Latest / Before You Speak / Before You Speak | Political Homelessness of an American Jew
Transcript
- Elwyn: Yeah, so, you know, we just finished recording about the Iran war. And I've been thinking a lot, even before this happened, about sort of what it means to be an American Jew in this political environment. And the Iran war sort of shines this incredible spotlight on this, because there is no question that Israel, the state of Israel, is certainly Walking hand-in-hand with us if not leading us down this path right that the exact role of Israel and our relationship with Israel Is an element of this war that is present and simply cannot be avoided and will need to be discussed But I live in the United States right I am an American Jew and I am a leftist Democrat and when I survey the landscape here there is ⁓ There is no binary right or wrong left or right party that I belong to and it's difficult and challenging and pulls in a lot of different ways and I think it's interesting to talk about and ⁓ maybe for people to hear about and maybe this is just a way for me to get some thoughts out of my head. A lot of times I think things through a little bit more than this one although this isn't completely unbaked. ⁓ I don't trust the right. I don't trust any political party that sits adjacent to people like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes ⁓ and Tucker Carlson and embraces Christian Zionism like Mike Huckabee. Those are people who would do harm to Jews. If you listen to Candace Owens speak about how she views Jewish people, like actual Jewish people, me. That will cause Jewish people to be hurt. There will be crazy people who listen to her and think, I need to kill some Jews. It's already happened. It happened in the first Trump administration. And all this shit is like born out from history. So I don't trust the right at all. I don't trust Donald Trump as a friend of the Jews. I don't think he wants to kill them. I don't think he wants to kill Jews. I don't think he cares about Jews at all, either way. You know, I think he cares about Israel in some way, although... what that all is, we don't know. I certainly don't trust Stephen Miller even though he is Jewish or Jared Kushner because I think they're all completely self-interested. I don't trust the right and I don't think that voting against Kamala Harris to elect people who are so adjacent to absolute white nationalists. If you go up and down the Trump administration, you've got people like Seb Gorka who's a fucking Hungarian Nazi. You've got people like Stephen Miller. You've got this guy who was approved by the Senate, testified in front of the Senate a couple weeks ago, who has just said absolutely neo-Nazi shit, right? So no, I don't trust the right at all. think they're, I'm in danger. They are a danger to American Jews, right? And I don't trust the left. And I don't trust the left, in part because of what happened after October 7th, although there was some bit of them that turned out to be right about that. But the left, man, I listen to people on the left that have huge followings and the way that they attack Israel and attack Zionism, it's really close, man. I never hear the qualifier that I want to hear, which is like, no, we understand that Jews and Israel are not the same. And I don't think enough people understand Zionism well enough to understand that Jews and the state of Israel are not the same and that's why I don't trust Netanyahu or the political leadership of Israel either and I kinda don't trust the American Rabbinate or institutionalized American Jewry because they have spent the last two and a half years since October 7th so closely equating being Jewish with support for the state of Israel that how can we blame someone who doesn't know any of this shit and listens to Candace Owens or listens to Breaking Points and Crystal Ball, one of the hosts there, her name is actually Crystal Ball, and gets all twisted about Jews and Zionism and Jews and Israel and if you wear a Jewish star you must support Israel and if you support Israel you must support what's going on in Gaza. Everything there has been too conflated, has been too tied together and there's not enough Derek Peterson: I didn't know that. Elwyn: understanding in the world or nuance or breadth taken to stop and think about this shit. So that rhetoric puts American Jews at risk also. And American Jews themselves, I don't think want to see it. You know, the idea that the state of Israel exists to protect from another Holocaust is instrumental to its founding. You cannot look at history and ignore that fact. You can dissect history in a million ways, but you cannot take that simple fact out of it. And this idea that the state of Israel ⁓ is a warm security blanket at the end of the day for American Jews to know that if there's another Holocaust or Holocaust type event, we have a state with an army that's a Jewish state with a Jewish army that can go and protect us and we can be safe living there. That is really drilled into you as an American Jew. I'm 51 years old, right? That has been drilled into me for 51 years, okay? But what if I really don't trust the state of Israel right now to be doing things that make us all safer? I don't believe for a second that this war in Iran makes an American Jew safer. Okay, I don't live in Israel. I have no right to comment on Israeli politics. I have no right to comment on what they feel when they have to, if they build a new house, build a bomb shelter in that house by building code. I have absolutely no right to question them. Okay, and I'm not. What I'm saying is, I don't think that Israeli Jews, and I don't think that American Jews fully recognize just how much of a pariah being Jewish makes you on all sides of the political spectrum. You know, we talked about Graham Plattner the other day, and I apologize if I'm coming at you a little bit. You know, no, no, no, like, fuck this guy, Plattner, you know, like, he got caught. Derek Peterson: It's okay. Elwyn: ⁓ reposting Stu Peters who is an avowed neo-Nazi. I wanna like Graham Plattner. I agree with everything he says. That's two strikes. That's two fucking Nazi strikes on this guy. And as a Democrat now, I have to choose between a guy who is either not savvy enough or just doesn't give a shit enough to disassociate himself with fucking white nationalist neo-Nazis or some 78 year old former governor. who's barely gonna eek it out over the finish line against goddamn Susan Collins who is probably concerned. Right? So now I as an American Jew am like, no. Derek Peterson: You're right, you know what? I completely forgot about the Nazi cover up, the tattoo thing. Like when you texted me that, that didn't even register that this was the second hit on him. That makes me actually question that tweet far more now though. Yeah, you're not wrong. Elwyn: Yeah. Yeah, so it's like, so I look at this and I'm like, man, I want to vote. I don't, I live in Maine. I don't have a vote for Plattner. But now I would have to sit that election out. I can't vote. I can't affirmatively vote for a guy like that because he should fucking know better. His standard as a Senate candidate is too high. And the left is just slowly, slowly, slowly letting down their guard and starting to say, well, for the sake of beating Donald Trump and for the sake of progressive values, we'll accept some Nazi tattoos and we'll accept cross-posting white nationalists and we'll accept globalizing the Intifada and we'll accept all the shit that the left can't accept. So like, I am all for progressive values, but man, I don't trust the left of this party to stick up for me, not the new left, not the progressive left, and I don't trust the old left, the Schumers, to stick up for me either because they're just in bed with AIPAC. and the pro-Israel lobby, and that pro-Israel lobby is doing infinite harm to American Jews because they're just dragging us into all this shit without thinking about it, and this country sees right through that right now. And the right is like, completely worse because they are filled with people who actually would shoot me. You know, like, who actually want to rid the world of Jews. So, you know, I sit here and I watch this war, and I'm glad Khomeini is dead. And I'm glad that Iranians are celebrating in the streets. And I'm glad that Israelis are celebrating in the streets. But I do not feel safer. And I do not feel allied with any part of the Democratic party on this. And I do not feel allied with any part of the Republican party on this. Certainly don't feel allied with MAGA on anything ever. And I don't feel that the congregations and the rabbis in the United States are taking the time to explain this to me in a manner that answers my concerns. And I don't want to go to temple because of that. I don't want to be involved in this, but I like being Jewish. find being Jewish, I find Judaism to be a religion of peace. I find it to be a religion of thoughtfulness and of discord. And I think that's why we've survived, and I think that's why we're always targeted also, because we survive and because we hold true to our traditions and true to our values, and we are now abandoning those values as I was raised to understand them, in favor of war. in favor of killing people, right, in favor of values that make zero sense to me. And there is no institutional presence anywhere in this country right now that seeks to answer these questions. They simply say, go along. You're a Jew, you should be Zionist. If you are not a Zionist, you are definitely not a Jew. You know, they won't say that out loud. But there is no question that if you're going to be a good Jew in this country, you have to also be a Zionist. And I am a Zionist. Because being a Zionist means that I believe that the state of Israel has a right to exist. Period. Full stop. And I am a Zionist. I do believe that state of Israel has right to exist. But I don't agree with anything they're doing. And nobody in this country gives a shit whether or not I agree. Because they all disagree. And this rhetoric is getting more more heated. and it's getting more and more awful and the bar for to be a democratic candidate is getting lower and lower and lower when we think about what's unacceptable and the bar for killing fucking people is getting lower and lower and on the other side and all around. So this problem of the political homelessness of an American Jew, man it's real, you know, and it's gonna tear this community apart a little bit unless people start to like listen more to what really more than half this country thinks about Israel. I heard a poll this morning that for the first time, not splitting demographics, for the first time more than 50 % of the people polled had a negative view of Israel. I feel zero comfort that those people understand the difference between a Jew and Israel. Zero comfort. Derek Peterson: Hmm. Yeah. Elwyn: And I don't know, I feel like this needs to be out there. And to the extent people listen and start talking about it, great. But yeah, I wanted to use that platform for this today. Derek Peterson: Well, dude, yeah, I appreciate you saying all of that. And I don't know if you can see me right now because I can't see you, but I'm still going to say this is that that is one of the reasons I have all of the respect I have for you is that you have the ability to actually wrestle with this. And I don't think everybody does. And this is for all of us, right? It's it's not just a like, and I don't want to demean anything that you're saying, but like, you know, I remember when I went through like the the Black Lives Matter stuff and my initial response was actually really poor to all that. Meaning like, as a white guy, I kind of felt like, ⁓ my hardships and the things that I've experienced in my life were minimalized because I wasn't black. And it took a lot of searching and understanding to realize, just because I've gone through some hard shit in my life, it doesn't mean... that I went through hardship because of the color of my skin or something that was out of my control. And there is something to be said for people like yourself ⁓ that are internally struggling with connections to their heritage and their past and to, you know, their genetics and all of these things and are wrestling with like, Hey, things were done a certain way for a very long time. And now like I'm really having a hard time aligning my values with some of this stuff. Dude, I think that that is some of the hardest things that you can actually go through is to question like, is, am I aligned with something that I am expected to be in line with because of my heritage? Like that's not a fucking easy thing to answer. And I have a lot of respect for you for wrestling with that question because you know, a lot of people would just choose not to do it. Elwyn: Yeah, thank you for that. you know, I was talking about this with my wife last night and she was like, what can we do about this? I was like, we can think critically, right? We can listen to what people, what our leaders are telling us and think critically about it. And I think that's really important. It is the thing that disappoints me the most though, honestly is. Judaism is a religion where we argue. We do. The Talmud is a book of rabbis arguing over points in the Torah. The Passover Seder can be hilarious because you just have the 10 commandments becomes 250 commandments just through rabbis arguing and multiplying by five over and over again. I'm not even joking. So to me, Derek Peterson: Ha Elwyn: I am disappointed that we have failed to really talk about this amongst ourselves as Jews in a manner that is deeper than we must support Israel. Because I can support the right of the state of Israel to exist and also be appalled at what its current leadership is doing in the name of being Jewish, in the name of Jewish secu- security, right? And I don't think that we in America are having this conversation in our synagogues and in our congregations. And I think that I'm probably not alone in feeling that. And I think that that's an incredible failing of a religion that should embrace this opportunity to create more connection, to create more value, to create more understanding about what we stand for outside of just being emotionally pulled by the politics of this. So, yeah. Derek Peterson: Yep. Well, dude, I commend you for starting that conversation and I hope that this reaches some people that maybe are in the same boat as you and that start to feel like they can talk about the same things because, know, like it's in my, might be an overstatement to say, but you know, like I'm an American and I disagree with everything that's going on with the leadership in America. I'm a proud American. I'm proud that I've grown up and had the freedoms that I grew up with in this country, the freedoms to experience everything that we have, like, you know, even growing up in Utah and a Mormon culture as a Southern Baptist and all the different diversity in different ways that we've been pulled. you know, like there's a lot of beauty in that. And I can love America while at the same time completely disagree with everything that's going on in our leadership. And I don't think it's a far. I think it's a little deeper for you because of the ties and the purpose of Israel. And so these questions are likely much harder to wrestle with than what I have to deal with. But I commend you for doing it. And hopefully this is the start of some good conversation. Elwyn: Yeah, thank you.