Noam: Hey, I’m Noam Weissman, and this is Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history. This episode is generously sponsored by Andrea and Larry Gill. Andrea and Larry, thank you so much. This is gonna be a doozy, so you’re gonna enjoy it. If you want to sponsor an episode of Unpacking Israeli History, or if you just want to say, hey, be in touch at noam@unpacked.media.

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Over the last few weeks on this show, we’ve been unpacking Religious Zionism, the theology, the history, the political movement, with the settler movement as one thread inside that bigger story.

This week we’re zooming in on that thread specifically because it deserves its own conversation and because of something that happened earlier this month, which was a WhatsApp message from a man named Yehuda Hakohen. Yehuda’s someone who is a settler, a rabbi, and for decades one of the most experienced English language voices for the national religious world we’ve been trying to understand together on this show. And we were supposed to meet during my recent trip to Israel earlier this summer.

But unfortunately, because it was an insane schedule, I just couldn’t fit it in. And I had to cancel. And I felt really bad about it. Yeahuda’s a good guy and a really fascinating character. When I returned from the trip, Yehuda wrote this to me. And this is his text message:

Shavua tov Noam. You and your colleagues talk a lot about the ideological, settler, smotrich voter sector of Israeli society, but you don’t give us a voice. Our voice is important. We’re not merely the bad Israelis for pro-Israel Jews to throw under the bus to legitimize themselves to and say, well, we don’t support them. We are a relevant and powerful force in Israeli society and politics. We’re playing a major role in shaping the nation’s future. We have a deep and serious vision for what Israel should be. 

So that’s what today is. Not a debate, not a takedown, a real conversation about the contours and the complications of the settler movement, the world Yehuda has spent his life inside of and explaining to people like me. And to get there honestly, we’re going to use some real quotes from politicians, from rabbis, from movement leaders as a lens, not gotchas as entry points. Yehuda, thanks so much for joining me.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Thank you for having me and thank you for taking my message so seriously.

Noam: I take things pretty seriously from people, especially people like you, Yehuda.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: I appreciate that. I’ll share with you part of my frustration at the time. You know, I travel in many different spaces. You know, I’m a Jew living in the West Bank, for many years, you know, teaching in institutions connected to the national religious world. I also spend a lot of time with Palestinians over the years and with leftists in North America and with diaspora Jews and one thing I notice about all of those different groups is they’re all really ignorant of each other. Like everybody is kind of constructing a caricature of the other instead of trying to understand the other as the other understands themselves. And you know, I know that you’re somebody who values nuance and I figured you would actually appreciate the opportunity to bring a voice like mine on so that your listeners can engage with, you know, Jews who live in the West Bank and what we can call the Judeans.

I’ll tell you up front, you know, in Hebrew, we’re called Mitnachlim, like I’m called a Mitnachel, and I’m okay with that. But the word settler does bother me. I push back against that often. Not because I would claim that there aren’t Jews living in the West Bank according to settler colonial structures and methodology. I think there are, not all the Jews. but because I think that overall using the word settler as a Jew living in the West Bank already infers that we’re living somewhere we don’t belong.

Noam: All right, I hear your point. And there’s a power of language, and people are very sensitive to language all across the board, whether or not you use the term occupation or Palestinian or or Zionist or you know, so many different words, the West Bank, Judea Samaria. And I’ll I’ll like my bias is like, I sometimes I get frustrated by this conversation because I want to talk about the substance, not the form. And I want to just like have a real conversation about the substance and spend a little bit less time saying whether or not the word that I got was the perfect word if we’re in good faith and having a conversation. So it could be, it could be exhausting.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: I hear you a hundred percent.

Noam: So before we get into anything, I wanna set the table properly because I don’t think most of our audience actually knows who we’re talking about when we say ideologically motivated West Bank Jews. And just give me in under two minutes, who are they? Well really who are you? How do you see yourselves? How do they see themselves? Why do they live where they live? And what and why do they do what they do? I want you as my guide.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Okay. Jews living in the West Bank aren’t monolithic, but there is a common denominator, I think, that most of us share. We all tend to see ourselves as part of an ancient people that was unjustly displaced from our land. We somehow managed to survive and maintain our identity in gas form for thousands of years before ultimately returning home and restoring our independence and becoming a solid again.

And now the international community is trying to displace us again through a two-state solution. And the only effective method of struggle we figured out so far for resisting this is to populate as many mountains as we can in order to make displacing us logistically impossible. I would say that that’s broadly the vast majority of Jews living in the territories.

But I think there are radically different communities and types of people who live here, but who for the most part share that common denominator.

Noam: Could you share just a little bit more about the different communities that live there? What are you referring to?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Yeah. I would actually say there are two spectrums that are reversed in a sense. There’s a spectrum the extent to which a community is actually living according to settler colonial structures, and then there’s a spectrum of violence, and they’re inversed in that those who are most engaged with violence are the least settler, and those who are the most settler are the least violent.

Noam: What does that mean? Just say it, explain that to me like I’m a fifth grader.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Right, like there are communities that have, you know, gates around them and full military protection and are monopolizing the resources of the area at the expense of the people around them in a way that they might not even be aware of because the structures are just so deep and Efrat, Alon Shvut, Elazar, Nevei Daniel, basically Western Gush Etzion with the exception of Badain, I would say would fall into that category. Those are the most–

Noam: And what and you and those are those those are what are those more upper middle class communities typically?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Yeah, you have a a lot of people who speak English there. For the most part there’s more affluence there.

Noam: And you call that a settler colonial structure because it’s living w explain that. What does that mean?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: No, I mean that the methodology, the methodology is a settler methodology in many ways. Like the way these places are constructed, the way they exist, the way they monopolize resources. It just sometimes looks like aliens just put them down.

Noam: Okay. Meaning and and they don’t engage in violence so often, but they have protection from the state.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Right.

Noam: And other types of West Bank Jews or Jude and Samaria Jews are what?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: No, so the opposite end of the spectrum, you might have communities that don’t have fences around them, that see themselves as responsible for their own security, might not have the best relationship with the state or with the military all the time, and see themselves as responsible for protecting themselves. And their relationship with the Palestinians around them is generally more of like warring tribes as opposed to colonizer-colonized.

Noam: So, in some ways that’s more of like an ancient multiple peoples engaging the same land and coming from the same place potentially. And is that what it is or is it something else?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: In a sense, I would say that unfortunately I think the majority of Israeli society, not only in the territories but in all of Israel, tends to have this idea that we’re like lambs and the Palestinians are like wolves. And because we’re lambs and they’re wolves, we need, you know, military structures and systems of control to protect ourselves from the wolves. And what’s different about these Jews, the ones who are the least settler but sometimes violent is that they actually see themselves as wolves.

So while in the short term that might look really problematic in terms of behavior and so forth, and again, I’m not justifying the behavior, but I what where I do see a silver lining, and this comes from about 11 years doing reconciliation work with Jews and Palestinians around here, what makes these Jews better fit for that type of work, if they could be convinced, is that a relationship between warring tribes can be fixed and they could be turned into allies much easier than when you’re dealing with a colonizer colonized type of dynamic.

Noam: Wow. That’s a fascinating perspective, which I think people listening, and I certainly am, are like, my mind is like, it was like my head, my like boom. Like I like I don’t even know what it’s like. This is a new angle that I don’t think I’ve heard before you sharing this. So I want to go into and I’ll tell you what I mean by that. You’re saying that you’re someone who is engaged in the, the obvious person, that people see who is engaged in reconciliation is not also a person that lives in Judea Samaria, the West Bank, on a mountaintop and engaging in more, either I’ll say it in Hebrew to make everyone feel better, Hityashvut, which means settling. But, I don’t have a better English word than that. Developing? But you are both in there and you’re doing reconciliation. So that’s so here’s what I want to talk to you about, we have a map. I want to start testing it a bit.

I’m going to bring you six real quotes today, and maybe we’ll get to all of them, maybe we won’t, from six different people in this world that you’re referring to. You’re saying that people don’t understand this world very well. You’re saying it’s misconstrued, that they’re not getting good communication. So I want to hear and I want everyone to hear exactly where you, who’s a representative, because I mean you represent everyone, but a representative of this world of Jewish people that live in Judea and Samaria in the West Bank, that you feel even in the Jewish world, you are misunderstood. So the first two are political, and let’s start there.

This is a quote from March 2023 from the finance minister Betzalel Smotrich. He writes, he said, There’s no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people. Do you know who are the Palestinians? I am Palestinian, he said, also mentioning his grandmother, who was born in the northern Israeli town of Metula 100 years ago, and his grandfather, a 13th century Jerusalemite, as the real Palestinians.

Where does this fall on your map, Yehuda? Is this a fringe position within the greater Israel camp? Is it close to its center? Do you personally hold, this is my real question, do you personally hold this view that there is no Palestinian people or nation? Or would you push back on it?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Well, first of all, my short answer is no, I don’t hold that and I push back on it, but I wanna give you more of an explanation than that, okay? Because for years when Palestinian led tourists would come to my house, I would often begin the conversation by telling them I share an identity with Betzalel Smotrich and his core voters, like his core voter base, but we have different politics, right?

And I think it’s very important to separate this idea of identity and politics, and we can get back to that later if you’re interested. But I think that for sure you and your viewers, your listeners should understand us as an identity more than a set of political positions. Okay. Now, I would say that I’m also, by the way, very grateful for everything Smotrich has done over the last four years to expand the Jewish presence in the West Bank. And to further obstruct any plans that the West has to take parts of our land away from us. So, in that regard, he’s done good, and I really hope he continues in his position.

That being said, like I mentioned, we have different politics and a very different understanding of Palestinians. I don’t think it makes any sense to deny Palestinian identity. I don’t think it’s in the Jewish national interest to even try to deny Palestinian identity.

But I think it’s important to go a level deeper and to try to understand why such a large percentage of Israelis, not just in the West Bank, Israelis across the board, and diaspora Jews, genuinely believe Palestinian identity to be not only fake, but also a propaganda weapon meant to hurt us. And I’d say this is true actually for Palestinians as well. Jews and Palestinians actually both feel very threatened by the identity of the other. Like Palestinians largely insist there’s no such thing as a Jewish people. They can accept a Jewish religion, not a Jewish people.

And I would say this is largely because we have two radically different conceptions of identity that make it very easy for us to deny the others. Like, for example, when we, the Jews, talk about our national identity, what we really mean is we are the descendants of a very specific set of ancestors buried in Chevron. We’re a family that became 12 tribes that became a people, plus those who joined us along the way according to an ancient ritual process that allowed outsiders to become insiders. But that’s our identity, and that’s how we understand national identity. The average Israeli understands national identity to be something like that.

Now, when in my experience, when Palestinians talk about their identity, they mean the indigenous peoples of Palestine throughout time, including the ancient Israelites, including the Canaanites, including the Jebusites, including even Crusaders who just stuck around and absorbed into the local population.

And so we’re having two different conversations when we talk about identity. And I think the silver lining here is that because our identities are so different, we actually could live together in this land while both simultaneously getting what we want. But I think the first step is to overcome this like principled opposition and principled resistance to understanding each other’s identity and story.

Noam: I think I got most of that. I’m trying to think. I think I got most of that. But to me, it sounds like you are accepting of a Palestinian identity that is that’s a concession, or is that or like meaning, if I go back into the history, I’m just gonna read you a few things historically. The organized Palestinian political self-assertion predates 1964 by decades.

The first Palestinian Arab Congress was 1919. The third Congress and Khaifa was in 1920, and it called for a national government responsible to representative assembly of the Arabic-speaking people of Palestine. Nine Congresses convened throughout the 1920s. A Palestinian press and literature identifying Palestine as a distinct homeland homeland goes back to 1911. The newspaper’s Philistine, with a 1922 memorandum to the League of Nations describing the population as descended from stock resident in Palestine since its earliest history.

And I think what you said is really interesting because the on the anti-I’m gonna call it the anti-Israel side of things, anti-Zionist side of things, they say, no, this concept of the Jewish national movement was only born when Theodore Herzl started organizing people. And it’s not a real Jewish national project. It’s really there’s a Jewish faith. And those who are either good Jews or bad Jews, but there’s a Jewish faith. and I feel like you said it very well that this issue is the existence of one many times demands the negation of the other. And are you saying that there are two peoples in this land, the Jewish people and the Palestinian people, yes or no?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: First of all, yes, but I’m also saying that because we have such radically different conceptions of identity, and I think we actually want very different things when we really explore the core grievances and aspirations of both sides, I’m actually confident that we could make a one-state reality work and if we can become allies.

I think the real problem is that we’re enemies. The real problem is that we’ve been fighting for over a hundred years. but if we’re able to overcome that and not be the enemy in each other’s story. Because let’s be honest, not just for Jews living in the West Bank, but for the overwhelming majority of Israeli society, Palestinians are the enemy. And I think that’s also true in terms of how Palestinians see us. So if we’re able to overcome that, then I think there’s a lot of room to create a political reality between the river and the sea where we live here together as allies.

Noam: So that’s a huge statement, Yehuda. You said you are oppositional. I let it go initially to the two state solution.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Of course.

Noam: You are pro the one state solution. Now, the one state solution is a solution that a lot of people who are would a lot when people assert this position, others who are defensive of Israel feel like it’s actually an antisemitic position. It’s an antisemitic position or an anti-Zionist position to believe that there should be one state between the river and the sea because of the fact that there are roughly seven or so million Jews and seven million or so Palestinian Arabs living between the river and the sea. And if you were to create one formal state that is both Palestinian and Israeli, because they’re equal numbers essentially between the two, then you would be living in a world in which it either has to choose the argument is between being a democratic state and a Jewish state.

And for a lot of people that I surround myself with, that they believe in a Jewish state. They believe in a democratic state. And they believe that the Jewish and democratic state should have, and a secure state, and it should make sure that every single person has rights and the ability to function as a citizen in that country.

But you’re making the argument that you’re like, no, it’s not something that I want. I don’t want a two state solution. I want a one state solution and Noam, I’m Jewish and a proud Jew and it is not antisemitic. So explain to me how you can have a Jewish, democratic, secure state that is all three of those things.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Well, if I start to explain that to you, it’ll be the rest of the episode.

Noam: Just give me a highlight. What’s your quick pitch on what it means that there should be one state? That’s a big statement.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Well first of all, we’ve spent centuries, generations struggling to come back here. And now that we have come back here and taken possession of our land again, we’re not gonna let it go. Right? And we’re gonna go back to Gaza. The Jews are gonna return to Gaza.

Now, in my opinion, the way to make that successful is to do it in a way that’s good for Palestinians and also helps them to achieve their aspirations. I don’t want to get into the mechanics of what you know, I have a colleague, Sami Awad from Bethlehem, who would often say that everybody argues about the solutions. It’s like arguing about the frame around a picture, but we should really be fixing the picture inside. The picture is the relationship. If Jews and Palestinians were to have a good relationship, then a hundred solutions become possible. As long as our relationship is what it is right now, no solution is possible. Okay.

I want Israel to be more Jewish than it is right now, more deeply Jewish than it is right now. I want Israel to be more authentically democratic than it is right now. Right. And democratic actually means something to me. It’s not just a synonym for westernization, like it is for some people here.

And I want Palestinians to feel fully included and to feel like they’re partners with us. And I think we can do that. and I think we’re more likely to be able to do it as Israel moves in the socio-political direction it’s moving in. I think that because of the transition taking place in Israeli society that I know scares a lot of people and probably scares a lot of diaspora Jews, but that transition is actually going to make it easier for Israel to have a healthier relationship with our neighbors and to re-indigenize into the region organically.

Noam: When you say the changes that are happening and it is scaring many diaspora Jews, and you think it’s actually good for the relationship, what are you referring to? Be specific, please.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Well, I’m referring a very kind of crude, raw preview might have been this government, the current coalition. But I think that, you know, certain sectors of Israeli society have been having more children than others over the last few decades. And I think that Israel’s identity is changing. And I think that’s what a lot of the fight was really about when it came to judicial reform.

I would actually argue that almost every divisive social and political issue in Israeli society is downstream from the core tension on whether this is going to be a deeply Jewish state, whatever that means, it might mean different things to different people, but let’s just say a deeply Jewish state, versus a Hebrew-speaking liberal Western state. And I think that’s really the divide in Israeli society. By the way, I would like Israel to be a democratic state, but for me, democracy means something very concrete. I want people to have the ability to influence the structures we live under. That for me is democracy. And I and I think that we can be a democratic state while still being deeply Jewish, but we’re clearly moving in the more Jewish direction, not just in politics. I know that it’s most visible, especially from abroad, when you look at, you know, elections and the coalitions that are formed, but it’s also true in Israeli pop culture. It’s also true just in yell a lot of societal norms that are changing, you know. And I think that that’s ultimately a positive thing. I think it’s a step forward in our liberation process.

You know, Zionism will basically achieve material liberation for the Jewish people, but we also need to achieve psychological liberation and part of that involves having the civilizational confidence to create a nation state or a society that actually expresses our identity and our values.

Noam: So there’s so much you said there. And I want to go with I want to continue with my quotes though, because I wanna I and you’re gonna be able to reflect on that. Now you, something you already said about Gaza, which I let go, for many Americans, and I’m American, we view that as a non starter. But I’m American and I live here. You’re Jewish, you live in Judea, the West Bank. And here’s something that the national security minister, the name that’s become the new boogeyman.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Yeah. Sure.

Noam: Outside of Bibi Netanyahu, which is Ben Gvir. And Ben Gvir on August 17th said the following: I think we should carry out targeted assassinations in Gaza, taking down 30 to 40 every night, not just those who pose an immediate threat. No, there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people. And then Ben Gvir said, I see all of Gaza as ours. That’s a lot. And not, you’re right, not part of my American sensibility. I’m yes, audience, listeners, I am sharing the hope with you, my thoughts. But I want to hear your perspective as an Israeli, as someone who I don’t know if you voted for Ben Gvir or not. I know that many people in your surroundings, your environs have. Is this your camp? And if it isn’t, whose is it? So those like what’s going on there? They’re not even people. What is he referring to? What does he mean when he says I see all of Gaza as ours? Is that something that your community feels?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Okay, so first of all, personally I see Ben Gvir as more of an entertainer than a serious politician, and I don’t take what he says that seriously. and his voter base

Noam: Well, you can say that, but as an American, many Americans said the exact same thing about Donald Trump, and he became president. And I’m not even making a claim one way or the other, but that sort of statement doesn’t really resonate so much with me because when an entertainer has a political capital, it kind of doesn’t matter how you view him.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Okay. So I’ll tell you that first of all, as I said, I don’t take him very seriously. I don’t see him as a doer. I see him much more as a talker. His voter base is probably just a lot of the periphery, younger Haredi men. I don’t know how many people in the territories are voting for Ben Gvir. some, I’m sure. but not, you know, I don’t plan to vote for him.

But I also want to point out that it’s very normal for peoples in conflict to speak this way, not just here in West Asia, but all over the world. Russia, Ukraine, your president in DC, gangs in New York and Los Angeles. When people go to war, the rhetoric is part of the war. So I think that whatever quotes you might have from Israeli politicians or or any b or or Hamas leaders or Hezbollah leaders or or anybody else, they’re gonna sound like this because that’s how people talk when they go to war, and again, not just here.

In terms of Gaza is ours, yeah, of course I see Gaza as part of our land. And of course most of my neighbors, my Jewish neighbors, see Gaza as part of Israel, and we’re still not over the crime of the disengagement of 2005. Meaning, you know, that for me, I’ll be honest, for me, the disengagement of 2005 was more personally traumatic than October 7, 2023.

Noam: Wow, why?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Because it was well for many reasons. First of all because it was a crime–

Noam: Not one Jew tell me if I’m wrong here, but not one Jew was killed, so explain to me why that was more traumatic for you. And and and as you answer this, is this also representative of a broader like is this just you or do you or do you feel like this is a broad sentiment in your community?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Okay I’ll tell you, it’s probably a broad sentiment. I haven’t taken a poll on it, but I would say that I think that a lot of people, not just in my community, I think a lot of people throughout the country, see what happened on October 7 as a consequence of the disengagement. They see it as directly connected. We can call it in Talmudic language, we can call it a Tolda, right? And a derivative.

Noam: What does that mean? An offspring of a result?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Yeah, like yeah. Let’s use those words. I would say that in 2005 we had a prime minister who campaigned on a certain, not just on a certain policy, but set of principles and values, and had a certain reputation that essentially, you know, I would say it was George W. Bush more than Ariel Sharon. I think that Sharon, I would blame for not standing up to Bush.

But whether you want to blame Bush or Sharon, we here had a situation where suddenly a prime minister, who was elected on one policy, the policy being the slogan being Nizarim, which was the most isolated Jewish community in all of Gaza. He said, Nizarim is like Tel Aviv. That was a slogan in his campaign. And then he went ahead and allowed Bush to force him to forcibly expel all of the Jews living everywhere in Gaza, plus four communities in the northern Shomron, everybody who tried to resist this policy were demonized by the press. Those protesting blocking traffic were beaten up by police who would take their name tags off. Courts would hand out very draconian sentences to people, very different from those who were blocking traffic and protesting during the judicial reform episode. And you know, ministers like Rav Benny Alon and Avigdor Lieberman at the time were fired to create artificial majorities in the cabinet. A Likud Party referendum was ignored when the Prime Minister lost and he refused to go to a national referendum.

Basically we felt like we were turned into enemies of the state. We had restraint, meaning those of us who were in the resistance decided that and our leadership decided that we weren’t going to fight our own people. We weren’t going to fight Israeli soldiers. And we backed down ultimately. And one could argue I think we were right to back down. I think that it would have been catastrophic for us had we fought each other at that time. But at the same time, I think the policy was a really problematic policy and it radically endangered Israel for the following two decades, culminating in October seventh.

Noam: So this is, for you and people in your community, that is just such a large statement. I can imagine it’s offensive to a lot of people listening and maybe offensive to, with an understanding that I could understand what you’re saying, but it could, I’m just trying to think of like a random audience member hearing that. Even with all of the pain that comes with it, I’m imagining the reaction from listeners who hear a statement like that. And I can, again, I understand it.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Why? What do you think is so offensive? Meaning I’m not talking about harming Palestinians? In fact, no no no no no, Noam. In fact, every single Palestinian that was killed in this war in the last three years would not have been killed had we not had had we not had Gaza taken from us in 2005.

Noam: Right. No, I understand what you’re saying. I’m I’m I’m more focused on the the traumatic aspect of of the day, not of of the seventh of October versus 2005. I was

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: No, look, October seventh was also traumatic, but I’m telling you something personal about me that I experienced more internal trauma than. Yeah.

Noam: Good. And I’m sitting with it. I’m sitting with it. I’m sitting with you. I’m thinking about it. I’m thinking about it.

Okay, so we’re just going from idea to idea and we could continue traveling with this like there’s something very charismatic about you and also confusing about you because I’m gonna read to you another quote.

This is from a rabbi named Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, and I want you to say a little bit about who Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsberg has been in your community and w how you respond to this line from him. The line from him is, during the 1997 trial of his students for the murder of a Palestinian girl, he was quoted stating, Jewish blood is not the same as Arab blood.

Now, there’s an argument that that theology comes from older sources, Hasidic sources from Tanya and from other places, that may or may not be accurate. But again, I want to understand. I said you’re charismatic and confusing. I could imagine, I actually don’t want to even guess what your response is to that. But there is a like, do you agree with Rabbi Ginsberg’s articulation there? Because there’s so much in the Talmud and so much in throughout scripture in general that talks about all human beings being created in the image of God. Whoever destroys a single soul, the Torah says as if he destroyed an entire world. There’s so many ideas about what’s called Kavona Briot, which means respect for every single person, dignity for everyone. There’s so much of that in the Talmud and the Torah. And I think that some people watching from afar look at a statement like that from Rabbi Ginsburg, who’s a leader in the community, and say, wait a second, is there what’s called Jewish supremacy. So how do you think about that question about Jewish supremacy?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Well, first of all, Rav Ginsberg is coming from Chabad and I’m coming from the world of Rav Kook, so I might be less familiar with what sources Rav Ginsberg is drawing this position from. I’m not an expert in the Tanya, so I don’t wanna claim to know exactly where he’s drawing these ideas from.

Noam: But even Rav Kook, even Rav Kook is said to have made statements about the distinction between the souls of Jews and non Jews, which was based on the Kuzari from, you know, eight, nine hundred years ago. So like, I just want to understand that better from your perspective.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Yeah. So again, Rav Ginsburg aside, because I don’t want to speak for him and I don’t want to speak for Chabad. I’ll say also it’s important to keep in mind that because the Jewish people haven’t had real power or fought wars in almost two thousand years, there is a lot to unpack when it comes to our laws of war, like what is military halakha. And there are some rabbis who really focus on trying to unpack this. I don’t know if Rav Ginsburg is one of them or not.

Like, for example, there’s a very real debate in all of Israeli society over the extent to which we’re meant to, obligated to, should endanger the lives of Israeli soldiers in order to be more cautious when minimizing enemy casualties. Like that’s like a very real debate in Israeli society.

So I don’t know if I want to speak for Rav Ginsburg. I think that I can say some positive and negative things or strengths and weaknesses about the community I live in. and I’m gonna maybe I’ll ask you to let me say the whole thing here.

Because on the one hand, coming from New York City, I moved here as an adult, a young adult, young twenties, and I was amazed, one of the things that really amazed me was just like the high quality human beings who live in these Jewish communities in the West Bank. And I wanna give you just a couple quick examples. I’ll shoot them at you. Number one, when me and my wife moved to the mountain we lived on for almost a decade. We had no money. The people there didn’t know us, but they saw we had no money and they took it upon themselves without us asking them or even really discussing it with us, they took it upon themselves to get us everything. And I mean washing machine, refrigerator, dining room table, beds, closets, chair, everything. And we never heard another thing about it. Nobody ever brought it up after they got all that stuff for us. Our entire home was furnished by the people on the mountain.

One time my daughter vomited on a bus. The bus driver got really, really angry. And some woman on the bus just quietly began to clean up her vomit, to help clean up her vomit. My wife recently lost her wallet at a place where a lot of Jews like hitchhike from and catch the bus from. And she was really like flipping out because she had just taken out a lot of cash. And I said to her on the phone, I said, don’t worry. You just lost your wallet in the best place on earth to lose your wallet. Okay. And as I’m saying this to her, call waiting, okay, it’s the police. Somebody brought her wallet to the police station. All the cash was there, all the credit cards were there, everything was there. And somebody actually l really was grateful for the opportunity to return this lost wallet to the person who had lost it.

On the one hand, these are amazing people. On the other hand, they definitely have a blind spot when it comes to Palestinians. And that’s again because, like the overwhelming majority of Israeli society, the mitnachlim, the Judeans, the West Bank Jews, see Palestinians as an enemy we’ve been at war with for over a hundred years. I get it.

It’s also important to note that we’re talking about a population that’s very provincial, doesn’t understand very much about the world outside our borders. Most don’t speak any language other than Hebrew. And because they’re psychologically living in the Jewish story so deeply, they feel very little pressure to know about the outside world or to behave in a way that would be considered immoral or virtuous according to another civilization’s value system or ideological paradigm. So these are really good people, but there are some blind spots and they just don’t know about your values in most cases.

Noam: Got it. Speaking of blind spots and perhaps not knowing how to speak to a broader world, I think you and I once spoke about this, Daniela Weiss. she is the founder of the Nachala settlement movement. And I actually had a trouble picking a quote from her. And I’ll just take a few from her interview last year with, he’s the guy who would who Louis Theroux, My Money Don’t Jiggle Jiggle. You know that remember that bit?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: No, but I saw his interview with her.

Noam: Alright. Okay, that you saw, but the algorithm probably you never saw my money don’t jiggle jiggle. Anyway, so here are some things that she said. On Gazans, they lost the right to be there on the 7th of October, and they will find their way to Indonesia, to Africa, to different countries, to the Western world. On settler violence, there is no such thing, she said. On settlements being war crimes under international law, it’s a light felony, she said. Now I’ve heard people say that terms like settler violence is the new form of libelous bigotry against Israel in the same way that the genocide libel was, meaning there’s not really so much going on, and we make it into something much more than it is. Is that true? And what should we be doing about Daniella Weiss and her speaking publicly on Theroux? Because I don’t know. Maybe you and by the way, maybe you don’t care in all seriousness, you might say, Noam, I don’t care about you. But a lot of Jewish Americans and Jewish people across the world, when they see statements like that from Daniella Weiss on public, like in front of everyone, we’re kind of like, WTF. What are you doing? But maybe you’re like, actually, guys, I don’t I it’s not my responsibility to care about your suburban Jewish life somewhere in in the States because then people hear c comments like that and they’re like, my God, like you Jews are really problematic. I wanna know what your take is on all this.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: In terms of her first quote, I’d say again, that’s just how people talk during war. She’s a tough lady, she’s a great grandmother, she’s got a lot of accomplishments under her belt. I don’t agree with everything she says, obviously. On the second quote, in terms of the about Jewish violence, I I don’t know why she’s–

Noam: Settler violence.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Well, I don’t like the S word, but anyway, I don’t know why she said that. Of course there’s violence here, but I think it’s naive to think the violence is one-sided. And again I think there’s different types of violence. If you’re talking about a bunch of Jewish teenagers beating up some random Palestinian, obviously that’s wrong. That shouldn’t happen. You know, if we can prevent that from happening, we should. If you’re talking about, you know, Jews actually fighting back against Palestinians who regularly attack them, that also happens. I mean, and both those, I happen to know of situations of both of those things happening. So like I I know that it’s it’s

Noam: Right. But there’s no systemic violence in the community of, I’ll be respectful of your language. There’s no violence in the community of the West Bank Jews that’s systemically problematic?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: No, it’s definitely not systemic. I mean systemic would be maybe more some of the policies of the state and the way the military functions. I don’t know if you’re looking to get into that. But in terms of there there are again, like I said before, there are Jews who live in villages without any fences, without real military protection, without a good relationship with the army, who see themselves as responsible for their security and the security of their families. And they behave the way they behave.

But by the way, I would say this about them. You know, you mentioned Rav Kook before. Rav Kook was very supportive of the Zionist project. He wasn’t a Zionist, but he was supportive of the Zionist project from the outside. Even though he saw all the problems with it and all the things people were doing that was upsetting a lot of the other rabbinical figures at the time.

Noam: You just have to say one sentence, you just said he’s not a Zionist. What does that mean?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Okay. Yeah. He wasn’t a Zionist.

Noam: He didn’t believe that the Jewish people should have national self determination in their ancestors’ homeland?

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: No, he did believe that, but I guess we’re gonna have to talk about what the definition of Zionism is or isn’t. But I would say that Rav Kook was looking at the Zionist movement and seeing it as a positive thing, even though a lot of the Zionists themselves were doing things that were offensive and maybe even painful to him.

I would argue that the subculture that’s developing among the younger generation of Jews in the West Bank is ultimately, big picture, a positive development. And I guess I kind of look at the violence in the same way Rav Kook looked at the violation of Halacha of the Zionists like 100 years ago. I think the violence is problematic. If I found that one of my kids was involved in it, I would try to set them straight. Also I think it undermines the authority of the state. And I look at the state as the vehicle through which we collectively fulfill the mitzvah of possessing the land. So I don’t think we should be undermining the state. But I also understand that some of these Jews are in a position where they’re attacked regularly and they feel they have to make those tribes they’re at war with afraid to mess with them.

And I get it. And a lot of the peace work I was doing, by the way, I’m not involved in reconciliation work right now. Just not one of the things I’m doing at the moment. But when I was doing it for 11 years, those Jews, the hilltop youth, the least settler, most violent Jews, were exactly the Jews I would try to bring to the dialogue sessions because they’re the Jews who I think can really have a healthy relationship with the Palestinians once they get over seeing each other as the enemy.

For example, you know, even though I think Binyamin Netanyahu is the best prime minister we could have right now, I find it really problematic when he talks about like civilization versus barbarism, or when Ehud Barak talks about Israel as a villa in the jungle. That’s a very colonialist way of thinking. And these Jews, you know, the you know, the violent West Bank Jews. One good thing I could say about them is they don’t have that colonialist mentality. And therefore, if they can stop seeing the Palestinians as the enemy, they’re able to have a much healthier relationship than a lot of Israeli society, unfortunately.

Noam: So what you’re saying is very paradoxical in many ways. This whole conversation has been paradoxical. And that’s the word that’s very much so on my mind. I wanna end with this last question. It’s a statement with a question. It seems to me that you believe that the question that I have is do you feel as though, or what is the thing that you feel is most misunderstood about you and your community? What is the and that you want people to understand much better?

To me, what I heard is that you believe that the path to reconciliation is to not view Jews and Israelis as what? I’m leaving that blank, but to view them as something else that’s blank. Like what is the path to reconciliation? It’s not this, it is that. Because your paradoxical idea that or ironic ideas, you believe that the pathway to reconciliation is not through secularism, it’s not through westernism, it’s not through two of separating, it’s actually through really going back to the land, vying for the land together, being in relationship with the land, with the people together, having respect and and dialogue with those people. But that religion is a big part of that. And that not just religion cultural religion is the way I would say it from your perspective. Like the religion of the people in the land.

I know I said a lot there, but just help me understand what it is that people like me, and, and maybe my listeners don’t understand about you.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Look, Israel is a very tribal society, right? Like we’re all we’re different tribes in Israeli society, leaving the Palestinians aside. They’re also a tribal society, by the way. They have various tribes as well. But the tribe I’m part of is for the most part the sector of Israeli society most consciously living the Jewish national story. Meaning we actually think of ourselves as characters in a later chapter of the same story our ancestors were characters in. And were for the most part living in the very same places where those ancestors lived. Like I myself spent almost a decade living on the mountain where the Maccabim had their partisan camp when we fought against the Seleucid Greek Empire. I can show you the Maccabees guard towers, the wine presses, the olive presses, the caves where they slept and held their strategy meetings. Matityahu Hachashmonai died on that mountain. His son Yehuda Hamaccabi fell in battle not far from it, facing down 22,000.

Noam: Matathias and Judah.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Yeah, with only 800 fighters. He faced 22,000 people and died on the battlefield. And it’s also, by the way, the mountain where our ancestor Yaakov had his famous dream of the ladder and where his name was later changed to Yisrael. And before any of your viewers cynically question whether Yaakov even really existed, I want to say that it’s not relevant to the discussion. What’s relevant is that we know for sure that the people of Israel spent thousands of years believing that he existed and that he had that dream and that his name had been changed on that mountain. And whether or not that’s true, the fact that we’ve cherished that story for so many centuries says something about who we are and what this land has meant to us for a long time. And I represent the part of Israeli society that’s most consciously living that story and most ferociously willing to fight for what’s important in that story.

For the things we’ve spent generations telling ourselves and our children that we’re determined to make happen in history. Right? So those Jews who don’t share our commitments on these issues, and the Jews who at, you know, some point in history, probably in the last century or two, got distracted or seduced by something else, they left the struggle. We’re the ones who keep it real. We’re the ones who want and fight for the very thing our ancestors were fighting for five hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, fifteen hundred years ago, two thousand, twenty five hundred years ago, etcetera. Right? That’s who we are.

Noam: Right. Well, Yehuda, thank you so much for taking the time to share with me and all of us who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish and what your struggle is all about. Thank you so much for joining me.

Rav Yehuda HaKohen: Thanks for having me.