Noam: Hey, I’m Noam Weissman and this is Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history. This episode is sponsored in memory of Leo Bernstein. To sponsor an episode of Unpacking Israeli History, or just to say, what’s up, be in touch at noam@unpacked.media.
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Okay, yalla. Let’s do this.Toba Hellerstein is an emotional attunement expert. That is a cool thing to be. And she spends her time helping people navigate hard conversations about all different topics, including Israel. Not by winning arguments, but by understanding what’s really going on underneath them.
A few months ago, we dropped a really meaningful episode with Toba about the way to think about and have conversations about Israel. It was the sort of episode that was provocative, it was controversial. Turns out, and maybe you’ll be surprised to hear this, that how to have hard conversations is really hard, and how to have hard conversations about Israel is even harder. And it really struck a chord with people. What struck me was that almost all of the comments and the questions were framed in the same way. Not something abstract, not like huge abstract questions like, what is the meaning of life, Noam? But very specific, very personal situations. A comment from a coworker. A post from a friend. A conversation with a little or big sibling. A moment where someone thought, should I say something here? And if so, how? Or an email where people were like, hey, facts really matter to me. They seem to matter less to you. What’s the deal with that? So this conversation is a critical part two.
But on top of that, I brought Toba to an Israel education conference run by my colleagues at Unpacked for Educators. And after our opening plenary, the educators from so many different backgrounds seem to be thinking in a different way now. They had dozens of questions. Rather than read all the emails on air or tell you the specific questions from the educators, we did something a little different. Here’s what we did.
We took the themes behind these questions and we condensed them into a set of short semi-fictionalized case studies. That’s what we did. They’re not pulled from any one person’s email or question, but you know, if you’re very self-centered, you’ll be like, it’s totally from me. But they are all grounded in what listeners and educators actually wrote to us and shared with us. You know, based on true story sort of thing.
The goal here is not to give you perfect scripts or winning arguments. It never is. And if you’re listening to Unpacking Israeli History, you know that. The goal here is to slow things down, think more carefully about what’s really happening in these moments emotionally, socially, relationally, and how we might respond in ways that are honest and human and and actually helpful. So with that, Toba, welcome back.
Toba Hellerstein: Thank you. I’m glad to be here and I’m really glad to delve more into it.
Noam: So let’s get into it a little bit, let’s see what practical ways we can talk to people about with these very, very thorny situations. So we’re to do a few case studies. You ready? Case study number one. Here it is. TOBA. You ready?
Toba Hellerstein: Hit me.
Noam: Okay. Let’s say you see a post on a friend’s Instagram and it calls for global solidarity to quote, end the occupation. What is your reaction?
Toba Hellerstein: So I’m going to be, I wanna just zoom out a little bit because I actually think before we do the tactical, I also wanna talk about like, the way that these conversations go really bad is when people, the person that you’re speaking to, that you’re trying to convince, or you’re trying to challenge, feels attacked and gets defensive. And it’s very easy to get someone in that state when we ourselves are very triggered because we’re speaking in a way that is accusatory and is attacking.
The first thing I would say is, like what is your current emotional state? So if I’m looking at a post and someone says that, and I am so heated, that is not the time to respond to the post. Because if I respond to the post when I’m really heated, that’s just like me cathartically trying to let out energy. Like I’m angry. I want to show them that they’re wrong.
That’s sort of like my ground rule for any engagement with people is, you, and this is not to say that like you have no anger at all or no grief that you’re holding, that’s impossible. Like that’s just not human. But you need to be, you need to be regulated enough to actually be engaging with a person as opposed to reacting. So that’s sort of the first thing.
If it’s a post, when I talk about conversations, there’s a whole other kind of rule book, but a post is very passive, right? You’re not having an active engagement with someone. You’re not having a back and forth in the way a conversation is.
And so I think the other thing that is applicable here, which is applicable for all of this is like, what’s your goal? What’s your goal when you’re responding to the post? Okay, so when I see something that I’m like, this is crazy, how could they say this? Especially if I’m triggered, which is like, it’s so easy to, I mean, it’s very hard to not be triggered in this, right? We’re holding so much grief and trauma.
So it’s really hard but like what’s my goal? If my goal is to be like is to shame them, like that is not gonna get anywhere constructive. Right is my goal to change their heart and mind, which is probably what I think my goal is, right? Probably what we think our goal is is to persuade someone in some way.
So when we think about persuading, whether it’s in a post or a conversation, what are the top things that we want someone to think and feel, right? So like, what’s a “must have” versus what is a “nice to have”?
So like to me, a “must have” is, Israel has the right to exist. Israel has the right to defend itself. It’s a normal country. Israelis are human beings that you have compassion for. Like these are the “must have”s. The “nice to have”s are around, to me, and you might have a different goal as viewers, you might have different goals in this, but for me, the “nice to have”s are like areas where people can have different political opinions, but they’re not existential. It doesn’t mean that like, there’s areas where reasonable people could potentially disagree.
So here’s what I would say for posts. I think it is very rare that you’re going to change someone’s heart and mind from just responding to a post. Because the internet is a place where humanity goes to die. They’re sort of ranting. They want to feel smart. And so unless this is a friend of yours in a friend group where you feel like you could engage, that’s where maybe that could be constructive.
So give me the specific post again, because I know I went kind of in a whole background of this.
Noam: Well, yeah, so this specific post is you see a friend’s Instagram calling for global solidarity to end the occupation. Like everything you’re saying about the goals versus, wrote it down, versus the “must have” versus the “nice to have.” I think it’s great.
I want to just give a little bit of a history here. Let here’s how someone might go about this. the way, some people, this might be the “nice to have”s.
There are many people who are supportive of Israel, love Zionism and believe that the military occupation of the Palestinians is an unacceptable thing. Right? That is very possible that you could feel that way. That is, and we did a three-part series on the history of the military occupation post 1967 and how some people dislike the term, how some people really appreciate the term, the difficulties of the term, the history of the term, the usage of it, by Nazis in Vichy France and how that was called then.
But here’s how someone else might go about this or not someone else, like someone writes and the occupation. Someone could say, well, and now I’m quoting from Micah Goodman, “an occupation is defined as military rule over a civilian population. But the IDF is not in the territories only to rule over another civilian population. It is also there to protect its own civilian population.”
And then you could continue and you could say, wait a second. The Arabs, the Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank, living in Judea and Samaria, they’ve had many opportunities to accept a peace plan with Israel and they rejected it in 1937. They rejected it in 1947. They rejected it in 2001 with Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak. Right?
And then, so the conclusion might be the following. The conclusion might be that on the one hand, the Palestinians are a nation that lives under occupation. The territories are not occupied, but the Palestinian people are. Meaning that the argument could be that you could say, Hey, I just gave you a whole history of this question mark about occupation. I defined the term occupation. I explained how the reality is that yes, Israelis are there and have a military control over another people. And the reality is that the Jewish people have a connection to this land more than any other connection to any land in the world that anyone has. So I just complicated a whole story for you.
Within that though, there’s 59% of Americans, even still with all of that information I just shared, that have an unfavorable opinion of the Israeli government, no matter what, essentially. And there’s this concept called social proof and perceived consensus. And the idea is that when people see repeated calls for ending the occupation in their feeds, the repetition itself creates a sense of overwhelming consensus. And then that becomes the availability heuristic. If everyone seems to believe it, then dissent feels socially risky, even if privately held doubts exist.
The way I try to answer that question is I try to, you know, go into the history of the definition of an occupation, go into, who are you even returning it to? Because in ’67, it was against Jordan that it was against, that the war was against. So I’m like, what’s your reaction to everything I just shared? like, that’s a long X thread that I just shared with you in reaction to that Instagram post.
Toba Hellerstein: Was, yeah. Well, yeah, so I zoomed out at first, but I wanna get really, really specific now. So we talked about the goal of like, big goals of strategic, like what do want people to think and believe? Those are sort of zoomed out goals. The zoomed in goal, it’s your friend who posted. So do you want to convince your friend? Or do you wanna make sure that people who are following your friend see a different narrative? Okay, let’s assume that the goal is both.
For your friend, this is a conversation to have live, whether it’s on the phone, FaceTime, in person, this is not something to do on social media. One. And we can talk about how to do those conversations, but that is not, there’s no way that that’s going to go well. Because you, you went into this beautifully crafted argument, you litigated, right? You went through disproving it.
But unless your friend is like a Middle East expert or from the region with like a really personal tie, likely they fall into one of three categories.
The first category would be they have a lot of anger around oppression and, you know, corrupt institutions, they probably don’t know much about the Middle East or Israel because Americans’ literacy of the world is very minimal. This conflict is infinitely complex. So in American context, this typically looks like people are angry, potentially angry at the police and the global military complex, things like that. That’s one category of like, they have real anger and rage about oppression and there’s some validity there for them, but it’s not really about Israel. That’s case one.
Case two is they’re someone who’s really driven by compassion and they’re seeing so much suffering and they want to feel like they are standing up for justice for the little guy. And so for that, once again, this is based off of the footage that they’re seeing.
And the third case is basically like the cool crowd is sort of what I call this of like, it becomes an aesthetic of like rebellion and social sequencing.
So those three categories, facts would actually not persuade any of those categories. None of those are based off of the facts, right? So like, I am not anti-fact, but I am pro strategy. Now, typically the strategy includes fact, but it’s not led by fact. It’s led by resonance and persuasion and facts can be used in that.
We have like the two different goals. The one is persuading your friend and so this is something to be done like messaging them and saying, I’d love to have a conversation with you and I’m sure we’re gonna talk about how to have conversations so we can kind of, we can punt that.
The second one is a social media goal of like, I wanna make sure the people who are following you don’t think that this is the only way to view things. I want them to see the nuance and things like that. Social media is, and once again for that, you want something that is relatable and emotionally resonant enough for the common person who’s not an expert to be able to latch onto, right? So the name of the game for all of this, this is all about emotional resonance, okay? Like changing hearts and minds, persuasion, this is, it’s all about emotions, it’s all about emotional resonance. This is just how people form opinions.
Noam: Is there, is there something manipulative about what you’re talking about?
Toba Hellerstein: It’s an interesting question.
Noam: I was just in a debate with a friend over the weekend where there were two sides of the debate. Perspective number one is manipulation is a bad thing to do because to manipulate someone is to treat them in some ways as an object to be refined, to be changed, to tinker with. And the other way to think about manipulation was that, well, if you’re trying to get someone to do a good, assuming that we believe something is a good conceptually, then that’s not a bad thing.
You could do that with your two-year-old, let’s say, who, you know, won’t go to sleep at night and, sorry, speaking from experience, and, you know, there’s a way to, quote-unquote, manipulate that child. And is that an, like, in the morning, we’ll be able to cuddle in the morning. Maybe that’s more manipulative to me because I really want to cuddle with her all the time. But, like, I tell that to her. and then you’ll be OK, basically. It’s OK. I’m still here for you. I’m still present with you. Even though it’s time to go to sleep. Gosh darn it. Right. You know. But there’s a minute. And so is it a bad thing?
The reason I’m like focused on this, this is Unpacking Israeli History. We go through the good, the bad, the ugly of Israeli history. I love going through the history. I love going through the facts. I love going through the different perspectives on the facts.
But what I really think is critical for really anyone who’s part of this community watches and listens to Unpacking Israeli History is it is also how the history is framed. What is omitted? What we’re including? What narratives we share, what we don’t share, and what you’re making the argument for, it’s a Jonathan Haidt sort of argument that basically there’s emotion first, there’s cognition second, there’s research consistently shows that moral emotions like compassion, anger and outrage, precede analytical reasoning. And we tend to think that, we’re human beings, we are so smart, we’re such critical thinkers. It’s just those animals that act on intuition and emotion. But the truth is that people usually decide how they feel before they decide what they think.
So is what you’re talking about a way to get people to feel a certain way? Like, how do we, how do you think about all this?
Toba Hellerstein: Right. Okay, I love that question. It’s really provocative. I think for me, when I think about manipulation, I think about disingenuity.
Noam: Being disingenuous, yeah.
Toba Hellerstein: So I think about like, is this disingenuous? Like, am I actively trying to control reality for a certain outcome? And am I actively like omitting certain things in order to achieve that goal? I mean, in the context of like the child, actually, that is technically manipulation. And like, I also agree that like, it’s for the greater good, right?
Noam: It’s persuasion, but yeah.
Toba Hellerstein: But I think though, here’s the nuance that when it comes to adults. I’m thinking about this less from a moral lens because to me, when I’m trying to achieve a certain goal, I view it as a higher moral goal. So I’m gonna take more of an efficacy lens to this. People sense inauthenticity from a mile away. My argument for this would be, people can feel you trying to curate and you try, like they feel an agenda even if they don’t cognitively perceive it in their, like they can feel that and they’re gonna be responding to that, they’re gonna get more defensive, more guarded, even like subconsciously. If I think I’m pulling a fast one on them,they are going to feel that from me. So like, the way I view this is like, if you are orienting to this as I want them to be in a shared reality with me, because it feels important and I think that they’re not seeing something. If you have an earnestness in your goal, that’s where you’re going to be most impactful.
And I also think that that speaks to the moral argument of, is this benevolent or not? This brings up such an interesting point, what I do often see is because I call this Jewish collective trauma. So this is like, millennia of persecution, sort of shutting down emotions and like, you know, issuing vulnerability and really being a lot more comfortable in intellectualism and reason and logic. So what I often see is because many people in our community are very uncomfortable with emotional expression, like genuine emotional expression, there’s this default to intellectualism and then there’s like the using of emotions to achieve a goal. And it’s really ironic because there’s like a dissociation from the emotions. Like the emotions are actually true, but people are sort of dissociated from them and the audience can feel that something doesn’t feel right.
And so I wanna just say that like, if you’re starting from authenticity in yourself, whether or not we wanted to find manipulation as something that could be neutral or positive or negative, this is going to be a noble goal and it’s going to be effective. But if you are, if you in your mind are like, Ooh, I think I got them there. it’s not going to be effective because people are going to feel that.
Noam: Right. Your focus is very consistently, is it effective or is it not? And I’m trying to explore this question of the moral nature of this all in the conversation of how to be thinking about what we omit, what we include. Then, so I want to give a practical takeaway for this because I want to get to our other case studies, Toba. So a practical takeaway would be something like, instead of litigating definitions of occupation, one should start by reflecting the emotion being expressed. It could be concern for suffering, desire for justice, identification with the vulnerable. And after that emotional validation, there’s space that opens up for complexity. And the goal is not agreement, but permission for nuance.
So maybe the advice looks like this:
I saw your post about ending the occupation. I know we both care deeply about human rights and people being able to live in peace. For me, that phrase feels complicated because I worry about what ending it looks like without a guarantee of safety for my extended family or my community or different communities or different families that are not my own, but wondering how they could be guaranteed safety. So I want to understand more about the vision for peace you’re supporting. And I want to share more about the vision for peace that I’m supporting.
Toba Hellerstein: Love that and that conversation should happen offline.
Noam: Right, right, okay, right.
Toba Hellerstein: I love that. That was wonderful. So first of all, like, are you triggered? Are you in a state where you can actually engage and think about how people could receive things, number one. But then number two, responding with something around, you know, sharing a short personal reflection that helps people see the humanity in what that post might be denying. I think the name of the game in general is emotional complexity so that people don’t walk away with a very binary view because we do win with emotional complexity. like if you are not triggered, if you can respond with something about it’s really complicated because for example, my brother X, Y, and Z and like this would have meant that he would have died if this happened. Like a little kind of, a little anecdote that makes it really relatable. You’re a person, you’re a human, you’re talking about your family, you’re not arguing, and you’re basically making it really difficult for someone who reads the chain to dismiss you, because you’re earnest and honest and it’s personal. And then you’re also undermining this black and white thinking, which is really where the danger comes from, is the black and white thinking.
And so in terms of like posts online, make sure you’re not triggered, try to share personal story as much as possible and try to introduce complexity to the situation so that it does not look so binary.
Noam: Yeah, I love it. I love that. I think that that’s so helpful. James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, and I think it’s one of the best books that I’ve read in the last 20 years, without a doubt. James Clear talks about this idea that before, if you feel your heart racing and you’re, let’s say, in a meeting and you’re really upset at a colleague, instead of giving feedback right away, he says, run for 20 minutes. Like, go outside, exercise, see if you can do 50 pushups. Because if your heart is racing, then it’s very likely that I’m not going to get the science perfect here, but that your amygdala might be outfunctioning your prefrontal cortex at that moment. Like, maybe, maybe just like tone that down, slow that down. And then after you, after you’re able to kind of release that tension, then, then have that sort of conversation.
Toba Hellerstein: Totally, 100% and I also want to say like we’re living in I mean there’s so much trauma from not only the scare the the horror of what’s happening but also like our imminent safety in like Jews as Diaspora around the world that like we’re kind of living in this hyper vigilance all the time like our bodies are, our baseline is, becoming so hypervigilant. And I think like, when I talk to people who are like on the ground, like college campuses, people who are doing engagement and outreach, I’m like, you need so much emotional resourcing because for you to have any impact, you have to be regulated and why would you be regulated with people calling for you to die? Like that’s not like a human thing to feel regulated in that.
I think not like allowing us to not feel like we’ve failed because we’re dysregulated will help us be more honest about that. and I think like the, I walk like eight, nine miles a day for this very reason, because I’m dealing with things all the time that are super, super activating.
Noam: 8-9 miles is a lot for the record. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of miles.
Toba Hellerstein: Yeah, it’s a lot of miles. That’s why I have a treadmill desk so I can actually get things done at the same time. Yeah.
Noam: So, Toba, want to go to case study too. I feel like if we, based on our current, uh, uh, numbers, this might be a, like a Bill Simmons ask two and a half, three hour podcast. Okay. Case study two. Your good friend from high school told you that he frequently listens to podcasters, including Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and Theo Vaughn. By the way, I think these guys might be the most downloaded podcasts in the world, you know? So let me just, let me just, let me just check the numbers for a second.
Toba Hellerstein: They’re very popular.
Noam: Joe Rogan’s number one. Tucker Carlson is number four right now and Theo Von is number five. Wow. That is wild. Okay. So, here’s the thing. These guys, they cover a range of issues, social, political, economic, and at the end of the day, they are entertainers. They spend a small fraction of their time talking about Israel and Jews. And it seems ineffectual to attack their credibility as a whole to someone who enjoys their podcasts. Like, people enjoy listening and watching Tucker and Rogan and Theo Von. They talk about ideas that are really just like out there and different. And maybe sometimes they’ll, you know, engage in conspiracy theory and that’s, that’s fun. That’s like fun for people. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun for people. on this. This My History podcast is kind of a reaction to that in many ways. Cause I really want people to get.
Toba Hellerstein Mm.
Noam the history of as opposed to, you know, the conspiracy theories about, even though, listen, I’m as entertained by them as anyone else. I just think that they could be incredibly dangerous. Anyway, so your good friend from high school tells you he listens to these podcasts. How do you approach your friend about this issue?
Toba Hellerstein (35:42.03)
Yeah, I mean it’s interesting like is this is the prompt really just that they listen to them? They’re not saying something that they heard about Israel or Jews on them. They’re just saying that they listen to them.
Noam Yeah, exactly. Their focus is not, they’re not saying that on the podcast itself, they’re hearing these ideas that the Jews are behind, I don’t know, taking out Venezuela or the Jews are behind, that they convinced Donald Trump to launch attacks against Iran and they’re the ones who convinced everyone to attack Iraq and it’s really the Jews. And it’s also the case that we know that trust in traditional institutions of media, universities and the government has declined tremendously. Tremendously.
Let me give you some numbers here. And this is like where, again, where I think that the question of veracity and facts and history comes in as a challenge because 28% of people trust media accuracy. 68% of people are unhappy with how democracy works and that’s across party lines. 70% believe that education system is going in the wrong direction.
And what people tend to have is what’s called this parasocial relationship. By the way, like I’m not trying to sound like a big shot, but people have a parasocial relationship with me where there’s a one-sided bond where a person feels this strong intimate connection with…
Toba Hellerstein: Sorry, are we not best friends, Noam?
Noam: No, we are best friends. We are, Toba. But, you know, like, We have a lot of listeners and watchers, viewers, whatever. And there’s like this illusion of intimacy that is created in this parasocial relationship. And so people feel close to Theo Von, they feel close to Tucker Carlson. When they’re walking for eight to nine miles, they, a day, they are listening to these people. And then within that embedded in it are these kind of really nefarious ideas that are non-historical, ahistorical, let’s say, but incredibly entertaining and like sound like they could be historical.
So my question to you is how do you, how do you deal with that? What advice do you give to somebody who is a lover of Tucker, of Candace, of Theo, of Joe Rogan, and it’s having a deep impact, of course, on their, how they consume content and how they view the world.
Toba Hellerstein: So a few things, I do think timing and prompt and context matters. and by the way, my propensity to engage in a conversation about this would actually be quite different if they said Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, versus Joe Rogan and Theo Von, actually. Joe Rogan, and I think Theo Von as well, their likability and their appeal is like, I’m just a normal guy and I’m just like shooting the shit and I’m curious. And the charm about them is there’s a lot of authenticity in them.
Noam: Yeah, the many episodes I’ve listened to, Joe Rogan and the short TikTok clips I’ve seen of Theo Von, they definitely come across as exactly what you’re saying, as like really like authentically curious and interested. And if they hear a fact, they’re like, well, that fact is what leads me to this direction. You know?
Toba Hellerstein: So in contrast to them, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are like highly ideological and engage with the conspiracy theories in a different type of way.
So to me, what’s problematic with Theo Von and Joe Rogan is that the guests that they have, they’re going on this journey with the guest and they are not actively pushing back in areas where we might want them to push back and they’re exploring them and they’re trying on the ideas. So for me, I would focus more on a guest that they had that you were really challenged by. Because I think for them it’s more about the guest. And I think you’re going to have a lot more pushback if you’re criticizing the podcaster in those two cases, because they have a lot of really great qualities as podcasters, is the honest truth. And so, if I wanted to take this on in a conversation, how I would handle this is, yeah, I think they’re really interesting and I like how they’re exploring all these different ideas without dogma of it has to be this way or that way. But there were a couple of guests they had where I was like, man, those people were, those people were like nutty. And like, I would like, start kind of small and friendly.
Noam: And then someone’s like, I like nutty. like that. Nutty is cool. It’s different. know? Yeah, nutty is good. Yeah, the problem with institutional content is that CNN lies and bumper sticker, CNN lies. And you know what? These guys, they’re interesting. They’re nutty. They’ll say what’s on everyone’s minds, but other people are just scared to say it.
Toba Hellerstein: Totally.
Noam: That’s what it is. They say the things that everyone else is afraid to say and they say it.
Toba Hellerstein: See, I know that you’re role playing, but I actually agree with everything that you just said. I actually think that all of that is true. And I think they’re very interesting people for that reason. But so the way I would respond to that though is like, I would validate as much as you do agree with okay, I have to agree with everything you said, it’s a lot easier for me. But let’s say you, you know, I only agreed with 75%. I’m going to validate that and I’m not going to insist on the other 25% unless it relates to my core goal in the moment. Right?
So this is kind of how I, when we started, I was like, let’s zoom out. Like, what’s your core goal? Is your core goal to get them to say, Joe Rogan has some like, crazy people on there and I think he’s like irresponsible as a podcaster or is your core goal to have someone question the problematic guest that said the problematic things. Those are actually very different goals, right?
And so, and I think we conflate them and we conflate our “must have”s and “nice to have”s. And we go after our goals in a way that doesn’t allow for gradualism, like slow gradual wins. And so like, I think a lot of the conversation engagement, it looks like trying to make someone who is critical of Israel into, it’s like the way that you would talk if you wanted them to be the biggest Israel supporter. And like, that’s not how people change their mind, first of all. And also what if you could have had them slightly diminish the negative view and never accept a really positive view, that’s still a tangible goal. So this is why I really harp on like, what is your goal?
So you validate everything that is honestly true to you. And by the way, like they’re going to smell bullshit from a mile away, because we all do as humans, we’re very good at it. So like, you don’t want to say something that’s not true for you.So like you validate as much as you can and then you, for those characters, you pick the guests that you thought were really problematic. And what I would say is if someone really likes Joe Rogan and Theo Von, they really like this open, like, you know, you don’t have to have the rigidity of this is what you have to believe. They like that, which means if they had a really crazy guest who was super ideological against Israel, they actually are really rigid and dynamic and they’re not really open. So it kind of plays to your advantage of like, I really like this sort of way of being of seeing different things and being like open minded. And this guest like had such an agenda, was like they were on there to like, this is how it has to be. I would delegitimize the guest on the same terms that made the person like the podcaster to begin with, which is like exploring things and taboos and allowing for, different types of realities. Right.
And then, also when you talk about the guests, like you can go into specifics for that of like, for example, they said X, Y, and Z. By the way, facts could be your friend to some degree in this. Like they said X, Y, and Z and like, that’s just like not true. And do you see like the way I just said that I’m not defensive. I’m not raging, but I’m also, I’m not shaming the person I’m talking to either. I’m like, I’m kind of like letting them in with me. Like that’s just like not true. And it’s like, I’m making the person I’m talking to on the same team with me, we’re kind of delegitimizing and making fringe the guest. We’re not attacking the podcaster who this person is a parasocial relationship with. I’m not making the person I’m talking to an adversary, we’re sort of delegitimizing the guest. So that’s for those two.
It is different when it comes to Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, because people do not listen to them because they like emotional honesty and authenticity. It’s more about summoning up strong emotions in people. It’s more about riling up, okay? So what that means is the person who is drawn to those people typically will have a lot of anger about certain things in society.
Noam: It’s like, one of the words in 2026 on the top words is rage baiting of 2025, sorry, this like getting people to be angry figuring out a way to do that.
Toba Hellerstein: Mm-hmm. Mm. So for them, my strategy for them is very different. My strategy for if your friend is listening to them is to, first of all, make sure your emotional state, like make sure you’re regulated enough to do this. But when you’re in a conversation with someone, always the name of the game is trying to be curious about what’s their perspective. Like, why do they like them? Not in a challenging way, like genuinely like wanting to know, because if you genuinely want to know, you’re gonna get an answer that probably has nothing to do with Israel and Jews, right? And is it possible that you could even validate the thing that they actually care about? Probably, right?
So if they’re really upset and frustrated by corruption or elites in different ways, right? These are sort of big themes for these podcasters or these personas. Is there a way that you can validate that like there are things that are really unfair that a small group of people are doing to look, like presumably you can acknowledge things like that.
And so I think for that, for the people who listen to those podcasters, we get into this bigger conversation around attuning to your audience, the person you’re talking to, like what makes them tick? Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, typically there’s an anger in them and you want to trace back to like, where is that actually coming from? And so the goal is to tease out the anger from the belief around Jews in Israel, right? So this is like when we talked about, like, the parallel of in political negotiations, you’re demanding something. So like you’re saying something about Israel, what is the human need beneath the demand? like somebody who listens to Candace Owens, like, Is there about eroding of values in politics and corruption and big companies and money and kind of like, you know, going against family values and things like that, hypocrisy, all these different things. So like, how can I validate that for you? And this is another thing for segmentation. When you validate that for the person, if they relax, and connect with you more. And when you kind of parse apart the Israel piece, if they relax even the tiniest bit from that position or that belief, they’re not in dogma. So there is a spectrum, I call this the spectrum of anti-Israel bias or antisemitism, the spectrum of the entrenchment of the belief.
So I have the sixth gradient scale. I’m doing another round of research, so I’m using the scale for this. The first level I call missing mind map. This is like, didn’t know, like total pure ignorance, just like lack of information. It’s more common in children because typically humans have heard something at some point, but this can often be really relevant. So here, facts are your biggest friends, because there’s no emotional thing that you’re navigating. Like they literally just didn’t know, right? Which is why facts and education is actually really, really impactful.
The next level I call familiar frame. This is like someone heard something in society and they kind of passively adopted it like cultural osmosis, or maybe they had one little experience with an Israeli person or a Jewish person and they extrapolated it, but they’re not like holding it really tightly, right? you’re starting to deal with a little bit of ego, but it’s still pretty small because they’re not super attached to the belief.
The third level I call reality retreat. And this is where there’s something that’s really difficult for someone to acknowledge. And so for example, let’s say that they’re a hardcore Democrat, like progressive Democrat, and it’s, the reason why it’s hard to talk to them about Israel is that it’s hard for them to acknowledge something that’s inconsistent in a progressive democratic candidate they really love. It’s really hard for them to look at that. So they end up really entrenching in this belief for that reason. So there you have something where you really wanna validate something about what’s important to them, to kind of, like separate a little bit.
The next gradation called self-slanted site. This is where someone really sees themselves as a victim or they have a role for themselves where Israel or Jews are playing a different role. And so this is even more ego of like, there’s a story, there’s a prism through which they’re seeing the world, you have a whole story and countries and groups of people are characters in this story.
The level above that is the social element, it’s called locked loop league. This is you have that whole story.
Noam: What’s it called?
Toba Hellerstein: It’s called locked loop league is what I call it.
Noam: Locked loop, locked loop league. Okay.
Toba Hellerstein: Yes, so it’s the locked loop of the story, but the league aspect is there’s a social aspect to it. So it’s not only that you see yourself in this storyline of maybe you’re a victim and there’s this group that’s the oppressor, which is self slanted site. But on top of that, you have a group of people who agree with you, and are socially mirroring that and socially reinforcing it, right? So it’s not just a personal story that you have, you’re actively getting reaffirmed and validated socially by people who also see themselves in that role. So it becomes like an us versus them as opposed to me versus them.
The reason why I went through the trouble of doing the scale is because there is a cliff, there’s a jumping of a cliff between locked loop league and dogma. And here’s the distinction. Dogma is my belief about Jews in Israel or Israel is so fused with my ego or my identity that like I can’t function as a self, as a person, as an identity. I can’t orient the world if you take this belief away. It is so fused with me.
Locked Loop League, the belief is still meeting a need for you. So like it’s meeting a need of you feeling like you are being vindicated for something, maybe it’s meeting a need for social belonging and connection, maybe it’s meeting a need for you to not see yourself as a failure in some way, if you talk about how success only happens in these elite groups. There’s all these different things where like, there’s an emotional need that the story is meeting.
But here’s the thing, if you’re in a conversation with someone and they have an emotional need that the belief is meeting, if you validate them in that need, that’s where you see a little bit of spaciousness, okay? When someone is in dogma, there’s no spaciousness. They’re totally fused with it. And so my rule of thumb when we’re engaging with people is when you’re, so you wanna validate people regardless, but try to see, are they creating any space between, like, are you able to make any emotional space? And if not, they’re not gonna get convinced. Like, I’m a big proponent of demarcating who is swayable, or there’s gradients of how easy it would be, right?
But like, dogma, basically someone has to have like a really profound existential experience to get rid of a dogma, okay? Like, they have to have a brush with like a serious illness or like someone in their life dies or something big enough has to happen that their sense of self in reality is so shaken that, right? And you’re not going to accomplish that, right? And I don’t want us to waste our time on people where there’s no way to win them, but locked loop league, we will often discount them as kind of being in this dogma, where it’s not actually true. So there’s a false positive that happens. And most people are actually not in dogma. The majority of people are not.
Noam: Fascinating. I like those six gradients. It’s very helpful. I think the distinction between Theo Von, Joe Rogan and Candace and Tucker is also very helpful. People are getting their history and their knowledge and their, you know, political perspectives from these sorts of people. When I think about your gradients, I guess the question is, when someone is so deeply into the ahistorical approaches and the conspiracy theories of these incredibly influential figures. The goal is, first of all, hopefully they’re not in the dogma zone and to not view them as in the dogma zone. Because if they are, that is the type of person that, like you said, it has to be, know, heaven forbid stage four cancer that, you know, that you have that it’s going to lead to your, you know, willingness to maybe look at life differently, whatever that is. Again, heaven forbid, but that’s where that comes in.
Maybe the way, the advice that I have, is debunking people like Tucker Carlson is not going to work very well for a few reasons. One, for someone who is a huge fan of his, one is that we said before, parasocial trust beats institutional trust every day. It just does. Secondly, there’s a backfire effect. which is when you are going to attack someone who, if you’re a parent and you just like, your son’s girlfriend, and they love their girlfriend, and you start attacking that person, what’s going to happen? They’re going to strengthen their attachment to that other person. Like that is what is going to happen all the time. That’s the backfire effect. And then also people compartmentalize. People, it is possible, like you’re saying with regard to Theo Von and Joe Rogan, people could really enjoy a personality, or a certain guest for their humor or their vibe while mentally separating specific political takes. So if you’re going to be critiquing the whole person, then that could lead to a defensive response.
Toba Hellerstein: Yeah, 100% and the other thing I’d add on to this is you will only have someone’s ear, if they trust you, the only way that you’ll have their ear and so building up rapport areas where we agree having a disposition that’s really like collaborative and friendly and exploratory and like that builds up trust and rapport and there’s you’re not going to debate someone into having a different opinion, but I think we really underestimate the role of trust.
And really quickly, I give this kind of example of trust around values and intention and judgment. Like if you see a lot of people dying in Gaza and you see Israel having a military policy that leads to it, the difference between you thinking A. This is a really messy war, B, Maybe they screwed up. Or C, it’s an intentional genocide. The difference between A and B versus C, that’s trust, right? Am I assuming positive intent or am I assuming that you have a sociopathic malicious intent? That’s all about trust.
Noam: Yep, yep, yep. Right. Great.
OK, let’s try to do two case studies. But Toba, we got to be quick here. Seven minutes each. Seven minutes each. You got this, Toba. We got this. OK, so case study number three.
An old college roommate says that she is increasingly concerned about how Israel treated Gazans during the war, but she confides that she doesn’t want to be labeled as antisemitic. So she avoids discussing the topic with you and with many, many, many others. So how should somebody engage in a substantive policy or a substantive reality, how Israelis treated and treat Gazans, while also addressing the issue of antisemitism prevalent in anti-Israel advocacy. Meaning, what do you do with your old college roommate?
And what we found out, what we see all the time, and we hear this all the time, in all directions, is that many Americans are reporting self-censoring their views on Israel. And it’s not just Americans, but people across the globe are self-censoring their views on Israel out of fear of social or professional consequences.
And again, it cuts in multiple ways. So how do you go about addressing this? Five minutes.
Toba Hellerstein: Okay, so the first piece of this is, so your friend, we talked about these kind of generally three buckets of what could drive someone to have anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian beliefs that are anti-Israel. So your friend fits into the compassion group in this. Compassion for people who’ve lost their lives, destruction, things like that.
And by the way, you can tell really quickly if someone comes from a rage background versus compassion around, are they focused on the perpetrator? Are they focused on Israel being malicious, villain, horrible, punishing Israel, or are they focused on the victims, right? So if they’re focused on destruction and concern for civilians or people in general, they’re generally coming from compassion. If their focus is on the victim and they’re in compassion, your first goal is to not undermine that compassion for Palestinians. Your first primary goal is to expand the compassion to include Israelis.
Noam: Okay, got it. can we also just note that having compassion for Palestinians, that having compassion for innocent people who have been killed is a good thing to show in general. That’s a good moral value. At least that’s the way I see it.
Toba Hellerstein: Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yes. know 100%. And so I think like, so there’s a lot of inauthenticity that comes into when we’re trying to litigate like, well, are they really suffering? How much are they suffering? It’s like, regardless of the details of what you could debate on, clearly people are suffering and have died, right? Like this is sort of baseline. And so I think the authenticity of acknowledging that and not, that does not need to mean because that Israel does not get to defend itself. Israel does not get to exist, right?
Noam: Right. But Toba, Toba, Toba, let me role play. But there’s no such thing as an innocent Palestinian. Every single Palestinian that’s been killed is either look at all the hostages when they come out. They talk about how, you know, the Palestinians like they hid them and they were in like these bedrooms with like Mickey Mouse, like, you know, posters in the background. And it wasn’t just a bunch of terrorists. There’s no such thing as an innocent Palestinian says, you know, role in this role play moment.
Toba Hellerstein: Well, I was like, wait, wait, are we role playing? I was like, wait, are you the person I’m trying to convince? Now you’re the person I’m trying to convince to convince their friend differently right now. You’re the Jewish person who wants to talk to their friend now.
Noam: Or the non-Jewish person. It could be either. It doesn’t have be Jewish or non-Jewish, she feels that the way Israelis treat Gazans is problematic, but she doesn’t want to be labeled as antisemitic. So therefore she avoids discussing the topic.
Toba Hellerstein: Got it. Okay. So you creating emotional safety is really important So like you can’t have a conversation where you can connect to someone and have and pull them into your reality if they’re not willing to engage because they’re afraid or they’re afraid of being ostracized or shamed so I think and especially since this is a friend you you have a relationship, right? So there’s some trust and respect there like start there of like, I know you’re a good person. know that we both, right, you’re validating something around the connection around values.
Noam: And you have to mean it. You have to mean it.
Toba Hellerstein: Well, hopefully you’re not friends with someone that you don’t believe that about. If you think they’re a bad person, why would they be a good person about this? Like, why are you having the conversation to begin with in some ways? Right. But most people, I don’t think are bad. Most people I think are good people. So.
Noam: Right. So then what do you guide on this one?
Toba Hellerstein: Yes, so you start by creating emotional safety where they can actually open up about what their real concerns are, right? If they are coming from a background of compassion, I think what I said before of having them expand that compassion, so maybe it already exists, maybe they already feel compassionate towards Israelis, maybe they don’t, but you first start to make sure that compassion includes all of the people involved. That’s your first goal.
From there, being able to, and I have a lot of experience with this, with people in my social circles of, they’re very relieved to know that there is space to disagree about specifics and agree on big existential things. And I think that we in our community go wrong where we’re going wrong by shaming people because people in trends can get defensive, but also, we make it so binary. It’s like either you are pro-Israel and Israel does everything right and Palestinians are evil or the reverse, right? And so I think like moral complexity is our friend and that’s true on both sides of things, right?
So your friend has compassion about Palestinians and is afraid about coming across as antisemitic. One potential goal you might have is to be able to reach them before they get swept up in more negative views, right? So if that’s your goal, it’s, and once again, this is about like having personal connection and having them relate to the situation in a way that feels very human, but you’re in your friendship with them, right? This is not a stranger. So like, presumably they care about what you’re afraid of, what your family is afraid of. Personal narratives and stories are so powerful, both with friends and with strangers, especially because the imagery that people get is so imbalanced around the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis. And there’s reason for this, right? Like by the numbers, more people are dying. So there’s reasons for this.
Noam: And antisemitism.
Toba Hellerstein: So I think for the antisemitism piece, think like people will relax into you in terms of trusting, like no one’s gonna trust what you say if they feel like they’re being unfairly accused of things. So part of this, so like you’re expanding compassion to include Israelis and you use personal stories and things like that to paint that picture.
And then the second goal is around having them trust that you’re a reasonable person about this. Like if they’re your friend, presumably they kind of trust you high level in general, but like people are really nervous that if they’re talking to a Jewish person, that they’re going to have this binary thinking where they’re like, maybe you’re unreasonable about this topic. So you want to show that you’re trustworthy and reasonable.
So for example, something that I really like to do is give an example of something that I did not agree with that the government did that I thought, you know, whatever that thing is, presume it’s a government, I’m sure you can find something you disagree with, right? Find something you disagree with. That is really great because it erodes the conflation of people in government, in this binary way of like, Israel is the best, we have to prove this. We’re basically acting like members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Like we have like governmental talking points. And that plays into this idea, not only of all or nothing thinking, like if I disagree with that a little bit, maybe I agree with the entire opposite of that. You’re creating that gradualism incremental difference, but also it’s more humanizing to be like, and there’s a country with people and people have different views and government is who was voted in, maybe your friend doesn’t like the government now in America and isn’t that sort of a similar thing? And so this is all about creating trust and emotional resonance when it comes to a friend.
And I think as it relates to antisemitism, there’s a reassurance factor of like, if you’re concerned about Palestinians, that doesn’t make you antisemitic. And like telling your friend, like from, like for me, if I’m talking to a friend, what I’ll say is to me, being antisemitic is holding Jews to a standard you don’t hold anyone else to, or blaming Jews in a way that you don’t blame anyone else, or making Jews like the symbol of something.
And as it relates to anti-Zionism, which I think is a form of antisemitism, because I distinguish between existential and policy debate. So to me, anti-Zionism is Israel should not exist. No one does that for any other country. Therefore, to me, it’s antisemitic. So what I always tell people around Israel is, if you think that the country has the right to exist and if it has a messy history, it should not be abolished in the same way that every other country has a messy history and we don’t think every other country should be abolished, right? Like if you’re consistent and you’re not targeting, you can totally have any opinion you want about the government and how they handle the war. We might, and I might disagree with you. I might have a different political opinion, but that doesn’t make you antisemitic. Like that’s a kosher thing to believe. And that reassurance builds a lot of trust that you’re a reasonable person.
Noam: Yeah. So it’s not, it’s not about applying a purity test. When you do that, you kind of are shooing people away.
Okay. Last one. We have six minutes for this one. Your younger brother is about to go away for college. He said he wants to keep his Judaism private and he’s going to put away his star of David necklace. And the reason he’s going to put it away is he doesn’t want to be labeled as a Zionist. How would you address this brother’s concerns?
Toba Hellerstein: Ugh, this is such a hard one.
Noam: And let me give you a stat, because you know, I like to give you some statistics. Only 34% of Jewish students in Columbia 2023-24 academic year reported positive sentiments of belonging to the wider university community. Only a third of Jewish students felt emotionally safe on their campus after the 7th of October, which was down from 66% prior to the 7th of October. Jewish students are regularly reporting increased social pressure to define their political stance as a condition of belonging. And we know this, we know that studies show that hiding core aspects of identity has such a correlation with higher stress, with anxiety, with loneliness over time. And I think many of us intuitively understand this. So if I had to walk around pretending I wasn’t Jewish, but I was Jewish and I liked being Jewish, but I had to pretend like I wasn’t, that would be really emotionally challenging. For me, at least.
So what is your take on this question and how would you address the brother’s concerns?
Toba Hellerstein: So the reason why this one is so hard is that every other question you asked, I had clarity on what the goal was. Right? So like, if, my clarity was like, I want people to not vilify Israel. I want people to see Israel as people who deserve to live. Like I had, we had a goal for every other conversation with friends or social media. We had a goal. And so we had a strategy.
This is a hard one because I think the goal is really complicated. Right? So like, if I’m imagining this and this is my younger brother, I’m conflicted about my goal because I both want my brother to feel proud about being Jewish and to not carry shame about that and to not have the stress of hiding. And I also want my brother to be safe. Right. So I have a conflict internally about what my goal is.
This is so different. This is so individual and personal, where like not only do I feel conflicted about the goal, I don’t feel like I want to convince other people to have the goal that I have, right?
So like, if you’re someone who is like, yeah, well, life is really hard and you’re going to be unsafe your whole life, this should not be like, that’s a life skill you have to learn. And it’s really unfortunate, but like, don’t like betray your, your identity and your core soul for that. That I totally see that.
But I also totally see the other side of it, we can only be like having so much social pain and potentially violence and rejection would traumatize someone even further and would make it harder for them to be in their Jewishness. So like, I really see both perspectives of this. So I am not in a position of trying to convince your listeners to have a particular goal, because I see both. Whereas the other questions, I was like, I think this is the strategic goal.
Noam: Right. Well, so I mean, I’ll answer my own question then. I well, I’m very wary of asking people to do something that is dangerous. And I wouldn’t want to ask people to do that. I think that and ultimately, I also believe that we should all distinguish between autonomy and inheritance and young adults need to feel that Jewish identity is something that is theirs, that it’s something that they choose, that they’re deciding that it’s part of their identity. If it’s imposed externally, it’ll not only will it be very meaningless, it won’t work. And when you pressure someone to feel proud, to be proud, to tell people they have to be proud, like everything else, it can backfire because it feels coercive.
Toba Hellerstein: Of course. Of course.
Noam: I would, though, encourage people with this sort of framing. If you cannot be yourself who you are, you’re going to be suffering more than the reverse. And this is true for black and brown people. This is true for Jewish people. This is true for Muslim people. This is true for Christian people. This is true for all the LGBTQIA plus people. If you’re going to be asked to not be who you are, you’re going to really suffer in a very meaningful way. Now, that does not mean like I’ve been in instances where I was in Belarus and I was, you know, surrounded by people in who were radically anti-Jewish. And I was very proud to be wearing a kippah. But my campers, I was 18, 19 years old, and my campers were 16 years old. They said to me, Noam, are you out of your mind? They said it in Russian and had a translator. Are you out of your mind? You cannot, you cannot be wearing a kippah in this part of Belarus where they just despise Jews. Take off your kippah. Now, in that sort of instance, I said, okay, I guess I got to do that. But I felt really, I felt really gross inside that I did that. felt, it felt gross inside, but I did it. so if you’re, if you’re going to really genuinely be in an unsafe place that is physically violent, that’s one thing. But if you’re going to be in place that’s emotionally tough for you to be Jewish, then I would say, assert your identity. Be more, not less. really would come at it from that. That’s my take. That’s my take on this.
Toba Hellerstein: Yeah. I have total resonance with, and then I also have this other story in my mind as well, which by the way, like I’m also a person who has, I’m obviously actively grappling with this as well on a personal level, right? like I lived in countries like Syria where it’s illegal to be Jewish. And so I have maybe an outsized, right? So I have like an outsized trauma about, about like right and so like so this is why I feel like it’s so individual it’s like what if you’re like you know what
Noam: Right. See, by the way, this is a meta. I’m going to be meta on the meta. You just helped persuade me on an issue, by you hearing what I just said and then providing a story that helped me see it a little bit differently.
Toba Hellerstein: Great. But also, Noam, to be meta as well, you probably heard it better because I wasn’t trying to prove you wrong. I saw the validity in what you said, so you didn’t feel like we were debating. And by the way, and that was not me being manipulative. It was like authentically, I guess you never know. I guess you never know. But I, yeah.
Noam: I right, right. Right. Not in the debate. It’s like, exactly. Right. Or was it, or was it, or was it? No, I’m kidding. Right. Okay. Okay. Awesome.
So Toba, I just want to wrap up this conversation and talk about, you know, it’s been a really wide ranging conversation about four different case studies that are all so important. And case study number one was when you see a post on a friend’s Instagram calling for global solidarity to end the occupation. Case study number two is your good friend from high school tells you that they listen to Rogan, Carlson, Candace, Theo Von. Case study number three was when an old college roommate says that she’s increasingly concerned about how Israel treats Gazans, but confides that she doesn’t want to be labeled as antisemitic, so she avoids the discussion with you. And then the last one was your younger brother is about to go away for college. And he said he wants to keep his Judaism private because he doesn’t want to be labeled as a Zionist.
And here’s what I want to just wrap us up with in thinking about all this. With all of these case studies together, people are rarely asking what is true first. I want to remind everyone of that. They’re not asking what is true first. They’re asking a different question. They’re asking, am I safe and do I belong? Not, do I know?
Toba Hellerstein: Do I matter?
Noam: So I was thinking about this. There’s something called, you know, Abraham Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs. And what’s interesting is that if you go up the hierarchy of needs, what you’ll see is at the very bottom, there’s physiological needs, then there’s safety and security, then there’s love and belonging, then there’s self esteem. Each of these represents deficiency needs, like things that you need taken care of, right? You need friendship, you need family, you need intimacy. You need health, you feel enjoyment. You need food, you need water, you need shelter. You need all of these things. And when you are deficient in these areas, anything else is, is just impossible to think through.
What comes after this deficiency is, then we get cognitive needs. Then we get these needs of knowing, understanding. And so this reframing, I think, would suggest that if you want to, and I know this is hard for people, but if you want to be use your language, you want to have effective conversations.
And I know some of the nerds out there are going to say, well, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy has been disproven. I, okay, I get it. and by the way, I was making fun of myself because I’d be that person who was like But like you know that like I think it’s kind of intuitive for us and if people feel safe if they feel secure if they feel love if they feel belonging I think then you could understand a little bit better cognition goes a little bit deeper. So truth matters everyone facts matter for sure, but it only becomes audible once those deeper needs are acknowledged.
Toba Hellerstein: So I’ll share a personal anecdote about this that probably people can relate to. I’m engaged and when my fiance and I, when we have,
Noam: Congrats.
Toba Hellerstein: thank you. When we have a fight, our rule, which we don’t always do in the moment because we’re human, but the rule is make sure we’re regulated before we actually talk about the content because we’re only going to be able to be curious and empathetic about the other person’s perspective if we feel like, we’re not being attacked, right? like the thing that you were saying about like your heart racing. It’s like, I can’t hear anything that you’re saying when I’m like that. And I see in myself, and I’m sure people can relate to this, like if you slept well and you ate and you had a really, like you had a massage, like, do you notice that you’re much more willing to like hear someone’s perspective when you’re like that, right? I do think it’s really intuitive. And I think that when people are able to, like, it’s really hard to see someone else when you’re so focused on needing to protect yourself. It’s sort of what it comes down to.
Noam: Yep. Well, thank you Toba for joining me. As always, it is such an important conversation with you, an incredible conversation with you, a meta conversation with you. This is Unpacking Israeli History and to be able to have a meta conversation about how we talk about Israel is, you know, I think it’s as critical to the conversation as the history itself, as the history itself. So thank you so much for joining me.
Toba Hellerstein: Thank you.
Noam: Unpacking Israeli History is a production of Unpacked, an OpenDor Media brand. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode or you were, don’t know, this episode made you really think about something, then share it with a friend who you think will appreciate it and leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify really does help other people find our podcast.
This episode was produced by Rivky Stern. Our team for this episode includes Jason Feld, Ari Schlacht and Rob Pera. I’m your host, Noam Weissman. Thanks for being here. See you next week.