Professor David Peimer and Ollie Anisfeld
Purim Debate: What is the Key to Jewish Survival?
Summary
Can Jewish survival be attributed to naturalistic causes or does it indicate a divine providence?
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Ollie Anisfeld
Ollie Anisfeld is the founder and director of J-TV, a global, online Jewish channel that aims to inspire positive Jewish identity, values, and knowledge through engaging video media. J-TV features content on current affairs, Jewish philosophy and values, Jewish history, and other entertainment. Ollie launched J-TV in 2015 while he was in his final year at University College London reading history. J-TV has viewers all over the globe with a viewership that is predominantly aged between 16–35. Ollie’s favorite word is “edutainment”—a combination of educational and entertainment content to influence hearts and minds.
We’re not entirely a race because anyone can become Jewish, and we have Jews of all different skin colours, ethnicities, and backgrounds. We do predominantly come from one ethnic background and ethnic source. But you have Jews of all races. So this is one of the flaws of the race theory in terms of hatred for Jews, because from from the start we were a mix of diverse people.
That touches on many, very raw contemporary issues. One note is that it seems that post-October 7th, Jews from across the spectrum in Israel, their Jewishness is dawning on them and they’ve come together.
A different way to the way this question has been approached by other people, which is they try to say maybe there’s some redemptive thing going on that we don’t fully understand. We have a limited view of history of understanding. But we know that you talk about Auschwitz and you also talk about Gaza. We often think about, why would he do it to us? But the interesting question to throw back is if God is described in the Bible as this father in heaven. We know that parents suffer when they see their child in pain, perhaps even more so than the child themselves. And they want to do anything they can to take it away, but sometimes they’ll tolerate it for whatever reason. So question to throw out and to think about is why would God do this to Himself?