The Vilification of World Jewry - with Yossi Klein Halevi & Donniel Hartman

Speaker 1 Dan, from 1 to 10, how would you rate your gifting talent?

Speaker 2 Maybe a 7.

Speaker 3 You?

Speaker 1 The most stressful day of the year is my wife's birthday. But for the sake of Schlombeik, let's just leave it at that.

Speaker 2 You have it easy, Alan. You're Israeli, so you don't have to face the stress of holiday gifting around Hanukkah.

Speaker 1 Right, right. Because we just give out some Sufganiot and call it a day.

Speaker 2 Right? Eight days of gifts. Well, this year we're making Hanukkah gifting a whole lot easier by giving the gift of Inside Call Me Back to a friend or family member or colleague.

Speaker 1 You'll also be supporting what we do here at Arc Media.

Speaker 2 So follow the link in the show notes and gift a subscription to Inside Call Me Back.

Speaker 1 And here's the kicker: to those who gift eight subscriptions or more, Dan will send you a personalized copy of his most recent book, The Genius of Israel.

Speaker 1 Just let us know who you'd like him to dedicate it to.

Speaker 2 When did we discuss this?

Speaker 3 We just did, Dan.

Speaker 2 Okay, then bring it. Just follow the link right here in the show notes and send your Hanukkah gift now.

Speaker 2 You are listening to an art media podcast.

Speaker 2 It's 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 17th here in New York City as we get ready to wind down the fourth night of Hanukkah.
It is 4.30 a.m. on Thursday, December 18th in Israel, and it is 1.30 p.m.

Speaker 2 on Thursday, December 18th in Sydney, Australia, where Jews in Australia are still reeling from Sunday's anti-Jewish massacre at Bondi Beach.

Speaker 2 The one surviving gunman of the attack, 24-year-old Navid Akram, has been charged with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder and one of committing an act of terrorism.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, Jewish donors have helped raise $1.3 million for the recovery of Ahmed Al-Ahmed, the Muslim man who was shot while heroically confronting and tackling one of the Bondi Beach attackers.

Speaker 2 Beyond Australia, in the past week, Jews, seemingly just about everywhere, have endured a staggering number of anti-Jewish violent attacks. attacks.

Speaker 2 On Tuesday, a Jewish man was knifed in the chest in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Speaker 2 On Monday, Dutch police arrested 22 people after clashes with anti-Jewish protesters outside an Amsterdam concert hall hosting an official cantor of the IDF.

Speaker 2 And this past Friday, gunmen opened fire on a Jewish household in San Bernardino, California while shouting, Free Palestine.

Speaker 2 Also, last week, the Hillel house at San Francisco State University was set ablaze. Yes, that too appears to have been an anti-Semitic attack.

Speaker 2 Against the backdrop of what is beginning to seem like, well, a globalized intifada, President Trump, speaking at the annual White House Hanukkah party on Tuesday night, told the invited guests that, quote, Congress is becoming anti-Semitic.

Speaker 2 And he boldly stated, quote, I will always be a friend and a champion to the Jewish people, close quote.

Speaker 2 Also Tuesday, President Trump imposed a travel ban on Palestinian Authority passport holders in a move he said was done to, quote, protect the security of the United States, close quote.

Speaker 2 In some other news on Tuesday, the United States hosted a conference in Qatar with dozens of partner nations to discuss plans for the International Stabilization Force, which is expected to enter Gaza in early 2026.

Speaker 2 Now on to today's episode.

Speaker 2 This morning, I listened to the latest episode of For Heaven's Sake, another ARC media podcast co-hosted by Danielle Hartman and Yossi Klein-Halevi, and it immediately struck me as a must-listen for the Call-MeBack community.

Speaker 2 In this episode, Danielle and Yossi offer a thoughtful reflection on the uncertain future of diaspora jewelry at this moment.

Speaker 2 I found myself returning to this conversation throughout the day, wrestling with the difficult questions that it raised.

Speaker 2 I leave the rest to Yossi and Danielle, and please don't forget to subscribe to For Heaven's Sake. Other than that, please have a meaningful, festive, prideful, and, dare I say, safe Chanukah.

Speaker 3 Hi, friends, this is Danielle Hartman and Yossi Klein-Halevy from the Shulm Hartman Institute. And this is our podcast, For Heaven's Sake, in cooperation with ARC Media.

Speaker 3 And our theme for today is is Bundai and the Australian Jewish community and the pain and the horror that they're suffering.

Speaker 3 But very often when a catastrophe happens, that becomes the identity of a community. What is the Australian Jewish community?

Speaker 3 The Australian Jewish community is the Jewish community that suffered its worst terrorist attack.

Speaker 3 or maybe the worst terrorist attack in Australia history, but definitely the worst attack in the Australian Jewish community. And you shrink an experience of 120,000 people in a life to that attack.

Speaker 3 And we want to talk today about terror that is threatening Jewish life around the world and what does it mean?

Speaker 3 What does it mean for Jewish life? What does it mean for the relationship to Israel? But before we reduce Australian life to

Speaker 3 Bundai terrorist attack. I visited recently, Yossi, you're very close to the community.
Very often we meet groups from Australia who come and we teach.

Speaker 3 And there's something very special about the Australian Jewish community that world Jewry needs to recognize.

Speaker 3 I remember a critique of one of the leaders of the community, Jeremy Lieber, who said to me, Daniel, you can't look at the world through the lens of American Jewry or Canadian Jewry.

Speaker 3 There's something special that we're creating too.

Speaker 3 And part of the story is there is a Judaism being built in a loving, vibrant way without as much of the power and the ability to strut of American Jewish life. It's not the same.

Speaker 3 And part of what was built is a community that is one of the most, if not the most, Zionist Jewish communities in the world.

Speaker 3 a community with the highest percentage of Jews going into day schools. Some of the largest and some of the best creative Jewish day schools in the world.

Speaker 3 So here it is, you have this small little community, which doesn't have infinite resources and numbers, but builds something

Speaker 3 different, vibrant, powerful, beautiful. Very proud Australians.
They're proud of their identity. They don't want to be American.

Speaker 3 They love Israel, but it's a love and a commitment to Israel, not necessarily an aliyah to Israel. It's not not the same.

Speaker 3 Israel is like almost our fantasy where we speak about how Israel is an integral part of my Jewish identity.

Speaker 3 To be a Zionist does not mean exclusively that I choose to move to Israel, but it means that Israel is a central vehicle through which I do Jewish.

Speaker 3 It's a community which, despite its small size, punches way, way, way above its grade and serves as a model for Jewish life around the world.

Speaker 3 What does it mean to build a meaningful Jewish life in a public sphere where you're not dictating and able to create a Jewish calendar life within that public sphere?

Speaker 3 And there's something very beautiful and powerful that we Jews around the world, including Jews in Israel, have to learn.

Speaker 3 So, Yossi, you also have a very, very close and long-standing relationship, far more than I do, I believe. What's unique about this community? Well, first of all, I love the way you began this,

Speaker 3 and it's very counterintuitive to this moment, and it feels to me exactly right that before we mourn and condemn and perhaps even eulogize

Speaker 3 what was and what probably is not going to be, however the changes are, it's not going to be the same community before and after. It's right.

Speaker 3 if only to lay out what is being threatened now, what we could lose if the Australian Jewish community starts to shrink, starts to leave, or turn so fearful and inward that they lose some of that vitality.

Speaker 3 So my first trip to the Australian Jewish community was in 1986. It was actually the first lecture tour that I've ever done.
Wow. And it was there.

Speaker 3 I was invited by the Australian Union of Jewish Students. And

Speaker 3 I had no idea. What do you do? What do you do on a lecture tour? What do you say?

Speaker 3 And they were just the greatest kids. Of course, those kids are now the elders of the Australian Jewish community.
But

Speaker 3 what I loved about them was this

Speaker 3 very interesting combination. of, on the one hand, they reminded me of American Jews because they felt completely comfortable in their Australian skin.

Speaker 3 They didn't have fears and neuroses about their place in Australian society like American Jews. But they also reminded me of Israelis because most of them were second generation children of survivors.

Speaker 3 And there was no place in the diaspora that I felt more at home in than Australian Jewry because there's no other Jewish community that has a proportionally larger percentage of survivor families than Australia.

Speaker 3 And that also accounts, I think, for the strength and extraordinary vitality of the community that you were referring to.

Speaker 3 There's something about the way in which the community not only carries the Holocaust, but it also to some extent carries the pre-Holocaust Jewish life.

Speaker 3 So for example, Sydney is where the Hungarian Jews live. That's my tribe is in Sydney.
Melbourne is where the Polish Jews settled. And this is an ironclad rule of the community.

Speaker 3 If you're Hungarian, you ended up in Sydney. Polish Jews ended up in Melbourne.
And

Speaker 3 Australia was like the last place in the world where there still was a small branch of the Jewish socialist labor bund, which just stopped existing after the Holocaust.

Speaker 3 It continued to exist for a while in Australia. Europe just moved.

Speaker 3 Yes, and there was something that was both charming and touching, but also gave Australian Jewry, I think, a tremendous shot in the arm. And at the same time, this is a very old community.

Speaker 3 The first Jews came with the first convicts. The first convict ships, there were Jews.

Speaker 3 And so you have this deeply rooted community in their national experience, along with this infusion of deep Jewish commitment, which was then reinforced by successive waves of Jews leaving South Africa and moving to Australia, leaving Russia and Ukraine.

Speaker 3 So you've had this tremendous infusion of Jews coming from very strong Jewish experiences

Speaker 3 and then taking advantage of the openness and welcome of Australia.

Speaker 3 And so that brings us to this moment. So, first I'll thank you for that.
And it's interesting. Australia is also one of the favorite places for Israelis if they want to leave Israel to go to Israel.

Speaker 3 Because it's the end of the world, and supposedly that's where you go to get away from our Jewish problems.

Speaker 3 And to our friends in Australia, not just our listeners, but our friends, our first is just a desire to hug you and to be with you. But as you heard of this attack in Bondai Yossi,

Speaker 3 what did it make you feel?

Speaker 3 Rage.

Speaker 3 Not even against the gunmen. The gunmen, I almost relate to them as a force of nature.
It's like a storm, an indifferent storm. I don't think about them.
I don't care about them.

Speaker 3 I felt rage toward all of those who over the last two years have turned Israel and its Jewish supporters, which is to say the Australian Jewish community, into criminals.

Speaker 3 that repeated every lie and half-truth and distortion

Speaker 3 and turned us into a genocidal Nazi-like country.

Speaker 3 And so, yes, if we are Nazis, then diaspora Jews who support us are pro-Nazi. They're fair game.

Speaker 3 And so all those now who condemn and express their solidarity and sympathy and condolences, it makes me physically ill. There was a statement that came out from the Association of Imams in Australia.

Speaker 3 Didn't mention the word Jew.

Speaker 3 They were offering their condolences. They opposed terrorism.
How many of those Imams helped contribute to the atmosphere that made this massacre possible?

Speaker 3 And so I thought about all of those people around the world. I thought about those in the Jewish community who have repeated the lies, amplified them, legitimized them.

Speaker 3 And I felt blind rage. How about you, Danil? So, first, I appreciate that, Yossi, because we're different people.

Speaker 3 It's not my language, but I think we do have to look at the consequences of vilification. You know, so often we speak about is anti-Zionism the same as anti-Semitism?

Speaker 3 All of that, you know, we move ourselves deeply with our fine distinctions, you know, and, you know, and we maintain whatever narrative is critical to us.

Speaker 3 But when a certain language becomes so vitriolic

Speaker 3 and where almost everything that Israel does is a crime,

Speaker 3 everything,

Speaker 3 there's going to be consequences. There's going to be a legitimacy for

Speaker 3 the evil which exists to emerge.

Speaker 3 And that evil is there, but it needs an environment which legitimizes it, which gives it the 5% of courage that it needs to go from being a sentiment into being an action.

Speaker 3 And I would never say this on my own. And listening to you is very important for me.

Speaker 3 It is. I wouldn't say it on my own.
I wouldn't get to that because I move in another direction too quickly.

Speaker 3 And I have to tell you, in that sense, I think you're more right than I am. And I think there has to be a conversation about the language and the environment within which we're living.

Speaker 3 And it's not about whether the person is an anti-Semite and, oh, I have a good friend. You know, I have such a good friend who's Jewish, so how could I be anti-Semitic? You know, it's not that.

Speaker 3 What are you creating? And I think, especially in smaller communities, you see the consequences of that.

Speaker 3 What you're really saying, Daniel, is that the whole conversation about whether anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism or not is irrelevant because the consequences are as deadly as if it were intentional anti-Semitism.

Speaker 3 See, I wouldn't go that far. I learned from you, but I can't become you.

Speaker 3 I'm trying. I'm trying.
I know. There's a lot of people who say, if only you could be more Yossi.
You know, I get that. I love my children.
I get the idea. Panil, I love the podcast.

Speaker 3 Yossi's always right. Thank you for sharing.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 Yossi's right. You know, I love you, but I have to tell you, it's, you know, I agree with Yossi more.
When my wife says that, I get really, it's like,

Speaker 3 then I get like, you know, but I don't believe it doesn't matter. I think it matters very much.
As I am slowly, with your help, beginning to try to develop for myself

Speaker 3 thoughts on anti-Semitism, some things that I haven't thought about, I refuse to think about. But the world doesn't let me.
And being in conversation with you is teaching me.

Speaker 3 And I'm learning, but I'm not becoming Daniel. But it makes a big difference because the minute somebody is an anti-Semite,

Speaker 3 at least as it's supposed to be, is that when someone is an anti-Semite, you don't say they're an anti-Semite, but

Speaker 3 this person is an anti-Semite, but they're going to help lower the cost of living. in my city.

Speaker 3 It's like anti-Semitism is not one of those, but once it's supposed to be a term that ends a conversation.

Speaker 3 Just like, by the way, a misogynist. You you don't say they're a misogynist, but they're really good on the economy or the environment.

Speaker 3 There are moral terms or representations of profound, deep, destructive moral corruption that we don't add the word but to.

Speaker 3 So it does make a difference, but it means that our response to it

Speaker 3 is not about the condemnation of the person in terms that they don't see themselves, but it doesn't mean it's any less dangerous. And we as a community have to respond accordingly.

Speaker 3 So I would still want to maintain

Speaker 3 such an important conversation. And really, this is a bit of a tangent from what we intend to speak about, which is Australia.
But maybe it's not a tangent.

Speaker 3 Because thinking, for example, about Mamdani

Speaker 3 and the whole conversation of is he an anti-Semite or isn't he an anti-Semite?

Speaker 3 And what you just said helped clarify for me why I felt that it doesn't matter whether he is or not, because he has contributed to precisely this atmosphere in which someone is going to take this one step farther than he intended.

Speaker 3 When you say globalized

Speaker 3 to attack,

Speaker 3 some of his best friends are Jews.

Speaker 3 He doesn't intend to make New York dangerous for Jews. Yes, but some of his best friends are Jews and some of his best friends are potential terrorists.

Speaker 3 And so when you come down to that, he is a clear danger to Jewish well-being, not because he's going to advocate violence, but again, because he is an active contributor to the atmosphere that makes it possible to kill Jews because of Zionism.

Speaker 2 One of the most enduring strengths of the Jewish people is our instinct to take responsibility for one another. It's a guiding principle of the Jewish Communal Fund.

Speaker 2 For more than 50 years, the Jewish Communal Fund has been a home for Jewish philanthropy, making it easy, impactful, and tax-smart to give.

Speaker 2 Recently, JCF fundholders granted over $1 billion to a wide range of 501c3 charities in a single year, much of it going to Jewish causes, day school scholarships and food pantries, emergency aid for Israel, and programs fighting anti-Semitism here at home.

Speaker 2 A JCF donor-advised fund lets you contribute appreciated assets, take your deduction this year, and direct support when it's needed most, whether that's rebuilding a community in Israel or strengthening Jewish education in New York.

Speaker 2 When you give through JCF, you're investing in Jewish life.

Speaker 2 To learn more about opening your fund by December 31st to lock in 2025's tax advantages, follow the link in the show notes or go to jcfny.org, the Jewish Communal Fund, where giving back means building the Jewish future.

Speaker 3 I want to go to what I felt when I heard as I woke up very early that morning. I was in Connecticut.

Speaker 3 Today I'm in Washington. This afternoon I'm in Detroit.
Tomorrow I'm in San Francisco. I'm in America.
I'm not in Israel.

Speaker 3 And I experienced it. as a Jew who's living outside of Israel.

Speaker 3 I was at a conference run by the Hartman Institute, and we had a security guard.

Speaker 3 Now, the security guard in the middle of a hotel in the middle of Greenwich, Connecticut, we have a security guard at the Institute all the time. But it just felt different.
Was this the first time?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 3 No, we had started after October 7th. You have to.
But I felt it. As you know, my immediate response wasn't rage.
My immediate response was sadness.

Speaker 3 Sadness for the Australian Jewish community that I know, that I've come to know, that I've come to love and respect so many great people.

Speaker 3 My people are suffering. It was a sadness and a mourning, not at the Australian environment, but at the experience of this level of horror.

Speaker 3 I felt a deep sadness that this is now a normative part of Jewish life.

Speaker 3 This is what we have to carry. We have to carry it.
We have to carry that we're walking in the midst of a normal life. We're sending our kids to schools.

Speaker 3 We're lighting Hanukkah and Norahs, that we're celebrating our Judaism. But there's people who want to kill us.
That that factor is a part of our life. I spend so much of my life trying to deny.

Speaker 3 Now, it's interesting, in Israel, it's the opposite. I live with a constant feeling that somebody wants to kill me, personally.
Or you carry a gun. That's why I carry a gun.

Speaker 3 And as I watched, excuse my French, and I don't care if this is, I'm making a mistake, that son of a bitch

Speaker 3 sitting there on that bridge, each time he shoots and he pulls back again and reloads over and over again as he's talking, who's he targeting?

Speaker 3 He's hunting Jews.

Speaker 3 Maybe there I felt a little rage. You'll see.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm going to give you that. Just watching him.
I'll tell you, Daniel, any Jew who uses the language of hunting Jews is skirting rage.

Speaker 3 Okay, I got to admit, it did, but it wasn't my dominant experience because I wasn't thinking as much about the Australian government, the prime minister, and all of the above.

Speaker 3 You know, maybe it's also, you know, Netanyahu, again, your favorite punching bag, when he said, all of this happened because you recognized a Palestinian state. See, you didn't say that.

Speaker 3 You said something completely different, guys.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, no, I thought that was ludicrous. Ludicrous.
You weren't saying, okay, this is a moment for me to score some political game.

Speaker 3 You were talking about a serious challenge of how we look at a conversation outside of Israel and what are the dangers and what are the lines. And the line can't be, are you personally an anti-Semite?

Speaker 3 You're saying we need different lines. And I think it's really important for us to learn from what you said.
So part of me, like, I saw that, like, really, at this moment, this is what you're doing.

Speaker 3 But in Israel, I felt that this event would have been over in a minute.

Speaker 3 And the brave, I believe his name is Ahmed Al-Ahmad, watching him, you know, you couldn't couldn't script the complexity of the conversation of who is coming to save us.

Speaker 3 And you watch him and you see him. And it's just the environment, the instability, the fear.
And so it's true, I live in Israel and somebody wants to kill me.

Speaker 3 But because I walk around with a gun, you know, I feel that I have this more or less under control most of the time, as long as there's not an intifada, first intifada, second intifada.

Speaker 3 And we just stopped calling them other things. But, you know, there's missiles and there's enemies.

Speaker 3 So, in a deep sense, we're crazy, but I'm sure every community, and I'm sure the Australian Jewish community as well, is going to create its own myths of stability.

Speaker 3 You know, now if we triple our police, and we have, you know, there's ways in which, as human beings, we find a way to return to life.

Speaker 3 And the question is, you hinted to it, and I want to get to that, is what does this mean for the future life of the community?

Speaker 3 But I felt that Jewish life has to live with this level of vulnerability again. And I think we lived with the myth that we we didn't.

Speaker 3 And I think part of the vitality and the contribution of World Jewry and all the little communities around the world to Judaism, not to Israel, to Judaism, was dependent on their ability to build something beautiful and powerful and ignore their vulnerability.

Speaker 3 And I felt a deep sense of sadness that, you know, I felt very vulnerable. in Greenwich, Connecticut.
This trip in America, I feel more vulnerable. I do.

Speaker 3 I feel personally more vulnerable without the myth of stability that my gun gives me. And I felt like I was a diaspora Jew.

Speaker 3 I was a diaspora Jew experiencing this. And I felt sad.
I mourned that this is how we have to live in the world because we're going to continue to live in the world.

Speaker 3 But this is just going to be part of our story.

Speaker 3 In thinking about diaspora vulnerability,

Speaker 3 we need to be more precise

Speaker 3 because

Speaker 3 what we're really talking about was the sense of immunity, post-Holocaust immunity, that the English-speaking diaspora that's correct.

Speaker 3 Good. And the Western European Jewish communities lost their feeling of immunity from physical violence in the early 80s.

Speaker 3 With the First Lebanon War, there was a wave of terror attacks, and they never recovered from that. France and all throughout Western Europe.
And

Speaker 3 Latin American Jewry lost its feeling of immunity from violence in the 90s with the back-to-back terror attacks, first against the Israeli embassy, then against the Argentinian Jewish community's headquarters in Buenos Aires.

Speaker 3 So where you still had a feeling of immunity from physical danger was the English-speaking diaspora. Yes, of course, there was the Pittsburgh massacre, but we all saw that as an anomaly.

Speaker 3 And that was the shock of it. And the Jewish community recovered.
Yes, it increased security in Jewish institutions.

Speaker 3 But there still was the feeling that that level of threat is not really going to come to Jewish communities in the English-speaking diaspora.

Speaker 3 The shock of October 7th was that the English-speaking diaspora lost its immunity from physical threat.

Speaker 3 And we're seeing it successively happen in one part of the English-speaking diaspora after another.

Speaker 3 And it happened in Manchester on Yom Kippur. Two Jews murdered outside the synagogue.
There have been violent attacks in Canada. And

Speaker 3 this is by far the worst of any of the violent attacks. And to happen in Australia.
You know, when you said earlier that Australia was the place of choice for Israelis to get away from it all.

Speaker 3 Really, Australia, end of the world, for it to happen there, you know, this is where I connected to your sadness. It's over.
What's over is, first of all, the feeling of immunity.

Speaker 3 The post-Holocaust era is now definitively over.

Speaker 3 And the question for me is, what else might be over? This is where my post-Holocaust mindset kicks in.

Speaker 3 And when I listen to Australian Jews being interviewed in the media after the massacre, I know what they're thinking. And what they're thinking is not only is the immunity over, that's clear,

Speaker 3 but is it possible really for us to continue having the Jewish life that we had until now? And maybe it's over in Australia. I spoke to a Jewish leader in England.
I won't say his name.

Speaker 3 A very sober man.

Speaker 3 One of the most thoughtful leaders that I know in the Jewish world.

Speaker 3 And he said to me, he wakes up in the morning and asks himself, is this the day when I should tell my community that it's time to pack?

Speaker 3 And he reassured me. He said, we're not there yet.
He says, I know we're not there yet, but I'm asking the question.

Speaker 3 And I think that what has changed all over the diaspora, maybe not in American Jewry,

Speaker 3 but in the rest of the more vulnerable smaller Jewish communities around the world. post-Sydney, there's the question of,

Speaker 3 is it time?

Speaker 3 And if it is time, or if the time is coming, what do I do? Where do I go?

Speaker 3 You know, I hear you.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I don't think in those terms whatsoever, Yossi.

Speaker 3 But I do know and admit that

Speaker 3 not to have that conversation. or not to assume that that conversation is part of our life would also be foolish.

Speaker 3 This is like I would think would be the flaw. If I was living in Australia, would I leave at this moment? And I could give an answer.
What would your answer be? My answer would be maybe.

Speaker 3 But I'm not living in Australia.

Speaker 3 After October 7th in Israel, did I say maybe I should leave? Not for a second.

Speaker 3 Not for an iota of a second.

Speaker 3 So it's very easy from outside, And you were quoting someone from inside, but I'm not discounting. I'm just saying where I vary slightly from you.

Speaker 3 And I'm sure every responsible family, everybody with children, asks themselves, in what world do I want to raise my children?

Speaker 3 And part of the problem is I don't know if there's anywhere.

Speaker 3 If we don't have this myth of stability anywhere, that changes that conversation. But I think when you're invested in a community, From the outside, you could say, oh, it's over.
You know, it's over.

Speaker 3 When you're there,

Speaker 3 you don't want to be, you know, the memory of the Jew who said, don't worry, it's going to be fine.

Speaker 3 But I don't like to over-exaggerate Holocaust language because at the end of the day, there's a difference between government-sponsored anti-Semitism and, as you said from the beginning, these individuals who are proliferating throughout our communities, They're there, and you know they're there, and they're a given.

Speaker 3 And when, you know, day after day, we're watching the reports of the Prime Minister, and then now I'm learning that there's the governor of, I forget, of South Wales.

Speaker 3 I'm not saying it correctly, and I apologize, but like the government, the institutions are standing and saying, This is not us.

Speaker 3 Now, whether the Prime Minister has any credibility or not, I appreciate that. You know, like I hate it when all of a sudden people, you know, you stand with the community when we're being killed.

Speaker 3 You know, I want you, there's something has to happen.

Speaker 3 You have to hear the importance of Israel and Zionism to our jewishness this is not you know a loyalty like you're not hearing us and now when we die now you see us i hate it when people see us when we're dead that's my father's torah when he hated when dignitaries would visit israel and see yeah go to yad vashem like here it is i i'm building a new life and you're coming to see me in yad vashem like that's where we get solidarity that makes me rage.

Speaker 3 You know what? You really sounded like your father there.

Speaker 3 I have heard him. I just feel.
You've heard him. But like what I feel that that as we talk about this, and, you know, our people have benefited tremendously.
Judaism is not a Judaism of Israel.

Speaker 3 It's a Judaism of Israel and a Judaism of North America and a Judaism of South America and France and Europe and Australia. There's so much creativity and so many unique features.

Speaker 3 that when you're invested in building it, when you realize you've created something special,

Speaker 3 the option of leaving, there there is always an option to leave, but the price of leaving.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I don't want to get to the clichés, and I know it's very cliché, but, you know, I'm a stiff-necked people. Like, I don't want them to win.

Speaker 3 And I'm not saying Australian Jewish community, you know, stand up, all these clichés, we're going to light the candle and the light is going to overcome the darkness. And I'm mourning.

Speaker 3 I appreciate that they're frightened. They're frightened.

Speaker 3 But there is a price to the option of leaving that only the person in the community itself who knows the gift that they've created for jewish life today who knows how beautiful their life is

Speaker 3 i i i think that's that has to be put into the equation i think look you know i would never tell anyone that they have to leave and have to come to israel i'm a zionist but i'm also a diasporist

Speaker 3 and There's a beautiful expression that Jews used to use to refer to ourselves, Amolam. Now, Amolam means two things.

Speaker 3 It means, and this is the classical way in which Jews understood it, the eternal people.

Speaker 3 But Olam also means literally world, the people of the world.

Speaker 3 And the fact that we have a diaspora, that there are Jewish communities all over the world, has immeasurably enriched my personal Jewish life.

Speaker 3 To know that wherever I travel, there's likely to be some Jewish community has been one of the great joys of being Jewish, with at the same time enjoying the security of having a homeland.

Speaker 3 So in that sense, we have lived in the richest Jewish time in our history.

Speaker 3 At the same time, though,

Speaker 3 I don't think that the question to leave or to stay that's playing out for many Jews today, not only in Australia, but all over the more vulnerable parts of the diaspora, is about physical safety alone.

Speaker 3 I think it's about dignity and about psychological safety. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 And you touched on this at the beginning, Daniil,

Speaker 3 of suddenly being in the diaspora, experiencing Australia, and knowing I have to depend on someone else to protect me.

Speaker 3 And the rage that you're hearing in the Australian Jewish community and you hear it in Canada and you hear it in England, the same language is you, the people we trusted, the government, the police, you've betrayed us.

Speaker 3 You haven't listened. You're supposed to protect us.

Speaker 3 Now, when you go through that experience and you have the alternative of a place where Jews are protecting themselves, even though it is actually more physically dangerous to be a Jew in Israel than any other place in the world, the odds are of getting killed as a Jew here are much greater than they are anywhere else.

Speaker 3 Nevertheless, we as a collective have the dignity of protecting ourselves and we have the psychological security.

Speaker 3 We may be the most insecure physically, but we are actually the strongest Jewish community in the world psychologically.

Speaker 3 And that, I think, is something that a lot of Jews post-Sydney are asking themselves.

Speaker 3 I would just, as we bring this to a conclusion, I would just add that part of the insanity of Israelis is their myth of stability, of security, psychological. But I grant you that it does.

Speaker 3 And I'm a Zionist who has chosen to live in Israel in no small measure because of that. That's not the only reason.
Daniel, you are so much of a Zionist that you made Aliyah twice.

Speaker 3 Twice, that's exactly correct. And that's part of the story.
And according to our tradition, God gave our Torah at Sinai.

Speaker 3 And the most important part of our tradition is not who gave us the Torah, but where did it go to.

Speaker 3 And it came down to earth.

Speaker 3 And in Jewish history, coming down to earth was not just coming down to a people sovereign living in their homeland. It came down to a people who lived all over the world.

Speaker 3 And part of the beauty and greatness of our religious tradition is that we didn't just create ghettos and survive the environment within which we lived.

Speaker 3 And that was always the test of Jewish seriousness. But in reality, we learnt and our tradition became greater and deeper and richer because we had people who we were talking to.

Speaker 3 We had societies and cultures and values and sensibilities that entered into our tradition. So I also, I don't tell people to move and I don't tell people to stay.
Everybody has to make their choice.

Speaker 3 But I know that who we are as Jews in the world, that the gift of Judaism, part of that gift is the gift that the Australian Jewish community has given us and what they've created. They are a light.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 as every community learns and enriches that tapestry. So my sadness is that we have to live with that insecurity.
And it's not just psychological.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 I want Israel as a center of Jewish life. But I love Israel.
in which the Jewish people have many homes.

Speaker 3 And who we are as a people and who we are as a tradition has grown and been enriched by it and so to my friends in australia and to all jews we mourn with you we hug you we're there in whatever way we can but in many ways this is yours you're going to heal and you're going to work and you know the price

Speaker 3 the price because you know what the beauty and depth of what you created any truly last words yossi

Speaker 3 just to echo what you've just said to send love and an embrace to the Jewish community in Australia and to Jews all over the world who are grieving and wounded and afraid.

Speaker 3 Yossi, thank you very, very much.

Speaker 2 That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members-only show, Inside Call Me Back.

Speaker 2 Inside Call Me Back is where Nadavayal, Amit Segel, and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling.

Speaker 2 To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arcmedia.org. That's A-R-Kmedia.org.
Call Me Back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar.

Speaker 2 Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn.
Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our associate producer is Maya Rockoff.

Speaker 2 Community management by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo.
Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.