Because that's what Donald Trump and Elon Musk and other men who
• 46:08
  have become very, very powerful.
• 46:10
  They are internet trolls made flesh and the whole attitude, the whole
• 46:14
  capital letters, shouty, angry.
• 46:18
  Attitude is that they are, yeah, they're basically internet trolls.
• 46:22
  They do a thing by the way, which is also very, very trolly, which is they
• 46:25
  are people of incredible power, but their approach and attitude is always.
• 46:30
  We're the victims.
• 46:31
  We're the ones who have suffered.
• 46:32
  We're fighting on behalf of the people who have been put upon anything like,
• 46:36
  well, no, you're not because you are incredibly privileged and incredibly
• 46:40
  wealthy and always have been.
• 46:42
  Right?
• 46:43
  Like, virtually none of these men actually came from nothing,
• 46:45
  they just came from money.
• 46:47
  But still, they act as if, like, yeah, we're the ones who
• 46:49
  have suffered our whole lives.
• 46:50
  I must say, fuck off, is all I want to say.
• 46:53
  Sorry, I've sworn quite a lot on this, I know, I know you're
• 46:56
  We're, we're, I'm not gonna edit it out, I mean, it is what it is.
• 46:59
  Yeah.
• 46:59
  Even though I can't say that, I'm certainly
• 47:02
  not No, you
• 47:02
  can't say that.
• 47:03
  But we're not in Senegal, we're not in
• 47:05
  Shul, so it should be okay.
• 47:05
  That's for sure.
• 47:06
  Yeah.
• 47:07
  Do you want to give us one final Joke before we say goodbye to you.
• 47:11
  Um, okay.
• 47:14
  I tend
• 47:14
  to finish.
• 47:15
  My, uh, Jewish gigs now with this story.
• 47:18
  It's just a true story.
• 47:20
  And it is about Jewish shame, actually.
• 47:22
  It's about Jewish shame.
• 47:23
  So, I was interviewed in 1999, outside the FA Cup Final, that's
• 47:29
  a big footballing event, outside Wembley Stadium, by a man called Jim
• 47:33
  Rosenthal, who was a football presenter.
• 47:36
  And, you'll know this, right?
• 47:38
  Occasionally, you see, I mean, it's more prevalent in Britain, where
• 47:40
  there aren't that many Jews, but you see someone on the TV who's Jewish,
• 47:44
  And you're quite excited, right?
• 47:46
  Oh, that's one of us.
• 47:46
  Well, I was on the TV and Britain, that was, nobody really was Jewish,
• 47:49
  apart from me and a couple of others.
• 47:51
  So when I met Jim Rosenthal, I thought I'll do a joke about that,
• 47:55
  that only he will get, right?
• 47:57
  No one else will get it, that doesn't bother me.
• 47:58
  So he's interviewing me, it's a Saturday, all big football matches are on Saturday.
• 48:03
  And this other guy, Frank Skinner, and then I suddenly say, Jim,
• 48:06
  should you be working on Shabbos?
• 48:09
  And I thought, well, he'll laugh at that and then carry on.
• 48:11
  But he didn't.
• 48:12
  He stopped the interview and said, Right, I'm not having that.
• 48:16
  I'm not Jewish.
• 48:16
  I'm not Jewish.
• 48:17
  I get out of that, he said.
• 48:19
  I get out of that because of my mum.
• 48:21
  So clearly, I didn't realise this, Jim Rosenthal's mum wasn't Jewish,
• 48:24
  his dad was presumably Jewish, Rosenthal, but he thinks of himself
• 48:28
  as not Jewish because of the stupid matrilineal thing that I don't hold with
• 48:32
  anyway, because otherwise my children aren't Jewish, and they totally are.
• 48:35
  Right, so, it's really awkward and embarrassing and awful.
• 48:39
  Then, in 2002, I happen to be in Japan, where the World Cup was on, and in
• 48:46
  Japan, there's always a big sauna and a big sort of spa area in your hotel.
• 48:50
  So as soon as I get there, I go down to the spa area, to the sauna.
• 48:54
  I go into this sauna.
• 48:55
  And sitting in the sauna at this hotel, on his own, naked, is Jim Rosenthal.
• 49:01
  And you know what?
• 49:02
  He fucking is Jewish.
• 49:06
  There
• 49:06
  you are.
• 49:07
  With that, David Baddiel, it's been an honor and a pleasure.
• 49:11
  Keep up the great, great work.
• 49:13
  Thank
• 49:13
  you.
• 49:13
  Thank you, Ammi.
• 49:14
  It's really been a joy to talk to you.
• 49:15
  Thank you so much.
• 49:23
  This has been so much fun.
• 49:25
  David Baddiel is a very brilliant man, just to sit back and listen to
• 49:30
  brilliant people talk is a special treat.
• 49:33
  Especially in these challenging times, I need to speak more with comedians.
• 49:37
  People who make you laugh.
• 49:39
  I'm convinced that part of our problem as individuals and as a global community.
• 49:44
  is that we don't laugh enough.
• 49:46
  If we were not so humorless, our personal lives and our
• 49:49
  world would look a lot better.
• 49:52
  We would be happier and more fulfilled.
• 49:54
  There would be less anger in our lives, fewer wars, and less cruelty.
• 49:59
  Have you ever noticed that tyrants seem to be uniquely devoid of a sense of humor?
• 50:04
  A little mouse of levity creeps into their totalitarian fortresses and sends them
• 50:09
  scurrying like frightened schoolchildren.
• 50:12
  As David so beautifully and poignantly embodies, laughter is a central component
• 50:18
  of Jewish tradition, from the beginning.
• 50:20
  The very name of the patriarch Isaac, Yitzchak, means laughter.
• 50:25
  When Abraham was 99 years old, God appeared to him and said, Your
• 50:29
  wife, Sarah, shall bear a son.
• 50:31
  Abraham could have responded in dozens of ways to this news.
• 50:35
  He could have sunk to his knees in gratitude that God would
• 50:38
  grant his childless, soon to be 90 year old wife a child.
• 50:42
  He could have taken a moment of personal reflection.
• 50:45
  He could have written a song.
• 50:46
  He could have cleared a room in the tent.
• 50:48
  But what did Abraham do upon hearing the news?
• 50:52
  The Bible tells us, And Abraham fell on his face and laughed.
• 51:02
  You can envision him rolling on the floor in breathless delight as he gasps.
• 51:07
  Can a child be born to a man who is 100 years old?
• 51:10
  And can Sarah bear a child at 90?
• 51:13
  The very thought is enough to send Abraham into an uproarious tizzy.
• 51:18
  Soon thereafter, three messengers visit Abraham and Sarah in their tent.
• 51:22
  They tell Abraham, Your wife Sarah will soon bear a son.
• 51:26
  Sarah was listening by the entrance to the tent.
• 51:29
  When she heard the prophecy, she could have responded in dozens of ways.
• 51:34
  She could have sunk to her knees in gratitude.
• 51:36
  She could have taken a moment of personal reflection.
• 51:39
  She could have written a song, cleared a room in the tent.
• 51:44
  But what did Sarah do upon hearing the news?
• 51:47
  The Bible tells us VA and Sarah laughed to herself.
• 51:54
  How can two withered people have a baby?
• 51:56
  She chuckled.
• 51:58
  You can envision her giggling under her breath, amused by the very
• 52:01
  absurdity, muttering to herself.
• 52:03
  Something like having a baby at the age of 90.
• 52:06
  After everything I've been through, you've gotta be kidding.
• 52:10
  Sure enough, when the baby arrives, nine months later, he's
• 52:14
  named , which means something like.
• 52:18
  You've gotta be kidding.
• 52:21
  Laughter is courage.
• 52:23
  It takes courage to laugh at yourself.
• 52:27
  Laughter is our way of reminding ourselves and others that we are not
• 52:30
  as high and mighty as we think we are.
• 52:33
  We are like every other living creature, frail and mortal, trying to
• 52:39
  eke out a living in harsh conditions.
• 52:42
  Life often seems to us unreasonable, incomprehensible, unfair, chaotic,
• 52:46
  and without rhyme or reason.
• 52:49
  One of the classic 20th century treatises written by Albert Camus
• 52:52
  entitled The Myth of Sisyphus was devoted to this central thesis.
• 52:57
  If the world is so absurd, why not kill ourselves now?
• 53:00
  Why prolong the agony?
• 53:03
  That's so French.
• 53:06
  Our lives are Sisyphean, wrote Camus.
• 53:09
  We seem to accomplish nothing, condemned to pushing a boulder up
• 53:12
  the hill only to watch it roll down again, and to repeat this over and over
• 53:17
  until we are, as Shakespeare wrote, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste.
• 53:24
  Sounds everything.
• 53:26
  The Jews also recognized this existential challenge.
• 53:29
  It wasn't invented by Camus in the 20th century.
• 53:33
  Our response, as David Baddiel so eloquently described, was
• 53:38
  to devote our lives to repair, the here and now, to action.
• 53:43
  Social progress is meaningful in its own right.
• 53:47
  Jews continue to laugh at the existential challenges of life.
• 53:51
  You've got to be kidding, we muttered, and confronted life with
• 53:54
  as much joy as we could muster.
• 53:57
  We are commanded in our tradition to rejoice.
• 54:00
  To find that place of joy.
• 54:02
  For to miss joy is to miss all.
• 54:06
  We celebrated Purim recently.
• 54:09
  Every year, we read how the Jews were on the verge of annihilation and the wicked
• 54:13
  Haman came within an inch of genocide.
• 54:16
  And our response every year is the same.
• 54:19
  To shriek with delight, joy, and laughter.
• 54:22
  And cry out loud.
• 54:24
  You've gotta be kidding, and then we get drunk.
• 54:28
  To laugh is to affirm life.
• 54:30
  Melancholy is a retreat from life.
• 54:33
  Laughter is the embrace of life, with all its cruelties and absurdities.
• 54:38
  Laughter heralds hope.
• 54:40
  Laughter allows for perspective.
• 54:42
  It leads to wisdom.
• 54:44
  It is medicine for loneliness and vulnerability.
• 54:48
  Laughter reminds us of our own smallness.
• 54:51
  That should lead us to value all of the things we take for granted.
• 54:54
  Simply to be is a joy.
• 54:57
  Laughter is a sign of resilience.
• 54:59
  It means we're fighting back.
• 55:00
  Laughter We Jews laugh even in the face of death.
• 55:04
  When Moshe was dying in the hospital, he had only one last request, his favorite
• 55:08
  meal, the chopped liver of his wife Sadie.
• 55:12
  When Sadie heard her husband's dying wish, she responded, You
• 55:15
  can't have that, it'll kill you.
• 55:17
  Moshe retorted, I'm gonna die anyway.
• 55:19
  It's not gonna make a difference, give me some of that chopped liver.
• 55:22
  Sadie responded, You can't have any, the chopped liver is for the Shiva.
• 55:27
  There's a time for everything under the heavens.
• 55:30
  There's a time for weeping, a time for mourning, a time for
• 55:32
  frustration and somberness.
• 55:35
  But our lives should be lived with joy, and sometimes a good response is just to
• 55:40
  fall on the floor and laugh or to mutter to ourselves, You gotta be kidding me.
• 55:47
  The Talmud tells of a great sage who met Elijah the prophet
• 55:50
  one day in the village market.
• 55:52
  The rabbi asked Elijah whether there's anyone in the market who would merit olam
• 55:57
  abba, eternal favor in the world to come.
• 56:01
  Elijah pointed to two men.
• 56:03
  Those two will be rewarded with eternal life, said Elijah.
• 56:07
  The rabbi approached these men to ask what was their vocation.
• 56:10
  They told him that they were jesters, jokesters, clowns, who entertained people.
• 56:16
  When we see people sad or depressed, we cheer them up.
• 56:20
  When we see two people quarreling, we strive to make peace between them.
• 56:24
  And of all the people in the market, even more than the scholars, the
• 56:27
  thinkers, the politicians, the teachers, the vendors, more than anyone else.
• 56:32
  It was the comedians whose future was rewarded with everlasting life.
• 56:37
  They cheered people up, and in so doing, made peace between them.
• 56:43
  To laugh, and to make others laugh, is the gladness of the world, and
• 56:48
  will be rewarded in days to come.
• 56:52
  And I hope David will forgive me, but I say that even about
• 56:56
  Jewish Fundamentalist Atheists.
• 57:03
  Until next time, this is In These Times.