Professor David Peimer
Purim Debate: What is the Key to Jewish Survival?
Professor David Peimer and Ollie Anisfeld | Purim Debate: What is the Key to Jewish Survival? | 03.24.24
- And we’re going to dive straight into this fascinating, maddening, strange, wonderful, weird and exciting topic of what really is the secret to Jewish survival. And obviously we just wanted to preface this in the beginning by just saying that obviously there is so many thoughts, so many ideas gathered over centuries of thinking and writing. And what we are going to do today is just crystallise a couple of our key thoughts in the period that we have to share today, rather than trying to take on too many things from so many different possible sources and ideas. So just to start with, we thought that we would just begin with a couple of quotes from some interesting and quite surprising individuals. And the first one comes from Mark Twain, 1899. As I’m sure many know, he actually went to the Middle East and to Jerusalem, and he travelled a lot, but that was one of his travels.
Anyway, he wrote this in 1899 about Jewish people whom he called the gem in the ocean. “The Egyptian, the Babylonian, Persian, they all rose and filled the planet with sound and splendour, then faded to dream stuff. The Greek, the Roman followed and made a vast noise, and they were also gone. Others have sprung up and vanished. The Jewish person saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew, all other forces pass but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” One other little phrase from Tolstoy. “What is the Jew? What is his uniqueness? All rulers of all nations have disgraced him, crushed, persecuted, burned him, and yet he continues to live and flourish. The Jew is the symbol of eternity. He’s the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. The people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is the embodiment of eternity.”
And very lastly, Winston Churchill, in 1920. “Some people like Jews, some do not, but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are the most formidable and most remarkable race that has ever appeared in the world.” So we have a possibly surprising set of phrases from a completely disparate trio of highly intelligent, notable individuals, just to open our conversation today. And because it’s Purim, we are going to start with the obvious meaning and link with Purim to the very question of the secret of Jewish survival. And can hand over to you, Ollie.
Yes, well, absolutely. As I told you, David, I’m actually… It might not look it, but I’m actually in my Purim costume today. It’s a very lazy Purim costume. It just says, “pretend I’m a cherry.” I’ve had enough impressive Purim costumes over the years that now I’m allowed a lazy one. Okay? Anyway, sorry to go from a very deep subject to go very, very light-
No, it’s great. It’s great.
We’re going to see there’s actually something so powerful and joyous, and in some ways light-hearted about the Jewish story of survival because it is so impossibly ridiculous. And that is really cause for celebration. Look, Purim is really rather timely, to be honest. We have a few different festivals throughout the year. The Passover is about freedom from slavery, Hanukkah is about freedom from violation, I suppose. The temple was defiled, our innocence was violated. But Purim was about an Iranian despot who basically created a decree to want to annihilate all the Jews. He had it in for the Jews. And in the end, everything was turned on its head and the Jewish people were victorious.
But it’s all too familiar, to be honest, this story. And whether you want to look back just a few generations or whether you want to look to the present day, it’s just amazing how we see this incredible cycle occur. But of course, one of the great messages of Purim that we really discovered on Purim, and it’s interesting that here is the first time we are really as a nation called Jews, the Jewish people in the Purim story. And Haman talks about… Pharaoh talks about wanting to get rid of the children of Israel. Now it’s the Jewish people. Now we take on a new meaning. And I think it’s very much tied to this association with Jews scattered around. We are now a nation scattered around the world, and we’re facing a different kind of hostility. And this time it was a genocidal one. And it’s what we discovered on Purim. And it’s a discovery that increases in its depths in every generation, perhaps, has become even more great in our time, is the immortality of the Jew.
That’s what we’ve discovered. And the question of course is why? And it’s so interesting that the Purim story, the Megillah that we read, the story of Esther never mentions God’s name, yet it’s one of the books in the Bible, the Holy Bible, the Godly Bible. And yet God is never once mentioned because what Esther and Mordecai were trying to train the Jews in understanding, and this is what our discussion will be about, is to see the divine hand, divine providence underneath the surface. You can explain everything that happened and all the coincidences that took place in the Purim story as just, it was just coincidence. And we got lucky and yay celebrate. But actually what they’re trying to train us to do is to see the king’s hand. And when they say that the king really, whenever it references the king, it means the king of kings, the rabbis tells us. That’s what it’s trying to get us to understand. To learn how to, when God hides his face… Which is quite amazing, is that Esther means hidden, right?
And Megillah’s Esther literally means to reveal the hidden. It’s training us in now we’re going into a world of exile, now we’re leaving the sovereignty of the land, now we’re going to train ourselves to see God’s hand behind the scenes, even though it could be explained away through naturalistic processes. And of course, we look today, and to be honest, I think the miracle of Jewish survival is even greater than the miracles we discuss of the splitting of the sea, and all the rest of it that’s described in the Bible. Because look, all these writers that you spoke about understood this. They realised this, they saw this incredible story. And we’ll touch on it in more detail, but in essence, the story of Jewish survival and what’s so remarkable about it is that, and what Purim comes to teach us, is that it looks like, on the surface, whether it’s 2000 years ago or frankly today, it looks like we are a vulnerable nation.
What is looks very, very insecure. But Purim comes to help us understand. It’s sort of, in some ways, there’s a difference between science and what Judaism is all about and religion is all about. Science comes to tell you what is. What would happen if I did this in the physical world and that? What is, in terms of Jewish people is we are vulnerable. We have the odds stacked against us. I think it was Mark Twain who said we have our hands tied behind our backs. But then the question is, why? Why are we? For what reason do we exist? And if our purpose, if our destiny existed even before our creation, if that’s the purpose of our creation, then that means… And if we tap into that and that’s what Jewish people have done throughout centuries, then we’ll understand that because our mission to the world to be the light to the nations, to be the moral teachers, which in some ways we’ve had such success in doing even though there’s plenty more to do, then we will understand that it’s impossible to destroy us because our relationship with the world’s destiny is far too essential.
Great. Great, Ollie. Just to help to give a sense of structure, we are going to look primarily at the two approaches of understanding the secret to Jewish survival, the one is divine intervention and divine purpose as Ollie’s been mentioning. And the other one would be the secular, or let’s put it, the naturalistic or slash historical approach to understanding the secret to survival. One, the material or physical, and the other, the spiritual or the religious. And as Ollie and I have often discussed, we’re not saying either or, but that both have to compliment each other because we are obviously here on the earth as well. But that’s part of our discussion. And putting the two together to try and tease out what really makes sense for us in the 21st century as well. To move on from Purim, Ollie, you’ve spoken before about divine intervention and notions from the Bible, obviously Purim being the one big example. Anything else that you want to mention from biblical narratives or teachings or Talmudic readings?
In terms of this story of survival?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, if you want, I can sort of make the case of why… The case of our relationship being in some way validated by the Bible. I’ll make the divine intervention case, the providence case.
Divine intervention case. Okay.
Yeah.
Great.
And I’ll touch on the Bible. So to be honest, in many ways this whole issue of Jewish survival and it pointing towards divine oversight, as to me, the only compelling explanation, is in many ways the reason why you and I are speaking right now, because it’s what ignited my Jewish journey. It’s what just made me become so compelled logically, as someone raised in many ways, obviously very much traditionally Jewish, but also living in a sceptical western world and environment and didn’t go to a Jewish school and was surrounded by people, and I’m very grateful for that, but surrounded by people that said you have to think logically and not just take things by faith alone. And I believe in that. But there are some things that occurred to me that have happened in Jewish history that are just frankly completely unprecedented with any other nation. And I’ll list them for you.
But before I do, I wouldn’t say that any of these things in and of themselves necessarily indicate that there must be a divine providence. But the fact that you have all these things coupled with the fact that they were explicitly prophesied and foretold in the Bible, to me, indicates that we know that the text of the Bible is written, it is at least 2000 years old. We have the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Greek translation that hasn’t been doctored in the last 50 or 100 years, to talk about all the things that have happened in history. And so I just sort of thinking to myself, what’s more compelling, that human beings wrote this, but they are fallible? And if they got just one thing wrong, then the whole book would seem laughable, or that it really is a being unbound by time that’s in some ways orchestrating the future and knows the future? Anyway, the points of Jewish history that are so remarkable, so miraculous is as follows. So of course we have the fact that we are still here, and that in and of itself is remarkable.
So there are plenty of nations and groups and tribes, the Hittites, the Jebusites that we hear about and other, that are all gone, but also even great empires and nations that Mark Twain spoke of and others, completely dissipated have gone. And yes, you might have some people who are descendants of the ancient Romans or the ancient Greeks, but we don’t have them living and breathing their culture like Jews are today. The fact that we’re celebrating Purim, reading the Megillah, the things we’re doing, the giving of gifts to our friends, to the poor, this was created as a decree for the Jewish people thousands of years ago. We’re still doing it. If you were to speak to someone 2000 years ago, 3000 years ago, practising Judaism, they’d recognise our Torah, our practises, our mitzvah. We’re still living, breathing, practising … And that’s the miracle that those writers were picking up on. And it’s remarkable that in and of itself, then added to all the following. The fact that we’ve been scattered throughout the world throughout most of our history. Okay?
Most nations as far as I’m aware, have a common land, common language, and a common culture. We didn’t have that for most of our history. Sociologists will tell you, you want to get rid of people, scatter them, spread them, then they’ll completely just… They’ll just be totally absorbed in the surrounding cultures. So we’re scattered all over the world, we’re even few in number. I mean, this is also remarkable. We are a similar size in population to the Han dynasty of China, thousands of years ago, about 14 million. Today, the Chinese population numbers about something like 1.3 billion, give or take about 12 or 13 million. So the Jewish population today is a statistical error when trying to count the amount of Chinese people in the world. It’s mental. And I remember asking some people who weren’t Jewish at an airport last year, how many Jews do you think there are in the world? They’re like, oh, 600 million? There’s 15 million! We haven’t even made up the numbers pre-Holocaust. I mean, it’s just absurd.
Meanwhile, they talk about genocide in Gaza. The Palestinian numbers have been increasing, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole for now. So we’ve had this… We’ve been fewer in number throughout the history. Now, I can explain why we have been, there’s all kinds of reasons, due to persecution, all the rest of it, but we also have laws that encourage procreation. So you can throw that the other way. But either way, we’ve been few in number, a tiny percentage of the world population, scattered everywhere and face a level of persecution that I think is unparalleled in human history. Because the hatred towards the Jews has been exterminationist. There’s four elements to the hatred that make it so unique. It’s universality, you can find it everywhere. It’s longevity, it’s existed for thousands of years. It’s intensity. Think of the many words we have to describe antisemitism, all the various phenomenon that appeared, ghettos, blood libels, holocaust, inquisition, I could go on.
And number four is it’s irrationality. You know, often we find that hatred will have a consistent reason throughout that they’ll use to justify their hatred, not of saying… It’ll just be an excuse that they’ll use. The Jews. We hate Jews ‘cause they’re rich, 'cause they’re poor, 'cause they’re capitalists, 'cause they’re communists, 'cause they’re inferior, 'cause they think they’re superior, 'cause they killed Jesus, 'cause they created Christianity, 'cause they’re parasites in our land, 'cause they live in their own land and created their own nations… It’s mad. And so we’ve had this severe hatred, surely with the odds stacked against us. Well, you have all these other great empires and nations, they collapsed, and yet here we are. And not only that, we have dramatically transformed the world’s values. Okay? Now, how does that make sense? As Mark Twain said, again, your hands are tied behind your backs. Why do people learn from a people that they supposedly hate? And yet, 3000 years ago, Abraham is called the Hebrew 'cause it meant he was like, it was just him himself against the rest of the world.
Whereas today, the majority of the world worships the God of Abraham. So many of the pillars of western civilization, of human rights, of democracy, all these principles, they stem from the ideas, first it’s about… Even the great, not so great United Nations, has on their wall a quote from Isaiah. They understand we were the first nation to articulate this vision for world peace as an ideal, and yet they have chutzpah to lecture us. But anyway, this is amazing. Not to mention, of course, all the individual Jews that everyone knows that we could list that transform the modern…. Created the modern world in many senses. It’s just amazing. So one second, you’ve got a people who are scattered all over the world throughout most of their history until recently, few in number, intensely persecuted, yet they’ve not only they survived, but they’ve transformed the world’s value systems. Think about it, by the way, what are the great governmental systems we have in the world today?
You either have theocratic ones, which come from the monotheistic ideas. Liberal democracy, which stem from Judeo-Christian values. Even communism was created by a Jew. Like the impact is just, it’s global. And so then the two final kickers are the fact that you have this fascinating and again, unprecedented relationship with the homeland. So we know 2000 years ago they were in the land and it was blossoming and it flourished. And then the Romans kicked them out. And for 2000 years you have this land that no nation managed to conquer and create their own sovereign state there. It’s just the one part of their empire, which by and large remains desolate, largely desolate. So I don’t get it. You’ve got a land that was fertile, but now it’s not fertile and everyone’s fighting over it, but they can’t seem to settle there. And it was so desirable 'cause it’s at the heart. Israel’s at the heart of three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
So we are there, we leave, and then we come back and the lands responds again. Have you ever heard of another nation doing this? Scattered and then they return. But this is the clincher. The clincher is that every single thing I listed, survival, intense prosecution, fewer number, scattered all over the world, light to the nations, leaving the land, the land being desolate, and then returning to the land, every single one of these things is explicitly prophesied and foretold in the Torah. In Deuteronomy, in Parsha Va'etchanan, it talks all about this. In Moses’ final speech to the Jews, he says, here’s what’s going to happen in your history. Now, to me it simply is not… It’s more plausible to say that the author is who he says it is. Anyway, in and of itself, the story is so wondrous. I find there is a slight hubris perhaps to say that we just managed to get there on our own through naturalistic causes. Because you can be as resilient as you want, but sometimes life circumstances can overtake you, whether it’s with health, wealth, all these things. And so I think it’s actually just, we have to acknowledge this reality. And by the way, you mentioned Pascal. Did you mention him at the start or am I-
No, I’m leaving that for you.
Okay. Sorry, I thought you mentioned it. It’s the final point. Blaise Pascal was asked by King Louis the 14th of France. He said, “give me evidence for the divine.” And Pascal, who is the father of probability theory, said, “the Jews, your Majesty, the Jews.” He looked to what’s most probable. There’s a great quote where he said, “look, this is all clearly foretold.” And for him, as is the case for me, I think it is a rational belief to say there must be some deeper underpinning to the world’s-
Okay, that’s great. That’s wonderful, Ollie. Okay. And fantastically and elegantly put. Thank you. I’m going to take on what you’ve said and just extend it slightly and then differ with you slightly, not completely. It’s from Jeremiah. “I will bring annihilation upon all the nations among whom I have scattered you. But I will not bring annihilation upon you. But I will also not leave you unpunished, but will chastise you in measure.” Fascinating thought from the Jeremiah. That I won’t let you be annihilated, but others will be annihilated. But I will chastise you when you push it too far or you forget about the Lord or other things. Then it goes on to say in Jeremiah, “as long as there is sun, moon, and sky, there will always be a Jewish people.” Leviticus, “yet even when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them nor spurn them so as to destroy them. If I do, it will annul my covenant with them.”
So it flips it fascinatingly that there’s a covenant set up. That if God were to ditch the Jews, then God would be breaking his covenant. He would be breaking it, not the Jewish people. It’s a fascinating paradox of thought. So I’m not going to go on with more that I’ve been researching as well, but I’m going to push the argument which doesn’t really go against anything you’ve said, but so much is historical. And I have that slight, slight couple of inches gap between myself and the celestial deity notion, that there’s something else underneath and around, not anti spiritual, but I guess I just was always brought up completely Jewish, culturally, historically in every way. And never really touched all the other… I had a bat mitzvah, of course, but never really touched the other aspects. And my sister’s lived in Jerusalem for over 50 years, so very close and many, many other cousins. So nevermind all that, it’s just that I come through it from a cultural, historical, or what’s known for everybody as the naturalistic argument as opposed to the divine intervention argument, which are the two that we are setting up today. So while I love this, I just stay three inches away from the notion of the celestial deity, whether it’s benign or malign or loving or jealous and whatever it all is.
I fully agree with you about the idea of the monotheism and everything you’ve said is a remarkable contribution in every way. 10 commandments… I mean, just so many that we’ve spoken before, you and I, the myth of or the story of Exodus, just so many things that you’ve mentioned already. All of it’s there, completely. But it is to come back to the word, it’s stories. And from this leads me straight into the idea of the naturalist or the historical approach, which is that we are as humans, and I’m going to refer quite a bit to Yuval Noah Harari here and his fantastic book about the brief history of Homo sapiens. Where he talks about, it’s the stories that we as humans have been able to pull together and live according to and believe in that has enabled us to collaborate, work together, destroy each other, kill each other, love each other, all of this.
But stories which capture values. And so much of not only the Bible, but so much of history is told through the narration of stories. And he argues, Harari, and yet I like it because he’s putting it in a very contemporary way, this side of the debate, is that these are collective fictions. These are the product of human imagination, societal imagination. And obviously, I mean, he’s Israeli completely, so he obviously is aware of the particular, the now and the past as well. That we will kill for stories, we will love for stories, we will do anything once we believe in the values the stories capture. As humans, we are creatures who try to understand the world and who we are through collective fictions, the narratives we create. Whether it’s the Code of Hammurabi, with the king at the top all the way down to the peasants and the slaves, or whether it’s the founding fathers of the American constitution, you know, equality, democracy, et cetera, justice, whatever.
All different values come at different times through different stories. He goes into, essentially, we accept more or less 14 billion years ago, the planet starts, matter, energy, atoms. And then life develops on earth about 4 billion years ago. Homo sapiens much later in that story. And Harari talks about three main revolutions. The cognitive, which is about 70,000 years ago, where Homo sapiens developed a larger brain. And it’s required social ties, language, rituals, social values, because if they didn’t collaborate and work together, they wouldn’t survive. And the larger brain enabled that to happen. That’s the first, the cognitive revolution. The second is about 10,000 years ago, which is the agricultural revolution, which is the hunter gatherer is replaced with the planting, with harvesting of crops, domesticating livestock.
And this required the mythical glue of an imagined story, a set of imagined values and stories to live by, which capture those values of laws and beliefs, et cetera. And then the third, the third revolution is the rise of sapiens. And in the rise of sapiens, us essentially starting more or less around 500 years ago, the scientific revolution. We may call it obviously how it relates to the enlightenment, et cetera, which is Jekyll and Hyde. And in Harari’s wonderful phrase, we are becoming hackable animals. And that the dependence is more on algorithm than on celestial spiritual beliefs, which is part of the very tension going on in the world today. And of course the Jewish story, coming back to it with a survival, it’s a series of brilliant values, the most remarkably coherent and cohesive set of values pulled together in stories.
Whether it’s a story of Exodus, even so many others, Purim, there’s so many that we can go through that we all know, of course, that are essential to hold a group together. And the Jews, justice, freedom, leadership, education, morals, learning, debate, how to live, monotheism, all of these things coming out of this tiny, tiny little remarkable group. I mean Harari’s obviously taking like a big zoom back picture looking back billions of years. That’s for us and for everyone, the historical slash naturalistic approach to this debate. You know, the secret of survival. Okay, so we’ve set up both. If we can go on now, you were going to say Ollie, about the integration and segregation and straddling both, living with both.
- Yeah, absolutely. And just one thing I would just to say, just to pick up on that before I do talk about that, just one small point is that I think what you find with… You are right. I think Harari is right. The stories we tell ourselves are so foundational to creating societies, espousing certain values that we want to propagate in that society. But what’s interesting is that prior to the birth of the Torah, Judaism, you find all the stories of a very self-serving, that nations and empires and powers will tell themselves in order to help preserve whichever structures they want to preserve. And usually it’s power structures. But something Professor Joshua Berman, I think, I think he’s of Bar-Ilan University, he wrote a book called Created Equal, how the story of the Bible totally broke with ancient political and social thought.
Something revolutionary happened in this new story, the story of the Exodus, where suddenly the powerless are given a voice, the powerless are emancipated. We talk about this, suddenly this idea of these notions of everyone being in God’s image. In ancient cultures and society, they would just preserve their elites. The masses were in service of that. There was certainly not a notion of all human beings, their lives having sanctity, and all the values that flow from that. So I do think we have to ask ourselves, what was it? What happened that caused this massive explosion and revolutionary change? But we can park that for now. But so in terms of-
Ollie, if I could just say… Sorry there. It’s a fantastic point, and I know you and I have discussed this before, is that founding myth or reality of the Exodus story, that a nation, a race, a group, whatever, emerges out of slavery into freedom, is an extraordinary founding story, myth or legend or reality that is so unique to us as Jewish people. Absolutely. That is so foundational. Compared to so many other cultures and peoples who have come before. Sorry, you were going to say?
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the story here is one of, Purim is hidden closed miracles. But this is the beginning of Jewish history where we have an open miracle. And it does seem to me that Judaism, philosophy of Judaism is saying that to have this initial burst of total revolutionary transformational change, which would then pave the way for this remarkable story of Jewish history, it does actually require divine… This only happens through divine intervention. We do need a national revelation that occurred at Mount Sinai. God doesn’t like it, He prefers to exist within the natural world in order to permit for free will and have a healthier relationship. But that’s just a side note. We did speak also about this issue of segregation versus integration in Jewish history. And it’s an interesting one because on the one hand, throughout most of our history, we’ve had to be rather segregated. And this wasn’t necessarily by choice.
I once had someone say to me, he wasn’t Jewish, and said, well, why do you Jews, especially religious Jews, they put up such walls to the wider world? And I said, well, who do you think put up those walls? And yes, okay fine, today we don’t have to have those walls, and I encourage putting down those walls to a large extent. But so much of our way of being has been because the world that we’ve lived in has been pretty hostile, especially Europe. And so we’ve developed this sort of sense of inferiority complex. But then you have the enlightenment era, suddenly Jews are totally allowed to… They’re emancipated into Europe, but at the expense of their Jewishness. So you can come if… What was that quote of Napoleon says, “to the Jews as individuals, everything, the Jews as a nation, nothing.” And so you suddenly see Jews thinking, well, if we fully integrate, then it’ll be great.
But of course, we saw in the ‘30s and '40s where Jews in Germany were declaring, “Berlin is our Jerusalem.” Hitler said, “we don’t hate you because you are different. We hate you because you’re trying to be like us and you’re not like us. And we know that even though you look just like us and you try to act like us and you get to the top of all of our professions, we will separate you from us.” And so it seemed like in some extent, that strategy hasn’t worked. And we are seeing similarly today, I believe Israel is very much dancing to all the western tunes and western standards of morality and war morality, and yet don’t care. They have total double standards. So what is the right way to go?
And it’s interesting because we spoke about how, in the story of the Exodus, and we have Moses, the first Jewish leader, there’s this fascinating dynamic he has where on the one hand he grew up in the palace of Egypt. And we see that part of his discussion with God at the burning bush is God telling him to be the leader of the Jews and to liberate them. And he’s pushing back a bit. And one of the things he says is, isn’t Aaron your brother? He can help you. Part of the underlying sense we’re getting is maybe his concern is in some ways he sees Pharaoh as his brother, and there’s going to be this very awkward tension of like, what’s going to happen when I go before him? And now it’s like the dual loyalties thing. It’s all there, right?
It’s almost like a Cain and Abel, brother versus brother story.
It all goes back to sibling rivalry, everything does. It really does. Especially even what’s happening today. It’s cousin rivalry. Absolutely. But anyway, so we as Jews have been straddling. The story of the Jews is a nation who straddles the universal and the particular. And we don’t choose what we… If we try going to one extreme or the other, it’s not healthy for us, it’s not healthy for the world. What we do is at our best is straddle, but not compromise who we are. Go out into the world, but not… But the problem is we’ve been unable to do that for most of our history, but it is seen as the ideal. This by the way, was part of what the debate was between Joseph and the brothers. The brothers were saying, we should be shepherds to protect our spiritual destiny and our values and not compromise.
We should be shepherds in the field, not get too immersed in wild society. Joseph said, no, I’m going to look nice, I’m going to present myself well, I’m going to engage in society because we have to bring our values, bring the divine into… That’s our mission. You can’t hide away from the world. And so the brothers in effect were symbolically saying, okay, you want to try that approach and think you won’t compromise your values? We’ll send you down to Egypt, the heart of hedonistic, immoral, debased culture, see if you survive. And guess what happens? That every step of the journey he is vindicated, he doesn’t compromise his values and the brothers end up bowing down to him. And what the message is, is that actually the ideal that the Torah wants of the Jews is to be fully engaged in the world as ambassadors for the divine morality, but without compromising that. And part of the lesson of Purim is that the Jews thought, when we started in exile, we thought, the story we told ourselves, was that the way we’re going to survive is by appeasement. Getting the approval of the powers that be.
So the Purim story starts with the Jews in the palace. And they’re at King Ahasuerus’ big party. And they’re wining and dining. And the rabbis tell us this was the root of their error, their mistake. They thought their safety lies in getting the world’s approval, and the powers that be’s approval. Sound familiar? We thought that that’s going to be the way that we survive. But of course, what happens moments later in the story, the powers that be elect someone to try and wipe out and annihilate the Jews. And it’s only later in the story where we reconnect with our identity. And by the way, who do they think was provoking, stirring the pot and making the fate of the Jews more deadly? They actually did not like Mordecai, who’s the great hero of the story, who gets Esther to approach the king and save the Jews.
They thought Mordecai, who refused to bow down to Haman, who refused to compromise on his Jewishness, they thought he’s just stirring the pot, he’s going to get us in trouble. Again, sound familiar? We think, oh, we have to compromise. We have to please the powers that be, we have to dance to this otherwise… And the clear message of Purim is, and the story of Joseph and about who we should be, is go out into the world, go out there, but don’t compromise who you are. Be absolutely clear and proud on who you are. Be the teachers in the world global classroom of morality. Do not try to pretend to be a student. And in that way, you will thrive and you will defeat your enemies. And more than that, the world will rejoice.
- Right. Great. So just taking it from there, it’s also the question which we spoke about as well. The whole idea of developing, is survive and against what, basically? Obviously, against antisemitism, especially over the last 2000 years. And it’s fascinating going back, when you look at the Roman, the writing in the Roman times, going back 2000 years ago, obviously to the beginnings, very beginnings of Christianity. But the Roman, Tacitus, historian, juvenile, the satirist, many, many others basically class the Jews as all part of the group under the heading Barbari, Latin for barbarians. So they are barbarians as much as anybody else is. Whether it was the Goths or the Egyptians, whoever they conquered, the English… Actually, for Caesar, if you read Caesar’s diaries, the English are the most barbaric of all, you know, they just had blue paint, they had on any clothing, a little bit of loincloth and walk around screaming like savages, in Caesar’s phrase and barbarians, it’s fascinating.
The English and then the Germanic… Anyway, all of them have their constant comments. But the Jews are sort of part of the general category for the Romans of barbarians. And juvenile, the satirist and Tacitus talk about how loud they are, noisy, and they’re total drunkards. Now, it’s fascinating when you look at the writings of such an eminent historian like Tacitas, for example, and they’re accused of being all these things. Stubborn drunkards, you know. More drunk than the Goths and others. So it’s interesting to see. And I do think it changes, as you and I and Judy have often discussed and others with the deicide, of course. But just before coming onto that is the idea that you were talking about of assimilation versus non-assimilation, and the idea of appeasement. It’s really interesting when you look at, it’s 1791, so just after the French Revolution.
There’s an assembly, the constituent assembly in Paris. And there’s a guy, Clermont-Tonnerre, who is quoted by Sartre in his book, the Anti-Semite and Jew, which is a book about the essential idea of this is western society needs a scapegoat. And the scapegoat is the Jew. And this guy says in 1791, “we will refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, but give everything to the Jews as individuals.” Now, that’s such an important phrase, I think, in understanding the beginnings of modern antisemitism. Because obviously it’s race, religion, nation, and we all know that debate and that discussion. But this is the liberal voice speaking here. “We will refuse everything to Jews as a nation, but give everything to Jews as individuals.” In other words, universal declaration of human rights, the democrat, the equal rights, et cetera, et cetera, as an individual, you’re fine. Hello, you’re okay. Do what you want. Come, go. Do this, do that.
But as a nation or as a race or as a group, forget it, no chance. Okay? You can’t be here. And why would you want to stay in a country which hates you because they adore the God that you killed? So ciao. Move. Now, what does one do? Appease, not appease? And Sartre creates this fascinating debate in the book, just speaking about it exactly as you’re saying, if you appease or if you don’t appease, either way, it’s a Catch-22. So obviously, don’t appease is the far better option ultimately as part of the stubborn, secretive survival. You and I spoke about the exodus before today in planning. It’s not by chance, as we said, they leave for freedom and to get out of slavery. But the choice is go, don’t appease, get out, get far. Can we imagine even if it did happen or not happen? I mean this is a time of horse and cart. If you’re lucky you have a cart and a horse, you know. This ain’t like… You can’t get a tour, you can’t hitchhike a ride on anything. You’ve got to walk all the way, and cross the sea. I mean, it’s insane if you really think about it.
Interesting. Do you know a time where appeasement ever worked?
Pardon?
Can you think of a time where appeasement ever worked?
No. I don’t think appeasement ever does. I think it is the most overrated, cowardly approach to anything, to be really honest. One chooses one’s battles, but I don’t think appeasement as a strategy or as a moral thought for human society works. No. And this is one of the points. And it’s fascinating, the other night I watched the movie Golda, with Helen Mirren and Liev Schreiber. He does a really good version of Kissinger. And just the one scene where Kissinger comes to visit Golda during the Yom Kippur War in the ‘70s. And he sits down, it’s just the two of them. Just a scene written for the two of them where the character Liev Schreiber playing Kissinger says “Golda, I have to tell you, first I’m an American, second, I am the secretary of state, third, I am a Jew.” Golda looks at him and he says, “you know, Henry, in Hebrew, we write from right to left. Hmm.” And then offers him
By the way, you should know, I thought about that anecdote recently when the Secretary of State, Blinken first came to Israel after October 7th before Netanyahu. And look, we can have all sorts of opinions about what he’s done since-
Yeah, yeah.
He said, “I stand before you Prime Minister Netanyahu, both as an American Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.” But in this time he was affirming his Jewishness. And I thought, you know what? We’re making progress.
We are getting there. From the self appeasing its own set of identities in the self. That script writer I think had it beautifully in a 40 second scene. So yeah. And I mean the deicide, which we were going to talk about more, but I mean obviously it’s so crucial to the whole discussion because of how it changes from the Roman perspective to much later, over the last 2000 years, I think is something that is absolutely vital. Because killing a God, I mean, can one imagine, and yet trying to be liked or appeasing because you’re accused of killing the God of so many other people, how do you fit in? How do you belong? How don’t you? Do you become the parvenu? Do you stay the pariah? Where do you locate yourself on that spectrum between pariah and parvenu?
Between being admired for being clever and being innovative and chutzpah, everything, surviving, and also being despised for killing God and also being despised for so many other things. The obsession, as you said earlier, capitalist, communist, money, not money, all those things. And ultimately the sad thing, I guess, or the reality is that this notion of being the chosen people, being understood from non-Jewish perspective implies both the inferior and superior, 'cause if we say, okay, you out there are chosen, I’m not, that means you are superior, I’m inferior. But I can’t live with being inferior, so I’ve got to knock you down, get you to the bottom of the ladder to make you inferior.
But I’ve set you up as superior 'cause you came up not in the 10 commandments, but you are the chosen, I’m not. So it’s a Catch-22, it’s unwinnable. So to appease, it is a bit ridiculous and a bit unwinnable because it’s a setup all the time of Catch-22, every step along the way. Is the notion of deicide and the chosen from a non-Jewish perspective, I’m saying. But all of this becomes part of the fascinating debate on surviving against what? The secret to survive an unwinnable Catch-22 post the beginning of Christianity and post as the Roman Empire dissipates and moves into other things afterwards. Okay. Ollie, were there other things that you wanted to say as we move towards finalising the conversation?
- Yeah. Well, I suppose I’ll just touch on this whole issue of chosenness and antisemitism. What’s the cause and all of that. It’s interesting. I actually saw, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, I don’t even know what to call him, anti-Israel activist called Mohammed Hijab, who’s a British Muslim. And he’s appeared a lot on Piers Morgan, other shows. And he is a bit of a clown, to be honest. And I mean, I wouldn’t call anyone that’s anti-Israel clown, but in his case, he is a bit of a clown. And he was caught on camera recently in a conversation with some kind of celebrity called Sneako, I think.
And he was caught on camera at a restaurant. I saw it on my Instagram feed just a few days ago where he said, look, I’ll be honest with you, the problem is not just Zionism, it’s Judaism. And I’ll tell you why. Because the Jews, they really think they’re chosen, they think they’re superior, they think they’re special. And that’s a fundamental problem in his eyes. And so I thought that was very… I was very grateful that this was revealed to us because I do think this underpins it all. We have all-
I think there’s a huge amount I agree, on chosen, which leads to control the world, and also deicide, killing of God. I think those two are so foundational in the non-Jewish world in the West.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Will you go on? Yeah.
You know, absolutely. It really is. And therefore it requires some unpacking here because it’s interesting. The funny thing is that basically most religions think and consider themselves in some way chosen. In fact, his religion. If I was in a room with him, I’d say, Mr. Hijab, don’t you believe that I, as a Jew, I have eternal damnation as a Jew? And only Muslims are already superior. The rest of us should be second class citizens and only you will go to heaven. And Islam has superseded Judaism, so now Muslims are the new chosen people carrying God’s message. Don’t you believe the same thing? So why are you so bothered by the fact that we believe it?
And it’s ironic because actually Judaism is the only religion that I’m aware of that doesn’t say you need to be Jewish in order to have a divine relationship, to have salvation, to get to heaven. And it seems like, most nations as well consider themselves in some way chosen, unique in some regards, some flags being like the sun showing that it’s like there’s this destiny with them and where the sun shines most prominently. But the clear point is that for some reason, when people say they’re chosen, it doesn’t bother people as much. When they hear the Jews think it or even say it, oh, that really invokes the rage. And it’s because deep down they acknowledge that there’s something real here. There’s something true. As you said, it’s undeniable. It’s undeniable that so many of their values… I mean, I would say to Mr. Hijab, you believe in this Mount Sinai revelation that occurred with the Jews.
You believe all this. That the Jews brought so many of the ideas that you propagate, came from the Jewish people. You know there’s such a clear destiny the Jews have, even if you believe they are superseded. It was your very God which gave them this mission. Right? And it’s interesting, I just saw in the comments, William Chenowski said, Christianity and Islam became universal, Judaism hasn’t. Why is that? The Rambam Maimonides actually picks up on that. And he says that Christianity and Islam are vehicles, divine vehicles through which many of the ideas of Judaism would spread to the world. And of course, that is undeniable. And when people say, well, that shows… Doesn’t that vindicate them and not us? Well, I’d say no. They got so many ideas from us.
And still to this day, the world’s magnifying glass remains on the Jews and Israel. And so it means that we’re actually just making a huge amount of progress and the God of a Abraham’s values are getting there, we just as Jews believe we have more to do. And it indicates this incredible impact that the Jewish ideas have had. But the key point is this, that what does chosenness mean? It doesn’t mean superior or inferior. It was never about that. And this is the mistake they make. This is the mistake that people make. What it does mean is having a specific mission for the world. And it’s funny. The other thing I find so funny is that we believe there are chosen people within the chosen people. The Levites and the Cohanim-
I know.
Are a chosen people within the chosen people. They are the holy of holies, right? We don’t have any issue with them. We don’t hate. We don’t have anti-Cohanism, right? So we’re comfortable with that. So because we understand, as long as we each have our own unique role and unique contribution in this divine plan, then that’s great and it’s a wonderful thing. And so it’s interesting because the story of Passover is when the Jewish people began as a people, it’s very much centred around this idea of firstborn, right? The firstborn of Egypt were destroyed, on that same night the Jewish people put the blood of the lamb on our doors. And on that night we elected to become God’s firstborn. Now, what does that mean being a firstborn? The first born in the Book of Genesis is sometimes not the child that’s born first, but it’s someone that chooses, elects upon themselves, or is elected by the parent to be the one that will transmit the values of the father and the parents, the mother and father down to the rest of the children.
So what being chosen means is we as God’s firstborn, have taken upon ourselves a mission to transmit the values of our Father in heaven to all of God’s children. Which doesn’t mean better or worse, it means we’re simply a vehicle to make everyone appreciate and understand their own unique contribution and destiny and relationship with God and with the world, and how they can each uniquely contribute to that destiny. So the Jewish people’s particularity and our divine story shows everyone that love is a particular phenomenon. If it was universal, we would all be the same. That was the fundamental mistake of communism.
And so really the chosenness thing should not be a threat if you are on board with this plan of divine morality permeating the world. And of course, the greatest enemy of the Jewish people throughout all of history to date today was of course, Adolf Hitler. And he understood this most clearly. He said that the Jewish people are inflicted on mankind, circumcision on its body, which means understanding that we are not going to be ruled by our animalistic drives and desires. We are going to channel, we are going to take control of it, principle of control, and channel it into good and holy things. We’re not going to deny the physical world’s pleasures and good, but we’re going to channel it in a good and constructive holy way. He said they’ve inflicted circumcision on the body and conscience on the soul-
Conscience on the mind. Yeah, you got it.
The chosen mission. He got it. He got it. And so Hermann Rauschning, who quoted him as saying that, who had meetings with him and then was working for the Nazis then worked the allies, he had this fascinating line. He said, antisemitism is the eternal call to Sinai that humanity again and again rebels. And that’s what it is. That’s what it’s-
Call to conscience. Yeah, yeah.
That’s how it’s always been. And so the question for the rest of the world is, do you want to be… You can have two choices when you are confronted by that. You can say, wow, I’m in a world in which God has elected a certain people to teach me and help me understand how I can serve this world. And I can be proud to live in such a world alongside a nation. Or I can be jealous and I can be hateful. And so the choice really will remain on the rest of the world. It’s time for the rest of the world to grow up.
That’s great. Lovely. Exactly as you were saying with Hitler, certainly, the circumcision and the conscience. That’s why the Nazis actually, the very first act against the Jews they did, which Hitler promulgated, he insisted on, was kick them out of swimming pools because it’s the body that is the site of filth and dirt. And so swimming pools cannot contaminate the area and all of that. So first it’s the body, and then pick out the conscience. And he understood step by step what he was doing in that way, exactly as you’re saying. Okay. So as we draw to a conclusion, so what Ollie and I, we just wanted to plant the seeds really of what is an ongoing debate and discussion, which has got so many remarkable facets.
And it’s fascinating to go into such a treasure of a conversation of the divine intervention approach, providence and the historical or what’s called the naturalist approach, philosophically between the two, and how they constantly rub up against each other, clash, compete, agree, disagree, in the best of the Jewish debate tradition. So to end, we wanted to just give a phrase or two from Anne Frank; “who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up until now? Who knows? It might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good. We can never become just Netherlanders or just English or representatives of any country for that matter, we will always remain Jews. Age of 14, Anne Frank.
Understanding completely as we were speaking earlier, either way, appeasement never works. We’ll always remain, see ourselves and be seen by others exactly as we are. Okay. I would like to suggest, Ollie, it’s been a wonderful pleasure preparing this with you and sharing now today. And we can go into some of the questions. Okay? And if you like, I can read them and then we can divvy up who will take which.
Q&A and Comments
Lorraine at Vancouver and the weather. Okay. Also in Vancouver we talk about the weather. That’s great, Lorraine. Ellen, East London, South Africa. We also speak about the weather. Okay. Okay, that’s great. Fancy-
I think maybe David, if you scroll to the bottom-
I’ll scroll down next. Yeah. Yeah. Myrna.
Q: Okay, Barbara; should we be offended by the statement that Jews are a race? Do you want to take that Ollie? A: Well, I mean, we’re not entirely a race 'cause anyone can become Jewish, and we have Jews of all different skin colours, ethnicities, and backgrounds. We’re not an exclusive club, anyone can become a Jew. And we do predominantly come from one ethnic background and ethnic source. But anyone… You have Jews of all races. And so this is one of the flaws of the race theory in terms of hatred for Jews, because Jews… I mean, I’m pretty sure Moses’ wife was from Africa and black, from the very get go, from the start we were a mix of diverse people. Many of the Egyptians came with us. So we’re not fully racial in that sense.
Yeah. And also just getting away from this idea of purity of race. I mean, not only DNA studies, but historical knowledge teaches us that obviously it’s so much mixture and a melting pot in a way. Francine; it strikes me that in order to survive, as in the Purim story, we have to pass, to coop the term. Ironically, passing or conversion didn’t help success or survival during periods of extreme antisemitism programmes or the war. Well, I suppose we can just say, yeah, I agree. And if there anything else you want to add there, Ollie?
No. It slightly broke off when you were reading the question. Could you just repeat that?
Okay. It strikes that in order to survive as in the Purim story, we have to pass, to coop the term. Ironically, passing or conversion didn’t help survival during periods of extreme antisemitism programmes or war-
What do you mean by pass?
Conversion. That part of the Purim story to passing or conversion didn’t help survival.
Oh, you mean converging to other faiths or getting more Jews?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that’s what Francine means.
Yeah. No, the point is, and as you were saying, the Jew cannot escape his or her destiny. It’s because it’s too… In my view, it’s essential to the world’s very purpose. And so we can’t escape it.
And from my point of view, it’s the antisemite who determines what the Jew is in that way. And whether you convert or not, as was proved in the late ‘30s, early '40s with the Nazis, it didn’t matter conversion or not, everybody’s still seen as a Jew, even if you’d won an Iron Cross in the First World War, or we’re sort of part of the Berlin elite.
Yeah.
Okay. In fact, the opposite. They’d hate you even more.
Q: Marilyn; would one of the reasons the Jews have survived is that they did intermarriage? Was people of other religions not encouraged? They did intermarriage with people of other religions was not… Oh, so intermarriage was not encouraged. Is that part of the reason for survival?
Of course, it’s part of the reason, but at the end of the day, not intermarrying doesn’t stop you from experiencing pogroms. Exactly. Okay. Ollie, you’ve got a wonderful phrase from Miriam and Annette. He’s an incredible lecturer and he’s terrific, they both say.
[Ollie] Thank you.
Which I agree with. Michael; miracles have seen in three wars, independence, Six-Day War, Yom Kippur. In each of that, we should have been beaten and dispersed. Yep. Sherry-
I think one thing we were saying on our conversation yesterday was just in some ways, we feel like we’re in very challenging times, but we do have to size, take a step back, 'cause I saw a great, I think it was Rabbi David Wolpe or someone gave a speech a few days ago where he said, I’m just imagining having a conversation with my great-grandfather today and saying, he’d say, "how are things going?” He’d say, “well, it’s a challenging time in the state of Israel.” “State of Israel? What?” “Yeah.” “There’s a Jewish state?” “Yeah.” “Well, what’s the problem?” “Well, we are not sure we’re going to still be getting billions of dollars of aid from America.” “America’s giving you billions of dollars of aid? What?” And so sometimes we do have to take a step back and just appreciate that… This is exactly the point, really. It seems natural, but actually there’s some… If you just open your eyes a little bit more.
By the way, this was in many ways one of the principles that we learned in the Purim story about seeing behind the surface, but also in the burning bush, because the bush was burning and it was not consumed. Which by the way, is a symbol of the Jewish people. The Jews are the bush that burns but is never consumed. But it says, Moses noticed it and he saw, why is this not burning? It’s been burning for a while now and it’s not being consumed. And the Torah text says he turned aside to look to see what’s going on, look closer. And only then it says, God saw that Moses turned to look and spoke to him. And it’s like it’s this idea of Moses sees beneath the surface. In fact, just before that he sees the suffering of the Midianite women, and then before that, the suffering of the Jewish slave. At all times, what’s going on? The Jewish mind is being trained just to look a bit beneath the surface. Don’t just accept, don’t tolerate, but question, challenge and open your eyes.
I think that’s one of the absolute keys to the Jewish notion, to always look what’s underneath, the subtext, something that is not just obvious. Great. Sherry, please talk about Jewish self-hatred. Whoa, that’s another whole conversation we can-
Trudy.
We’re going to hold it for now.
Trudy and I said we want to do that on JTV, which is the Jewish YouTube channel I run. So we’re going to do that one-
Crucial topic. Great. Rose; Rashi says, God has to be described in human terms so we humans could understand it. However, Spinoza believed in God as nature for which he was excommunicated. Yep. And Spinoza is the one who Einstein identifies much more with, and I do as well. And Spinoza also had the phrase which we’ve been alluding to today about, when you despise people so much and you hate them and you set them up in all this way, ironically, I’m paraphrasing from Spinoza, ironically, you help them stay together as a group, which is fairly obvious. The more you attack them and be vicious in many ways, verbally, physically, everywhere, ultimately extermination. But the more you move, you force them to stay together. In the story-
I actually think human beings are described in godly tubs. So it’s actually, how’s that for a hand twister? But think about it. If we’re made in his image, then that means that we’re just the reflection. My arm’s the reflection of his arm, it’s not the other way around, anyway.
Sure. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Precisely.
Q: Ellen; is a secular Jew living in Israel in time going to be an Israeli and no longer a Jew? A: That is a fascinating question, which touches on many, many very raw contemporary issues. But let’s hold it here because it goes into contemporary notions of politics and history. Unless there’s anything you want to add, Ollie,
I’ll just add that it seems that post-October 7th, Jews from across the spectrum in Israel, their Jewishness is dawning on them-
They’ve come together. Yeah.
They’ve already coming together more and more. So I don’t think… I mean, hasn’t that been the theme of this whole discussion over the past hour that our destiny is inescapable?
And I think also in times of serious crisis, certainly coming together, whether from an historical point of view or destiny point of view. Ivan; thank you for your both glass half full.
Q: But where was the divine intervention in Auschwitz and Gaza? I don’t know if you want to take that, Ollie. A: I think we need to do a full one hour discussion on the question of the Odyssey, how that can be suffering if God is good. My YouTube channel is called JTV. If you type into YouTube “JTV Jewish,” you’ll see it. One of the most recent videos I put out a few weeks ago was on this very topic, it’s about a half hour. And I’ll just leave you with a slight taster, which is, I think 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 know that the Talmud says that when the Egyptians were drowning, okay, the enemies of the Jews, when they were drowning in the sea, as the Jews were walking on their way to liberation, the angels in…
The Talmud says, the angels in heaven wished to sing to God. And God says, why are you singing? My creatures are drowning and you want to sing right now? These were the enemies… These were the Nazis of their time. They were throwing babies into the Nile. I’m not by the way saying, making any comparisons today. I’m just simply saying that we see here that God seems to be very sensitive to the suffering of any creature, how much more so is he pained by the suffering of innocent people? Right? How much more so is he pained? 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, and that’s our conception of him 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?
Okay. And so to move on with the questions. So to remain, are we debating about the social evolution of organised altruism as divinely given or not? Partly, yes. But really it’s the idea of survival and the secret of Jewish survival, if it was divine intervention or if it’s not necessarily just organised altruism, I would say, but has a historical or what’s known as naturalistic approach or both. Obviously they’re going to overlap. Okay. Jay speaking about, I’m just going to… Because it’s quite long. Speaking about the importance of education and literacy in helping the survival of us Jews over the ages. Absolutely, Jay. No question. I mean, vital. And we can talk about that. How much more crucial or fairly central the notion of education and literacy. Honey; Moses was a leader of Israelites. The term Jewish is only with Mordecai, who was called HaYehudi. Okay. I don’t know if you want to take anything there, Ollie?
David, I’m so sorry, but I’m being chased to go to my Purim meal now.
Okay.
I really apologise.
There’s a hell of a lot more here. Okay, let’s hold it. Ollie, this has been fantastic. And just for everybody to know, it’s our first and we’re obviously going to plan some more together with Trudy and others of these kind of conversation slash debates discussions. Okay. So have a great rest of Purim. And, pardon?
Thank you so much, David. Thank you. Thank you a lot to the university. Thank you Trudy. Thank you everyone for watching. Happy Purim.
Thank you. Happy Purim and happy rest of the weekend everybody. Take care everywhere. Enjoy.
Thank you David.