Mijal: Hi everyone. Welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam. I’m Mijal. It’s just me today with a guest. but we miss Noam and this podcast is our way of trying to unpack big questions being asked by Jews and about Jews.
We don’t have it all figured out, but we are going to try and figure things out together. As we say every week, we really, really enjoy hearing from you, listening, you know, whenever you send in questions or comments. So please continue to send them in, email us at wonderingjews@unpacked.media and also follow up and also follow us on Instagram @wonderingjews.
Today I am really, really honored to be joined by someone whose work I’ve really, really admired for years, Rabbi Alex Israel. I’ll just read the formal bio first, and then I’ll just say how I know Rabbi Alex. So Rabbi Alex Israel is an author and an educator. He teaches Tanakh, Bible and Jewish thought in Jerusalem and also in communities and campuses around the world. Rabbi Alex is an author and an educator, and he’s also a podcaster. He has a daily podcast every single day. How many days have you done this already?
Alex Israel: Yeah, yeah, a bit crazy. Over two years I’ve recorded almost all of Neviim and almost all ofKetuvim. And next in the summer we’ll be starting through the Five Books of Moses through the Torah.
Mijal: Great. So you’ve gone through like all the prophets and all like the later writings. my gosh.
Alex Israel: Two thirds of the Bible. It’s quite something. I’ve amazed myself. started, I didn’t realize I’d keep going and I just, I’ve become addicted.
Mijal: Wow. Do you record every day or do you like batch record?
Alex Israel: I wish I could say I batch record. I frequently record at 1 a.m. because I haven’t done tomorrow’s podcast. So there are some people who are very organized and other people are a bit last minute and yeah, that’s me.
Mijal: Amazing. Well, we’re going to include the link to the podcast in the show notes. And I just want to recommend it. It’s really very special to listen. It’s short. It’s like nine minutes, 10 minutes, depending on the day on the chapter. And it’s a very amazing way to enter and to try to understand what the Bible is telling us. So right now, think, Rabbi Alex, you’re in Nehemiah. Is that? Yeah, Nehemiah.
Alex: Yes, which tells the story of Jews returning to the land of Israel and trying to set up their states. And there are so many parallels between then and now and so much to learn from it. It’s fascinating.
Mijal: Okay, so that’s a perfect setup to introduce. Well, also, let me just say, Rav Alex, I feel very lucky to not just to know you and to have, you know, learned from you formally, but like you’ve been a mentor, you’ve taught me at the SAcks Scholars program, and you are known by so many, not only as an amazing scholar and teacher, but also as just someone incredibly generous. I know that very often I’ve had questions and like, I’ll just WhatsApp you. And it’s been really, really incredible to just to see your level of deep caring. And doing so, and you live in Israel, you just had a weekend away with your family.
Alex Israel: Thank you, Mijal, I really appreciate that. I did. I had a wonderful weekend with my kids. And as I was telling you before, it’s actually the first time we’ve managed to get all of our families together since Rosh Hashanah 2023. I had three boys who were called up to the army on 7th of October in the middle of Simchat Torah. And each time we’ve got the family together for a Shabbat or for a, you know, like we were all thought we’d be home for Seder. And then my son said, no, I’ve got to be in the army. we’re on high alert so each time somebody can’t make it and so this weekend we managed to get everyone together for the first time in almost two years but it really is.
Mijal: That’s very special. I hope it’s not too soon, too much time till you can do it again, God willing.
Alex Israel: Yeah, no, no, hopefully things will, even though actually my son is going into Gaza tomorrow. So, yeah. There you go. That is our life at the moment.
Mijal: Yeah, we’re going to keep him and all of our, all those who are fighting to defend the Jewish people in our minds and in our hearts and in our prayers.
Rav Alex, let me tell you, let me share with our audience why it is that I reached out to you. I have been, like, you know, I follow politics, geopolitics, especially when it comes to Israel pretty closely. And I think like many people who care about Israel, I have been just reading the news and feeling confused, worried, anxious about what’s happening. I would say without getting into like the nitty gritty or without doing my own like analysis, but there’s been a clear sense that something has shifted or at least that it’s revealed that there’s been a shift in the way that specifically America under President Trump is dealing with Israel and with the Middle East from like a little bit of like a simplistic point of view.
Some of the things that have happened in the last three weeks in terms of its dealings with Yemen or with Saudi Arabia or with Qatar or bringing out Eden Alexander were things that were done in a way that was like America pursuing its own interests in the region and not necessarily considering how and whether this works out vis-a-vis the interests of Israel. There’s still a lot of questions that remain open.
And again, not doing high level geopolitical analysis here. I think many of us are waiting to see what’s going to happen with Iran and the nuclear deal. That might be the test of how we’re interpreting this shift right now. But I have stayed up many nights, as I’m sure many of us have, just trying to think, what does this mean? How do we understand this moment?
And I’ve had this feeling going back a lot of months already that I’m trying to find precedents and moments in Jewish history that could help us orient ourselves into understanding where we are right now and into figuring out what kind of wisdom exists that could help us. And I have kept wondering and thinking, how does this moment relate? How is it similar? How is it different than the biblical period, right, in the time in which we had sovereignty, in which we had, in that time, was like a monarchy often, not always, but we had to deal with regional powers, we had to deal with empire, we had to deal with really difficult choices in terms of, you know, military war and how much do we, you know, believe in our own strength versus have to do whatever the big powers tell us to do, all of these things.
And I’ve really been wanting to figure out what we can learn from our history in biblical times. And I couldn’t think of a better person to ask these questions than you, because you really are a master teacher. You live in Israel. You understand the current situation right now. And you’ve been teaching a chapter of the Bible, Tanakh, every single day for the last two years. So that’s the big conversation that I hope we can have today. Yeah. Ready? Okay. Good.
Alex Israel: Great, I’m up for it. I have some answers, we’ll try and tease them out together. We’ll see how we do.
Mijal: Yeah, well, either way we’ll learn some Torah together. So I’m excited. Okay. So Rav Alex, let’s just start from the very beginning because I think especially in America, people use the word Bible and you know, there’s questions there like Jews use it one way, Christians use it another way. We talk about the Torah. We’ve, you and I have already used the word Tanakh right now. So could you help just explain to our audience, what is the Tanakh?
Alex Israel: So the Tanakh stands, it’s an acronym, it stands for Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim. The three books. The Torah is the five books of Moses which tell us the story from creation till the verge till Moses dies. And that’s what we read in our synagogues on Shabbat, the Torah reading. When you have a sefer Torah, it’s the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch.
Mijal: So the Torah is like five books of Moses.
Alex Israel: Mm-hmm. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. People are more familiar with that because it’s part of the Parshat Hashavua, the weekly Torah reading in the synagogue.
Then there’s a second section. It’s called the Prophets. The first half of it is actually more like historical books. They tell us the history from the entry to the land till the exile from the land. What we call maybe the first Commonwealth, some people call it the first temple period, but the temple was only built halfway through. We’re talking about something like 750 years from the 13th century BCE till 586 BCE. And we’re talking about a series, a historical continuum. And then we have a whole set of different books, which are the writings or the speeches of different prophets. You’ve probably heard their names, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Zechariah. These are names that sort of sometimes entered, the book of Jonah is also in there, which is a book that sometimes people know, Jonah and the Whale.
And then there’s a third section and it’s the writings. It’s known as Ketuvim and it’s a sort of very eclectic mix of different works. The most famous maybe is the Book of Psalms. There’s the Book of Job about suffering.
I’ll say that the Christians have some other books which we don’t include. So sometimes it’s referred to in English as the Hebrew Bible. But what I love about it is the way that it is so diverse, right? Because we’re talking about the fact that it is a book of laws, but it’s also a book of history and it’s the folklore. It’s the basic of our prayer like Psalms with all of its elation and its despair. It’s sometimes philosophical like a Kohelet, Ecclesiastics or Proverbs. So we’ve got like a Proverb book. You can read it as philosophical dialogues like, you know, the Platonic dialogues in the book of Job. There are amazing showdowns between, you know, talking truth to power like Elijah and the king of Ahab or there are thrillers like the Book of Esther, right?
Mijal: But you know, I was going to say, Rav Alex, it’s funny because you’re describing this diversity as something awesome, which it is. It’s also confusing, right? When I’ve tried to explain the Tanakh and I’m basically, trying to say, it’s 24 books, right? And some of them are like what we tend to think of as like the Bible and it’s like law. And some of them are more like a historical record of like the political aspect of like, you know, the kingdom of Israel.
And some of it is Psalms and some of it is poetry. And there’s something that’s a little bit confusing. Not confusing, but I’m saying like this diversity is also makes it hard to describe it as like one type of work. Give us a little bit of the history. How were these 24 books chosen or codified to be like the Tanakh.
Alex Israel: Right, so it’s actually a fascinating, there is a fascinating history to the canonization or codification of these books. The original layer, the Torah, the five books of Moses, was traditionally, you know, literally the revelation of God through Moses to the people of Israel and formed the basic framework of law for Jews. So in there you will find the holidays, you will find Shabbat, you’ll find laws of purity which are observed and sacrifices which are observed in times when we had a temple.
But you’ll also find all sorts of social laws. So Jews lived these laws in their villages and towns in ancient Israel. If you want the prophets, right, the prophets are giving a commentary to society and telling us about the events that happened. It’s almost like you might read an op-ed in the newspaper. I don’t mean to lighten it, but you’re gonna hear a view, an ethical view about the events of the age. And the Writings give a whole another dimension to things.
Now, around the second century CE, the rabbis, they see that the second temple has been destroyed and things are falling apart a little bit in the land of Israel as life is very hard under the Romans. And we reach a point where the rabbis decide to codify this as the authoritative books. There are some books they have arguments about. For example, a very famous book is The Song of Songs, which is quite explicitly sexual. And they said, does that fit in or does that not fit in? And other books as well. So there was actually a debate. But you have rabbis, probably the most famous amongst them, being people like Rabbi Akiva. And they’re debating what’s in and out. And in around the year 200 or 130, 150, they codify this and ever since then that’s been our Tanakh and books which are not in the Bible are called the outside books.
And the remarkable thing is that anything which is an outside book, the only way we have them is through the Greek translations but the Jews held these books as sacred, as a sacred possession they copied them down very carefully by hand and we have found even original versions which aren’t so different to the versions that we have in the Dead Sea Scrolls when in the 1948 these Scrolls appeared from a cave somewhere near the Dead Sea in Israel. They were scrolls from 2,000 years ago. People examine them. They could read them. They were the same text that Jews had in their synagogues and in their study houses. So this is a literature which gives us a sense of real continuity and Jews have held these as sacred works. They’ve been studied and mined over the last few thousand years and they become the basis of our stories, our thinking, our heroes, our villains.
Mijal: And, Rav Alex, I’ll just note something here. You used the word sacred. I think both you and I would describe ourselves as approaching the Tanakh as a sacred text or set of texts. And some of it, traditional Jews believe like the Torah, like you said before, is literally the word of God revealed to Moses. Others of it were written by different prophets or different individuals. And then the codification process by the Talmudic, you know, by the sages, in a sense, make these 24 books have a certain amount of sanctity in the way that we approach them.
Alex Israel: Sure, but it’s important to say that I think it’s also been embraced in a new way in the modern era. The most famous, you know, if you want, fan of the Tanakh was probably David Ben-Gurion, the man who founded the state of Israel. And he saw the Tanakh not in a sacred way at all. He was not a particularly religious man. He certainly was not observant, but he saw it as a manifest for the idea of us as a nation, not just as a wandering people, but as a people who could have their own country connected to land, connected to politics, connected to statecraft. And so he looked at this as sort of a dreamscape about how Jews could be, how they’d lived in the past.
Mijal: That’s an important note and a good segue. The background, the subtext of what you’re describing is that for a very long time, hundreds of years, Jews in the diaspora, they would read, I’m simplifying a bit, but they would focus on the five books of Moses, read them weekly with the parshah. They would focus on psalms, maybe some scrolls. But especially Nevi’im, the middle section, the prophets, that deal a lot with statecraft and sovereignty and all of that, a lot of it was almost like neglected in the houses of study. Instead, Jews focused on questions around Jewish law and Jewish philosophy, partially because they live in diaspora. And it was like, what am I learning? You know, like I’m not even going to focus so much, it was kind of like neglected.
And as you’re describing, there has been a renewed interest and focus, whether it’s from someone like David Ben-Gurion or today, actually, I think it’s a difference between Israeli Jews and American Jews. Israeli Jews in yeshivot, in houses of higher learning of Jewish studies, there’s a very, very strong focus on Nevi’im, on the prophets. And I think there’s like a sense there that these things are not, these things are, these stories, these narratives are relevant and urgent in a way that they haven’t been for 2000 years.
Alex Israel: I certainly would agree with that. I always find it fascinating that if you open the Talmud, you go to the second page of the first tractate of the Talmud and you meet King David. But King David is woken up by his magic harp every night so that he can pray at midnight. And King David is described as somebody who is almost like a rabbi, praying, answering legal questions. That’s the Talmud. Talmud was written in Babylon in exile.
How do you meet David the first time in the Bible? Fighting Goliath. He’s a soldier. He’s an officer in King Saul’s army. He’s wearing army fatigues. I feel like there are some segments even of Israeli society who only read the Talmud.
Mijal: Like Haredi Jews tend to focus more on the—
Alex Israel: Right. And that’s their image of King David. King David is wearing a black coat and a long beard and a hat and he’s a rabbi and he’s praying and he’s devout.
I think he also had that devout dimension. He’s the guy who wrote Psalms. And yet there are others who want to see King David as the person who started his career in the army, which there’s no doubt he did. And now the question is interestingly, how we can bring those two pieces together. I think that’s a lot of what’s going on in Israel nowadays.
Mijal: Yeah. By the way, right now in America, I don’t know if this has caught on in Israel, but the show House of David from Amazon, I know if you’ve watched it yet. I started watching it.
Alex Israel: No, I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve been recommended by some of my students.
Mijal: Yeah, I didn’t finish it. Honestly, I wanted to show it to my kids, but it was too graphic because I’ve been learning the book of Samuel with my kids. Actually, I started on Passover. But it’s interesting just to see that actually have mass appeal. But again, all these things are…
Mijal: I think that they encourage us to have a shift. Often in the West, we tend to think of Judaism and, you know, only like in religious, spiritual terms, it’s what you do in terms of faith and synagogue. But the Bible, Judaism, is not apolitical. It is about establishing a good society. It is about having a rule of law. And it is also about negotiating survival in light of enemies.
So with all of that in mind, I’m going to start by asking you, and I know this is like almost unfair, because I’m going to ask you to summarize certain things that are very complicated, so many books, so much information, but I’m going to ask you to give us the cliff notes so that we can have a more informed conversation.
So if we think about the time period between when, I’ll just remind all of us, according to the Bible, the Jewish people, when they emerge, they are in Egypt, they have slavery, they leave Egypt, they’re in the wilderness for 40 years, then they enter the land of Israel. So if I were to ask you to describe to me, Cliff notes, when the Jews entered the land of Israel, okay? And until the destruction of the first temple, I know that’s like a long time. Could you walk us a little bit with a very bird’s eye view describing the different forms of political governance the Jewish people had in that period?
Alex Israel: Certainly, and hopefully what we’ll talk about, hopefully some of the issues will already start being able to bubble from what we talk about. The Israelites come into the land, as I say, around 1300 BCE, led by Joshua, and they come into the land. They in fact conquer the whole land. This seems to be a period in which Egyptian control has sort of minimized and they have an opportunity to take over the land. And at the beginning, they all move into different tribal entities.
After Joshua dies, there’s no national leader. For a few hundred years, we call this the period of the Judges or the Chieftains, the Book of Shoftim, it is sort of like a tribal confederation, but each tribe is independent. Now this is a really interesting experience from a political perspective, because each tribe is on their own, and there’s no national leader. As a result of that, they’re very, very vulnerable. They’re vulnerable to invasion, and they’re invaded over and over and over.
Mijal: They’re invaded, by what I recall to be like neighbors or people that are also like the plishtim or like other groups that are in the land with them competing over resources.
Alex Israel: So, you know, I used to think this was only a biblical thing, but then I remember that the map of the Middle East has changed so much in the last hundred years, back and forth, it seems like, you know, there is nothing new under the sun. Then also, it’s almost like, you know, you’ve got to use your elbows. So any one of the neighbors who got a bit of strength tried to invade and expand their territory. you know, basically, occupy the Israelites and the Israelites then always yes–
Mijal: Wait, me ask a clarifying question. Sorry. You said before, when they came in with Joshua, they conquered the whole land. If I thought, and again, this is me learning. I thought that they conquered parts of the land and parts of it remain unconquered, which meant that a lot of the battles that kept happening and the invasions wasn’t necessarily from somebody externally. It was like there were multiple peoples in the same land, kind of like vying for control of different areas.
Alex Israel: The way it’s described in the book of Joshua is that they sort of like had a broad military control over the land which allowed them to settle in the whole expanse of the land of Canaan. There definitely were local tribes who had control over their own cantons or their own region. So I’ll give you an example. You asked, who were the enemies, right? So when you go through, you have one example of Aram, is today’s Syria, they attack. You then have Ammon attack, they’re today’s Jordan. You have the Moabites who attack, right? There are also today’s Southern Jordan, right? Sometimes you have a local tribe like Yavin Melahkanan, a king within Canaan who had his own sort of canton. Suddenly he gets strong and he suppresses the Jews for 18 years.
But to all intents and purposes, these are very local phenomenon and the Jews never muster an army of more than 30,000 people. 30,000 soldiers, that’s the most they can do. If they’re out overpowered, so one of the wars against Midian, the enemy have 150,000 soldiers, then the Jews have to sort of like suffer occupation for years and humiliation. And there’s this cycle going on of invasion. Suddenly the Israelites find a hero of the day and he keeps things in control for a little while. And then in some other part of the country, they get invaded.
Now this is all described in the book of Judges and the book of Judges is the prelude to the request for a king.
Mijal: How many years are we talking about of living in this situation of tribes?
Alex Israel: We’re living with these ups and downs for about 300 years. There’s been, so to speak, no attempt to create central government. And after 300 years, they turn around, take a look at themselves, and say, wait, this just is not working. We need to have a king. We need to unite, the United Tribes of Israel. And then they start trying to set up a monarchy.
Mijal: Was this just as they’re setting up monarchy and asking for a king very much for military reasons to help, like you described lead them into battle. There’s also like, again, because I was just thinking about House of David and the Book of Samuel, there’s also prophets and the prophet Samuel wasn’t thrilled that they wanted a monarchy.
Alex Israel: So you’re 100% correct that the prophets weren’t thrilled about this whole notion of the monarchy. And the interesting question is why? So I have to throw in another piece. And the other piece is the religious piece. During this time when we were in this tribal stage, there also weren’t really national preachers. Remember, when we were in the period in the wilderness, we always had a Moses and we had a local, a temple, and I assume there’d be religious moments at the temple. Now we’re spread around a large land. It’s much easier to have local temples and sometimes people weren’t particularly educated so they worshiped idolatry. Idolatry was sometimes a lot more interesting and tactile. Remember, idols you can see in Judaism, we don’t represent our God in physical form. That was sort of counter-cultural to everything that they saw around them.
A lot of Jews wanted idolatry. They wanted to engage in the sort of rites and rituals which related to nature, which were part of the pagan world. There was also all this. There was a lack of defense. There was a lack of stability, but there was also a real religious vacuum. And what there was was occasional prophets who would warn the people and try and guide them. Suddenly the people come and they say, we want a king.
And it seems like Samuel suspects that not only do they want political stability, but they sort of want to create a system where they can rid themselves of religious teachings and they can do whatever they like from a national perspective. Maybe we’ll say we’ll be a nation like all the other nations. And that’s how they look at it.
Mijal: That’s interesting, but again, I’m going to do a little bit of time travel as you you teach us about the past, I’ll do the time travel. It’s interesting. It reminds me of like a certain critique by religious people who almost like want to wash their hands away from statecraft because there’s something about statecraft that feels that it could very easily become intoxicated with power and control and forget God.
Alex Israel: Right. And by the way, the book of Samuel talks about the establishment of the institution of monarchy. And in fact, what you just said now, the notion that power can get to people’s heads and that power can corrupt, is in fact the story of the first two kings. We hear about King Saul, and King Saul is quite paranoid that somebody who’s got more charisma than him, his name’s David, he’s actually a son-in-law, will take the kingship away from him and he becomes haunted by this image that people are trying to get him all the time, becomes very very paranoid, to the point that he makes terrible, terrible moral mistakes and he stops, he becomes obsessed with his sort of popularity cult, maybe I would call it, and just fighting his enemies instead of really leading the country.
And then we’ve got King David, who’s a wonderful man and a wonderful leader. But when King David gets a bit too comfortable, he has a very, you know, sordid affair with a married woman, then tries to cover it up, then goes in ranges that her husband, who’s a pretty high-ranking officer in the army, should be put into a very dangerous mission and get killed. And the person who’s tapped him on the shoulder and says, hey, David, this is not how Jewish kings should behave, right, is in fact the prophet.
So what we actually find, the Bible is actually a remarkable book. I always say it’s one of the most subversive books. Usually we say that books are written, history is written by the victors. History is written by royalty, usually. No king would want this published about themselves. We have some of the most, I actually feel it’s like amazing moral testimony because this book, which is seen as written by the prophets, is not only telling us that we need kings and we need power and we need to have government, but it’s also at the same time telling us through very colorful and passionate stories about the flaws of abuse of power, of how power can get to people’s heads. And so we start learning a lot about the limitations of power while we’re building up the power systems.
Mijal: It’s so funny, Alex, when you were speaking. Well, first of all, I get a little bit dizzy because, you know, it’s like, I think we’re living at a time where we, I feel like history is happening, in a way that I didn’t feel, you know, years ago. And there’s something dizzy when you think that history will be shaped by human leaders who have so many, like, the personality of whoever is ruling and their ego and, you know, wherever that takes them and their relationships. It’s not only political alliances and wars. It’s also like whichever individuals ruling and whether they fall in love with, know, they want the woman bathing in the roof next door, things like that. There’s like all of this.
I don’t know, it just makes me feel dizzy about both the greatness of certain things that feel beyond human control, like little people, we can’t really affect certain massive wars between empires, but also just thinking these big empires are led by individuals.
Alex Israel: That’s for sure, that’s a deep statement about our own politics. It’s a deep statement about Medinat Israel, about the state of Israel. You know, we follow the state of Israel and I’m sure we’ve all got our areas in which we love Israel and then areas in which we’re deeply uncomfortable with certain things that go on there. But we have to remember that even something which is something we pray for is built on a human and realistic and worldly basis. Right?
The rabbis have this lovely concept that Jerusalem, there is a lower Jerusalem, a Yerushalayim Shalmata, and Yerushalayim Shalmata, sort of divine Jerusalem. And there’s a sculpture on the roof of the Israel Museum. It’s like an hourglass. And always find when you look up in the heavens, you see the floor. And when you look down at the floor, you see the heavens. I always feel like Israel’s a bit like that. People come to Israel wanting to find God on the streets, right? And people look up to the heavens.
But the truth is in Israel, you look up to the heaven, you see the ground. You cannot have a country without human leaders and human leads are human. We’re flawed, right? And without political processes and political processes are ugly and messy. And without an army, right? We’ve spoken about the need for a military and whenever there is a military, there are going to be mistakes.
Mijal: So you describe for us how we had this 300 years or so of like tribes basically with no centralized authority, lots of dealing with neighboring invasions. Then we have the establishment of monarchy. You described two strong, but very flawed kings, King Saul, King David. Give us again, survey bird’s eye view of the next three, 400 years.
Alex Israel: Right. So let’s understand. King David is an incredible warlord and conqueror, and he expands the borders. And in the time of his son, King Solomon, this is the first dynasty, King David’s hands over to son, King Solomon. The country is large, it is wealthy, and it is at peace. But what happens during that time seems to be that all sorts of economic problems and in fact, factional problems, different groups, the northern tribes, the southern tribes arguing and immediately the King, Solomon dies, the kingdom splits into two. There’s a northern kingdom called Ephraim or sometimes Israel based with its capital eventually in Samaria and a southern kingdom, the tribe of Benjamin, the tribe of Judah, they actually have the temple in Jerusalem and the kingdom will remain split until for the rest of time.
So that’s an amazing moment, the rupture of the, you know, sometimes in the best of times, we don’t appreciate what we have. And sometimes in the best of times, we get torn apart by certain domestic issues. And that seems to be what happened here.
Mijal: And it’s crazy, you the amount of time that we had like a unified Jewish people under a monarchy without being split into two kingdoms, how long are we talking about here?
Alex Israel: 73 years.
Mijal: Right. So it’s just like very, again, that sense of for me, like vertigo or like dizziness of how difficult it is to…
Alex Israel: Right and, a lot of people, we are, Israel is 77 years old a lot of people have been talking about these you know years this 17th right and that things are likely to unravel at certain stages in history and things are prone to to having unraveling at that point. The kingdom exists as two kingdoms for quite a long time, for a good few hundred years.
And in about the year 720 BC after like 200 years later, we enter into the era of huge imperial superpowers. The first one is called Assyria, Ashur. The capital is Nineveh. And they come along, they sweep through the Middle East. And we’re not going to, we’re doing a bird’s eye view. So cut a long story short, they attack, they destroy the Northern Kingdom and exile the 10 tribes. And the 10 Northern tribes go into exile. And we talk about the 10 lost tribes because the Assyrians were so devastating in taking exiles and spreading them through their kingdom that they weren’t able to retain their identity. The Northern Kingdom was lost. There is still the Southern Kingdom, what we call Judah or Judea, center Jerusalem. And that continues, but then they get stuck with another huge empire, the Babylonians. And under the Babylonians, there’s all sorts of political horse trading there.
To get into kind of long story short, in the year 586, about 140 years after the fall of the Northern Kingdom, the Southern Kingdom falls. The Israelites lose sovereignty. We find ourselves by the rivers of Babylon without a king, without a land, without a temple, and we have our first experience of exile. Some Jews are in Babylon, some Jews are in Egypt and in other places.
In a way, this is the beginning of the diaspora. This is because there are Jews who were going to remain there and never come back, but they will retain their Jewish identity. So this is another very interesting moment, but that’s taking us from something like 1300 BCE to 586 BCE, about 750 years of from a sort of a loose coalition of tribes to monarchy and an empire and then to a split kingdom where each kingdom has to deal with itself. I guess that made us a little weaker until both kingdoms eventually fall, being embroiled in huge superpowers who ruled the entire Near East.
Mijal: So, so, Rav Alex, anyone who knows the intricacies of the Nach and the Prophets would know that what you just did is really, hard, which is to give us, you know, this, this, this, you know, cohesive survey.
I’m going to ask you like another follow up, like not easy question. I’m going to take advantage, full advantage of you being here. So throughout all of these, hundreds of years, whether as tribes or under a United monarchy or two kingdoms, so the written record describes both internal dynamics, it describes the moral characters of the kings, it describes the relationships between kings and prophets. And it also describes a lot of it like wars and political alliances. And sometimes you’re trying to negotiate how to deal with your neighboring country that’s fighting with you. And sometimes it’s how to desperately negotiate empire, right? And also empires that seem to be shifting, like changing political alliances and how do you choose, who do you ally yourself with? Is it Egypt? Is it Babylon? There’s all of these crazy political considerations.
I would say for me, again, I’ll just bring it to the present. I think of America and I love this country, but I think of America as an empire, right? It’s not just like a nation. And I think like the way that I think a lot about politics has to do with thinking of America as empire. And I think of Israel as an important, powerful regional power in the Middle East, but one that is too small to ever become an empire. just has to be a stronger regional power. So having said this and having, you just said the stage for us, if you had to say from the book of prophets, from all these narratives, what are a couple of things that feel clear are the right way to negotiate empire, according to the Tanakh? What are two ways that maybe feel clear that are wrong ways for Jews to negotiate political alliances and empire? And what are maybe two question marks that the Tanakh just like is ambiguous about and like doesn’t tell us?
Alex Israel: So you’re 100% right. Israel was never going to be a superpower. It’s not incidental that there is Babylon, which is by the big rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and you’ve got Egypt by the river of Nile, and they had the physical properties which would allow them to become superpowers. And we are always in the middle. We are this small ship tossed in a very large ocean.
I find it amazing that even today we’re between superpowers, between religions, between East and West. Nothing’s changed. Abraham is told, Lech Lecha to leave Mesopotamia. Egypt, we come out, Anokhi Hashem Elokecha She’ot seti chameir tz’israim. God takes Abraham out of Mesopotamia. God takes the Jewish people out of Egypt. And we are there caught in the middle. And it is very, very difficult.
I’ll say there are two critical questions. One is a cultural religious question, and the other is a strategic existential issue. I’ll put it this way. And they’re linked. Why? Because alliances or let’s say for example I’m a small Israel and I see Assyria coming along and I don’t know what to do. So I turn and I think who’s going to be my protector? I think I’m going to turn to Egypt or something. To go it alone is very difficult.
If I ally with Assyria, let’s say, the up-and-coming power, I will be wealthy, I will be powerful, and I will be safe. And that’s great. But what price will I pay? I think it’s Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book, The Prophets, who says so well, he says that whenever you allied with a state, there’s no free lunches here, right? There is a price to be paid. Once you ally, you are a vassal of a large country, you take on their whole way of thinking, you take on their norms. Certainly in the case of Assyria, they really imposed sort of like their own whole way of doing things.
There’s an amazing story about King Ahaz who’s told by the prophets. The prophet says to him, remain independent. Don’t ally with Assyria. Don’t ally with Egypt. Just keep this with–
Mijal: Which prophet was this? Isaiah.
Alex Israel: The prophet Isaiah. Take a look about Isaiah chapter seven, six, seven. King Ahaz says, I can’t do that. It’s too risky. And he goes and says to the Assyrian king, I’m with you. At which point the Assyrian king says, fine, you have to do this, but take on my religion, build an altar to the God of Assyria in place of the altar in the temple.
Mijal: But Rav Alex, let me ask you, what do you think about what Isaiah was saying? Like you almost said that your introduction to this question was describing us as being like stuck between these empires and how we will never become a superpower. Was there a possibility for King Ahaz to basically say, yeah, I’m not going to care about these big superpowers. I’ll just be in the, cause like I’m telling you that sounds resonant of some of the political conversation that’s happening around Israel right now.
To me, again, maybe I’m like not being the most reverent, know, prophet fearing person here right now, but to me, there’s something almost like naive to think that you can go at this alone.
Alex Israel: Politically naive. Yes, I agree. I don’t envy, I think if I was in Ahaz’s position I might have also fallen for the same problem But I want you to understand what happens what eventually happens is if we’re going to do that then look again I just I just need to say something for our audience to understand, you know, in the same way as somebody who was looking for protection, let’s say take the Cold War was taking protection with the Soviet Bloc, they would then take on the whole series of sort of what it meant to be part of the Soviet bloc, you know, not a free press and a communist economy and secret police.
And if you want to be part of the West, you have to have democracy. And you have to have a free economy and a free press. And then you’ll also have all the ills of the West, the internet and obesity. mean, countries like India are in this place where they’re undergoing change and, you know, industrialization and pollution and what have you in the same way. If you want to become, take protection under the wing of Assyria.
That means you will stop being the people of Israel. And the people of Israel means monotheism and it means their adherence not to a culture of power but a culture of justice. This isn’t just a question of politics. This is a question of, you know, selling our soul.
Now, I totally appreciate your question, Mijal. I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t envy the king. But the prophets are constantly saying that if you make these trade-offs, if you decide to make a deal with these countries, you risk suffering the very soul of Israel. And the soul of Israel is more important than your temporary safety. Better just not to play in the big league. Basically, just to keep your head down, don’t try and play international politics. Pretend that you are a local power and you’re not gonna get in anyone’s way and hopefully they’ll leave you alone. I think that’s the best. I think it’s an incredibly hard thing to do. I don’t know.
Mijal: But can we disagree with the prophets? There’s something there that really rubs me the wrong way. That’s hard for me. Because I also think, and I just say, I think, and I’m speaking frankly here, I think the prophets in a sense had it easy. They got to be the moral critics who didn’t have to wield power and make decisions. And when things kind of fell apart, their moral critiques were written down.
But they weren’t actually effective in building movements and moving people and being constructive at their own time. So Isaiah is really helpful for us two years later, but at the time King Ahaz had more of like a say on how to build society.
Alex Israel: Right. I definitely agree with you, but I do want to say something. You started off by talking about the place of Israel and here with Donald Trump and the Trump government and did Trump stop on his way to Saudi Arabia and Israel? He didn’t, is he together with supporting Israel at the moment or is he being critical of Israel? I think that is endemic to empires and I think that’s really what the prophets were saying. You think they’re your friend today but you don’t know what they will be tomorrow. Right, there’s a verse that we say in our Psalms every single day and it says don’t rely on elected officials, don’t rely on leaders because they’re only human beings. Their spirit will leave them, they will die, a new leader will come along, all of their assurances will be gone. I would say that sometimes in the news cycles we have, it’s not just the life of a particular leader, it can be this month with the administration and next month with the administration, and it’s any administration. And I think the prophets were very worried.
You find this, by the way, again in the end of the first temple period with a different prophet, Jeremiah, where the king keeps on deciding he’ll ally with Egypt. But then Babylon here, they’re made an alliance with Egypt. So they say, you’re in trouble. So he says, no, no, no, we’ll pay our taxes to Babylon. And then we pay our taxes back to Egypt. And the prophet says, you know, be very careful about leaning on the reed of Egypt, because you will lean on the reed and it will pierce your hand. In other words, you have a situation in which you will be betrayed by the leader that you want to, you want to be supported by.
What I’m trying to say is that relying on any superpower, let’s understand, you said it, the United States are an international superpower. Israel is somewhere on their priority list. If it doesn’t serve their priorities, then it’s not going to be relevant. And that is indeed the critical question.
By the way, the prophets say, King, you can do whatever you like. But the one thing you have to keep in mind is the religion of Israel. That’s what I want you to be loyal to, to the values and religion of Israel.
Mijal: And just to remind our listeners, when the prophets say religion, they don’t just mean, I think, the way that we tend to conceive of it in America, know, like, you know, prayer and like ritual. It’s also, there’s Jewish mandates as to how to do social welfare, how to adjudicate justice, how to build a good society. There’s no separation of church and state, I would say, like in the classical biblical, Judaic tradition.
Rav Alex, let me maybe articulate what I think you just said. Tell me how this sounds. The Tanakh is complicated because you know, we’re all seeking wisdom right now, but the Tanakh doesn’t do that. It tells us stories. There’s often ambiguities, contradictions, question marks that we have.
But I think what I’m hearing you say is that there is a need to do real politics and to engage in the dirty business of governance and politics and war and economy. And we as Jews, especially speaking in a national context, have to always maintain a sense of deciding what are things that can never be
negotiated away, what are things that can and then negotiating with empire with a point of view that is, don’t know if the word is cynical, but it’s realistic. Maybe that’s what the prophet was trying to say. Don’t fall in love with empire or believe there’s something deep there. Maybe the transactional nature of things is actually the way that we are supposed, I don’t know, I’m thinking out loud here.
Alex Israel: I would totally agree with you. I love what you’re saying. You know, the Bible has a story in the book of Daniel of King Nebuchadnezzar who makes a huge idol and the people say it was in his own image and everybody should bear down to it. No leader can be a God, right? No leader is going to always be there for you. There is horse trading in international politics and there are interests and the interests might go your way this year or this month, but they might be against you and therefore don’t put your trust in this. You’ve to be grounded and know where your values are. Egypt’s not going to save you. Assyria is not going to save you.
Mijal: Who’s gonna save you?
Alex Israel: That’s a good question. The truth is, I think it, well, you could say Israel betach basham, Israel should trust God, but I think God has given us a way. I think we have to, if I take the prophets, the prophets wants more than anything else is for the society, the society of the country to be cohesive and moral, to people to be proud of what they have in their country and for people to support one another.
There’s an amazing chapter, Jeremiah chapter 7, where he turns around to the people and he gives a whole speech about how everybody thinks that Jerusalem is invincible because God’s temple is there. And he says, listen, you know, there are no assurances about your national existence. Temples have been destroyed before the temple of Shiloh in the north of Israel have been destroyed before.
There are no assurances to Jerusalem. The only thing that will give you assurance is, and he starts listing the Ten Commandments, be true to yourselves, know who you are, understand this is your identity.
And again, I don’t know if this is a political message, but when push comes to shove, has helped Jews survive throughout the ages is not this or that political strategy, but it has been that we know who we are. And that we have a way of living and a set of ideals and those ideals have affected the world and the prophets always say that’s more important than the temporary political calculation.
Mijal: Rav Alex, part of what’s complicated about what you’re saying is that there have been so many voices that have said what you said, but with like a twist, basically saying focus only on like religiosity in terms of Jewish law and study of Torah. and, know, like, like, like today there’s one of the biggest crisis as in Israel is that Haredi Jews, what some would describe as ultra-orthodox. I prefer to say Haredi. They don’t go to the army. And part of it is they say, we just sit and learn and God will protect us. So it’s complicated. I think there’s something complicated.
I’ll also share when I was growing up, I think I was in certain circles that learned the prophets and drew very specific messages. So again, I’m going to simplify to make a point, but the messages were very much like militaristically don’t do like pragmatism, just do whatever you need to do and like God will save you. And I remember like actually a moment, I might’ve been like 20 when I went to a conference in Ir David, city of David, and I listened to a presentation by Rabbi Benny Lau, who also teaches a lot of Tanakh the prophets. And I forgot exactly what he taught, but I remember him describing prophetic voices that were telling Jews like, don’t trust your military prowess. Actually, you should have restraint right now. Right now you should be subservient to whichever empire is before you because that’s what you should be doing right now.
So the prophets are complicated.
Alex Israel: I will definitely say that I think it’s important while we learn the prophets, the prophets never wanted exile. Exile was always the doomsday scenario. The assumption was always that Judaism is designed to be a national culture. Judaism isn’t just a religion of individuals or even communities. Judaism is designed at its best self, so to speak, to be the culture of a national entity.
And therefore it encompasses the economy and it encompasses politics, but it does ask for humility. The, you know, ask the king not to be too rich. It asks the king not to raise himself above the people. It’s not Judaism has a very unique view. The politics isn’t about pomp and ceremony. It’s about that. There should be a humility then it’s actually about limitations in power.
And in that regard, I actually think this is the enduring message of Judaism. Not to believe in these false gods of gods of power and assuming that everything is about, you know, your country. But there’s a layer which is what the people represent.
By the way, in the Bible, the people can push back against the king. There’s a phenomenal story about a king who wants a vineyard next to his house. And his neighbor won’t give it to him. He arranges that the guy will be killed. You don’t mess with the king. And the prophet comes along and blames the king and says, you just committed murder. You might be the king, but you don’t have power over the fields of your, you can’t just sequester a field. The land belongs to the people. I, God gave it to them.
And this is where, by the way, sometimes we think about monarchy and we think monarchy is, you know, you’ve got the monarchy and you’ve got the peasantry. In ancient Israel, people have quite a lot of power. It’s much closer to a democracy in certain. So there are certainly enduring messages from the Bible which I think have been seeded sometimes into Western culture. They’ve become values which have sort of endured through Judaism and they’ve affected the world. They’ve certainly affected our religion and our way of living.
Mijal: So, Rav Alex, let me do a lightning round of like quick questions to conclude. Okay. So these are not going to be again, fair cause they’re going to ask you to summarize a lot in very quick. All right. if Isaiah was tweeting about this moment in, you know, Trump/Bibi kind of like politics, what would he tweet? What would he say?
Alex Israel: Also, I’m not on Twitter, well, there’s a lovely phrase. I’ll give two. I think one thing he would say is there’s a phrase, which is, if a fox is in power, a fox wasn’t always seen as a positive, know, a bit tricky. If a fox is in power, bow down to him. In other words, respect whoever’s in power. I think that would be a good tweet that Isaiah might say. In other words, he’s in government. Treat him seriously. He’s got the power. Don’t belittle him.
A second thing I would argue is there’s no such thing as a free lunch. I said it before. Whatever you take will come with a price tag and you’ve got to be aware of that price tag. He might act as your best friend, but he’s got his interests and you’ll pay later on.
Mijal: Good, good tweets. What do you think is the most misunderstood prophet?
Alex Israel: That’s a really great question. I think in his own time, Jeremiah had the worst time. Jeremiah was thrown into jail. He was beaten. But I think another really misunderstood prophet that I really feel for him was Moses. The people are always complaining to Moses and telling him he’s not doing a good enough job. And when you read through the Bible, he’s so dedicated. And it wasn’t an easy job to be a prophet. It was really to be a counter-cultural figure. It was tough.
Mijal: Yeah, to suffer the contempt of the people. For saying truths that would only be appreciated, you know, years after you die.
What’s one Tanakh story that you think every modern Jew should revisit in light of today?
Alex Israel: Gosh. These are really hard questions. First of all, I think that every modern Jew should read the Tanakh. I think you should start reading. I mean, I would go for a chapter a day, which is what I do.
Mijal: Maybe with like a podcast accompanying you, you know, yeah.
Alex Israel: Yeah. But I really think, first of all, read it. You’ll be surprised. It’ll be incredible.
Mijal: By the way, add there that I mentioned before I’ve been learning Samuel with my kids. My kids are five and eight and they have been really enjoying it. We’ve been enjoying it a lot. Many of the stories in Tanakh are just amazing pedagogically. It’s much easier to learn with them Samuel than like to do the Tabernacle or Leviticus, you know?
Alex Israel: Right. So if I had to think about two stories, I’d say very quickly. Number one, as we said when we started, Ezra and Nehemiah is the challenge of a country rebuilding themselves. Ezra and Nehemiah come after Jews have already been in the land of Israel for 80 years and things are still floundering, and they have to try and really rebuild things. So to me, that gives us a sense that it’s a long haul. There are no, you know, peace nows, or Mashiach nows. It’s a long haul and you have to build and you have to create mechanisms. So maybe that’s a really good story for this moment. You have your downs, you have your churban, you have your destruction, but you have to rebuild brick by brick. So maybe that’s a good story for this moment.
Mijal: One last question from me, we spoke a lot about kind of like political advice or just thinking really intensive nations. But I wonder if you had to give some wisdom from the Tanakh to regular little people like me, let’s say. Like, you know, I have no way of affecting geopolitical decisions or what’s happening in America or in Israel. And I know that I have been struggling with that feeling of feeling like the world is spinning so fast and feeling almost like disoriented and also wondering like what can we do? So what’s some wisdom from the prophets that you can give us?
Alex Israel: So that’s a great question. Again, I would return, I certainly would return back to the notion that you read a history which is, you know, unfolding over millennia. You know, Abraham is promised that he will get a land, but he doesn’t get the land, his children don’t get the land. It ends up happening 400 years later. And then we read how we lose the land and we come back to it.
So first of all, I do think this notion of understanding that the arc of history is long, if you want to paraphrase, but it tends towards redemption in some way, I think is an important message. It doesn’t mean that everything’s going to be beseder, but that we’re in a very, very large story, which is, you know, and I think I’d give another message, which to me, I think Jewish unity is really, really important.
There’s a story in the Book of Ezekiel which is a metaphor for the Jewish people waking up. It imagines a valley of dry bones. And there’s been a massacre. And suddenly these bones come back to life. And the prophet says to Ezekiel, do you know what this is? And he says, no, I haven’t got a clue. And they say, well, it’s the Jewish people coming back to life. They’re going to be revived. You know, they’re going to be revived after the great destruction of the temple or after a Holocaust.
But the very next prophecy says, take two pieces of wood and graft them together. You have the kingdom of Ephraim and the kingdom of Judah, you need to learn how to pool your strength. When you grasp something, you take strong roots and are very healthy. You take the properties of both and you pool both of your energies.
And I think in this moment, in this moment I see it so, in Israel we’re very experts at fighting right wing against left wing, whether it’s about hostages or whether it’s about legal reform. But to me, we’ve been given this great blessing of coming to the back to the land of Israel. The bones have been revived. But the lesson, the next lesson literally in the book of the prophets is, graft yourselves together, learn how to live together, learn how to take the strength from each sector of society and then you will have a healthy plant which knows how to grow on its own devices. But it can, it can take the strengths of each group. So that’s something that gives me hope and gives me a mission.
Mijal: That’s beautiful. By the way, that metaphor, thinking about the two pieces of wood kind of coming together, I would also think about like American Jews, Israeli Jews, Jews around the world. There’s something, there’s a big calling there for all of us to consider what it means to double down on this.
Wow, I feel like we could probably have done this in 20 hours. We fit it in, you in about an hour and a bit. So thank you so much, Rev Alex. I know that I’m leaving this conversation with a lot of threads to pull on.
Alex Israel: Yeah, Mijal, I just want to say it’s always a pleasure. It’s always a pleasure to chavruta with you. And I really value our interaction in learning and also just our friendship. So thank you so much.
Mijal: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Really, really good to have done this. I know that I was actually really looking forward to this learning. And it just gives such an appreciation of how so many of our modern questions and problems have been here before and we’ve dealt with them and there’s just so much wisdom and treasures, I would say, in our Tanakh and our tradition. We are definitely going to drop links to your classes, to the podcast, in the show notes.
And for our listeners, just keep wondering, learning and we will see you very soon.
Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam is a production of Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand. Subscribe wherever you’re listening to this podcast and follow Unpacked on all the regular social media channels. Just search for Unpacked Media. If you enjoy wondering with us, please share this and other episodes with your friends, family, whoever you think will enjoy too. And please be in touch, write to us at wonderingjews@unpacked.media and follow us on Instagram @wonderingjews.
This episode was hosted by me, Mijal, with our very special guest, Alex Israel. Rob Pera is our audio editor and we are produced by Michael Weber.
Alex Israel: Thank you.