Latest / UK Column Radio / The Difference Between Judaism and Zionism | Jerm Warfare
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: So so.
- 0:30Speaker 2: My name is Jerm.
- 0:31Speaker 1: This is Jerm Warfare, the battle of ideas.
- 0:34Speaker 2: Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, thank you for joining me in the trenches.
- 0:38Speaker 2: Tell me if I've got this mostly right. You finished
- 0:41Speaker 2: high school at around 16 and then you immediately went
- 0:44Speaker 2: into studying under the top rabbis. And then you were
- 0:48Speaker 2: a pulpit rabbi, I think, for what, around 30 years
- 0:51Speaker 2: in New York?
- 0:53Speaker 1: A little more. Yeah. Yeah, I'm a regular. I spend
- 0:56Speaker 1: my day now studying, praying, spending time with my family,
- 1:00Speaker 1: and now dealing with questions about Zionism. And you've written,
- 1:06Speaker 1: I think, five books. Is that right? It is.
- 1:10Speaker 2: It's How Zionism Has Stolen Jewish Identity.
- 1:14Speaker 1: Well, that's one book. The other four books were written
- 1:17Speaker 1: in Hebrew. and they're on biblical or rabbinic topics. A
- 1:22Speaker 1: legal topic is biblical exegesis and the like. In 2018,
- 1:28Speaker 1: my book came out. It's called The Empty Wagon, Zionism's
- 1:35Speaker 1: Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft. And the name
- 1:40Speaker 1: The Empty Wagon is the rabbinic nickname for Zionism that
- 1:47Speaker 1: caught on based on a, meeting that a great sage,
- 1:51Speaker 1: Rabbi Korelitz's name was, had with David Ben-Gurion, where Ben-Gurion
- 1:56Speaker 1: came to Rabbi Korelitz to try to discuss how Jews,
- 2:01Speaker 1: the Orthodox Jews and the Zionists can get along and
- 2:07Speaker 1: join with each other. And turns out they couldn't. So
- 2:12Speaker 1: Rabbi Korelitz is asked by Ben-Gurion, so what do we
- 2:17Speaker 1: do now if we're incompatible? So Rabbi Karelitz told him
- 2:22Speaker 1: about a Talmudic law. The law is that if you
- 2:26Speaker 1: have two wagons on a single lane road coming at
- 2:31Speaker 1: each other from opposite directions, the question now is which
- 2:36Speaker 1: wagon has to go off the road to make room
- 2:38Speaker 1: for the other. And the law is that if one
- 2:41Speaker 1: wagon is full and the other is empty, the empty
- 2:44Speaker 1: wagon needs to move out of the way so the
- 2:47Speaker 1: full wagon can continue on its way. said Rabbi Karelitz
- 2:51Speaker 1: to Ben-Gurion, our wagon, Judaism, is a full wagon. We
- 2:56Speaker 1: have thousands of years of tradition. We've been around all
- 2:59Speaker 1: this time, and we have content, as opposed to Zionism,
- 3:03Speaker 1: which is empty, an empty wagon. So you guys got
- 3:06Speaker 1: to move out of the way to make room for us.
- 3:08Speaker 1: That's what he told him. And Ben-Gurion got really upset, really,
- 3:14Speaker 1: really upset, after he actually It took him a few
- 3:18Speaker 1: moments to figure out with Rabbi Carell the ramifications of
- 3:22Speaker 1: what he said. But that's the name of the book.
- 3:27Speaker 1: It's named after that story. Zionism is described as the
- 3:30Speaker 1: empty wagon.
- 3:32Speaker 2: When we talk about Judaism and when we talk about Zionism,
- 3:35Speaker 2: what are we talking about?
- 3:37Speaker 1: Judaism is a religion. It was, according to the Jewish religion,
- 3:42Speaker 1: which we believe in, in the story, the biblical story
- 3:47Speaker 1: in Exodus, where Moses leads the Jewish people, or leads
- 3:51Speaker 1: the people out of, I want to be precise here
- 3:54Speaker 1: so you can understand, out of Egypt at the base
- 3:58Speaker 1: of Mount Sinai, then God gives them the Torah. So
- 4:02Speaker 1: that Torah had 613 commandments, not just 10. Long story,
- 4:07Speaker 1: but that's the Judaic belief. And all those people and
- 4:12Speaker 1: the as yet unborn souls of their descendants who were
- 4:17Speaker 1: at Mount Sinai and accepted that Torah willingly, it was
- 4:21Speaker 1: kind of like the Christians, the most similar thing, based
- 4:26Speaker 1: on my experience being told when I tell over the story,
- 4:31Speaker 1: by Christians what it's similar to. It's a calling. God
- 4:35Speaker 1: gave a calling to these people, meaning obligations. God said,
- 4:39Speaker 1: this is how I want you to live. And they
- 4:41Speaker 1: actually accepted it, them and their souls, the souls of
- 4:45Speaker 1: unborn children, meaning today's Jews. And whoever is obligated in
- 4:50Speaker 1: that covenant between God and the people of Moses are
- 4:54Speaker 1: called Jews. The religion makes the Jews. There were no
- 4:59Speaker 1: Jewish people until then. And at that moment, the ragtag
- 5:05Speaker 1: refugees from Egypt became the Jews. And it's a lifestyle.
- 5:12Speaker 1: It's a priestly lifestyle. That's why we have We look different.
- 5:19Speaker 1: We wear yarmulkes. We eat kosher food. We have our
- 5:23Speaker 1: own prayers. And to whatever extent a person chooses to
- 5:28Speaker 1: be religious, that's the extent he's fulfilling the covenant. The
- 5:33Speaker 1: rest of the world... God gave Adam, or perhaps Noah,
- 5:38Speaker 1: it's complicated, but let's just call it the Noahide covenant now.
- 5:43Speaker 1: When he came out of the ark in the story
- 5:47Speaker 1: in Genesis, so God said to him, look, it's a
- 5:51Speaker 1: world out there. People have to be civilized. There are
- 5:54Speaker 1: seven nations. General rules, we'll call them laws, but they're
- 5:58Speaker 1: general rules that the world has to fulfill. You can't kill,
- 6:04Speaker 1: you can't steal, sexual deviation, you can't worship idols, you can't,
- 6:12Speaker 1: this is one of the rules technically, rip a limb
- 6:16Speaker 1: off a live animal and eat it before you kill
- 6:18Speaker 1: the animal. You have to set up a court of
- 6:21Speaker 1: law and justice. It doesn't have to be according to
- 6:24Speaker 1: Jewish law. Justice, law, and morality. That's also one of
- 6:29Speaker 1: the rules, and the whole world is expected to fulfill.
- 6:36Speaker 1: Those who receive the Mosaic Covenant, which is about 800
- 6:40Speaker 1: years after Noah, more or less, they're obligated to fulfill
- 6:46Speaker 1: more of a priestly life, a more strict covenant with
- 6:53Speaker 1: additional commandments. Anybody who wants, by the way, can convert
- 6:58Speaker 1: to being a Jew. The most famous convert probably in
- 7:02Speaker 1: the country now is President Trump's daughter, Ivanka. She converted
- 7:07Speaker 1: to Judaism. Assuming she did it properly and with the
- 7:12Speaker 1: correct due process, she's 100% full-fledged Jews and her children
- 7:16Speaker 1: are Jews, even though her father is Donald Trump, who's
- 7:19Speaker 1: like not Jewish at all, which means that it's a religion.
- 7:25Speaker 1: It's a religion which is a community as well. The
- 7:30Speaker 1: Muslims now, they tell me they have a word for
- 7:34Speaker 1: such a type thing, which the Jews also have. It's
- 7:38Speaker 1: called Uma. We call ourselves the Jewish Uma. They have
- 7:43Speaker 1: a word for Uma. It means we're connected. Brothers in faith,
- 7:47Speaker 1: I suppose in English you could call it. But it's
- 7:49Speaker 1: not that we're a tribe. Jews never had a flag. Actually,
- 7:53Speaker 1: as the story in Genesis and Exodus shows, the Jews
- 7:59Speaker 1: were comprised of 12 tribes. Each one of those tribes
- 8:02Speaker 1: had their own flag, their own culture, their own lifestyle,
- 8:05Speaker 1: which made them tribes. But the Jews collectively never had
- 8:09Speaker 1: a flag, never had one lifestyle. In biblical times, we
- 8:15Speaker 1: spoke Hebrew. Later, the Jews during the Temple and the
- 8:19Speaker 1: Second Commonwealth spoke Aramaic, which we still use for a
- 8:24Speaker 1: lot of our prayers. It's a religion, but it's a
- 8:30Speaker 1: religious community where Jews are bound up with each other
- 8:34Speaker 1: only in a spiritual way. And what I mean to
- 8:38Speaker 1: say by that is that if a person does not
- 8:40Speaker 1: believe in the revelation at Mount Sinai, So he's an atheist.
- 8:46Speaker 1: That means that he does not believe the Jewish people
- 8:50Speaker 1: exist because the Jewish people were created by that revelation.
- 8:56Speaker 1: It's not that they were the Jewish people and then
- 8:59Speaker 1: God gave these people who are already a people, a
- 9:03Speaker 1: political nation, the Torah. It's not true. The fact that
- 9:08Speaker 1: we have the Torah is what makes us Jews. Had
- 9:10Speaker 1: God created given the Torah to a different group of people,
- 9:13Speaker 1: they would be the Jews. There's a very famous statement,
- 9:19Speaker 1: it's a guideline, a teaching of a great rabbi who
- 9:22Speaker 1: lived about a thousand years ago in Egypt. His name
- 9:25Speaker 1: was Rabbi Sadia. Rabbi Sadia, and when I say this,
- 9:30Speaker 1: I'm not trying to convince anybody, neither you or the
- 9:33Speaker 1: people in your audience, to my religion. But Rabbi Sadia
- 9:37Speaker 1: was defending Judaism against other religions that claim that God
- 9:42Speaker 1: took the law, the Torah, away from the Jews and
- 9:44Speaker 1: gave it to some other people. Rabbi Sadia wants to
- 9:48Speaker 1: prove that that's not true. You know, it's an interreligious defense, okay?
- 9:57Speaker 1: So Rabbi Sadya does this by citing verses in the
- 10:01Speaker 1: Bible that the Jewish people will exist forever. They'll be
- 10:05Speaker 1: there forever. And Rabbi Sadya continues that since it's only
- 10:09Speaker 1: the Torah that makes us an umma, ein umma senu
- 10:13Speaker 1: umma elebesai rasa, those are his words in Hebrew, um...
- 10:18Speaker 1: since our nation is not our nation, I don't want
- 10:21Speaker 1: to use that word, our people, our umma, our collective,
- 10:26Speaker 1: is not a people except because of the Torah, had
- 10:31Speaker 1: God given that Torah to someone else, had he removed
- 10:35Speaker 1: it from the Jews, then the Jews would no longer exist.
- 10:39Speaker 1: The Jews mean, the definition of Jews are those people
- 10:43Speaker 1: who are commanded by the Torah to fulfill it. That's it.
- 10:47Speaker 1: It's a job description. You know, I guess, again, Christians, similar,
- 10:52Speaker 1: not exact, would be like a calling. You have a calling,
- 10:55Speaker 1: which means you have God wants you to do this stuff,
- 10:58Speaker 1: whether you do it or not. The fact that you're
- 11:02Speaker 1: called makes you the Jew. The fact that this is
- 11:05Speaker 1: your covenant makes you the Jew. The fact that you
- 11:09Speaker 1: have these, it's a job description. God gave Jews a
- 11:12Speaker 1: job description. That's the Torah. A policeman is somebody who
- 11:18Speaker 1: has a job description. If he never shows up to work... Technically,
- 11:21Speaker 1: he's a policeman that's not doing his job. A Jew
- 11:25Speaker 1: that doesn't fulfill the Torah is a Jew that's not
- 11:27Speaker 1: doing his job. If he doesn't believe in it, if
- 11:30Speaker 1: he doesn't believe in the Torah, then he doesn't believe
- 11:32Speaker 1: he's a policeman. He doesn't believe he's Jewish. Fine. Now,
- 11:37Speaker 1: here's the thing. There are many non-religious Jews. And 500
- 11:42Speaker 1: years ago, there was almost no such thing. There was
- 11:44Speaker 1: no such thing as a non-religious Jew, an atheist Jew.
- 11:47Speaker 1: If somebody wanted to not be Jewish, he would just
- 11:50Speaker 1: convert to another religion because there weren't so many atheists
- 11:53Speaker 1: back in the Middle Ages. But even if he wanted
- 11:57Speaker 1: to be an atheist, he would no longer identify as
- 12:00Speaker 1: a Jew. He said, I'm an atheist. There were some
- 12:03Speaker 1: few exceptions, like maybe Benedict Spinoza is one of them.
- 12:07Speaker 1: It depends who you ask. But But aside from these
- 12:12Speaker 1: few quirky exceptions, a Jew, everybody knew what a Jew was.
- 12:16Speaker 1: Even Shakespeare and Shylock is a religious person. But then
- 12:23Speaker 1: came the emancipation and the enlightenment, and people got freedom
- 12:26Speaker 1: from religion, freedom of religion, and Jews were no longer
- 12:32Speaker 1: bound to stay in the ghettos, and they were allowed
- 12:36Speaker 1: to go out into the world. And a lot of
- 12:38Speaker 1: people That said, you know, we don't want this lifestyle.
- 12:41Speaker 1: Being Jewish is not just belief or some rituals. It's
- 12:45Speaker 1: a whole lifestyle. I can't eat in Domino's Pizza. I
- 12:50Speaker 1: have to eat kosher food, which means that I need
- 12:54Speaker 1: a neighborhood that sells kosher food. If I want to
- 12:56Speaker 1: eat in a kosher, if I want to take my
- 12:58Speaker 1: wife out to a restaurant, I need a kosher restaurant.
- 13:01Speaker 1: I need schools that, for my children, that teach Judaism, that... pray,
- 13:09Speaker 1: where the kids pray two or three times a day,
- 13:12Speaker 1: depending on how long the day is. We need our
- 13:16Speaker 1: own community. We need a prayer quorum. That means we
- 13:18Speaker 1: need not only synagogues, but we need... Jews live in
- 13:22Speaker 1: their own communities because we need certain things, which is fine.
- 13:26Speaker 1: That's freedom of religion. Thank God we live in a
- 13:28Speaker 1: country like this where we could do that. We are
- 13:31Speaker 1: loyal to our country. I hang out my flag in
- 13:34Speaker 1: the 4th of July, you know, but all we're interested in,
- 13:38Speaker 1: all Jews are interested in is fulfilling the Torah, doing
- 13:43Speaker 1: our prayers. Take me, for example, I'm a senior citizen,
- 13:47Speaker 1: you know, I put in my time. All I want
- 13:49Speaker 1: to do is pray. I spend my day praying, studying,
- 13:55Speaker 1: dealing with questions and issues about Zionism, you know, when
- 13:59Speaker 1: they cross my desk. advocating for the Jewish people, and
- 14:05Speaker 1: take a walk by the bay. And that's it. That's
- 14:07Speaker 1: all I want. And everybody leave me alone. I only
- 14:09Speaker 1: have one country, one flag. That is of the United
- 14:12Speaker 1: States of America. My family's from Poland. And that's my life.
- 14:16Speaker 1: You know, my mother's family's from England. Like most, the
- 14:20Speaker 1: vast majority of Americans, which is only 250 years old,
- 14:23Speaker 1: the whole country, we are all immigrants from somewhere for
- 14:26Speaker 1: the most part. Italy, Ireland, wherever it may be, right?
- 14:33Speaker 1: Then there's Zionism. Let's go to the mid to late 1800s.
- 14:39Speaker 1: When the Jews, many Jews decided they don't want to
- 14:42Speaker 1: be religious. They want to assimilate. They want to be Russians.
- 14:46Speaker 1: And it's not just Russians. They wanted what they would
- 14:49Speaker 1: consider a normal, secular, Russian lifestyle, German lifestyle, French lifestyle.
- 14:56Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is that Jews, we
- 14:59Speaker 1: were always... literate, meaning 2000 years ago, compulsory education was
- 15:04Speaker 1: instituted by the high priest, Joshua Ben Gamla and any
- 15:07Speaker 1: town that didn't have education for the children was either
- 15:11Speaker 1: dismantled or ostracized. Okay. Um, whereas compulsory education in Europe
- 15:17Speaker 1: started in the 18 hundreds, but although the Jews were
- 15:21Speaker 1: literate for the most part, I mean, they had compulsory
- 15:24Speaker 1: education up to a certain age. Um, we never had
- 15:28Speaker 1: fiction literature. All the literature, and they are very profound
- 15:34Speaker 1: and sophisticated poetry and literature, but it's all about religion
- 15:40Speaker 1: and the religious experience and about God. Because we're supposed
- 15:45Speaker 1: to live a priestly lifestyle, right? It's not a capital
- 15:50Speaker 1: sin if you write a fiction book. But that wasn't
- 15:54Speaker 1: what our lifestyle was about, okay? There was no Jewish art,
- 15:59Speaker 1: no Jewish architecture. This was our life, like think Shaolin monks, but,
- 16:06Speaker 1: you know, without martial arts, okay? Then these guys came
- 16:13Speaker 1: and said, no, you know, we're not interested in that.
- 16:16Speaker 1: It's their choice. People have free will. We want to
- 16:18Speaker 1: be artists, architects, doctors, lawyers. We want to be part
- 16:22Speaker 1: of the world, part of the Russian community. You know, fine.
- 16:25Speaker 1: That's their choice. Here's the problem, though. The non-Jewish world
- 16:29Speaker 1: would not allow them to do that. Anti-Semitic pogroms starting
- 16:34Speaker 1: in 1881, Ukraine, Russia. lethal pogroms targeted the assimilated Jews
- 16:43Speaker 1: as much as the religious Jews. And these assimilated Jews,
- 16:47Speaker 1: they didn't particularly like the religious lifestyle. They looked at
- 16:51Speaker 1: us as many secular people do today. A lot on
- 16:55Speaker 1: the left. I see the way they talk about me. Uh, narrow-minded, anachronistic, misogynistic.
- 17:02Speaker 1: They hate women. They hate modernity. They hate intellectualism, darkness,
- 17:09Speaker 1: all sorts of the idea that if a person's religious,
- 17:15Speaker 1: he's primitive, that idea. Primitive, ugly, unsophisticated, you know, stuff
- 17:21Speaker 1: like that. And they figured that all we have to
- 17:25Speaker 1: do is assimilate. We'll show people how bright we are.
- 17:28Speaker 1: We're normal people. We're not like those, ugh, religious Jews.
- 17:33Speaker 1: But it didn't work. So now they had an identity crisis,
- 17:37Speaker 1: which is the second part of the subtitle of my book.
- 17:42Speaker 1: First part, from identity crisis to identity theft. That's what
- 17:45Speaker 1: started Zionism, an identity crisis of the non-religious assimilated Jews,
- 17:51Speaker 1: guys like Herzl. who was absolutely assimilated. In fact, he
- 17:59Speaker 1: liked Christianity better than Judaism. There's an old Jewish joke.
- 18:03Speaker 1: What's the difference between Jesus and Herzl? Jesus celebrated Hanukkah,
- 18:08Speaker 1: Herzl celebrated Christmas. Okay. Yeah, Herzl, he celebrated Christmas. He
- 18:15Speaker 1: didn't even circumcise his son. He was a completely, and
- 18:20Speaker 1: he didn't like Jews in particular, religious Jews. There are
- 18:23Speaker 1: letters that we have from him where he wrote about
- 18:26Speaker 1: he was at some party at some place in Austria,
- 18:35Speaker 1: an event. And he said there were a lot of Jews,
- 18:41Speaker 1: ugly Jews with dripping noses there. He didn't like Jews,
- 18:46Speaker 1: religious Jews at least. So the problem was, now what
- 18:49Speaker 1: do you do? You don't want to be Jews, but
- 18:52Speaker 1: the non-Jews won't let you be non-Jews. So there are
- 18:55Speaker 1: various different answers. And in those days, in the days,
- 18:58Speaker 1: in the 1800s, 1700s even, but we're talking about 1800s,
- 19:04Speaker 1: there were a lot of these isms, ideologies that cropped up,
- 19:07Speaker 1: kind of to replace the authority of religion. You know,
- 19:10Speaker 1: it wasn't the, for the Christians, we're talking about Europe,
- 19:15Speaker 1: so pretty much the Christians were the dominant religion there
- 19:19Speaker 1: at that time. So, you know, the story of Canossa,
- 19:24Speaker 1: the The kings needed, in the olden days, the kings
- 19:28Speaker 1: needed permission from the priests or from the church, you know,
- 19:33Speaker 1: to do things. They needed their blessings. But the authority
- 19:36Speaker 1: of religion went down in the Enlightenment and the Emancipation.
- 19:41Speaker 1: And new ideologies cropped up. So many Jews said, okay,
- 19:47Speaker 1: you know what, communism is the solution. Because communism, if
- 19:51Speaker 1: you believe in it, it means everyone's treated equal. If
- 19:54Speaker 1: you believe in it, that's the idea. So the Jews
- 19:56Speaker 1: will be treated equal. So communism will take. There was
- 20:00Speaker 1: all sorts of isms. Socialism. But one of the isms
- 20:04Speaker 1: that cropped up around that time, a little earlier, French Revolution, etc.,
- 20:09Speaker 1: was nationalism nationalism was the most powerful social movement of
- 20:15Speaker 1: the time what it did was it took the people
- 20:19Speaker 1: and gave them it's interesting on one time it gave
- 20:24Speaker 1: them an identity but in a way it gave them
- 20:27Speaker 1: independence what i mean is it used to be that
- 20:32Speaker 1: when people fought wars let's say They didn't fight wars
- 20:35Speaker 1: as Englishmen. They fought wars for King Egbert, his wars.
- 20:40Speaker 1: The king would gather an army and attack, right? You
- 20:44Speaker 1: would fight. You would be the king's subject. No more
- 20:47Speaker 1: were you the king's subject. You were an Englishman. You
- 20:49Speaker 1: were a Frenchman. It was your country. You're fighting for
- 20:53Speaker 1: your land, your country. The connection between one person and
- 20:56Speaker 1: another had to do with land, language, culture. And there
- 21:02Speaker 1: were all different... variations of this. There's liberal nationalism, like
- 21:06Speaker 1: let's say we have in United States of America, where
- 21:08Speaker 1: you have a whole bunch of different people. There's no
- 21:10Speaker 1: such thing as being inherently, it's nothing biological or even
- 21:18Speaker 1: any inherent way of being an American. It's kind of
- 21:21Speaker 1: a social contract. I pay my taxes, the government does
- 21:24Speaker 1: stuff for me. If people in California are attacked by
- 21:28Speaker 1: foreign power, The people on the East Coast will join
- 21:31Speaker 1: the army to protect them. It's kind of like a
- 21:34Speaker 1: social contract. On the other hand, all the way on
- 21:36Speaker 1: the other extreme, there was the organic or ethnic nationalism
- 21:40Speaker 1: where there was something, they believed there was something inherent
- 21:43Speaker 1: about being an Englishman. At the extreme, it was racist.
- 21:47Speaker 1: We are a separate race. The Germans are a separate race.
- 21:50Speaker 1: We're the Aryan race. That was a... extreme, it was
- 21:55Speaker 1: a nationalism, but a ethnic, organic, biological kind of nationalism
- 22:00Speaker 1: with very different levels in between, right? So the And
- 22:07Speaker 1: nation states were being created. People were looking at themselves
- 22:11Speaker 1: as new identities. It made them independent of authority. Democracy
- 22:17Speaker 1: was coming out. People have votes. It's our country. We
- 22:20Speaker 1: fight for our land, our flag. It still had this
- 22:23Speaker 1: religious component to it. pseudo-religious component. You die for your flag.
- 22:34Speaker 1: You die for your country. There's this ideology, idealism is
- 22:40Speaker 1: a better word, that things you die for and you
- 22:43Speaker 1: kill for, that's abstract ideas, okay? But now it's nationalism. Jews,
- 22:49Speaker 1: there were Jews that said, you know what? Nationalism is
- 22:52Speaker 1: going to help us because now people respect nations. People
- 22:56Speaker 1: respect Peoples, singular, people, singular, a people. Therefore, we're gonna
- 23:03Speaker 1: change the Jews from a religious Ummah, from people with
- 23:09Speaker 1: a spiritual connection, people who are brothers in faith, people
- 23:13Speaker 1: who are responsible for each other because God said so.
- 23:18Speaker 1: Judaism was only a nation, and I use that word
- 23:23Speaker 1: in quotation marks, because God is our king, and we
- 23:27Speaker 1: follow the king the way the British followed King George,
- 23:30Speaker 1: for example. And we are all subjects of the same king,
- 23:35Speaker 1: and that's what brings the Jews together. We have a king.
- 23:38Speaker 1: We have a father and a king. God is our...
- 23:42Speaker 1: we call him. Jews are brothers because of our relationship
- 23:46Speaker 1: with God. And the relationship is not because of any race,
- 23:50Speaker 1: is not because of any people. Extremely important to know,
- 23:54Speaker 1: it's only because we fulfill God's commandments. If a Jew
- 24:00Speaker 1: does not believe in God, He is, we call him
- 24:04Speaker 1: a kofir. The Muslims have a similar word, a kufir, kafir,
- 24:09Speaker 1: something like that, which I've heard from Muslims. It means
- 24:13Speaker 1: that you are expelled from our people. Infidel. You are
- 24:17Speaker 1: still ab, what? Infidel. Infidel, yes. You are a, you
- 24:23Speaker 1: are a infidel. You are a denier. You are a, you, you,
- 24:29Speaker 1: And even though you're obligated to fulfill the Torah, you
- 24:35Speaker 1: are a traitor to the Jewish people. So the idea,
- 24:41Speaker 1: and I must emphasize this because this idea that really
- 24:44Speaker 1: comes from German nationalism, part of German nationalism, which ended
- 24:49Speaker 1: up the Aryan race, also believed there were Germans that
- 24:53Speaker 1: said they are the chosen people of the Bible. And
- 24:57Speaker 1: in terms of Jews being quote unquote the chosen people,
- 25:00Speaker 1: there are two mistakes that people make about that because they,
- 25:06Speaker 1: project German nationalist idea onto the Jews. First, the idea
- 25:11Speaker 1: of people. The Jewish people mean only those people that
- 25:15Speaker 1: are connected to the covenant. Again, it has nothing to
- 25:19Speaker 1: do with race. It has nothing to do with anything.
- 25:22Speaker 1: If you do not believe in Judaism, meaning you're not
- 25:26Speaker 1: committed to the religion, we understand everybody's sins. And if
- 25:29Speaker 1: you believe in it, the flesh is weak and all
- 25:32Speaker 1: this stuff is true. And And there's a lot of
- 25:35Speaker 1: tolerance for people who, out of weakness or out of temptation,
- 25:41Speaker 1: they give in to sin. But somebody that just doesn't
- 25:45Speaker 1: believe in it says, it's not temptation. I just don't care.
- 25:48Speaker 1: I don't believe in God. I don't believe in the revelation.
- 25:51Speaker 1: I don't believe in any of this. He's not part
- 25:54Speaker 1: of the Jewish people. He's a Jew in the sense that,
- 25:58Speaker 1: because he doesn't believe in the religion, he is only
- 26:01Speaker 1: a Jew in the sense that if he comes to
- 26:04Speaker 1: a rabbi and says, rabbi, I want to serve God,
- 26:08Speaker 1: he does not need to convert. He just needs to repent.
- 26:13Speaker 1: If a non-Jew comes to a rabbi and says, I
- 26:17Speaker 1: want to serve God, he has to convert. This guy,
- 26:21Speaker 1: because he already has his job description, he already has
- 26:24Speaker 1: his calling, Only in that sense does it mean he's Jewish.
- 26:30Speaker 1: That's it. But people, when talking about that, people, it
- 26:35Speaker 1: means nothing to do with race, nothing to do with
- 26:39Speaker 1: even nationality. It has to do with your job description.
- 26:44Speaker 1: You could be chosen to, you know, it's more like
- 26:48Speaker 1: being chosen for jury duty. And then there's what are
- 26:50Speaker 1: you chosen for? If you're chosen, okay, there's a word
- 26:54Speaker 1: that's out there that in Hebrew, I have never seen
- 26:58Speaker 1: it in this form. Chosenness. Now, there is, yes, people
- 27:03Speaker 1: in the comments are going to say, what do you mean?
- 27:04Speaker 1: It says chosen people, chosen people. I'm talking about that
- 27:08Speaker 1: form of the word grammatically. Chosenness. Like that noun. The...
- 27:16Speaker 1: The reason why that form, I have never even seen
- 27:19Speaker 1: it in Hebrew, is because being chosen is not an
- 27:24Speaker 1: attribute in and of itself. It's like being chosen for
- 27:27Speaker 1: jury duty, okay, or being deputized. If you're chosen for
- 27:32Speaker 1: jury duty, that means you're chosen for a duty that
- 27:35Speaker 1: you have to do. If you don't go to the jury,
- 27:38Speaker 1: if you don't come to the jury, then you're still chosen,
- 27:43Speaker 1: but you're not fulfilling it. So what good does your
- 27:46Speaker 1: being chosen do for you? Nothing. If you come to
- 27:51Speaker 1: the jury and you say, I'm here to fulfill my
- 27:55Speaker 1: civic duties, then you fulfilled your calling. But we're chosen
- 28:03Speaker 1: to serve God with extra rules. That's it. If you
- 28:08Speaker 1: don't do it, then you are worse than not being called.
- 28:13Speaker 1: In Christianity, if somebody has a calling and he doesn't
- 28:19Speaker 1: fulfill it, he's worse than somebody that never had it.
- 28:23Speaker 1: And I explained this several times and some Muslims tell me,
- 28:27Speaker 1: they put in the comments or they tell me that
- 28:29Speaker 1: there's the exact same thing. I'm sorry, I don't know
- 28:32Speaker 1: the Arabic term. It's in the Quran. Something called an
- 28:36Speaker 1: excellent community or an excellent umur or something like that,
- 28:40Speaker 1: that religiously the Muslims are, I don't want to use
- 28:46Speaker 1: the word superior because it has supremacist connotations, and I
- 28:51Speaker 1: don't want to give it that, but the best or
- 28:53Speaker 1: the excellent community, which means that you are most serving
- 28:57Speaker 1: God or something to that effect. That's almost the exact
- 29:00Speaker 1: same thing in Judaism. That's all it is, no more
- 29:03Speaker 1: and no less. It's talking about religiously, you are chosen
- 29:08Speaker 1: to have a more strict religion. And yes, it's true,
- 29:12Speaker 1: reward is commensurate with responsibilities like everywhere else in life.
- 29:16Speaker 1: Jews get more reward. If you want to step up
- 29:20Speaker 1: to have more responsibilities, you could have it by converting.
- 29:27Speaker 1: Anybody can convert to Judaism. Some of our greatest people
- 29:30Speaker 1: in history converted in the book of Ruth. Ruth the
- 29:33Speaker 1: Moabite woman converted, and she was the great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother of
- 29:38Speaker 1: King David. The prophet Ovadia was a convert. The great
- 29:44Speaker 1: translator of the Torah, Onkelos, was a convert. Converts are
- 29:51Speaker 1: loved and welcomed by us. If they want to convert,
- 29:54Speaker 1: you have to understand we don't proselytize, first of all,
- 29:58Speaker 1: because There's no reason to become a Jew if you
- 30:01Speaker 1: don't want to. On the contrary, I know Jews that
- 30:04Speaker 1: would prefer not to have these responsibilities. They are privileges,
- 30:10Speaker 1: not burdens, if you ask me. It's like, but there
- 30:14Speaker 1: are Jews that would, if they were to wake up
- 30:17Speaker 1: one morning and they'd find out that their mother's mother's
- 30:19Speaker 1: mother's mother was a non-Jew, which makes them non-Jewish, there
- 30:25Speaker 1: were those, unfortunately, I think that it's a shame. but
- 30:29Speaker 1: they would not look at their being Jewish as a privilege,
- 30:33Speaker 1: and they would be happy. I think that's ignorance. I
- 30:40Speaker 1: think being Jewish and having the opportunity to serve God
- 30:43Speaker 1: is a very big privilege, and I would jump at
- 30:46Speaker 1: it if I had the opportunity, which I do. That said...
- 30:50Speaker 1: Zionism is Jewish nationalism. They said, let's change all of this. No,
- 30:55Speaker 1: the Jews are now going to be a nationality. There
- 30:57Speaker 1: are other religions that have this. In Hindu religion, there's
- 31:01Speaker 1: something called Hindutva, which is very similar to Zionism. What
- 31:07Speaker 1: they did was they said, no, no, in order to
- 31:10Speaker 1: eliminate anti-Semitism, in order to eliminate the disgustingness of Jews,
- 31:14Speaker 1: the backwardness of Jews, all the bad things that Jews are,
- 31:20Speaker 1: we just got to dump the religion. What we're going
- 31:23Speaker 1: to do is we're going to become a nationality. We're
- 31:26Speaker 1: going to change the Holy Land. The Eretz Yisrael, Israel,
- 31:30Speaker 1: is a holy land. It doesn't make us Jews. It's
- 31:33Speaker 1: not our national homeland. A homeland is... Like in English,
- 31:37Speaker 1: the word homeland doesn't say much about what a homeland is,
- 31:40Speaker 1: but in other languages, la patria in French, in Italian,
- 31:45Speaker 1: in Russian, mother Russia, things like that, motherland, fatherland, it's
- 31:48Speaker 1: the land that birthed the people. Israel's declaration of independence
- 31:53Speaker 1: says that the Jewish people all the way at the
- 31:56Speaker 1: beginning were born in this land. Wrong. Jews were born
- 32:00Speaker 1: at Mount Sinai. But in Zionist philosophy, it's a different
- 32:05Speaker 1: definition of what a Jew is. It's a Jew. You
- 32:08Speaker 1: have a different definition to other Jews. My connection to
- 32:11Speaker 1: other Jews is because we are brothers in faith and
- 32:16Speaker 1: we have responsibilities for each other. And a spiritual connection
- 32:21Speaker 1: is a very strong connection. A spiritual connection is strong.
- 32:25Speaker 1: It's a It's an internal connection. But no, said the Zionists,
- 32:31Speaker 1: the connection between one Jew and another is the same
- 32:33Speaker 1: as one Spaniard to another Spaniard, one Frenchman to another Frenchman.
- 32:37Speaker 1: And the connection that unifies us is the land. Our
- 32:41Speaker 1: relationship to the land is not because of its holiness,
- 32:44Speaker 1: because of its ancient homeland. You hear that the Zionists
- 32:50Speaker 1: talking about all the time, our ancient homeland. It's not
- 32:54Speaker 1: an ancient homeland. It is a holy land. Self-determination they wanted.
- 33:00Speaker 1: Jews never prayed for self-determination. We prayed for the Messiah
- 33:04Speaker 1: to come so that the world would be spiritually renewed.
- 33:07Speaker 1: It is not a question of when to have Israel.
- 33:11Speaker 1: The way the Zionists look at Jews as a nationality,
- 33:16Speaker 1: The brotherhood of Jews is the same as the brotherhood
- 33:19Speaker 1: of Japanese, and the religion is wrong. The way they
- 33:24Speaker 1: look at Israel, Israel is to the Jews, where Japan
- 33:28Speaker 1: is to the Japanese, and France is to the French,
- 33:30Speaker 1: is wrong. Israel is to the Jews what, let's say,
- 33:34Speaker 1: a synagogue is to the Jews, a giant synagogue. It's
- 33:37Speaker 1: God's home, not our home. It's God's home. And we're
- 33:42Speaker 1: in God's palace when we enter there. And we have
- 33:46Speaker 1: to be more religious. Ben-Gurion said that Zionism will be
- 33:51Speaker 1: successful when, and some attribute it to other Zionists, when
- 33:55Speaker 1: we have Jewish prostitutes hawking their wares in Hebrew. In
- 34:00Speaker 1: the streets of Jerusalem. No, God, the land to us,
- 34:06Speaker 1: the land screams in agony when they have the Zionist
- 34:10Speaker 1: nightclubs and prostitutes and even all the secular stuff there.
- 34:15Speaker 1: Israel is one gigantic synagogue for Jews to come to
- 34:20Speaker 1: serve God. If you're not going to serve God there,
- 34:24Speaker 1: if you're going to be non-religious there or sinful there,
- 34:27Speaker 1: much better for you to stay out of that place.
- 34:30Speaker 1: Just stay out. You're harming the land, you're harming yourself,
- 34:34Speaker 1: and you're angering God and making him sad. And I
- 34:40Speaker 1: don't mean literally anger. It's just a metaphor. So, And
- 34:45Speaker 1: sadness is also a metaphor. So Zionism is Jewish nationalism.
- 34:51Speaker 1: It's a different definition of what a Jew is. They
- 34:54Speaker 1: literally erase Jewish identity the way we have it. And
- 34:59Speaker 1: they replaced it. with a Jewish nation, their goal was
- 35:04Speaker 1: the Jews will stop religious aspirations. What are the Jews' aspirations?
- 35:09Speaker 1: To become pious, to become studious, to become knowledgeable in Torah,
- 35:14Speaker 1: to serve God, oh no. The new aspirations are going
- 35:17Speaker 1: to be we're going to have a strong army. We're
- 35:20Speaker 1: going to win Eurovision Song Contest. We're going to win
- 35:22Speaker 1: Olympic gold medals. We're going to be strong and everybody's
- 35:25Speaker 1: going to admire us the same way they admire Putin
- 35:29Speaker 1: and the Russians or the way they admire the Cossacks.
- 35:32Speaker 1: or the way they admire others, the way the Europeans
- 35:36Speaker 1: admire or used to admire the United States of America.
- 35:40Speaker 1: We're going to show the world that the Jews could
- 35:42Speaker 1: be a civilization. The Jews could be a nationality. The
- 35:45Speaker 1: Jews are going to win Nobel Prizes. And that's what
- 35:48Speaker 1: makes the Jews proud. You know what? And not only that,
- 35:51Speaker 1: but we could be strong because Jews were pacifists in
- 35:54Speaker 1: the olden days. We are gone. No. I'll give you
- 36:00Speaker 1: an example. In the Old Testament, what we call the Torah,
- 36:05Speaker 1: there are wars all over the place. But there are
- 36:10Speaker 1: never any, and we have a lot of holy places,
- 36:12Speaker 1: the Jews. There is no Jewish site, a holy place
- 36:18Speaker 1: of a war. This war, like the Alamo, for example,
- 36:21Speaker 1: in San Antonio, you know. There's no such thing because
- 36:26Speaker 1: it doesn't matter to us. And even those wars were
- 36:28Speaker 1: not which means that the wars were not fought with strength.
- 36:39Speaker 1: We look at King David, who was somewhat of a warrior.
- 36:43Speaker 1: And by that, I mean, God said he's disqualified from
- 36:48Speaker 1: building the temple. Solomon had to do it because He
- 36:52Speaker 1: was involved in wars. We look at him like a
- 36:57Speaker 1: studious rabbi, like a rabbi. If you want to know
- 37:00Speaker 1: what King David looked like, take a picture of a
- 37:03Speaker 1: holy rabbi. That's King David with a crown. To the Zionists,
- 37:08Speaker 1: he's Conan the Barbarian with a yarmulke, maybe with a yarmulke.
- 37:12Speaker 1: And I'll tell you the difference. The wars were won miraculously.
- 37:20Speaker 1: They were won from God. God did it. It's not
- 37:23Speaker 1: because the Jews were strong people. It's not because of
- 37:26Speaker 1: any of this. As the Bible says, the battle does
- 37:28Speaker 1: not go to the strong. The Zionists hated this in
- 37:31Speaker 1: the Jews. No, we're going to be strong and then
- 37:34Speaker 1: everybody will respect us. Zionism is an erasure of Jewish
- 37:38Speaker 1: identity and replacing it with nationalism. It's that simple. Religious
- 37:43Speaker 1: Zionists are the worst. Guys like Ben-Gavir Smotrich, um, They
- 37:51Speaker 1: want the nationalism, they want everything the Zionists wanted that
- 37:56Speaker 1: I described, but they also want to say that this
- 38:00Speaker 1: is compatible and we will fulfill the rituals of the
- 38:03Speaker 1: Torah and the theology of the Torah together, both. They
- 38:08Speaker 1: want to be nationalists and religious. In fact, they're called datilumi,
- 38:14Speaker 1: religious nationalists. We consider nationalism, the whole idea that the
- 38:19Speaker 1: Jews are a nationality, a form of idol worship and heresy.
- 38:22Speaker 1: Guys like Ben-Gavir Smotrich, Moshe Feiglin, who I just had
- 38:27Speaker 1: a debate with last week and came out a couple
- 38:31Speaker 1: days ago. It was great. We consider those guys people practicing,
- 38:39Speaker 1: and he admitted to me, Moshe Feiglin, you know who
- 38:42Speaker 1: he is, right? He's the guy that joined up with
- 38:44Speaker 1: Smotrich now. They're He's an extreme right wing. He wants
- 38:49Speaker 1: to build the temple. You can Google him. He admitted
- 38:54Speaker 1: to me, and this is really the only reason I
- 38:56Speaker 1: engaged him. I would not engage somebody like that, save
- 38:59Speaker 1: for that I wanted to tease out of him these words,
- 39:03Speaker 1: which I challenged him on it, and he agreed. He
- 39:07Speaker 1: and I have two different religions. I said to him,
- 39:10Speaker 1: I want to be able to tell people that when
- 39:13Speaker 1: people point to me what Israel is doing and say,
- 39:17Speaker 1: look what Judaism believes, I want to be able to
- 39:20Speaker 1: tell them because it's the truth. It has nothing to
- 39:22Speaker 1: do with Judaism. This is Zionism. Zionism is a different religion.
- 39:26Speaker 1: Even religious people like you who wear yarmulke like I do,
- 39:31Speaker 1: who keep Shabbos like I do, who eat kosher like
- 39:33Speaker 1: I do, you are practicing a different religion. And you
- 39:36Speaker 1: know what he said? I agree. He says he agrees
- 39:40Speaker 1: we are two separate religions, Zionism, just he says we
- 39:44Speaker 1: belong to the same nationality. I'd say that nationality doesn't exist.
- 39:49Speaker 1: The Jewish people that Israel invented, the political nation that
- 39:53Speaker 1: was born in the motherland or the fatherland of Eretz Yisrael,
- 39:59Speaker 1: the land of Israel, does not exist. It's a figment
- 40:03Speaker 1: of their imagination. And the religious part, they are, we
- 40:09Speaker 1: have nothing to do with them, nothing to do with them.
- 40:12Speaker 1: Anti-Zionist Jews simply mean this. Israel, Zionism means, and this
- 40:18Speaker 1: is not my definition, because the Zionists make people crazy
- 40:21Speaker 1: by giving them all sorts of different definitions of Zionism
- 40:24Speaker 1: that you cannot even deny. Israel Supreme Court, Ornan versus
- 40:29Speaker 1: Ministry of Interior said, that the foundation stone of Zionism
- 40:36Speaker 1: is that the Jews are not merely a religious identity,
- 40:45Speaker 1: they're also a national identity. That's Zionism. Part two of
- 40:50Speaker 1: Zionism is that Israel is the state of that nationality,
- 40:54Speaker 1: that's their 218 nation state law, and Israel represents all
- 40:58Speaker 1: the Jews And therefore, the Supreme Court said that's what
- 41:02Speaker 1: gives them the right to self-determination because they are the
- 41:05Speaker 1: national movement of the Jewish people. To me, that's all unilateral, insane, ridiculous.
- 41:13Speaker 1: You know Shmuley Boteach, the Zionist rabbi? He calls himself
- 41:18Speaker 1: Rabbi Shmuley. He has a tagline. He calls himself America's rabbi.
- 41:23Speaker 1: He's not America's rabbi. And Israel is not the Jewish
- 41:27Speaker 1: state any more than Shmuel Boteach is America's rabbi. Israel
- 41:31Speaker 1: calls itself the Jewish state, it claims to be the
- 41:33Speaker 1: state of the Jewish nationality. One, there is no Jewish nationality,
- 41:38Speaker 1: and two, even if there was, why would Israel be
- 41:41Speaker 1: its state? Even if we were a nationality, what does
- 41:45Speaker 1: it have to do with Israel? A bunch of guys
- 41:47Speaker 1: in 1948 got up and said, we're the state of
- 41:50Speaker 1: the Jews. And now they come to the Jewish people
- 41:53Speaker 1: and say, even if you're anti-Zionist, if you're anti-Zionist, what
- 41:56Speaker 1: that means. It doesn't mean that, okay, you're against Israel's
- 42:01Speaker 1: actions the way, let's say, Jane Fonda was against America's
- 42:05Speaker 1: war in Vietnam. That's not what anti-Zionist means. That's anti-whatever
- 42:12Speaker 1: Israel's doing. Anti-Zionism means that you don't believe these tenets
- 42:20Speaker 1: of Zionism. Jews are not a nationality. Jews are an umma.
- 42:25Speaker 1: that we Jews are very connected to each other. We
- 42:28Speaker 1: have a holy relationship to the Holy Land and we
- 42:31Speaker 1: look forward one day where we will be holy enough
- 42:35Speaker 1: and the world will have been sanctified enough so that
- 42:39Speaker 1: when the end of days comes, which the world will
- 42:41Speaker 1: become holy in a spiritual renewal of the world, we
- 42:45Speaker 1: will all be able to study Torah, not in New York,
- 42:50Speaker 1: but in God's palace, in God's backyard, which is, when
- 42:55Speaker 1: we say next year in Jerusalem, that's what we mean.
- 42:57Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with sovereignty, self-determination, or anything
- 43:02Speaker 1: like that. It has to do with reaching a level
- 43:04Speaker 1: of holiness and sanctifying the world so that we, our
- 43:09Speaker 1: relationship with God, will be even closer, which currently we're
- 43:15Speaker 1: unworthy of, right? But... Zionism changed Judaism into a political thing.
- 43:24Speaker 1: Religious Zionists, Orthodox Zionists, they practice a different religion than me.
- 43:29Speaker 1: I have me and my religion and the Muslims have
- 43:33Speaker 1: something in common. We don't eat pork. We have stuff
- 43:35Speaker 1: in common. There's overlap. We don't eat pork. We believe
- 43:38Speaker 1: in the first cause necessary existence God, total monotheistic religion.
- 43:44Speaker 1: We don't believe in a trinity. Me and the Christians have...
- 43:48Speaker 1: Ten Commandments, the creation of the world, the Old Testament,
- 43:53Speaker 1: Noah's flood, various different things, right? And me and the
- 43:56Speaker 1: Zionists have overlap too. We both eat kosher food. We
- 44:00Speaker 1: keep Shabbos. We put phylacteries on. But the distance between
- 44:04Speaker 1: me and the Zionists, let's say, is greater, much greater
- 44:09Speaker 1: than the distance between the evangelicals and the Catholics. Can
- 44:15Speaker 1: I jump in?
- 44:17Speaker 2: You mentioned evangelicals.
- 44:19Speaker 1: Yes.
- 44:21Speaker 2: Can it not be argued that evangelical Christians are even
- 44:24Speaker 2: more dangerous when it comes to Zionism?
- 44:30Speaker 1: It could be argued. The truth is that Jewish Zionism
- 44:35Speaker 1: would not exist if not for evangelical Zionism. the evangelical
- 44:40Speaker 1: Zionism came up first. And I know that even some
- 44:45Speaker 1: Christians are going to say, well, those weren't evangelicals. Those were,
- 44:48Speaker 1: I forgot the word for it. They have another word
- 44:52Speaker 1: for it, but for all Zionists, we'll call them Zionists. Okay.
- 44:55Speaker 1: I'm not a Christian and I'm not familiar with the
- 44:58Speaker 1: exact nuances between the, you know, the different groups. Late 1500s, 1600s,
- 45:08Speaker 1: there were Christians that believed, Protestants, not Catholics, Protestants, all
- 45:13Speaker 1: of them, that the Jews are going to return to
- 45:16Speaker 1: the Holy Land as a nation, and all of that
- 45:20Speaker 1: stuff is part of the end of days. They had
- 45:26Speaker 1: sermons about it and a theology about it. In fact,
- 45:31Speaker 1: they were, if not for them, which now there were
- 45:34Speaker 1: Protestant countries and Catholic countries, as we know, right? Let's
- 45:37Speaker 1: say England was a Protestant country for the most part,
- 45:41Speaker 1: as opposed to, let's say, Greece or France or Italy, right?
- 45:45Speaker 1: Which are more Catholic countries. So that's why England, which
- 45:49Speaker 1: had the British mandate, were so unopposed. They were so willing,
- 45:54Speaker 1: you know, to make the Balfour Declaration and to give
- 45:59Speaker 1: their land over to the, or not really, they didn't
- 46:02Speaker 1: give it to them, but be willing to have a,
- 46:07Speaker 1: what they called the Jewish homeland created there. Theodor Herzl
- 46:12Speaker 1: would have had no power at all, if not for,
- 46:16Speaker 1: no success, if not for the Christian Reverend William Hechler,
- 46:20Speaker 1: you could look it up. He approached Herzl and said, hey,
- 46:24Speaker 1: you know, your movement, that's our end of days philosophies.
- 46:28Speaker 1: He even said it was predicted in the New Testament.
- 46:31Speaker 1: He had various different formulations that predicted Herzl in the
- 46:36Speaker 1: year that he came out with his book, The Jewish State.
- 46:39Speaker 1: And he introduced him to various heads of state. Not
- 46:43Speaker 1: only that, but Benjamin Netanyahu, who was a completely secular Jew.
- 46:49Speaker 1: He never had a Jewish education. He was in public
- 46:52Speaker 1: school all his life. I bet you that he would
- 46:55Speaker 1: not even be able to read a page of the
- 46:57Speaker 1: Talmud because the Talmud is Aramaic and he never studied Aramaic.
- 47:04Speaker 1: He doesn't know which side of a Talmud is up
- 47:05Speaker 1: or down, but he has no qualms preaching evangelical theology.
- 47:14Speaker 1: For example, you could look it up when he went
- 47:16Speaker 1: to the site number 10 years ago, I think it was.
- 47:19Speaker 1: in the Auschwitz concentration camp. So he spoke about a
- 47:23Speaker 1: prophecy in the book of Yecheskel, Ezekiel, I believe it
- 47:27Speaker 1: is in English, about bones, dry bones, bones coming out
- 47:31Speaker 1: of the ground dry, and then they grew flesh, the
- 47:34Speaker 1: prophet witnessed this, and they became alive again. And he
- 47:38Speaker 1: said that that prophecy foretells the birth of the state
- 47:43Speaker 1: of Israel, that the Jews prior to the state of
- 47:46Speaker 1: Israel were like dried bones and now they're live people
- 47:49Speaker 1: who became alive by virtue of their state. Now they
- 47:54Speaker 1: are people again. That interpretation of the prophecy of Yehezkel
- 48:00Speaker 1: is nowhere in any Jewish source, nowhere. But it is
- 48:05Speaker 1: all over Christian evangelical sources. First instance I was able
- 48:10Speaker 1: to find was a guy, I believe his name was
- 48:13Speaker 1: Charles Hayden about 150 years ago. John Hagee has said
- 48:23Speaker 1: it over. It's all over. Benjamin Netanyahu literally, when he
- 48:27Speaker 1: speaks about theology, he speaks more about evangelical theology, which
- 48:34Speaker 1: is completely unrelated to any Jewish ideas that he does
- 48:39Speaker 1: about Judaism. He doesn't know anything about Judaism. In fact,
- 48:43Speaker 1: he makes problems for the Jews because people think that, well,
- 48:46Speaker 1: he's the head of the so-called Jewish state. I deny
- 48:50Speaker 1: that tagline. His decisions and his actions must be somehow Jewish.
- 48:58Speaker 1: So I'll give you an example. In Poland, I think
- 49:02Speaker 1: it was 10 years ago, they wanted to ban Jewish
- 49:07Speaker 1: ritual slaughter. It's called Schita. And the Jews said, the
- 49:12Speaker 1: Jewish Polish community said, freedom of religion, you know, we
- 49:14Speaker 1: need it. Netanyahu went to visit Poland, had to be,
- 49:18Speaker 1: and they asked him if he wants kosher food. He said, no,
- 49:20Speaker 1: we don't need kosher food. We don't need it. So
- 49:25Speaker 1: the Polish government and others in Poland said, look, if
- 49:31Speaker 1: the prime minister of the Jewish state does not require
- 49:34Speaker 1: kosher food, then it can't be such an important thing
- 49:37Speaker 1: for the Jews. This was brought up by a Knesset
- 49:40Speaker 1: member in a anti-religious party in Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid
- 49:46Speaker 1: party by a religious woman who was there, Aliza Lavi,
- 49:51Speaker 1: her name was, who pointed a finger at Netanyahu because yes,
- 49:55Speaker 1: it's true. The Polish community said that that, that, that,
- 50:02Speaker 1: that weakens their case for Jewish ritual slaughter. And that's
- 50:07Speaker 1: one of the problems that Zionism causes for Judaism. People
- 50:11Speaker 1: think what they do is the Jewish way or comes
- 50:15Speaker 1: from the Judaism or the Talmud or baked into Judaism,
- 50:19Speaker 1: nothing could be further from the truth. Even when a guy,
- 50:23Speaker 1: everybody knows Jews have to eat kosher food, everybody. But
- 50:26Speaker 1: when Netanyahu says, I don't, it was available to him.
- 50:30Speaker 1: He says, nah, I don't need it. He doesn't, he's
- 50:33Speaker 1: not an observant Jew. He's not a believing Jew. Again,
- 50:37Speaker 1: he espouses Christian evangelical ideology more than Jewish ideology. And
- 50:43Speaker 1: people think, well, look, this is what the Jews do.
- 50:46Speaker 1: So I told Feiglin, and Feiglin agreed with me. He says, no,
- 50:50Speaker 1: we have two separate religions. We do not practice the
- 50:56Speaker 1: same religion. I agree with him. So that's the difference
- 51:00Speaker 1: between Judaism and Zionism. Zionism is nationalism with a different
- 51:03Speaker 1: definition of Jew. They say that Jew is a nationality,
- 51:07Speaker 1: a political nationality, not like A tribe and not like,
- 51:13Speaker 1: you know, the Jews were at Mount Sinai, not spiritually
- 51:16Speaker 1: connected to other Jews looking forward to living in God's palace.
- 51:21Speaker 1: There are connections. Obviously, there's connections between Jews. The reform
- 51:24Speaker 1: movement denied any of that. And they said that we're
- 51:28Speaker 1: like Christians. that one Christian has nothing to do with
- 51:30Speaker 1: the other Christian, it's just a question of belief or
- 51:33Speaker 1: rituals that makes you a Christian. No, a Jew makes
- 51:36Speaker 1: you part of an Ummah, and it's more similar to
- 51:38Speaker 1: the Muslim concept of Ummah than the Christian concept of religion, or,
- 51:44Speaker 1: and it has nothing to do with the modern political
- 51:46Speaker 1: concept of nationality, which results in self-determination, et cetera. It's
- 51:52Speaker 1: a redefinition of what Jew is, and it's an attack
- 51:57Speaker 1: on Jewish identity, And it just makes trouble for the Jews,
- 52:02Speaker 1: which the Zionists like. Zionists like when there's trouble for
- 52:05Speaker 1: Jews in America, in Europe, because you know what they say? Oh, look,
- 52:09Speaker 1: this just proves you all have to move to Israel,
- 52:11Speaker 1: so come. To Zionism, Judaism is a disease and Zionism
- 52:16Speaker 1: is a cure. To Jews, Judaism is a living body
- 52:23Speaker 1: and Zionism is its poison. But both the Jews and
- 52:27Speaker 1: the Zionists agree that Zionism is a spiritual attack on
- 52:33Speaker 1: the Jewish people. Now, this has nothing to do with
- 52:36Speaker 1: the Israel-Palestinian conflict. If Israel would be doing only good
- 52:41Speaker 1: things in the world, nothing I said would change. Zionism
- 52:46Speaker 1: is still an attack on Judaism. It's a change on
- 52:48Speaker 1: the Jewish rule. It's a change in the definition of
- 52:51Speaker 1: Jewish identity and its attack on Judaism. You know, if
- 52:55Speaker 1: let's say there would be a two state solution in
- 52:58Speaker 1: theory and the Palestinians would have their state and the
- 53:01Speaker 1: Israelis would have their state. And let's say even the
- 53:03Speaker 1: Palestinians get 95 percent of the land and the Israelis
- 53:07Speaker 1: are left with when I say the Jews, I mean
- 53:09Speaker 1: the Israelis, OK? And in this context, see, even I
- 53:14Speaker 1: sometimes blur it just out of habit, out of propaganda,
- 53:21Speaker 1: you know. And let's say even the Zionists would get
- 53:28Speaker 1: 95% of the land in the Negev desert and the
- 53:30Speaker 1: Palestinians would get the rest. And let's say they'd all
- 53:32Speaker 1: be happy. Nothing I said would change. I don't care
- 53:37Speaker 1: if Israel's winning all the Nobel Prizes in the world
- 53:39Speaker 1: and everybody loves them, like before 1967, except for the
- 53:43Speaker 1: Russians and the Arabs, everybody loved Israel. If Leon Uris
- 53:48Speaker 1: wrote his book, you know, late 50s, 60s, this was,
- 53:52Speaker 1: I think it was then, everybody loved Israel. If everybody
- 53:56Speaker 1: loves Israel, it is not my country. America's my country.
- 53:59Speaker 1: They claim to be the country of the Jews, they're not.
- 54:02Speaker 1: They're the country of the Israelis. They claim to be
- 54:04Speaker 1: my country. That's Israel's law, the 2018 nation state law.
- 54:08Speaker 1: I have nothing to do with Israel. All I ask,
- 54:11Speaker 1: all anti-Zionist Jews ask, that's why you won't see 90%, 99.9%
- 54:15Speaker 1: of anti-Zionist Jews you won't find involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
- 54:22Speaker 1: You know why? Because we are, to us, the Israel-Palestinian conflict,
- 54:27Speaker 1: and please, nobody write in the comments, oh, see, he
- 54:29Speaker 1: doesn't care about the Palestinians. No, I do. I'm talking
- 54:34Speaker 1: about something else now. The Palestinians' conflict with Israel are
- 54:41Speaker 1: no different than the conflict with the Uyghur Muslims or
- 54:45Speaker 1: what's going on in India and Kashmir. No more connected
- 54:48Speaker 1: to me. I'm not saying what's worse and what's better
- 54:51Speaker 1: in terms of human rights or whatever. or destruction. I'm
- 54:55Speaker 1: talking about the connection to me. What Israel does, we
- 54:58Speaker 1: don't look at as connected to us. I'm an American.
- 55:01Speaker 1: I have some stupid foreign country saying we are the
- 55:05Speaker 1: country of all the Jews, including Yaakov Shapiro. Their 1952
- 55:08Speaker 1: status law says Israel looks at itself. Whatever that means.
- 55:16Speaker 1: Countries don't look... It's not the Israeli people. Israel looks
- 55:18Speaker 1: at itself as the work product of all the Jews
- 55:21Speaker 1: all over the world, and they expect Jews all over
- 55:24Speaker 1: the world to cooperate with them in getting Jews to
- 55:26Speaker 1: move to Israel. That's crazy. Their law, which has no
- 55:30Speaker 1: jurisdiction over me, says that they're my country. All I
- 55:33Speaker 1: ask your viewers, that's all I ask of anybody and
- 55:38Speaker 1: of Israel, just stay out of my life. Let me...
- 55:41Speaker 1: Be a normal American. My family's from Poland. Let me
- 55:44Speaker 1: practice my religion. I will advocate for human rights all
- 55:49Speaker 1: over the world to the extent that, you know, I'm
- 55:51Speaker 1: a human, whatever. But leave me alone. One foreign country.
- 55:57Speaker 1: Is it too much risk of a foreign country to
- 55:59Speaker 1: stay out of my life? Just stop saying you represent me.
- 56:03Speaker 1: Stop saying you're my country. Stop saying all of this.
- 56:07Speaker 1: And just leave me alone. Leave me out of it.
- 56:11Speaker 1: You know, after we establish that, you know, people ask
- 56:14Speaker 1: me all the time. I've spoken in many anti-Zionist protests
- 56:18Speaker 1: throughout the years. There are videos of me on YouTube
- 56:22Speaker 1: with a little black beard, not one white hair. You know,
- 56:25Speaker 1: by the looks of you, it was probably before you
- 56:27Speaker 1: were born, okay? That's a compliment. I've been... And sometimes...
- 56:33Speaker 1: The press comes, you know, people with the camera in
- 56:37Speaker 1: the olden days. I remember there came a guy with
- 56:39Speaker 1: a big fat camera on his shoulder. You know, it
- 56:42Speaker 1: was a blue thing, big fat thing. And they asked
- 56:45Speaker 1: me and we're protesting about what Israel is doing. Let's
- 56:48Speaker 1: say they're oppressing the Haredim. They're trying to get them
- 56:51Speaker 1: to go into their army and the Haredim are resisting
- 56:54Speaker 1: and they're beating them up and throwing them in jail,
- 56:56Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. various different and somebody comes
- 57:00Speaker 1: over to me and they say they don't care about
- 57:03Speaker 1: what we're protesting or what our topic is one thing
- 57:05Speaker 1: they want to know what do you think about the
- 57:08Speaker 1: Israel-Palestinian conflict? I said, why are you asking me and
- 57:13Speaker 1: not that Chinese guy walking down the street? Why are
- 57:15Speaker 1: you asking me and not that Italian guy walking down
- 57:18Speaker 1: the street? Do I look Israeli? Do you think I'm Israeli?
- 57:21Speaker 1: I'm not. Do you think I'm Palestinian? I'm not. Oh,
- 57:25Speaker 1: I get it, because I'm Jewish. That's why you're asking me. Well,
- 57:30Speaker 1: guess what? That makes you a Zionist. That's what I
- 57:34Speaker 1: told the guy. Anybody that thinks that the Jews all
- 57:38Speaker 1: over the world are connected politically to a country called
- 57:43Speaker 1: Israel is a Zionist. That is literally the definition of Zionism. Again,
- 57:48Speaker 1: Israel's Supreme Court said the foundation stone of Zionism is
- 57:53Speaker 1: that the Jews are not merely a religious identity. but
- 57:56Speaker 1: a national identity. And Israel, by 2018 nation state law,
- 58:01Speaker 1: is the country of that nationality. I am here to
- 58:05Speaker 1: deny that. Israel, leave the Jews alone. Leave us out
- 58:09Speaker 1: of it. And by the way, this is the best
- 58:11Speaker 1: thing for the Palestinians, frankly. If you ask me, the
- 58:15Speaker 1: Zionists will never do this. But in theory, if you
- 58:18Speaker 1: want a peaceful solution for Israel to become a... Binational,
- 58:27Speaker 1: not even binational. The Israeli Supreme Court that ruled that
- 58:34Speaker 1: the Jews are the nationality, there is no Israeli nationality
- 58:37Speaker 1: by Israeli law. The problem is not that Israel exists.
- 58:41Speaker 1: The problem is it doesn't. Israel by Israeli law exists.
- 58:45Speaker 1: is not an Israeli nationality. There's Israeli citizenship, but they
- 58:49Speaker 1: have a category for their citizens called nationality. Israel is
- 58:52Speaker 1: not a nationality. There's a French nationality, an American nationality, Mexican.
- 58:57Speaker 1: There's no such thing as an Israeli nationality. Jewish is
- 59:01Speaker 1: the nationality. There's about 100 and something nationalities in Israel. Arab,
- 59:05Speaker 1: Jewish is one of them. And the reason Israel was
- 59:10Speaker 1: sued in that Supreme Court case, the appellants, 21 of them,
- 59:14Speaker 1: mostly Jewish, said, we want an Israeli nationality. We have
- 59:18Speaker 1: a flag. We have a nation. We have everything. Why
- 59:20Speaker 1: shouldn't there be an Israeli nationality? Also, it's discriminatory against
- 59:25Speaker 1: people who are not Jews because Israel is not their nation.
- 59:29Speaker 1: Israel's not their country. They're citizens, but Israel's the country
- 59:32Speaker 1: of the Jewish nationality. That's the law. And the Israel
- 59:36Speaker 1: Supreme Court said no, because the foundation stone of Zionism
- 59:40Speaker 1: is that the Jews are a nationality. Israel is the
- 59:44Speaker 1: state of that nationality, and if there would be an
- 59:46Speaker 1: Israeli nationality, all Jewish Israelis would have to choose. whether
- 59:51Speaker 1: they're Israelis or Jews, you hear this? I don't have to,
- 59:55Speaker 1: an Israeli who practices the Jewish religion is an Israeli Jew.
- 1:00:00Speaker 1: A Jew who is not Israeli is, let's say, an
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: American Jew. Judaism and Israeli is not a contradiction. They
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: said that if Israel would be a normal nation like
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: all other countries with a nationality, you cannot be both
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: a Jew and an Israeli. That's Zionism. That's what you
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: need to understand. Flip that law. Flip that ruling of
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. Let Israel exist as an Israeli. Then
- 1:00:27Speaker 1: you would have Israeli citizens, Israeli nationals. If you don't
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: like the name, I don't know, let the citizens change
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: it to Israel. Eretz Yisroel or Holy Land, Eretz HaKadosh,
- 1:00:37Speaker 1: whatever you want. But if Israel would be a nationality,
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: you could have Muslim Israelis, Palestinian Israelis, Italian Israelis, Polish Israelis,
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: just like you have Italian Americans, Polish Americans. America's a country.
- 1:00:52Speaker 1: It's a nationality. Your religion is your religion. Your nationality
- 1:00:57Speaker 1: is your nationality. Where you come from is where you
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: come from. Israel only exists on paper, these paper laws.
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: Because the more Israel is my country, the more it's
- 1:01:11Speaker 1: not the country of the non-Jews. You see, there's a
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: flip side to this. Either Israel's country of all the Jews,
- 1:01:17Speaker 1: including me, or Israel's the country of the Israelis, including
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: every Israeli, regardless of his religion. That's the problem.
- 1:01:27Speaker 2: It's not a popular opinion, what you've just said, but
- 1:01:30Speaker 2: I think you've just solved the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
- 1:01:35Speaker 1: It's a fact. It's not even an opinion. I'm not
- 1:01:38Speaker 1: saying anything that's even an opinion. My opinion is that
- 1:01:40Speaker 1: this would solve it. But listen, you want to hear
- 1:01:43Speaker 1: how absurd Zionism is? Okay. So Israel claims that it's
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: just a nation. It's secular and it has nothing to
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: do with religion or anything like that, right? There was
- 1:01:53Speaker 1: in the Knesset, Ben-Gurion has said this many times, that Jewishness,
- 1:01:57Speaker 1: being Jewish is a nationality. Okay, check this out. Israel
- 1:02:03Speaker 1: has a law of return. All Jews can get citizenship
- 1:02:07Speaker 1: in Israel, which is, by the way, different than the
- 1:02:08Speaker 1: law of return of all other countries in the world.
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: German law of return, Italian law of return, Spanish, all
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: laws of return mean that if you had some connection
- 1:02:19Speaker 1: with that country or the peripheral, the country adjacent, some
- 1:02:29Speaker 1: closeness to that country, somehow you're allowed to return. in Israel,
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: if you are a Jew, you're a Jew, you're a Christian,
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: you're a Catholic, and you convert to Judaism, your family
- 1:02:41Speaker 1: had nothing to do with that country, and even me,
- 1:02:46Speaker 1: you never lived there, my family never lived there, let's
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: say we had nothing to do with Israel, if somebody
- 1:02:51Speaker 1: has nothing to do with Israel, it was created in 1948,
- 1:02:54Speaker 1: All Jews, by virtue of the fact that they're Jews,
- 1:02:56Speaker 1: not by virtue of the fact they have a connection
- 1:02:58Speaker 1: with that country that was created in 1948, can move there.
- 1:03:02Speaker 1: There's no law of return like that anywhere. Not Armenian,
- 1:03:06Speaker 1: not Chinese. There's big differences between them. But an atheist
- 1:03:13Speaker 1: can also move to Israel on the law of return, right?
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: Because being a Jew is a nationality, not a religion.
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: But if you're Jewish... and you're not an atheist, but
- 1:03:25Speaker 1: you believe Jesus is the Messiah, you practice Christianity, or
- 1:03:29Speaker 1: you believe Muhammad is the prophet, you practiced Islam, you
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: practice Islam, you are not considered a Jew for the
- 1:03:35Speaker 1: law of return. But an atheist can, but a Christian can't.
- 1:03:42Speaker 1: Both ethnically, so-called ethnically, so-called racially, so-called nationally, so-called, I
- 1:03:52Speaker 1: don't know how they call it, jewish if jewish is
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: a national identity just as you could be an atheist
- 1:03:59Speaker 1: you should be able to be a christian and a
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: muslim but israeli law says no a jew can be
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: an atheist but if you're a muslim you're not a
- 1:04:05Speaker 1: jew if you're christian and i do now listen to
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: this no problem let's even that's a contradiction but let's
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: accept it but now let's talk about conversions so any
- 1:04:18Speaker 1: all nationalities I could be naturalized into their nationality. So
- 1:04:24Speaker 1: if I want to be Italian citizen, Italian nationality, ethnically Italian,
- 1:04:30Speaker 1: I'll move to Italy, I'll become an Italian citizen, Italian national,
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: let's say I'll marry an Italian girl, Italian kids after
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: a thousand generations I'm indistinguishable from any Italian right and
- 1:04:47Speaker 1: Italy is as much my country as any other Italian
- 1:04:50Speaker 1: or the descendants in Israel if you come and you
- 1:04:56Speaker 1: say I want to be naturalized to become a Jew
- 1:04:59Speaker 1: part of this Jewish nationality well you can't there's no
- 1:05:03Speaker 1: way to do it unless you convert to Judaism religiously
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: but wait If a Jew's not religious, he's a Jew, right?
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: He is entitled to the law of return. If he's
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: an atheist, I'm an atheist. I want to convert to
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: Judaism and be just like that Jew that you let
- 1:05:18Speaker 1: in for the law of return. Can't do it. No
- 1:05:21Speaker 1: such thing as being naturalized. So a guy says, look,
- 1:05:26Speaker 1: you know who my role model is? My role model
- 1:05:29Speaker 1: is Benjamin Netanyahu. I named my kids Benjamin. I changed
- 1:05:34Speaker 1: my name to Benjamin Malachowski. I had plastic surgery. I
- 1:05:40Speaker 1: look like Netanyahu. I pulled out my hair, so my
- 1:05:44Speaker 1: hair could be just like Netanyahu. I love him, and
- 1:05:49Speaker 1: I want to be a Jew just like him. He's
- 1:05:52Speaker 1: my God. but I'm currently not Jewish. I want to
- 1:05:56Speaker 1: convert and be just like Netanyahu. A Zionist is just
- 1:06:00Speaker 1: like him. I believe everything he does. I want to
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: be part of this Jewish nation just like their prime minister.
- 1:06:08Speaker 1: The law in Israel is, since converting to Judaism is
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: the only way you can become naturalized, and in order
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: to convert to Judaism, you have to convert to the religion.
- 1:06:19Speaker 1: You can't just say, I want to be a national Jew.
- 1:06:21Speaker 1: conversion is a religious act. They say, no, I'm sorry,
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: you can't because Netanyahu is not observant. He's not Jewish
- 1:06:29Speaker 1: enough for you to become Jewish. So what? He's the
- 1:06:32Speaker 1: prime minister of the Jewish state. Nope. you cannot become Jewish.
- 1:06:38Speaker 1: But if this same guy goes to Yaakov Shapiro, who's
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: an anti-Zionist rabbi, and he converts him religiously to be
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: an anti-Zionist, and now the guy's entitled, but Orthodox Jew,
- 1:06:50Speaker 1: he's entitled now to the law of return. None of
- 1:06:54Speaker 1: this makes any sense. People have to understand, people always
- 1:06:57Speaker 1: talk about what Zionists are doing with the Palestinians and this,
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: and I'm not saying not to talk about it. But,
- 1:07:05Speaker 1: If you want to understand what Zionism is, if you
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: wanna see the weaknesses in Zionism, not their behavior. Zionism
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: is an ideology and it's insane, it's incoherent, it makes
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: no sense, it's not merely wrong, it is wrong on
- 1:07:24Speaker 1: so many levels, but more than wrong, self-contradictory, falls apart
- 1:07:28Speaker 1: under the weight of its own contradictions, it's incoherent, it's absurd.
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: If everybody would believe this and understand this, People would
- 1:07:37Speaker 1: laugh when they call themselves the Jewish state. And before
- 1:07:40Speaker 1: you know it, Israeli lawmakers would not say that. They'll
- 1:07:44Speaker 1: change the idea that being a Jew is a nationality.
- 1:07:47Speaker 1: And the idea that this is the foundation stone of Zionism,
- 1:07:50Speaker 1: they'd say, okay, Zionism, what a stupid thing this is.
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: Let Jews be defined as those that accepted the Torah
- 1:07:56Speaker 1: on Mount Sinai and who are obligated in the 613 commandments.
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: Let Israel be a normal country like all other countries
- 1:08:06Speaker 1: and your problem solved.
- 1:08:08Speaker 2: I'm absolutely fascinated by listening to you. I'd love to
- 1:08:12Speaker 2: invite you back if that's okay with you. I've got
- 1:08:14Speaker 2: more questions I'd like to ask. I'm blown away by
- 1:08:18Speaker 2: the substance of the actual depth of what you're saying.
- 1:08:23Speaker 2: I've never heard anybody explain this to me like you've done.
- 1:08:31Speaker 1: Gladly. Gladly. I've dedicated a large part of my life
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: to explaining this to people, including Jews. Gladly. All right.
- 1:08:46Speaker 2: Well, then, for now, Rabbi, how can my audience follow
- 1:08:51Speaker 2: your work or get your books, etc.
- 1:08:54Speaker 1: Okay. My book is called The Empty Wagon, Zionism's Journey
- 1:08:59Speaker 1: from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft. Google it and find
- 1:09:04Speaker 1: the least expensive seller, get it from them, whoever it
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: may be. The Empty Wagon, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro. I have
- 1:09:14Speaker 1: a YouTube channel called Rabbi Yaakov, it's called. But most
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: of my content is being invited to other people. I
- 1:09:27Speaker 1: was on George Galloway a couple of weeks ago and
- 1:09:31Speaker 1: various other interviews that I've had put me into YouTube.
- 1:09:38Speaker 1: And that's probably I also have a podcast called called
- 1:09:42Speaker 1: Committing High Reason. That's a great title. Thank you. Mostly
- 1:09:47Speaker 1: having to do with Zionism. The reason is for that
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: is that because what the Zionists call treason, I call
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: high treason is really high reason. And it's really Judaism.
- 1:10:00Speaker 1: All right.
- 1:10:02Speaker 2: Well, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, thank you for joining me in
- 1:10:04Speaker 2: the trenches.
- 1:10:06Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.