Noam
Hey everyone, welcome to Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam. I’m Noam. This podcast is our way of trying to unpack those really big questions being asked by Jewish people, by non-Jewish people, about the Jewish story, about the Jewish people, about the Jewish state often, about Judaism. We don’t have it all figured out, but we try to learn together to wonder together.
Mijal
As we say every week, we really appreciate and enjoy hearing from you. So please email us at wonderingjews@unpack.media. Today, we’re really excited to have ⁓ a friend of ours who has been here before in the podcast, Rabbi Joe Schwartz. In terms of his official bio, Joe is a director of Macomb Israel Education Lab and director of educational innovation, where he spends his time just trying to think about how to deepen the connection between global jury, especially between English-speaking Jews around the world and Israel. Joe was born in Brooklyn. He went to Columbia and to NYU School of Law ⁓ and had his rabbinical ordination from the Ziegler School. And he used to be a lawyer before he served as a pulpit rabbi and before he took his current position. He moved to Israel, I think it was two, three years ago that Joe moved to Israel and now lives in Tel Aviv.
And I’ll just say that’s the official bio there. Unofficial bio or just the way that Noam and I think about Joe is that Joe is a friend. He’s a friend. He’s also someone, I’ll just say Joe, who’s an intellectual with a poet soul. And if you ever want just to follow somebody on Facebook to get like real, like a dispatch from what it’s like to be an American who moved to Tel Aviv and just different experiences there. It’s really, really worthwhile to read everything that Joe writes.
And Joe, we’re going to ask you some questions about what this last few days have been like. We are recording this on Monday, June 16th. But I’ll just note, I’ll just start before I pass it on to Noam, I’ll just start, Joe, by saying that this feels a little bit different than some of our other conversations in that Israel is a all out war with Iran right now. And we asked you to come knowing that you and your family and so many others have been under barrage of rockets from the last four, three nights, whatever that is. And even before we start asking questions, I just want to convey how much we are praying for you, sending our love and our unwavering support and really grateful that you took time in this. It’s not taken for granted that you are taking time out of this insanity just to sit with us and to kind of do what you do in your day job, which is make sure that we continue to be connected, you know, even with all this insanity.
Joe Schwartz
Thank you for the invitation to be back on the podcast and thank you for considering me your friend and colleague. You’re both really important voices and wonderful souls. Thanks, I’m really happy to be here.
Noam
Thanks, Joe. I want to just echo what Michal said. It’s 8 a.m. in the East Coast, on the East Coast of the U.S. right now, 3 p.m. in Israel. And this weekend was another weekend. There was a term that was always said after the 7th of October, which is unprecedented. We heard that word all the time, unprecedented, unprecedented. And we hear unprecedented now again and again and again in a different sort of context.
There have been unprecedented moments and we specifically going to Iran preemptively or preventively, depending on your perspective, striking Iran, making sure that it doesn’t have nuclear abilities. There have been many people who feel as though this has a World War III sort of feel to it. I don’t know if we’re jumping the gun on that one. But there’s been a lot of tragic reports in Israel as well after Israel flew to Iran and struck in Iran, striking their nuclear, military, and oil sites.
And I think there, I don’t have the exact numbers right now, but I’ve been told that there have been hundreds upon hundreds of Israelis who were injured, over 20 Israelis killed. I don’t know if that’s the exact number or not, but what we hear nonstop here in the US, and I was saying right before we jumped on the recording that, you know, my wife is just like constantly scrolling on Instagram, just like, it’s like she’s not there, but she’s there. She’s not there, but she’s there. And it’s it’s just it’s this warped reality of being anxious,
this is like this is my description of being an American Jew right now. There’s anxiety of feeling something for people that you don’t even necessarily know. You might have some family and friends there, but there’s this anxiety. Then you think you’re in control of it by nonstop just looking at the next reel, the next clip, the next something. And and we don’t really know what to do about this?
So I wanted to just have a conversation with you. This is not a rapid reaction podcast. It’s not It’s not meant to be breaking news. That’s not what we do here but the whole concept of this podcast is we want to focus on big ideas and Judaism in Israel and Jewish world and and I want to Get a sense of your feeling right now.
And Michal, I want to ask you also because you are a spiritual leader in New York and there’s a feeling in Israel, there’s a feeling in New York right now and across the world. So let’s start with you, Joe. What’s on your mind today? How are you feeling right now? What are your emotions? What are you wondering about?
Joe Schwartz
I just want to reflect something you just said. You talked about this strange feeling you’re having. You’re not here, but you’re with us, and you’re anxious, and you’re scrolling, you’re refreshing your scroll. I think Mijall said it best. That strange feeling you’re having is peoplehood. I mean, that really is. And it means so much, I have to say, to have that kind of outpouring of feeling. Even if it doesn’t know where it’s supposed to go and what it’s supposed to do, just the outpouring of feeling is a great comfort.
And I try to be on my Facebook and my kind of social media presence sort of gracious. But I was, I don’t remember, I remember what day this was, I guess it was yesterday. It’s a bit, one thing I’m feeling is tired, very tired. We’re not sleeping very well, which I’ll get into. But I was aware that certain people were not reaching out. And so in this very passive aggressive way, I wrote a Facebook post, really hoping a few people would read it. And instead what I got was this kind of guilty outpouring of feeling from all these extraordinary people around the world saying, we love you, we love you, we love you, which was not at all my intention. But all of a sudden it was brought home to me, you know, who am I to complain about people not caring for me when I have such a huge world of people, some of whom are very close, some of whom are really remote, but all of whom are reaching out to me right now. So that’s, that’s. Yeah.
Mijal
You But Joe, to clarify, who’s not reaching out? You think there’s people who, because of the geopolitical reality, just
Joe Schwartz
I think I have some close friends and some family who are politically to the left.
And their silence right now is very loud. And I’m aware that it’s related to that. You know, and it’s a strange thing because as you mentioned before, mean, my own feelings, political feelings evolve a great deal. I’m not identified with one side or another. And I don’t think this war is a particularly right-wing war or left-wing war. But to have silence from friends and family when you’re under fire ⁓ hurts, you it hurts. ⁓ But what I wasn’t hearing was the amount of love that really kind of totally overwhelmed the silence ⁓ and from all quarters. So that’s really amazing.
I was thinking, you I guess the major story for me about this is the story of Tel Aviv. This war is very much about Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is described as Habu’a, right? Like the bubble, which is in many ways insulated from the rest of Israel. It’s been very strange since October 7th to be in the Bu’a because you could easily walk around this city and not know you’re at war. I mean, yes, have Azakot, we have alarms, and we have missiles from Yemen that come in, and now the missiles from Gaza have been stopped, but there were those coming from Gaza and those from the North as well. But as soon as the Azakot, as the sirens go silent, everybody’s back at their cafes and life continues as usual. That’s not true right now. Right now is a different feeling. I feel like we’re really at the, in the, crosshairs, you know, of Iran, it’s pretty clear that even though they’re lobbing these, you know, ballistic missiles over all of Israel, Tel Aviv for some reason is really the heart of what they want to hit. It reminds me bit of these signs that I saw out of my alma mater during the encampments, LGBT, let’s go bomb Tel Aviv, right? For some reason.
Mijal
There that was a sign like that, I didn’t know that.
Joe Schwartz
There were lots of signs like that. And there’s a kind of a thrill, I think, to be had by bombing Tel Aviv, perhaps precisely because it seemed to be the kind of fun capital of Israel. The missiles are coming our way. They’re coming to the center. And that’s scary. They’re also, they’re ballistic missiles, right? This is not the Qassam rockets coming in from Gaza or even the rockets coming in from Hezbollah. These are serious, deadly missiles.
This is the scenario that I’ve been very frightened about since the beginning of the war. You know, we have, if you’re fortunate enough in Tel Aviv to live in new construction, you have in your apartment, a mamad, merchav mu gan dirati, right? Like often, like many Tel Avivis, we actually are moving from rental to rental to rental to rental while we’re waiting for our actual apartment to be finished. So now we’re in a sublet. This sublet happens to have a, sorry.
Noam
And that’s the translation of that is it’s a shelter.
Joe Schwartz
Yeah, it’s a personal, like an apartment, personal protected space. That’s what it is. And the apartment that we’re living in right now has one of these, it’s where my son sleeps. But we’re able to get up in the middle of the night and go into this mamad, into this space, which is reinforced concrete with steel doors and a window that has a kind of a steel shutter in it that you can close. However, I’ve been aware, you know, that a direct hit, you know, from a ballistic missile could easily penetrate
Noam
Right. Right.
Joe Schwartz
something like these mamads. They’re not underground, right? They’re in the apartment. And just last night, we woke up to the news that an apartment building in Petah Tikva, which is not that far from here, was hit and it penetrated a mamad, one of these personal spaces, and killed the people sheltering in it.
And so I have to say the bravest person I know in my life is my wife, easily, the most, you know, the most fortitude, the most can-do attitude, who never once considered leaving Tel Aviv during the war, that has shaken her. It’s shaken her that the Mamads are not effective against ballistic missiles and that you can do everything right and still be killed while you’re sheltering with your family.
And at the same time, I wanna say, you we’re so, so, so fortunate to have one of these in our apartments. There are lots and lots of people in the city and throughout the country that don’t. And they are effective against, like blasts, right? So if you don’t get a direct hit, you just have the shattering of glass or things around you, they seem to survive. So that has shattered our sense of, think, safety and calm. .
Mijal
Joe, wanted to ask you, what are details that we might not even imagine from reading the news? Like I’ll give you an example. I’ve got siblings right now in Jerusalem. And I realized yesterday that my sister-in-law had been sleep training my niece for like the last three months and finished two days ago. And that I was like, well, like it’s a little detail like that, that I might not even realize, you know, or something different. like my husband here in America has had a concussion and it’s very hard for him to have loud noise. And I just keep thinking about it like pretty much every day. What if I was in Israel right now? There’s probably thousands of people with concussions and like there’s this loud noises and like, so could you give us a little bit of like a sense of some of like the texture, the imagery of what life looks like right now that we might not get.
And I’ll say also Joe one of the things that’s been really amazing to me, I mean, think at Tel Aviv group that you’re also in, which are by Joe Wolfson’s community and Corinne Schmoel’s community, JLIC Tel Aviv, and I’m in other groups and I’ve seen people who were evacuated from the South to Tel Aviv, who now are living Tel Aviv and who are inviting people from Tel Aviv to come take shelter with them in the South, which it’s both like beautiful solidarity and it’s also like dizzying, know, just in terms of this little country and which areas are being, you know, targeted.
Joe Schwartz
That’s beautiful.
Noam
Michal, you just say who Joe Wolfson is? Who’s Joe?
Joe Schwartz
Yeah.
Mijal
Yeah, Rav
Joe Wolfson was our guest here. Noam, you weren’t in that episode. He did a bonus episode on the Book of Ruth. We learned together for Shavuot. And Joe and his wife, Corinne, ran a community for young Jews and others in Tel Aviv. And I’m good friends with Joe. And one of the gifts that he gave me since October 7th was that he added me to a close group of just his community, a thousand people and the amount of just volunteering, stepping up, who needs help? It’s like I’m in that chat and like I want to cry because the response there is just so unbelievably powerful. And I feel like I get a little bit of a sense of what it’s like to be there on the ground, not like the news, but like the people like this person needs a ride. We need somebody to check on the elderly. We need somebody to cook 80 meals. Can you do it by tomorrow? So that that has given me, I feel like that’s been a gift for me and also it obligates me in many ways to make sure that we here in America are figuring out how to respond to that.
Joe Schwartz
Well, I wanted to say Rabbi Joe is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. that WhatsApp group that he has really has been going since before October 7th and after October 7th, it’s been this lifeline for people. I mean, he has done absolutely heroic things for the past two years, and they continue even now. So he is a very different kind of person than I am. He is a person who is constantly oriented toward the community’s needs and leaps into them. And I’m oriented toward my family’s needs. And that’s entirely where my mind is like all the time.
So I can’t speak to the kinds of things that he does. I think for me, I mean, in terms of the flavor of life, and maybe I just said it, you know.
Above all, I’m a father and a husband, primarily like a father at this time with three small kids. It feels a little bit like COVID again, except with, you know, lethal missiles flying in from time to time and lack of sleep. So, you know, the schools are shut down. We don’t travel far. We’ve been told to stay right next to shelters. So downstairs from our apartment, there’s a playground. Tel Aviv is filled with young kids, absolutely brimming with children. And so there has to be huge number of playgrounds and all these playgrounds are built on top of Miklatim Tziboriim, like so communal public bomb shelters. So there is a big bomb shelter which sits underneath the playground. And so our life kind of revolves around being up in the apartment, being down at the playground, and then they’ve opened up and cleaned out this miklat, this shelter that the kids run down to. But really the lack of a framework for the kids, an educational framework to do with them, means that you’re parenting most of the time with a kind of your heart racing about anxiety about what could happen. But also that kind of dread of trying to occupy the next 12, 14, 16 hours with your kids and making sure that they’re taken care of emotionally. And I will say, I don’t know how long it’s been going right now. Four days, five days, I’m not quite sure where we are in the war, but you know it does that kind of feeling of people’s nerves fraying and strange emotional outbursts and so on. That’s very much the vibe. You for those of us that are staying in Tel Aviv, the kids are starting to fall apart a little bit. I think to some degree from anxiety and I think to a large degree without having kind of a framework to occupy them. That’s very challenging.
Noam
So, Joe, I’m taking notes as you speak because I’m thinking so much about the bubble that you described, thinking that Tel Aviv is a bubble. It’s not a bubble. The notion of kids that are brimming throughout Tel Aviv, imagining that. I’m also imagining this pain of one of the upsides of COVID, if you will, is that the entire world had a sort of camaraderie. around: We’re all in this together. We’re all in our homes. It’s painful. We can’t go outside.
But that’s not what you have. You have a unique situation where you have to stay in your home. You have to go to your mamad. You have to make sure that your kids are okay. You said you’re more father than a husband right now. But Mijal and I, Mijal in New York, me in South Florida, you know, we’ll go outside. We’ll go for stroll. It’s on our mind, on our mind and it’s what our work is dedicated to but we don’t have the exact same feeling as you right now. just don’t and I want to know if there’s something from your perspective that global Jewry could be doing more of to, I don’t know what the word is, to empathize, to be part of, to engage with what do we do? What should we be doing right now?
Joe Schwartz
Good question. I have to say, you know, after this last month or I’ve also a little bit lost count of time, but after the, you know, assassinations, the executions in DC, and then the, the attack in, in, Boulder, I think there is a feeling already among world Jewry at this point that we are under collective attack, you know, physically under collective attack. It’s been important to me since October 7th to drive home that even though the experiences of Israelis and diaspora Jewry are very different since October 7th should be seen as an attack on the Jewish people, wherever we are. And I think tragically it’s becoming clearer and clearer that that is what we’re facing. We’re facing a global attack, physical attack of the Jews around the world. And so I want to in some sense break that distinction between diaspora and Israel at this time. I think we are going through something very, very similar and we feel it. And even though you can stray further from your home than I can, know, knowing you’re publicly identified, with Israel, you have several podcasts about Israel, you run an organization, you as well, Mijall, have been extremely public about your positions, you’re a target, you are a target, you’re probably both of you much more of a target than I am. It’s very, very public figures. And that sense of solidarity, it’s a shame it has to come through that kind of sense of a common threat, but it’s real, it is. That’s one thing.
I think a second thing…This is straying a little bit into politics, but I hope you’ll allow me. I this is a war after all. I would never say that to be a member of the Jewish people, you need to support a war, right? I mean, war is, there’s room for conscientious objection and that’s part of the greatness of the people is that we have voices that support something and voices that don’t, and we’re all part of the conversation. That said, I think this war against Iran has been coming for a very, very long time. Certainly for as long as I’ve had political consciousness, the idea that there is a rising threat in Iran that explicitly says that they aim to destroy the Jewish people. know, Mijal, you’re from Argentina, where of course Iran struck and killed, I forget how many, 85 people simply because they were…
Mijal
85.
Joe Schwartz
Yeah, simply because they were Jews. mean, this is a force in the world that is explicitly exterminationist antisemitic. And what we’re doing right now in Iran is a fight for the sake of the Jewish people, not just for Israel. And so, you know, I don’t want to, again, coerce people into supporting a war that they don’t support. But this is a big and important war that I think here there’s a sense of relief that it’s finally being fought.
And I wonder whether around the world there could be a sense as well that this is different from the war in Gaza. This is different from a lot of actions Israel has taken. This is a war for the collective survival of not only Israel, but the Jewish people. And therefore a certain kind of, a certain kind of communal support for all of us at this moment, I think is really, would be really important.
Noam
So is your take, you said it’s different than the Gaza war where like there could be legitimate perspectives, is it time to stop, is it not time to stop. With Iran, is it your take that it’s kinda like right center left, like broadly speaking, even though you’re being attacked right now and have to go into mamads, there’s a broad sense that right, center left in Israel is supportive of this war. Is that your take?
Joe Schwartz
I think so. I mean,it’s hard to know 100%. I think to the extent that there’s not support for the war, it has to do with the really poisonous politics that surrounds Bibi and the lack of trust in Bibi, right? The feeling, I mean, just on the eve of this war, the Knesset had been gathered to fire the attorney general, right? Which is a kind of a major move. Just at that moment, we struck Iran.
There’s a feeling, you know, of suspicion about the timing.
I mean, my wife, as I mentioned, is sort of my litmus test for this because she’s very involved in the kind of anti-Bibi world. And I asked her her feeling about this and what she said was, yes, there was probably something opportunistic about the timing here. And nevertheless, she fully supports the war. She thinks it was the right time to strike. Both can be true. So I think there is a certain kind of anti-Bibi contingent or a sense that anything he does is met with immediate suspicion and therefore is seen as unnecessary out there and I don’t, you know, don’t gainsay it. Like there’s, there’s reason for that. But I think overwhelmingly people think that this war had to happen. And I think, know, you had Yaakov Katz on your, on your other podcast speaking about this and the kind of the window of opportunity here felt like an important moment to strike. And the three factors that he mentioned on your, on your podcast, which I recommend to everybody, I think really are broadly, are broadly felt. That, and also I think a sense of overwhelming pride at what we’ve been managed to achieve is miraculous. Yeah.
Mijal
Yeah, Joe, I want to speak about that a bit and going back to the language that Noam brought about a cocktail of emotions. When I heard the news that it started, I the first thing I just viscerally broke down crying, just thinking about the stakes. And then I stayed up really late Thursday night just following everything. There was, together with that fear, I felt a sense of euphoria.
Joe Schwartz
Yeah.
Mijal
And I was almost surprised by myself because like I’m like, this is not me, but it felt almost like biblical. Like I kept hearing like almost like the Entebbe music, you know what I’m saying? Like behind me, the boldness, the chutzpah, the brazenness, the brilliance, the hitting so quickly. I remember just reading so much about like the Six Day War and how much Jews were walking around with like their head held high. And I was like walking around and saying like, like, this is amazing. Like, it’s it’s it’s amazing. And I’ll also say like you brought up Bibi, Joe. And I think we have different political opinions here. I’ll count myself as somebody who’s had many qualms about the behavior of the prime minister. And I also think I was kind of I had this weird thinking in the past few days that he’s actually behaving differently. Like he’s, I’m like, I wish we had this Bibi for like the last, the last three, four days has been Mamlachti. Mamlachti is a term that you use when you have like, you know, somebody who’s thinking about the whole people who’s speaking with confidence, who’s explaining, who’s saying we are. Yeah.
Joe Schwartz
I will say.
Can I cut you off for one moment there? Because he did something that I’ve been waiting for him to do for a long time, which was that there was a tragic case of four women in the same family in the North, Arab Israelis who were killed. And he took to social media to take to task right-wing voices that celebrated their death because they were Muslim Arabs. And he said very sternly and very eloquently as he’s able to, and again, these are our brothers. Missiles make no distinction, we make no distinction. I was moved to tears by him saying, was, yeah. Yeah, okay, we’re all saying the same thing.
Noam
I was Joe. was too. is that what we’re all talking about? same here. Same here. I
Mijal
Same. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking about when I saw that.
Noam
sent that video to so many people. I was so moved. I was so moved. in, I don’t know what this says about us, but I was like, thank you. Thank you.
Mijal
We can put it in the show notes just for anybody. But I was moved and also I was like, where have you, I wanted this kind of leadership the last two years, like that kind of, also not only that, the fact that he was looking at Israeli people and speaking very clearly saying this is war, these are the reasons, this is the cost, okay? And he was doing something that I don’t think he’s done as much since, in Israeli society since October 7th, he hasn’t really spoken to journalists and hasn’t really addressed the public in this way.
I’ll also say, I’ll speak as a religious person, like I have been, you know, I’m very, I’m a religious Jew who believes in God, but I’m also a Maimonidean, so I’m always very wary of saying that I understand how God works. I’ll give you the kind of thought that comes to mind without telling you that I agree with it, okay? Like part of me just thinks, my gosh, like before October 7th, okay, we had Iran that was building up its nuclear arsenal and they had basically their proxies, know, Hezbollah and Hamas, ready to shoot at us. kind of thinking like that, like the worst case scenario, like October 7th was…was a catastrophe that we cannot even explain. But the worst case scenario would have been like Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas at the same time. Right? And there’s part of me that like I am thanking God for miracles that we see and for miracles that we don’t see. I’m thanking God for every pilot that comes back safely. I’m thanking God for the fact that right now Hezbollah has been neutralized.
Hamas cannot send missiles into Israel even while they’re still holding hostages and still causing havoc. And we have right now taking out so much of Iran’s ability to attack us. And I don’t know, I’ve been having all this sense of just turning to God and even with the begging God to continue to protect us, thanking God and saying, this is miraculous and it feels really special.
Noam
You’re using the term us, which is interesting because you’re American, but you feel us. That’s what you feel, right?
Mijal
Yes, yes, there’s never a question for me. It’s us. It’s both. mean, I have like siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles, but it’s my people also. I’m not the only one. I’ll just like, Noam, you and I, travel around the country, you know, meeting different Jews. And I know for me that every time, and I don’t know, Joe, if you sense this from there, like you spoke about the voices you don’t hear, but I’m always kind of like just taking it back that I’m not the only one who feels us. There’s so many of us.
Jews from all denominations, from all political stripes. And the one silver lining in America, you know, with all this rising anti-Semitism and the difficulties of the last two years is that there are so many Jews who have stepped forward and they say us and they say we and they mean it.
Noam
And maybe Joe, that’s everything from an empathic perspective, global Jewry, like from feeling that usness, that feeling that you mentioned earlier is peoplehood. Maybe that’s a part of it. I just wanna go back to something you said though, Joe, because we both got excited as you said it. So I wanted to say like pause and reflect. Why did you get emotional when you saw Bibi say what he said? Could you talk that through?
Joe Schwartz
Absolutely. I’m actually tearing up as we’re talking about it right now. So I have to now think to myself, why am I so emotional about this? ⁓ I will say, I’m gonna be political again. I think as a new Israeli, know. ⁓
Mijal
Joe, you can be political this episode. There’s no desire here to harness your voice.
Joe Schwartz
I’ve been here for five years, right? And it’s been a difficult five years. But there’s a phrase that’s often applied to the American president, the Consoler-in-Chief, right? That part of the need of a great leader is to stand before the people and to give them what they need. I think a lot about, all the time, think about Isaiah saying, nachamu nachamu ami, right? Comfort ye, comfort ye, all my people. The need of a people who’s suffering as greatly as the Jewish people are right now, of a leader who can stand forward and give us what we need emotionally, can’t be underestimated how great that need is, and the kind of echoing void where leadership should be at this moment in Israel also can’t be underestimated. Everything you said, Mijal, is true about thanking God, but on the level of sort flesh and blood leadership, a voice that will stand in front of the people and give us what we need has been really, really lacking. And it’s a lot of things.
It’s a voice that says that takes responsibility. It’s a voice that says, hear the pain of my people and I suffer with you. It’s a voice that says, you know, here’s where we’re going. Here’s how tomorrow can be a better day. It’s a voice that models what a of a, mensch looks like in all the various ways. And it’s all of that has been lacking, all of it. And that’s excruciating actually, I think. And this was this moment where Bibi stood forward and because we all got chills, we knew he said what had to be said, right? And I think if I’m not mistaken, he referred to Arab citizens of Israel, he used the word Achenu, right? They’re our brothers, they’re our brothers, you know, which of course has biblical overtones as well, right? I mean, that’s the language that the Torah uses to describe the people of Israel, broadly speaking, and these are the people of the state of Israel, they are our brothers, but it takes a certain amount of courage to say that in this climate where there really is a very, very strong racist atmosphere among certain portions of the Israeli public.
Noam
Yeah, it’s the brothers.
Joe Schwartz
And so it took courage for him to say that decent thing as well. And so he was modeling courage and decency, you know, and he didn’t have to say it. Like, it’s not clear to me why there was political upside in making that comment. It felt actually sincere and so sincerity as well. And here’s kind of these little glimmers of the kind of leader that we really, I think, desperately need at this moment. When there’s decency, there’s that great line at the end of Willy Wonka, the first movie, right? Where he says like, a good deed in a ugly world or something like that, right? Something like that. That just a little glimmer of decency means so much at this moment. And again, I guess there’s also this thing about Bibi personally. My feeling about him is that he has all the potential to be a truly great man, a truly great man. I mean, he is absolutely brilliant. And so many of those talents are turned toward really dark and self-interested things. And there again was this moment of greatness shining through.
Mijal
Well, know, Joe, that there is one more like alternative, another read to that. The other read is that Netanyahu for the last 20 years has been just like focus only on Iran and that he’s under he has the belief that he’s the only one who could carry out what’s happening right now. So in
Joe Schwartz
Yeah.
Mijal
I’m just giving this alternative read that in many ways everything that he’s done to stay in power has been because he believes he was the person who could do this. And I think that also explains again why he made that statement. I think he’s a different leader when he’s facing this threat that he’s been thinking about for 20 years and that he believes has been his reason to be alive in this world. So I don’t know, it’s tricky. And I’m with you. Like I felt when I heard him, I was like, the word that came to mind was Mamlachti, which is that you’re thinking about Israelis, not as like tribes, but you’re thinking about them as more of like a collective. I don’t know if I’m saying it right. And like you’re, you’re speaking with that in mind.
Joe Schwartz
The greater good, right? Not self-interest and not tribal interest, but the collective interest at that moment. Micah Goodman, think, opposes it to tribalism, right? Tribalism is looking out for your own subgroup, and Mamlachti is always when you have an interest of a tribe that you put aside in order to serve the interests of the greater good. He talks about Menachem Begin refusing to retaliate, right, when his ship was shot down, the Altalina, that that was a moment of great mamlachtiyut because he could have easily leaned into his tribal affiliation. Yeah, it definitely was. It was mamlachti. And also it was menschlikait, I think. I mean, it goes beyond just sort of statesman-like behavior. It’s also being a basically decent person, which is something we would…
Mijal
Yeah, yeah. By the way, I’ll just share with you an experience I had this Shabbat because it really, it moved me strongly in the, the, the Shul where I lead, the downtown Minyan. So we often have visitors, especially if people are coming to NYU or downtown, like the limanals before Shabbat, we’ll have them. And for the last seven years, I don’t even know, six years or so, five years, we’ve had a group of Israelis that come to us from the Ruderman program at Haifa University.
This is a group of Israelis that are in Israel studying American Jewry. And they do a summer visit. They stay in the NYU dorms. Their professor is a friend of mine. So they always come to us to kind of check us out. So we walk in this Shabbat and there’s like 10, 12 Israelis who were there from all over the place, like religiously, the country. And it was very interesting for me because I had to I had to think about what to do Shabbat morning in a way that would feel appropriate for both like all the young American Jews who were coming at this time and also for these Israelis who might be stuck here and who have family back in Israel. And there’s like special, you know, pain in that also. And when you’re like, especially like, you know, Joe, you spoke about being a parent, you’re a parent, your teenagers are like in a mamad somewhere in Israel and you’re stuck in America and you can go.
Anyways, I think it was one of the most emotional and moving Shabbats that I’ve had in a very, very long time. It felt very natural. We interlaced our Tefillot with thoughts about Israel. We made it a point to really lift up the Israelis. We do Tefillah for the Khatufim, for the hostages, for the Chaelin, for the soldiers. We asked everyone who had somebody in the army to come to the front. We sang a Chaynu.
But the reason I’m mentioning all this is that the Israelis were all in tears. I’ve never seen them crying so much. I mean, I’ve never seen like a visiting group. I felt many of them just kept coming and saying, thank you. And I felt almost embarrassed by that. And one of them wanted to speak to the community to express thank you. And part of me, my first impulse was like, you don’t need to say thank you. Like this should be the norm. And I also wanted to say, like, I almost feel like inadequate. Your kids are in the army right now, risking their lives so that I have an Israel that I can go to and you’re coming to me to say thank you. And I don’t know, it was very, I had so many emotions reacting to that. I’ll just mention two other things. There was like, one of them was like from like a very secular kibbutz and there was something very meaningful to them, like being in a religious setting and feeling connected in the way they hadn’t before.
And then I’ll say, just one more, sorry, one more moment that jumped out to me ⁓ was that one of them came and told me, and I’m going to write about this one day, they said that they had been visiting a lot of different communities before this, you know, before this Shabbat and that they felt that in all of their meetings, there was often like a subtext of blaming them, of American Jews blaming the Israelis saying like, you’re not doing the war in Gaza, right? You’re messing up with your politics, you’ve elected the wrong people, you’re endangering us. And he said that this Shabbat was different for him. And I’m not saying this for myself, I’m saying this to make a point, that he felt like he didn’t have that subject of like blame and guilt and like enlightened liberal American Jews telling Israelis they’re messing up and just felt enveloped by love. And I was sitting with that and just thinking a lot about our relationship. So sorry, that was like a long monologue about my Shabbat morning that I’m, I’m still sitting with, and there’s more there, but I was very moved by it.
Joe Schwartz
Yeah, I mean, I wonder, you know, there’s this phrase, I think Gil Troy coined it, identity Zionism, It means the more that you can sort of associate yourself with things Israeli, you know, the more that you have a kind of an association with Israeli friends and Israeli, knowing Israeli history and so on, the more attached you’ll be to your Jewish identity. That the basic argument for Zionism is the work that it does to deepen Jews, Jewish identity. That’s, there’s, that’s one kind of Zionism. But as you were speaking, I was thinking there’s another kind of Zionism, which is like existential Zionism, not identity Zionism, but existential Zionism, which really is kind of the core argument for Zionism, right? That without Jewish power and Jewish state, the Jews won’t survive. And I will say that, you know, there’s a strong kind of internal argument happening within the Jewish community. Does Israel and does Zionism imperil the Jews more than it protects us? Right? I mean, that’s an ongoing argument. And there’s it’s not just a neutral argument. I mean, there are strong interests on both sides of that.
Mijal
Are there a lot of people who are arguing that Zionism is in peril? Or are you speaking about, let’s just say, like an intellectual left-wing American Jewish kind of like idea?
Joe Schwartz
Well, it’s a good question, whether it’s real or not. It’s hard to know in this day and age what’s real and what isn’t. It’s certainly an argument that’s out there, and it’s certainly a perspective that you hear people speak about a great deal, particularly on the Jewish left and the left generally.
More than that, what people will say is, you know, what we’re experiencing now is not antisemitism. It’s a reaction to Israel’s conduct in the world. The more that Israel, you know, flexes its muscles and kills people, more it imperils Jews around the world. This is an argument you hear quite a lot. And I wonder if it’s part of the subtext of being blamed that you heard from Israelis, right? Comes from that idea. You, by being Israelis, by fighting your wars, are making my life less safe. And as I was saying, I earlier, ⁓ I think we’re living through a time at this particular moment when we’re living through existential Zionism. I think it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Zionism exists because it has to exist. And because without Zionism and without the Jews organizing for actual self-defense, we would be at the victim of our enemies. And so I think it’s wonderful that the Israelis
felt as moved as they did, but I think the gratitude that they were feeling was genuine, genuine gratitude. And at this moment in particular, there is a war being fought for the survival of the Jewish people.
And you’re right, I feel that when you talk about the sense of guilt, as I made Aliyah when I was 46 years old, right? Like here I am, this sort of waste of flesh walking around while young people risk their lives. And right now my children are young enough that they’re not in the army. And so I feel very much like I’m living on somebody else’s credit, living here in Israel. But I am tremendously, tremendously grateful for this place and for the many kind of visionaries that saw why this was necessary. I wanna say one other thing I think about this sense of pride that we feel is the sense of chaos, I think, among the Jews that, you know, who’s actually running the store at this moment runs very deep. You know, when you’re in Israel, there’s always the sense of barely controlled chaos. Bus drivers can’t drive the bus and you can’t get meat. You know, let’s say, know, for like all of Sunday, there’s no meat in the country. There’s just things that fundamentally don’t work. You know, very, very deep levels.
Noam
That’s funny. It’s a great bit.
Joe Schwartz
You know, you watch the Knesset channel and people just can barely put two words together without screaming slurs at each other. And then at this very moment, you know, young men and women are flying over Tehran and performing absolute miracles. the sheer, I mean, we still haven’t had the stories told of what actually is happening in Iran right now. When they come out, it’s going to be absolutely amazing. Just the feeling of competence, I think, right? That at least we know what we’re doing there and we’re doing it really, really, really well.
Maybe that also has something to do with Bibi’s tone as well of like, okay, I can stand behind this and say, we’re doing this, I’ve thought about this, we’ve planned it, it’s being executed correctly. That gives a great sigh of relief. ⁓ And I think that runs very, very deep. And again, just like leadership can’t be underestimated, I think a sense of professionalism and competence and know-how can’t be underestimated in the sense of comfort that it brings to people.
Mijal
Hmm.
By the way, Joe, there was a great piece in the free press yesterday by Mati Friedman called Bombs Rain Down and a Divided Israel Unites Behind the War. And one of the insights that it gave me ⁓ was that, and I’m going to say it in my own words, just reflecting what you just said, Joe, that a lot of the chaos that happened in the last six years was a preparation for this moment. So he speaks about Israelis going through COVID, judicial overhaul, you know, fight, and then October 7th.
And it’s not the main point of his piece, but to me it struck me that what he described was that this was really hard, almost like a crucible, but that it also prepared Israelis to face this moment in a way that if this was eight years ago, the response of the civilian population would have looked like very differently. in some ways, the chaos, I’m not saying, there should be chaos, but there was something very insightful for me about reading the way he described that.
Joe Schwartz
I think that goes to your point about seeing God’s hand here as well. mean, also, if Sinwar hadn’t pulled the trigger when he did, I mean, of course, there’d be 1,200 people still alive who aren’t alive today, but we would have still had a Hamas. And if we still had a Hamas, we wouldn’t have pulled the trigger on the operations that brought down Hezbollah. And if we hadn’t brought down Hezbollah, we wouldn’t be able to fight this war against Iran. A lot of things had to line up in just the right way to make this war possible and to make the gains that we’re achieving possible. it does kind of feel like, for all the failures, somehow it was guiding us toward a moment in which things could work out in the best possible way.
Noam
To me it’s like there’s a theological note here Which is there’s this dayenu sort of feeling of like like if this didn’t happen We would have been satisfactory if this didn’t happen. It would have been satisfactory also I’m thinking of the chad. God. Yes story for some reason right now. Also, I’m thinking about you know the
that imagery of this leading to that, that leading to that. I’m also watching a show right now on Prime called House of David, which is likem a really, really, it’s really cool. And it talks about how one little rock, one rock changed world history. And it’s just like, And that’s like part of the, there are a lot of people that feel like this eschatological feeling right now, this messianic, this end of days, this like something miraculous, something huge is taking place. If you just take a step back and you look back, I was giving a lecture, I was on Saturday afternoon on Shabbat day, ⁓ and someone just said to me, Noam, do you not see what’s going on right now? This is the hand of God. That’s who’s part of this.
Because I was talking about it historically, philosophically, existentially, all these things. And he’s like, no, no, no, it’s actually really simple. Just pay attention. This is the hand of God. Yes, it’s planes, it’s people, it’s that event in Gaza, it’s that event in Syria and Lebanon. There’s a word to describe this, God. So I don’t know how I feel, but yeah, show me something.
Mijal
Can I show you something? So this is my family WhatsApp chat. So my brother sent this. It’s a crazy picture of the skies in Iran. And you see this stunning pink and blue kind of like explosion in the sky. And it’s called Kela David, which is what? How do you call it in the House of David? Like the slingshot? Slingshot of David? And I don’t know, my brother wrote, can you imagine King David finding out this kind of technology thousands of years after the house of David would be named after the sling he used to kill Goliath? Sorry, just wanted to say that when you said that.
Noam
Yeah, it is remarkable and it does feel when you take that step back in because we’re human beings who are incredibly self-centered. What I mean by that is like we view the world through our very, very limited lens. Realize that there’s, like, this is all like you connected House of David, slingshot of David. Can you imagine? It’s just a couple thousand years apart from each other. And what just happened in the last two years is it’s just a couple years. It’s in the scheme of eternity. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. And we’re all living through this feeling like it’s everything, everything. But it’s part of a brand, of a bold grand story that we are part of. And yeah, it does feel biblical in the sense that like, is our role in this story? So.
Joe Schwartz
Noam asked me earlier if there’s a biblical analogy here. I think that one of the closest ones is the plague that strikes the Assyrian forces at the gates of Jerusalem, right? Where you’re…
Noam
What happens there?
Joe Schwartz
Well, so you expect this amassed force, it’s under Hezekiah, right? It’s under Hezekiah, I believe. I hope so, I hope I’m remembering correctly. And it was the great feared enemy of the Jewish people, amassed to destroy us. Everyone lived in dread of it and they woke up one morning and they were all, they’d all collapsed, they’d all died. We lived in tremendous fear of Hezbollah in particular and also of Iran. And here they are sort of crumbling, crumbling for us, paper tigers. I wanna say there is that. On the other hand though, just to hold on,
Noam
Yes. Yes.
Mijal
paper tigers.
Joe Schwartz
Onto our Zionism for a moment. This wasn’t just the hand of God. I this was human action. And so much of Zionism is there to say, we’re not the ones that were brought into the land of Israel. We’re the ma’apilim. We’re the ones that go in defiance of God’s decree. And again, maybe God’s hand is there as well, right? That if only when we act in defiance of God, will the miracles actually kind of be revealed. But there really is something amazing here, going back to the competence point. I saw one of the left-wing people I followed on Facebook.
Mijal
100.
Noam
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Joe Schwartz
Facebook had a post that said the Kaplanistim are right now over Isfahan, right? Like the people who protested. The Kaplanistim are the anti-government protesters, many of whom were senior officers like Tayyaseem, pilots and so on. And they were decried by the government ⁓ as being potentially disloyal to the government because they threatened to refuse service under this government. And here they are flying over Isfahan where many of the nuclear installations and saving us. And what I love about that, right, is first of all, it’s a little thumb in the eye to, you know, their political enemies. But what it also shows is that we are acting. We’re acting, actually. You know, we’re not simply passively moved along by providence. We’re acting. And we’re acting, to use your term also, Michal, we’re acting in a Mamlukhti way. We’re putting aside petty divisions.
Petty divisions and we’re actually acting together. Just one more quote that I heard on the news, maybe this has passed around, a young woman whose apartment exploded from one of the percussive blasts.
She was on the news, she had been taken to the hospital, she was telling a story that her daughter who had been in her arms fell from her arms when this blast happened. She was covered with glass and she was taken off to the hospital and she said, a stranger picked up my baby and handed her back to me and got into the ambulance with me and accompanied me to the hospital. I didn’t even get her name, she said. I didn’t get her name, but if you’re listening, please let me know you’re okay. And then she said something like, so beautiful, she was like,
We have absolutely extraordinary people. And we’re arguing over nonsense, over nothing. And maybe that’s sort of the opportunity of the moment of Mamlach Tiyut, of the sense of common fate, common cause, and how beautiful it is when we really do gather together and see the kind of unity of the Jewish people at moments like this.
Mijal
Yeah.
Yeah. And Joe, as we wrap up, even as we love talking about in this episode, God and theology, a hundred percent action, we are going to put in the show notes, a couple of links of organizations to donate and just want to urge American Jews to support as much as possible. There’s a lot of need right now in Israel based on this war. If you’re somebody who prays, join us, join me. just don’t want to speak for you now, like, you know, consider praying.
For the safety of everyone in Israel, I’m praying also for the safety of all innocents in Iran and the region and that protection should continue to come. And Joe, are keeping… You brought texture, flavor, pathos and just helped us really understand a bit more what’s happening on the ground. And we are keeping you and your… wife, your three children, your family in our minds, in our hearts, in our prayers. And we hope that God willing, we should be again on this podcast in easier times. ⁓ And thank you so much for coming and joining us.
Joe Schwartz
Thank so much for everything you do. Thanks for inviting me. Love you too.
Noam
We love you, Joe.
Wondering Jews is a production of Unpacked, part of Open Door Media. Today’s episode was hosted by me, Noam Weissman, and Michal Mithon. Our producers are Michael Weber, Rivke Stern, and Jenny Falcon. by Alex Harris. It’s edited by Rob Perra.
Mijal
We’d love to hear what this conversation sparked for you. Email us at wanderingjuice at unpack.media. You can also find us on Instagram at wonderingjuice. Also, if you appreciate the conversation, feel free to review us, give us five stars, tell us what you think. Thank you so much and see you next week. See you soon.
Noam
See you soon. See you very soon.