Latest / Boots on the Ground / Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin: Nature, Torah, and the Battle for Israel’s Identity ep 40

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Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin: Nature, Torah, and the Battle for Israel’s Identity ep 40 · Boots on the Ground

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another episode of Boots on the Ground, where we discuss Israel's wars, politics, and identity.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: Before we begin, I want to say thank you to our partners here at the Jerusalem Media Group and our sponsors of BeTheirIsrael.com.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: For all those events where you can't be here in Israel, the BeThereIsrael.com will live stream all of your family events to your friends around the world so that they can join you virtually.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: As Sean and I are still in Miloin at the very moment, this episode is being pre-recorded and will be shared in the future, along with the other content that we'll be putting out in the moment.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: As Sean and I both feel it's important that we keep sharing perspectives of what's going on here in Israel, even if we can't be regularly in the studio to bring that to life.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: Today, on this episode, I'm joined by someone I find phenomenally interesting.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: And I hope you'll join me, Rabbi Dr.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: Natan Slifkin.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna actually gonna have a two-part episode because as most people we bring on here, they're multifaceted.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: Rabbi Slifkin is both the founder and director of the Biblical Museum of Natural History and the writer and founder of the Rationalist Judaism blog.
1:08
SPEAKER_01: But before we start, as always remember to like, share, and comment so you can keep seeing all this content.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show, Rabbi.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: How are you doing today?
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Good, good, nice to meet you, nice to be here.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Great to have you.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: So let's first start off with the Biblical Museum of Natural History, bringing the flora and fauna of the Bible to life and to show the connection that the land of Israel and the Torah have and how we can use those to properly understand the lessons that we learn through the text of the Torah.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: Tell me all about the museum and that mission.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Because that's something that until I saw was it a tree was a tree, a deer is a deer, and a deer isn't a deer, it turns out.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: So there's several aspects to the museum.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, in terms of the uh what it actually is.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: So it's really a combination of a museum and a zoo.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh we have all the animals of Tanakh, but the uh the larger animals we have as taxidermy, and the smaller animals we have as live exhibits.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: So we So there's no live lions.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: No live lions, but a lot of live other animals.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Lizards, snakes, other kinds of things.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Um and also associated exhibits, a hall of chauffeurs, a hall of Noah's arcs, and so on.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh the main uh the hall of cash rut, also that.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: But the the main goal of the museum is learning about the animals and plants of Tanakh and learning about the uh the role that they play uh in Jewish identity and in tradition.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: And uh a major part of that is realizing that the animals and plants of Tanakh are the animals and plants of the land of Israel, right?
2:33
SPEAKER_00: The place where Tanakh happens.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: And realizing that when Jews moved out of Israel to Europe, where they had different animals and plants, so a lot of the uh names uh got transposed to other species.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: And that led to a lot of misunderstandings.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: So give us an example of a misunderstanding of the Nesher, the king of birds, right, which is always identified as an eagle.
2:55
unknown: Right.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: All right, but uh the problem is there are uh verses in Tanakh which describe the Nesher as being bald.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: Eagles are not bald, even whatever American bald eagle.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know eagles had hair.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: But they had feathers.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh means bald.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the American bald eagle, lovely head of feathers, right?
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh it just has white feathers in its head.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: But which bird is bald?
3:16
SPEAKER_00: The griffin vulture.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: Griffin vultures are bald, uh, largest, most magnificent bird of prey in this part of the world, the Lords of the Air, right?
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Highest flying bird in the Guinness Book of Records, breaking the record, altitude record at 37,000 feet.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: But in Ashkenaz, right, in France and Germany, you didn't have these birds.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: It was the eagle that was the king of birds, so the name got transposed.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: That that does change the way we think about it, because an eagle is the primordial hunter, whereas uh a vulture is Scavenger.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: Scavenger.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: So it changes the understanding of how you Right.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: And also I notice Americans particularly have a hard time with this because uh in America, uh the only vultures you have are turkey vultures, which are very you know unpleasant birds, and there's very negative associations with vultures.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Um but the truth is but that's cultural, right?
4:03
SPEAKER_00: In the Middle East, not just uh amongst Jews, amongst other nations too, it's the griffin vulture that's regarded as the king of birds.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: It's you so it's a magnificent soaring bird, kind of like the condor, kind of like the ecological equivalent of the condor in America, which is also a scavenger, but because of its size and you know its majestic soaring flight is regarded with great um honor.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: Is there another great example of a misunderstanding of an animal or a plant species that really changes our understanding of it?
4:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: Um here's one.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: So in in say the night you have to have matzah and it's a mitzvah to eat matzah.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: So mitzvahs come with halachic parameters.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: So the minimum amount that's called an act of eating is eating a kazais.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: Now you see people come up with all these huge quantities of matzah.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, an olive is only, you know, a tiny little thing.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Like an olive's worth of matza is only half the size of a credit card.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: So why are people coming up with these huge sizes?
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh so again, it's because they didn't have olives.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: There were no olives in Ashkenaz.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: Olives only grow around the Mediterranean basin.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, they were just trying to work off various clues in the Gemara, but it ended up becoming a much bigger size.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: And you look around, you find the writings of one of the shounen, one of the great medieval rabbinic authorities, who says he travelled to uh made the very difficult journey to where it's Israel and he saw an olive, and he couldn't believe how small it was.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Wow, so it's things that we take for granted today.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't matter where you live, you know what an olive is, or you you get on Google and you can see an olive.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Although my mother grew up in Wales, you know where that is, next to England?
5:31
SPEAKER_00: She never she never saw an olive.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: So we're not even having to go back to the medieval where you can go back one generation where you don't have the globalness of the supply chain.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: So you have and you don't have the internet, so you don't know what an olive is.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: Right.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: And then wow.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it really does change the difference of the meaning.
5:49
SPEAKER_01: The one the one question I always have is the is the the is the controversy around the trelet.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: Right?
5:55
SPEAKER_01: The snail, that's a snail, that's not a snail, that changes color.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: Right.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: So can you give us an unequivocal dis answer?
6:03
SPEAKER_01: Is the trelet that I wear that other people wear, is it actually trilit or not?
6:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Hexaplex tranculus, the uh banded dime UX snail.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but again, that was something that was lost not just because of geographic reasons, but also, you know, the whole the trilit industry was destroyed by uh eventually, and it was lost for thousands of years and it had to be rediscovered.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: Um through your museum, you've led the this work of creating this uh this uh understanding of the floral form of Israel has led into your latest book, The Lions of Zion, where you uh show the the Israel peoples the Israel the Jewish people's connection to the land and its its physical existence as a disproof to all of the uh anti-Semitism, anti-Israel propaganda that uh is used against us, and by showing that that we are native to this land and that our nativity is is natural through the text.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: So let's t tell me a little bit about the book and the admission, if and if I'm if I'm you know explaining it correctly.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: So this book came as a result after October 7th.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: In other words, after October 7th, right, everyone trying to help in different ways, right?
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Some people, boots on the ground.
7:15
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Right?
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Um and but also we so in terms of the museums, so we were giving free admission to all the uh evacuees who came to the center of the country, we were doing therapy for kids and so on.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: But we also realized that we have an ideological uh message to share, which is that apart from the military attacks in Israel, you have this attack of delegitimization coming from the West, primarily coming from the you know the universities, and this idea that Israel has no legitimacy because it's a settler colonial state.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: The Jews were a bunch of Europeans uh who came and stole the land from the indigenous people.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: And the indigenous people are the ones, they're the ones who are really connected to the land, and the Jews were a bunch of Europeans who just came to exploit it.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Now, you can counter that in various ways.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: You can point out how uh the Jews came because we needed a place to live, right?
8:03
SPEAKER_00: We were being massacred in Europe, we needed a place to survive, and you can point out that we didn't that we had nowhere else to go, and you can also point out that we didn't pick a land at random, we picked the land which was our historic homeland.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: But with regards to that, to archaeology and so on, you know, which proves that Jews had a commonwealth here thousands of years ago, so there are some people who will deny it, other people will say, yeah, sure, but that was ancient history, that was thousands of years ago.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: What connection did the Jews from 19th, 20th century Europe, what connection do they have to the land of Israel?
8:32
SPEAKER_00: And this is where nature comes in.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: Because as I show in the first part of this book, every aspect of animals and plants that's part of Judaism, which is many, it's always the animals and plants of the land of Israel.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Right?
8:46
SPEAKER_00: It's the uh, you know, we said about the example of Kazaias, right?
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Jews trying to measure food the size of a Kazaias.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: So they didn't have access to them, so why not, you know, just give it up?
8:54
SPEAKER_00: So find a new unit of measurement.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: No, we wanted to get back to what an olive was, because an olive is one of the seven species that the land of Israel was blessed with.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: And the animals, even more so, right?
9:04
SPEAKER_00: Every shul in Europe had lions on the Arnhakodesh, right?
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, replicating sh replicating uh the uh the base of Mikdosh, which uh had lions, and Shlomahamelech's uh palace, which had lions, right?
9:16
SPEAKER_00: All these Jews called Ari, right?
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Arye.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: All right, are you named after someone?
9:21
SPEAKER_01: I I'm named after my great uncle.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: Great uncle.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Where was he born?
9:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh Southern Germany.
9:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: He died fighting as a partisan at the age of 14.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: So he was an allier of the of the people of Israel.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: You know, lions placing playing this huge role in Jewish culture.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: Now, very approximately, how many lions were there in the shtetl?
9:40
SPEAKER_01: Probably not many.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: Zero.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: Right.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: So what's going on?
9:44
SPEAKER_00: So it's all you know a cultural uh heritage based on the time when we lived in Israel.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: We were surrounded by lions where they were a huge part of their lives, our lives, right?
9:52
SPEAKER_00: Lions mentioned 150 times in Tanakh, more than every other animal put together.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, i in the same way.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: More than all the different animals and species that are used as sacrif sac sacrificially in the.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay, fine.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sheep and cows have a pretty big bulk.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh but in terms of wild animals, the lion, you know, by far is the most prominent because it was part of life in Israel.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, um you haven't exactly had wild lions in Israel either in a very, very 800 years.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: It's a long time.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: But other things, you know, leopards were here.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, when I moved here from England 30 years ago, there were still wild leopards in Israel.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: I did not know that.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Um lots of things used to live here, you know, bears, crocodiles, right, uh, all kinds of things.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we we put up uh after the war started, we put up this gigantic wall-sized map of the world, and we're putting on it artifacts uh to show how different animals and plants play a role in different uh the cultures of different nations.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Animals and plants have a role in human culture.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: They may have certain symbolic significance, or certain stories people tell about them, or songs they sing about them, or art that they do about them, or naming their children after them, like you know, in your case.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Um we put up like uh an Australia open, a boomerang that I picked up in Australia, which has an animal painted on it.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Which animal is painted on the boomerang?
11:14
SPEAKER_00: Any guesses?
11:15
SPEAKER_01: Kangaroo.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Kangaroo, exactly.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: All right, in America, we've got the US presidential seal, which is an American bald eagle.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Right, poo, we have those uh those woolly hats they have in poo with uh the things hanging down each side, which are made out of the wool of an alpaca.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Right?
11:30
SPEAKER_00: Canada is is maple leaves and beavers, right?
11:33
SPEAKER_00: African art is all you know, zebras and giraffes and things, right?
11:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, showing uh and when you have an artifact, you know, you can see which part of the world that culture is connected to.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: We have this tusk of a walrus that's engraved, someone gave me a very special thing, it's engraved with a scene of an indigenous tribe hunting whales from canoe from primitive boats.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: So as soon as our person gave me that, I was like, oh, I know exactly where this is from.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not from Africa, it's not from Australia, it's not from Asia, it's from the Pacific Northwest.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: It's inuit, right?
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Because that's where you have a culture of people who are with waluses and whales.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: So, in the same way, you know, you look at the animals and plants that are part of Jewish heritage, the lions, you know, the griffin vultures, the uh the olives, and you realize this is not uh this is not a people from Poland, right?
12:19
SPEAKER_00: This is a people from the land of Israel.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that that is actually a very powerful argument to be made.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting because you start you started off by saying how the argument to delegitimatize Israel is that we're colonial and that if there is history, it's ancient history.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: Yet you went and you used the argument that is the most universal and the most ancient, which is nature, to disprove the argument of history.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm saying that we kept the connection to nature.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: We weren't sure exactly when we were in Europe, obviously we didn't have first-hand access to these animals and plants, so we lost the immediate familiarity with them, but we still retained these names, uh, these concepts as part of a part of our heritage.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: I think the the real power is that if the they're trying to use history to delegitimize our connection to the land of Israel.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: Right?
13:12
SPEAKER_01: It's like you said at the beginning, also, it's it's a very powerful statement where you you point out that you can delegitimize politically, we're colonizers, we're coming here, and then you can disprove that by saying, Oh, here the here's the archaeology, and and then you can disprove that by saying, Okay, it's ancient history, it doesn't matter.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: But then you can go back to what is the most ancient of history, which is the natural world, the physical existence of nature itself.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: You can't it's it's universal and it's eternal, and it also proves our connection to the land of Israel.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't matter how much you want to say, okay, well, those facts don't matter.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: The the foundational facts, the foundational natural existence of history also proves our connection to the land of Israel, which is a very powerful statement.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: And in the second part of the book, I look at the other, I go more into the political side to look at the other side.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: So what about, you know, for Palestinian culture?
14:01
SPEAKER_00: What are the animals and plants that have significance in that culture?
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Is there any?
14:05
SPEAKER_00: So there are.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: There are.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: This is news to me.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: There are.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: But what's fascinating is you look into them, and like one of them is the uh the sabra, right?
14:13
SPEAKER_00: The sabra cactus.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: They regard Israelis calling themselves sabrahs as a cultural appropriation.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: Because they say, really, the Sabra is, you know, the part of the timeless heritage of the Palestinians.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: It's what not just them eating the fruit, but also using the cactuses as fences around their village.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and they talk about the Sabra as having tremendous, you know, cultural significance, timeless.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: Some people use that word, timeless significance for Palestinian heritage.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: Now, when I was making this map of the world, so often they look at coats of arms, because coats of arms are a good way of showing which animals and plants have significance for different nations.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: What's the coat of arms for Mexico?
14:49
SPEAKER_00: It is an eagle with a snake in its beak perched on a cactus.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: Sabra cactus, which are from America.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Cacti are all from the Americas.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: None of them from Asia or Africa.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: So we're not going to be able to do it.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Imported here about 150 years ago.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: So all the sabras we have in Israel, we like to call ourselves sabras, we're prickly on the outside, but some of them are.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: They were modernly imported in the last 150 years from South America.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: I did not know that.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: I actually see.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: I even I learned something new every day.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: And you know, every every animal, every plant, you know, that's part of Palestinian culture, it's all the same thing.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: It's all things that are of very, very recent significance.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: Which is, I'm not in the books, I'm not saying that the Palestinians are not a people.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: They are a people, they have a political identity just like many nations in Europe.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Right?
15:33
SPEAKER_00: There's not a huge difference between different nations in Europe.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: It's a political construct.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: But but this idea that's used.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: I would push back on that, but okay.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: Keep going.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: That's not the point of this show, but we'll we'll do a different show about whether the people are.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: This idea that the Palestinians are the people with this you know ancient timeless connection to the land, and the Jews are these modern Europeans, you know, it's the exact opposite.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: All the thick parts of nature that are part of our identity are things that are the timeless parts of the land of Israel, and all the nature things that are part of their identity are modern constructs.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: Right.
16:06
SPEAKER_01: So so that I'll agree with you on, therefore, but what to call them a people I think is a bit of a stretch.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: Um but I want to talk about now the second part of the more rabbi side, the less doctor side of Natan Slifkin.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: The you you create a blog called The Rationalist Jud Judaism, which is based around the the logic and the teachings of the Rambom of Maimines, who took a very logical and scientific approach to Judaism.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which is teachings that I I deeply connect with and helped help me frame my understanding of the world and of Judaism at a point in time where I was saying, okay, this is all mystical nonsense.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: So it helped me really re-grain a foundation on a footing, the teachings of the Rambam.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: Tell me how the blog started, and then we'll get into what it's become today, because I think that's where that's where a lot of the controversy around not the association starts with today, and it's also a very relevant issue to help really understand the sociological side of what's going on in Israel right now.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: So tell me that's the one that's a lot of different things.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: So if it wasn't clear, like I said at the beginning, there's the two sides to one person.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: There's the museum, which is its own entity, which is probably, I would say, from everything I can tell, your life's work and part of it.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: Part of it.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: But it's something that if it was my project, it would be it would definitely be something that I'm extraordinarily proud of.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: And this is someone who I've planned personally to go to the museum multiple times.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: All of my children have been there.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: I have yet, which is embarrassing for me, and I'm sorry, I have yet to make it there.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: But it is on my list.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: You're in for a tweet.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: I I'm aware, and I will, it's still on my list of places I need to go.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: And I'm a little bit embarrassed that I haven't succeeded yet.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: Um and the blog is something completely separate.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: Completely separate.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: Completely separate.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: It's what you do in your private time.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and it's separate because, well, you'll see as we discuss it, the museum is for everyone, right?
18:10
SPEAKER_00: It's for Dati, it's for secular, it's for Khaedim.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Everyone comes at from across the entire population.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's totally, you know, suitable for all audiences.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: And we pride ourselves on that, that it's totally suitable for all audiences.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, but some of my other books and my blog are no for a very specific audience.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Right.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's talk about the blog now.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: The other side.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: Okay, the other side of Natan Slavkin.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the blog emerged out of controversy over my other books.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: I have some other books dealing with Torah and science, Age of the Universe, Evolution, uh, scientific inaccuracies in the Gemara.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: And those books were rather notoriously banned 20 years ago.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: They were put in Kheron by two or three or thirty-six or so leading figures in the Khaedi world.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: Who's counting?
18:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, who's counting.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh, because they thought that they were very slight they said that these books were very, very slightly completely heretical.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, now I look back.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Now I look back and laugh, but at the time it was very distressing because I was part of that world.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Um so and it was very hard to understand what how exactly they could say that, because you know, this I the ideas I was writing, number one, they were true, right?
19:17
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the world is very old, there was an age of dinosaurs.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh, not everything in the Gemara is scientifically accurate.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: There are no salamanders that are generated from fire, as the Gemara says.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and number two, I wasn't the first person to say this, right?
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Ram Bam, you know, Rambam had already written that the account of creation is not to be interpreted literally.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Ram Bam and many others, rehearsed, many, many others, dozens of others had said that the authority of chazal and Torah does not mean that they had they were infallible about science.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: They relied on what the experts of their day said, which in some cases were was not accurate.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: So, how could my books be banned as false and heretical when they were true and just reflecting a traditional view in Judaism?
19:56
SPEAKER_00: And eventually I realized that the answer was that there's two very different streams of thought in Judaism.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: There's the rationalist approach of Rambam and others, and there's the mystical approach.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: And the mystical approach has become so dominant that people, even learned people, don't even realize that the rationalist approach ever existed.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: They can't conceive that it ever existed, or they or they view it as some kind of weird aberration, maybe for kirv or something like that, but not as a serious school of thought.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: Which it was.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: It was a very, very serious, it was a dominant school of thought in the medieval period.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: So I started my blog, Rationalist Judaism, to uh to explore uh this school of thought more thoroughly.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: It eventually came out with the book, Rationalism versus Mysticism, to explore it more thoroughly.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: Can you give again now?
20:42
SPEAKER_01: I I love bringing up, can you give us an example of one of the arguments that would have been the the big red flag, the the blaring siren that would have banned one of your books?
20:52
SPEAKER_01: Is it an argument that you made or you know?
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this one I'll go back to the uh salamanders, right?
20:56
SPEAKER_00: That the Gemarith talks about spontaneous generation.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: Salamanders being born from fire, mice growing out of the dirt, insects growing from dust and from sweat.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: And now we know there's no such thing.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: There is no such thing as spontaneous generation.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: It was a universal belief until a few centuries ago.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Everyone believed it, right?
21:17
SPEAKER_00: It was um so it's quite understandable that the Chazal believed it, but now we know it's not the case.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: But that's something which for my opponents is unthinkable.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely everything that Gemara says is for Lulcha Kodesh, divine inspiration, absolutely divine and infallible.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: So now as the blog developed and it went from from what the where I started reading it, it was already past a point where it was just like halochic discussions or psycho f or um more philosophical discussions of points than Judaism, it became more of a Sociology.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: It became more of a sociological experiment.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: Not an experiment, but it it it's uh you're you're trying to, from what I can tell, again, I'm I may be misunderstanding what you're doing, but you're trying to explain.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Explain the Kharidi or ultra-orthodox outlook on the world through their perspective, and then at the same time critique it, obviously, why why it's flawed or why it's wrong and how that affects the reality we're living in today.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: Right.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: So originally my approach was that actually I even wrote an article defending the ban in my book, uh defending the ban as a social policy.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I acknowledge that what I'm writing is obviously it's not heretical, it's not uh even original, right?
22:28
SPEAKER_00: But um nevertheless, I understand for sociological reasons why the Havidim don't want this approach.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: They want the idea that you don't critically evaluate things in the Gemma in light of science, they want the idea of you know unconditional acceptance, reverence, and so on.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: And and I ch You never challenge authority.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: That's what they want.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: I understand what they want it.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: The modern world presents a lot of challenges, it's very hard to deal with the modern world, so they want to take the approach of building up the walls.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Fine, you know, I respect that, I understand that.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: When I republished my books after they were banned, I did it in a way that made it very clear that they weren't directed towards a Hawedi audience.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I said that even though mysticism is not my approach, all right, but uh okay, you know, it has it certainly has a legacy and it certainly you know has its place.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Uh but then in recent years, I started analyzing Kuedi society a bit more, and especially after the war, and of course, you know, we have this huge problem of the army, right?
23:21
SPEAKER_00: That they're that there's a war going on and and they're not helping, and they're not interested in helping, and uh and it's creating tremendous hardship.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: You've got the idea of manpower shortage, you've got, as you know too well, reservists being you know sent back again and again and again, and it's crushing.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: And um, but they'll make the claim that they are supporting him, and is that the Torah that they're learning is protecting me on the battlefield.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: Right.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: So that again is a mystical claim.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: That's a mystical claim.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: You look into it, there's no sources in the Gemara.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: All right, uh there's absolutely people will send, I don't know what you mean.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: The Gemara says this and that.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: You look into the sources, all completely misinterpreted.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: All right, there's zero source in traditional Judaism for saying someone learns Torah and that protects other people in battle.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: Not directly, but there is the concept.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: There's kind of the Tamutorak and Egit Kulam.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Tamutorakeneged Kulam means um means that learning Torah has this value that it prepares you and teaches you how to do all the other mitzvos.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but then there was also the idea, wasn't it?
24:18
SPEAKER_01: It was um again, you're you're you're definitely more of the expert on Tanakh and Gumara than I am, so uh pro I I apologize, I'll misquote her from the wrong question.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, he he the example given as I remember in this the book of Joshua once if we shuah is anyone who like you know bowed their head down to the water to drink, he sent home.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: But those who lifted the water up and like they're into a cup running, it was a sign of of people who were more more spiritually connected or more expressive for themselves.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: The holier people exactly.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Right, but at the same time, the opposite.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: My assumption was that they were praying and not carrying a sword alongside them.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: When when uh when Moshe needs to uh say when you have the egel a zahav and Moshe says, Mila Shemeilai, and the Levium pull out their swords, what are they doing with swords?
25:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: You make a good point.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: Like I said, you're you're more of the expert than I am.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: There's no idea in traditional Judaism that learning Torah protects other people in times of war.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: None whatsoever.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: Zero.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: Um it's an idea that of and by the way, that isn't really the reason why Kharedim don't fight in the army.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: That's what they just convince themselves and convince other people.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the real reason.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: What's the real reason?
25:39
SPEAKER_00: They're scared.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not the real reason.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: They're not scared.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: No more scared than anyone else.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about that.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: So the whole question is a mistake.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: So you don't need to ask why Kharim don't serve.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Serving the army is a difficult thing.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Right?
25:52
SPEAKER_00: The question is why does anyone serve?
25:54
SPEAKER_00: So why would somebody do something very difficult?
25:56
SPEAKER_00: So you do it either because you feel a very strong sense of civic duty or because it's basically what everyone does and you have no choice.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: So Haredim do not have this strong sense of civic duty because they don't see themselves as part of the nation of Israel.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: They see them have a totally separate identity.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Um and it's certainly not something they have to do or forced to do because they've been receiving tremendous, you know, government financial benefits for years not to do it.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: So so you know, so why would they why would they do something that's difficult and scary if they have no if they don't believe in it and they have no reason to?
26:29
SPEAKER_00: But obviously that's not doesn't sound so good.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: So they came up with this whole rationalization that their Torah is what's protecting other people.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: And but this is all, you know, a mystical idea with and it also it all comes back, and you know, Uhhaim of Elohim, you know, 200 years ago, unfortunately, developed this idea that Torah Elishma means learning Torah for its own sake, and that metaphysically sustains the world.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Now, historically, that's not what Torah Lishma meant.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Torah Lishma meant learning Torah for the right reasons as opposed to learning Torah Shalolishmah.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: Right?
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Learning Torah shalolish ma is for the sake of cover or money, and learning Torah Lishma is for the right reasons, to become a better Jew, to do mitzvahs, and so on.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: It was always learning Torah was about knowing how to live Torah, how to live life as a good Jew, how to do the mitzvos.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: So that's the argument I've always been making when I when I talk about this is what's the point of learning Torah if it doesn't affect the way you behave?
27:23
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: And if the behavior that it creates is a behavior for the Kharidi community, then it kind of cancels out the value of the city.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Um so and interrupting Torah, learning Torah to do mitzvos because that's what Torah is for, to teach you how to do mitzvos, right, primarily.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Um so you know, this role of Torah got distorted, and the idea that you know you're creating mystical energy and bringing benefits into the world, all these kind of m mystical metaphysical frameworks were created to the extent that now they come up with this idea that learning Torah is defending Israel.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: It's bringing energy into the world that serves the Jewish people and protects Israel.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: But of course, it's not something that anyone ever stakes anything on.
28:08
SPEAKER_00: In other words, this idea that, yes, Torah protects in times of war, nobody ever stakes anything in that belief.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: No Koredim ever say, okay, so we'll go and put our yeshivas on the border and protect the border.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: And they don't say that Torah protects anything else.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: They don't say we don't need medical services in our cities because Torah protects from illness.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: We don't need food, we could pray all day.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: We don't actually have to eat the city.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: In other words, but we don't have to look before a process of the city.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: Classical Judaism, nothing ever replaces hhtadlis.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: You always have to do the endeavor, the physical effort.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: And along with that, you davan and so on, it's never a replacement for the uh for the histadlus.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: Soedim also work that way, right?
28:46
SPEAKER_00: It's not a replacement for their histadlus, their endeavour in politics and you know, in voting, and rallying votes and you know in medical services.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: But with the army where they can offload it to other people and it's something very inconvenient and difficult, so then all of a sudden they'll make this claim that uh that that you don't need to do the histadlus, so that you need that you have this spiritual replacement.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: So, based off that understanding, let's say you got elected magically, you're appointed prime minister.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: You have a it's not a political question.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: You you have a you have a ruling coalition of 85 people from your own party, you can enact any policy you wanted.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: How would you see solving the current problem between the Khariti communities and and and communities in Israel and the rest of Israel?
29:29
SPEAKER_01: And bridging bridging that gap to create a healthier relationship, A, and bring them back in to be part of the nation of Israel.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: Like you said, they see themselves as completely separate.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: How can you bridge that gap and bring them in?
29:43
SPEAKER_00: It's a difficult problem, but it's not unsolvable.
29:45
SPEAKER_00: Um it's not unsolvable.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, you have to realize that you know 70 70, 80% of the uh the population of Israel, the Jewish population, is Zionist.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: It believes in supporting the country, strengthening the country militarily, economically.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: So it's not hard to build a coalition of people that agree on all these fundamental issues, which are I think the most important thing.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: So even worse than the army problem is the economy.
30:10
SPEAKER_00: The fact that Khaidim have this idea of not working and not getting an education, it's a tremendous drain on the economy.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's an even much, much bigger problem.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: It's had setting the country in course for economic collapse.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: Um the way you solve it is is very simple.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: How did this lifestyle become possible?
30:28
SPEAKER_00: Jews never lived this way in history with tens of thousands of people in Kurdle.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Jews don't live that way in America today, right?
30:34
SPEAKER_00: Even in Yeshivish Jews.
30:36
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
30:36
SPEAKER_00: Because it's just it's not possible.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: It's not sustainable.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not sustainable, right.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: Israel had this problem that because Kharedim offered their votes in exchange for money, so for many years, the government successive governments of Israel made it viable.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: And you know, as a saying, necessity is the mother of invention.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, necessity is also the mother of hashkafic invention and hashkafic reinvention.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: When uh when it's sustainable to sit and learn and not work and not get an education, so you know they build a whole hashka around it.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: Once it becomes not sustain not financially sustainable, uh then they'll have to go to work or serve, and then the hashka will change.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: Because when you've got lots of people doing things, and we're not gonna get 80,000 Korean to serve in the army.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: Not gonna happen.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: But if you cut off the financial benefits and various sanctions, driving licenses, things like that, not talking about putting people in prison.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: All you have to do is you make it not financially sustainable, and you can't get a d you can't have a driving license unless you do service.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: Then you'll get 10,000, 20,000.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: And that would be enough to solve the acute IDF manpower shortage.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: But more than that, once you have 10,000, 20,000 in the army, it becomes something that the Hawaiian society has to adapt to.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: And uh and that would make the sociological change that would result in even more changes.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell You'd also at the same time you'd solve a different one.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: It's an argument I've been making, whereas there's two there's two issues at hand.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: There's one, there's the manpower shortage or lack thereof in the army.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: That's that's I'll disagree with you a little bit about that of how to solve it.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's an I don't think it's really a manpower issue, but more of a utilization of the existing manpower.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: There's always room for more efficiency, but that hasn't changed the fact that it's it's it's more than that.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: There's, you know, victory requires less manpower than than status quo.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: Um winning a war requires a small you know ultimately leads to a smaller army.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: One day we end up being if we end up we we end up being at war with millions of Palestinians, we're gonna need a lot of people to know to be able to do that.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: And in the end of the day, so that's a different argument to me, but the question was is there's um there's a balance.
32:41
SPEAKER_01: Right?
32:41
SPEAKER_01: No one's claiming all the Arab all the Arabs and Israel need to come serve in the army.
32:46
SPEAKER_01: It's more of an economic question well, you're not serving, we don't need to support you as much.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: Or there's a lot But it's funny, you know, there's talk in the Kwaidi circles now about them becoming Islamized.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: This present in the Khawaiti radio show that just like you know historically Jews in Islamic countries would sometimes pretend to convert to Islam, so too now maybe Kuwaitim should pretend to convert to Islam so that'll be exempt from army service just like Arab without the other.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they should also start identifying as women who are exempt from army service.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: They should identify as religion.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: But the reason why they would never do it is because you know what else?
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Arabs don't get drafted into the IDF, but you know what else they don't get money.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: They don't get they get extraordinary amounts of budgets as well.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: Compared to how much Korean get a fraction of a fraction.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: But in the end of the day, was is is on the one hand, I think Israeli society would be would be more acceptable to the to the non-Kherean sector as well as if they're not serving, at least we're not we're not paying for them.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: Right.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: We're not we're not basically we're not paying protection to them to exist for protection that we're not getting.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: Right.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: We're not paying political protection.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: Right, exactly.
33:54
SPEAKER_01: So I think that that's the other balance that's the same.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: That's never been tried, by the way.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: People say, oh, you can't draft the that's never been tried for a sustained period.
34:00
SPEAKER_01: The sustained period to an extreme extent has never been tried.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: It started to and was ended very quickly.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: Actually, famously by Lapid and Bennett, they stopped that policy.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Because at the time, the idea was it wasn't realized at the IDF problem.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: The bigger thing was we have to get them into the workforce because the economy is gonna collapse.
34:15
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: All right.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna get to the end of the show now, and uh we ask all our guests to share their reasons for optimism.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh a positive thought before we get to the end.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: While you think about your answer, I'm gonna once again say thank you to our partners here, that Jerusalem Media Group, and our sponsors, beTheirisrael.com, for all our events in Israel.
34:37
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34:44
SPEAKER_01: And remember to like, share, and subscribe so you can see more of our content.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: Rabbi Doctor, not on Slifgan, what is it that makes you optimistic for Israel and the Jewish people's future?
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh like I said, I think the economic uh uh threat to society is the the biggest threat to Israel, and that was not about to be solved, but because of the horrors of October 7th, which brought the IDF issue to light, which is the more emotive um issue for people, because it's more immediate than the economic thing, it's more long term, that this has given uh a window to make uh political changes, which I hope we'll see in the election.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: And uh and hopefully we'll see Israel resetting itself based on on Zionism, on the idea of not even Zionism, just basic civic duty, right?
35:33
SPEAKER_00: That if we're gonna survive in this part of the world, we need a strong nation in which everyone works and contributes together to help.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: And I'm hoping that now at least the horrors of the last few years are putting us in a position to recognize the importance of that and that we'll attain it.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: All right.
35:47
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sharing with us.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: As always, I'm Israel Chai.