Franklin Foer on why fatalism isn't a strategy for American Jews | Unholy Converstions

[00:00:03][music] >> It's Unholy. I'm Jonathan Freedland in London. And I'm Yair Lapid in Tel Aviv.

[00:00:10]Unholy two Jews on the news, the latest of our Tuesday conversations and we bring you a dialogue with really one of the most interesting observers and thinkers about the Jewish world, particularly the Jewish world in America.

[00:00:23]Franklin Foer is a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine. He is a biographer of Joe Biden, the author of the acclaimed book How Soccer Explains the World.

[00:00:34]We'll talk more about that, I think. And currently work on a history of the golden age of Jewish America, prompted in part by a landmark essay he wrote for The Atlantic just around 2 years ago arguing that that golden age was ending.

[00:00:49]Frank Foer, welcome to Unholy. Such an honor to be here. Thank you.

[00:00:54]I was going to say finally, but I didn't want to be too Jewish justice.

[00:00:57]>> I said a shehechiyanu before I came on, so >> [laughter] >> No, finally is right. I was going to get into a little Talmudic disquisition on whether it should be how football explains the world, how soccer explains the world. Frank and I have both been saying multiple shehechiyanus for the victory of Arsenal. It's our shared team, but we're not going to do that.

[00:01:15]Instead, we are going to come on to talk about about Jewish America and all the ideas you have on that. And the excuse is that May is Jewish American Heritage Month.

[00:01:29]It's drawing to a close, but I thought it would be useful if we go back to that landmark essay of yours because I don't want to do an injustice to that essay of 2 years ago. Can you, for people who are coming to this new or, you know, it's been a couple of years, can you refresh their memories with what you are essentially meaning when you talk about the golden age and why you argued it was now coming to an end?

[00:01:55]Right. So, after World War II, there was this incredible moment where Jews had been on the outs American Jews had been systematically excluded from many of the institutions of the American elites. And then after World War there was uh this magical confluence of events where Jews went from the being the outs to being on the ins and we were suddenly admitted into the inner sanctums of academia of American culture and ultimately of American politics. And as Jews entered those elite spaces, they brought with them their anxieties, their hopes, their dreams about America at a moment when America was redefining itself. So, there was a vision of freedom. There was a vision of American democracy which Jews were the co-authors of. American Jews were the co-authors of. And that that vision was something that I think allowed America to prosper and it allowed American Jews to prosper. And when I went to college in the 1990s, it was it was just completely common unexamined fact that a third of the classes of elite universities were Jewish. That when you flipped on primetime television, it was just an unexamined fact that a lot of the sitcoms and dramas you know, it had prominent Jewish characters who were acting out Jewish anxieties and in Jewish dreams and that this was just kind of part a staple of American popular culture. And then when we got to this century for a whole variety of reasons, anti-Semitism was just one of them. Um that that American Jewish dream came not quite crashing down. It just started to crumble I think pretty slowly. And then after October 7th, it started to feel like a more desperate collapse and the reason that what what happened after October 7th hit American Jews with such a walloping gobsmacking force is that there were these spaces whether it was the university, whether it was the Democratic Party that had felt like intimate homes for American Jewry and then suddenly there was a sense that they were no longer homes. That in the late 20th century, I have a friend who read my article who said, you know, what we were saying essentially is like to use a sporting metaphor is that 20 late 20th century American life was a home game for American Jews and then suddenly it feels like we're playing in a way game.

[00:04:44]And you're now working on a book um the same in the same vein.

[00:04:48]Could you tell us if I mean what kind of your process since then since publishing this and of course it heightened debate around it.

[00:04:57]Are you more and more convinced of what you were saying?

[00:05:00]I think I probably I I think I may have underestimated the extent of the problem when I wrote the piece. I wrote the piece in the months that followed October 7th and I think that there was maybe even a wishful sense that that flowed through the the that essay that I certainly harbored in my heart that thing that the tide would shift that everything would reverse that once the war was over things would if not revert to some sort of status quo that existed before October 7th but that there would be some sort of subsiding of the tide and I don't think that that's been the case. I think that I probably um failed to to predict the way in which on the right this this this damn would have burst. I mean I obviously knew that there were these pockets of the internet where anti-Semitism was festering. I knew Nick Fuentes existed. I knew Tucker Carlson existed. I knew Candace Owens existed, but I had no idea that their anti-Semitism would prove to be such a potent business model. And we look at the way in which Candace Owens has kind of risen in Ben Shapiro's empire apparently having problems sustaining its its audience.

[00:06:21]And then just to look at the way in which it's it's continued to persist on the left and it has only I think hardened and grown where I I don't think I expected on October, you know, in the months that followed October 7th that um that taking some vow against AIPAC would be the primary litmus test that it would take to get elected in a democratic primary. And I'm I'm I can't tell you how concerned I am just about that fact because there are lots of debates that we can have about Israeli policy.

[00:06:57]But when AIPAC becomes the symbol of becomes becomes the debate. When it's not about you know, settlements and it's not about Lebanon and and it's about AIPAC, it's really about a cabal of Jewish billionaires who are throwing around their weight. And that is that is almost the most classical manifestation of anti-Semitism that I can think of. And in in every race that becomes the test now. And then so to be clear, when you see those people, those Democrats saying I take the vow and I'm not going to take any money from AIPAC or condemning AIPAC, are you are you suggesting they are furthering an anti-Semitic trope, even acting out of an anti-Semitic impulse?

[00:07:48]Is that you what you're arguing here?

[00:07:50]>> [sighs and gasps] >> You know, it's I I don't want to question their motives per se, but I think that we're when we talk about the atmosphere and we talk about the way in which um American society kind of probably subconsciously is drifting into a more anti-Semitic state, I think that that is in fact just further evidence of it. Part of the problem is is that our debates over Israel in the United States are not being conducted in a way that avoids all of the dangers of anti-Semitism.

[00:08:25]I mean, there's so much to ask about that and I I I rather not um create tension between two Jews because what we try and do here is to lower tensions, but I will want to quote you something >> what you guys do?

[00:08:35]Well, we'll try. So, trying. The The operative word was trying. So, um uh you know, this is something that Alex Edelman said to us on Unholy Life and we asked him about your piece. And he said, you know, this this is always been an embattled community, but look, there's so this is a golden age for Judaism. Look at Taffy Brodesser-Akner and look at Etgar Keret. And he said, there are you full of Jewish filmmakers and Jewish academics and you know, he continued on and on. I'm not going to quote the He's a comedic genius. I'm a news person. We should never attempt jokes, but he talked about how one of his ancestor who was murdered by Cossacks in the 19th century would have would to to meet his cousin today and the cousin would say, "Oh, it's so bad, you know, we feel uncomfortable in Columbia University." And the ancestor would say, "What? There are Jews at Columbia University?" So, what I'm trying to ask in this very long-winded way is, first of all, with perspective, because even in that piece you say, you know, obviously even the rise wasn't uninterrupted. So, if we have perspective, is there can we find some kind of optimism? And I assume you you would agree that there's still a lot of great things happening within this sort of Jewish community and culture and and other things.

[00:09:40]>> Yeah.

[00:09:42]That's a good joke about Columbia. I'm going to steal that. It goes on and on.

[00:09:45]There's that Jewish faculty. Oh, the state of Israel exists. You know, it's a long It's a long list.

[00:09:51]No, it's I think the way that I think about it is that um is about the It's about the relative prosperity. And that what we experienced in the late 20th century was this zenith that was really probably unlike anything in the history of the diaspora. That um our our sense of um our sense of belonging, our sense of well-being, our sense of being essential to the national story during those years was something that was unparalleled. And I don't think that that exists anymore.

[00:10:28]And and maybe you could argue we're like I played a role in spinning ourselves up after October 7th, but I think that the evidence is pretty abundant. And at least as far as safety is concerned, at least as far as sense of belonging is concerned. That doesn't mean that we're, you know, on trains to a concentration camp. It doesn't mean that pogroms are descending. It doesn't mean that the fundamental fact of the American state remains the same, which is that we live in a country where the state has never instigated a pogrom. The state has never been um never been a force behind discrimination.

[00:11:08]And certainly there are um still incredible outbursts of American Jewish creativity.

[00:11:17]But I think to to to assert that is to fail to to assert that uh without recognizing the larger narrative is to to discredit the larger narrative. I to drill down into the connection between this new set of feelings or accelerating set of feelings after October 7th, uh and the events of October 7th, the the the the uh uh the the killings uh the slaughter endured on that day, and also Israel's response to it. Because I'm guessing there will be, particularly perhaps non-Jewish listeners, who won't immediately see the connection. Because they'll say, "Hold on a minute. So, campuses and so on were getting more and more hostile to Israel. Why is that suddenly a a a trauma, a a change for American Jews?" And we you know, this would be the argument. And I'm partly just uh being devil's advocate here, but I want to hear how you answer it. They would say, "That's got nothing to do with the Jew in Brooklyn or in California or that you know, the beef of the people who are making the protest, etc., is about Israel. Why What does it say about American Jews that a new coldness or worse towards Israel is experienced as a new kind of discomfort for American Jews? Unpack for us how the two uh are interconnected."

[00:12:39]Yeah. Well, I think a lot of the argument and a lot of the political strategy that infuses the the the campus protest, the really the people who are organizing and driving the campus protest, and if you step back, a lot of the kind of whole post-Durban um mindset has been to drive um to to drive a stake between the good Jews and the bad Jews. So, i- if I could just step back, I think one of the the the one of the things that made the peace process so comforting to American Jews was that it was ultimately consistent with the the the the small-L liberal values that were so central to American Jewish self-conception. And so, when the peace process collapses and when begins the beginning of the strategy of turning Israel into a pariah state, that creates the sense that there there is no possibility of coexistence. And there changes within the Israeli polity that ultimately move away from a vision of coexistence, too. And so, as we move away from that vision, um one of the and as Israel becomes a pariah and there is this deliberate strategy of turning Israel into a pariah, there there's it becomes impossible to profess what I call I would call maybe normie Judaism in America because um Israel in in, you know, in most if you step onto a bema in in most conservative and reform synagogues in the United States, there is an Israeli flag there. And I think that the political strategy was to say you have to essentially to the the Jews who go to the synagogues, you have to take that Israeli flag down or you're a bad person. And that becomes the choice that This is why campuses become such a interesting and important microcosm because you're dealing with kids who are more pliable and you're dealing with a environment where it's easier to apply social pressure. And the idea that you couldn't join the Barnard gardening club without having to denounce renounce Zionism um is like was it was a fact the Columbia antisemitism task force report documents how this operated at Columbia was that Jews Jewish students were being forced to make a choice in order to belong socially and to participate in the civic life of their their university. And that is pressure that's not applied on other communities and is just singular to Israel and to me that is that is anti-Semitism.

[00:15:31]Yeah, you you mentioned even in that piece in 2024 how Zionism in certain circles Zionism just becomes synonymous for for Jew but particularly in campuses. I I don't know I think we've talked about this a lot on the podcast.

[00:15:42]Perhaps you've encountered this sort of satire skit from I I don't know why I'm trying to be the one quoting comedy in this conversation. This should never be left to me Jonathan. We know this but in any case so there's a skit on those genius satire program in this country called Eretz Nehederet. It's a wonderful country and there they two people two Jews meet at a at the airport in in Ben Gurion Airport. kind of quote unquote fleeing New York because of Mamdani saying I can't live there anymore the anti-Semitism like I'm coming in and I'm making aliyah and the other is fleeing the Israeli government saying I can't live here anymore and both of them kind of say sotto voce about the other you're crazy.

[00:16:18]And I wonder I guess to ask maybe even both of you this sort of tsunami of anti-Semitism that we've been seeing in the past couple of years is it in any way reversible?

[00:16:31]Well, I'm going to say I think it's very destabilizing and I think what you're describing in that skit is destabilization as opposed to kind of a rational way of navigating through the crisis and I think one of the things that I find most dismaying about American Jewish organizational land is that there is that the that the the spinning out of control the way in which you look at events that are objectively disconcerting and then react in a way that is that is so unstrategic and that that's not not thoughtful. That that to me is is a massive problem that the community has here that it's things are things you know we can see lots of things that are very uncomfortable and not good and and portentous and that we want to reverse.

[00:17:25]But to respond, um, um, to respond with anxiety and and emotion is understandable, but it it shouldn't be the the limits of our thinking. That it's possible to navigate, um, our politics and culture in a strategic sort of way, where we don't, um, hunker down and just kind of sit with our arms above our head and and pretend like we can't persuade the rest of the world. This to me is a fundamental failure.

[00:17:57]I think it's a failure of Israeli, uh, public diplomacy. I think it's a failure of American Jewish internal, uh, politicking, which is that persuasion is still possible. And, uh, that's the thing that I find, um, I've I I it gives me reason to be optimistic, that there are a lot of people who could kind of go either way here. And just to assume that they're all going to become Hamasniks is is is a type of fatalism that I think is itself dangerous.

[00:18:30]>> We had Bret Stephens on the podcast recently talk and and I pushed him on his state of the Jewish people address, in which he had essentially occupied the position you're you're you're critiquing there, which is the a slightly fatalistic position, which is "Anti-Semites are always going to hate.

[00:18:46]Haters are going to hate. There's nothing you can do to change them. So, get them out of, you know, don't let them live in your head and just do what you're going to do." And I put to Bret the concern I had, which is that you could you could, I'm not saying you would, but you could infer, somebody could infer from that an attitude to Israel, which is, "You know what, they're always going to criticize, so knock yourselves out. Israel can do what it likes in terms of settler violence and so on.

[00:19:10]Um, there's no problem that needs to be addressed here because uh and you know, any criticism is or not any criticism but anti-Semites are going to criticize you so just do what you do what you like. And that seemed to me to be the opposite path that should be taken because instead if you go with your logic which is persuasion and this is really to get to the to the nub of it, it wouldn't just be a matter of better uh, advocacy, better hasbara in the jargon, rather it would be saying let's alter the product, the thing we're selling meaning what you know, the Jewish people are collectively doing in the form of Israel has to alter and then if it does alter, we can start persuading again much as you were saying about during the period of the peace process. There were Israel got much more of a hearing.

[00:19:57]Then if that going with that logic, do you get the sense in the American Jewish community that there are takers for that approach or and I'm thinking partly of other diaspora communities these last two and a half three years have a lot of you know, American Jews sort of put their fingers in their ears or looked away from the reality of the war in Gaza cuz in a way it's just too or horrible to look at.

[00:20:23]And so they've got into saying, you know, whatever I'm hearing about this it can't be true rather than saying, you know, we need to change it and once we start changing it then we've got a story to tell. Right. Um you know, I I think I agree with you.

[00:20:36]Well, I certainly don't I don't agree with federalism. I think that federalism is a terrible political strategy. I think that um I mean, we could we can all agree that that kind of the way that at the very least the way that um parts of this Israeli government describe Israeli policy is essentially putting the worst possible face on what Israel is doing and that does have consequences for the diaspora and it has consequences for the way that American Jews think about themselves in the relationship to the state of Israel. And then there's the question of policy itself, which I do think that um you know, whether it's possible or not, maintaining a vision of coexistence is, I think in my view, it's like essential to the Israeli soul and essential to the Jewish soul and that um that the ways in which I mean, obviously October 7th kind of um was so psychically uh strategically um uh catastrophically damaging that it's not hard to understand why there would be a retreat from that, but I think as things stabilize that there is there is a necessity for having some long-term vision and the failure to have that long-term vision is you know, it is it is it does make everything more difficult. But when I'm talking about persuasion I guess I am talking about that, but I'm and I think that it's also I'm talking about how um just when you price in anti-Semitism into the world and just assume that everybody who disagrees with you is disagreeing from a place of bad faith hatred, you basically foreclose any possibility of changing minds. And I the the metaphor that I keep coming back to you um it's imprecise it but it's the Cold War. That when the communists started taking over Italy and France in the 19 in the late 1940s, what did the United States and the allies do? They they they said, you know, how do we stop these guys? Well, we need to make common cause with people we don't especially like. So, but we're going to end up working with socialist and democratic socialists who may hate America per se, but they hate the communists more. And it's in our long-term interest to find those sorts of allies. And I And I like it when I look at um American politics, you know, we have to make distinctions between people who have fallen into the hardcore pro-Hamas Hezbollah camp, which exist, and who managed to drive a lot of the campus protests and a lot of the politics around these questions. And we have to say that there are people in the middle who, you know, who don't believe in their hearts in kind of that that that that the people who committed the horrors of October 7th are martyrs or who don't believe that Hezbollah is worthy of celebration. But they're just not They're just not attuned. They're not smart about these issues. They're not educated. They're drifting because it is the fashions, because it is the times, because it is the convenient thing to do. We need to be able to have conversations with those people and to present the best possible case. That means that they don't end up falling into the more extreme camp or that they don't allow the extreme camp to have the run of the field.

[00:24:18]How does that persuasion work vis-a-vis anti-Semitism? I mean, how can you And obviously not everyone is born an anti-Semite. That's I hope is clear to But but or hope is true, rather. But how do you say, for example, that anti-Semitism is the beginning of a decline of a society or at the beginning of a decay of a I mean, how In other words, do you convince the non-Jews, if you can, that anti-Semitism is bad for them as well?

[00:24:45]There are a couple things. One is people don't understand what anti-Semitism is because we're stuck in um >> [snorts] >> this kind of rubric of of racism. And anti-semitism is different than conventional forms of racism. It's adjacent to it. It's it you know, broadly taxonomically it fits in it, but anti-semitism is an accusation of power.

[00:25:09]It's it's an it's it's a it's a conspiracy theory. And it's just astonishing to me how few educated people understand actually what anti-semitism is.

[00:25:23]Um and then secondly, I do think that we're stuck in this world where we're unfairly and and anti-semitically kind of um linked to um Israeli government policy in the minds of both anti-semites and non-anti-semites.

[00:25:39]And I think we have to find a way to um to to disentangle that into to navigate our way through that. Um I guess implicit in your question is the sense is like how when when somebody becomes an anti-semite, how deeply is that woven into the fabric of their souls?

[00:26:00]And obviously there are people who are um who are vehemently anti-semitic for whom that is a defining part of their worldview and the way that they um the way that they talk and describe political existence, social existence.

[00:26:17]And then I think there are a lot of people for whom it's this subconscious thing that they end up gravitating to where they don't even it's it's it's kind of a softer form of anti-semitism.

[00:26:31]And I don't think that those people are irredeemable. I think that they cuz they're not bad people. They're just people who've absorbed a bad idea. And they don't even understand that they've absorbed a bad idea. And I refuse to believe that those people are so far gone that that can't have a conversation with them. I think >> [sighs] >> I haven't given you a satisfying answer to this question, but but this is maybe my more satisfying >> the answer I've heard in a long time.

[00:27:00]Here's my more satisfying response, which is that >> [snorts] >> you know, to me if I go back and I look at the Israeli Declaration of Independence, if I go back and I look at all of the the long history of American Jewry, I think that there is a fundamental commitment to liberalism embodied in that document, embodied in the ethos of of our community. And what is small L liberalism? It is the faith that politics is a solution to our the problems that divide us. And if we stop having conversations with people who disagree with us, we're no longer prac- practicing politics, we're we're we're hunkering down and just kind of hoping for the best. And I look at I look at a lot of of of American Jewish politics, and certainly I look at the way that Israel moves around the world, it's kind of there's this sense like, well, screw it. Like, we're never going to persuade anybody.

[00:28:04]And that may be true 70, 80% of the time, but by giving up on that stance, you're not just squandering the 20% you're also um you're also disappearing from kind of I think a fundamental value.

[00:28:21]I think that's exactly what the exchange we had with Bret Stephens was in a way about that. It was about not abandoning that effort. Um but this point about liberalism, I want to get your read of the temperature of American Jewry. We've talked so much on the podcast about the generational divide. And that there is a younger uh generation who would now, the polling suggests this, define themselves even as anti-Zionists. They're the ones A lot of Jews are on those protests. They say Israel not in my name. We know all the the sentiments. Um and they often say, "We're doing this for Jewish reasons.

[00:28:56]We're doing this cuz of what you taught us, tikkun olam, the phrase repairing the world and particularly strong in the reform progressive Jewish movement. Uh you told us not to be bystanders to injustice. So, we're just acting on our Jewish upbringing, etc." So, we know a lot about that group. What I hear much less about is what I want to call the Jewish mainstream. It may mean older, you know, you can tell us about the generational point.

[00:29:18]Where are they? Where have they been?

[00:29:21]What have they been feeling these last two, three years? And I ask this because what I see around me in this community here is a lot of people who publicly want to uh you know, push back against those protesters.

[00:29:37]But privately are very unnerved by what they've seen these last three years and just could not work out what they felt about the death toll in Gaza. Some would approach it by saying, "Let's argue the numbers.

[00:29:49]It's not as many as they say."

[00:29:51]They didn't want to make the move their kids had made and say they denounce Israel. They wrestled with it. And I just don't get I I think that is rarely heard and discussed. But you have your finger on that pulse and I just would love to hear you talk about where that Jewish mainstream has what they've been going through these last two, three years.

[00:30:07]And there's another component of it which you didn't describe, which is that when they hear the criticisms of Israel, they feel as if it's being directed at them. And so, yes. There there's um you know, that's why it it sounds it it's kind of like in my bones, this group feels like when Israel is criticized by these groups or by by external actors, that there is anti-Semitism there, which I think makes it even more complicated to wrestle with whatever mixed feelings that they have.

[00:30:38]I mean, this is a group that I think falls back on um this argument in a it's like Bibi's got to go. Like that's that's like what you hear all the time. It's like that there's everything is kind of personalized and that's I think part of um which is kind of a little bit of a convenience, I think, in terms of the way that this is this is processed. Um >> [sighs] >> And also allows for a measure of of hope, right? That there is a better day around the corner if there is better political leadership in the country. And I I have to admit like that's I'm describing things that I kind of find myself invoking all the time to my to myself. And and also I do think that there is kind of pushing away of of of kind of Gaza not wanting to to kind of think or stare too hard. Um And and I think it is like I think people I think a lot of American Jewry is kind of just genuinely conflicted.

[00:31:41]Like their their love for Israel is real and it is deep and it is it's like it into it's like you can't can't dismiss it. And there is discomfort. I think it's it's pretty convenient and also um there's like this is an interesting psychological move where rather it's turn to to to the West Bank and to turn to settler violence and to kind of really focus on that because that's easier to it's easier to kind of contain, it's easier to critique, it's kind of the it's there's less less moral gray zone there.

[00:32:20]Um I think when when American a lot of normie American Jews think about Gaza, they're kind of in a moral gray zone.

[00:32:29]I like normie American Jews. Um I mean, I like the term.

[00:32:34]I'm I'm I'm turn this American Jews are great.

[00:32:37]We all love them.

[00:32:39]True, this is true. We're in agreement. So, I want to I do want to insist on the Jewish Heritage Month. Now, it's kind of to ask you of your top three is kind of cheating because, you know, when the piece that you published in the Atlantic there were so many pictures of people you could just, you know, choose from, but your three favorites because I can tell you Jonathan's and mine are the list we gave, but if you had to give your three favorite of the list Jewish Americans. Okay. Um >> No family members.

[00:33:09]>> [laughter] >> All right. So, I'm going to I'm going to give you one I'm going to start off with one character who you've never heard of before.

[00:33:18]Uh who um I just discovered relatively recently.

[00:33:24]Um his name is Alexander Pekelis and he um he was born in Odessa. His parents put him on a boat in 1918 so that he wouldn't get conscripted by whichever Russian government was in charge.

[00:33:38]He ended up wandering around without a passport through Central Europe in the 1920s, ends up in Italy, uh marries an Italian Jewish woman, becomes an important legal philosopher in Italy. Then 1938 Mussolini imposes his racial law. And so, if you're a Jew uh if you were if you're a naturalized Italian Jew, you were essentially your citizenship was revoked. And so, he and his family had to go had to flee the country and again, no passport, no home, no country.

[00:34:13]Eventually, they end up in New York City in 1940 after kind of the horror of that kind of odyssey.

[00:34:21]And even though he's he's he's in his 40s, he has to go back to law school um to kind of learn everything all over again so he can make a fresh start in the United States. And so, he's he's a genius. So, he gets into Columbia Law School.

[00:34:36]He ends up becoming the editor of Columbia Law Review in in the early 1940s, which is like a big deal because of anti-Semitism within the university and also the fact that he didn't really speak English when he came here and he becomes this kind of god in the Columbia uh law school world and they actually create a seat for him on the Columbia uh law law review um kind of even after he's gone because he was such a such a giant. And then he just has this kind of brief explosion where he's writing these brilliant essays and he goes to work for the American Jewish Congress, which was run by Rabbi Stephen Wise. And and he was kind of the Unlike the German Jews who ran the American Jewish Committee, this is very confusing this alphabet soup of American Jewry where we all have the same acronyms. AJC, it's kind of an intentional way of blurring the differences between them. But the American Jewish Congress was the one that was more committed to Zionism, that was more um in touch with the the Russian Jewish immigrants than the the haughty um up high Park Avenue German Jews. And so, uh you know, Rab I'm Rabbi Stephen Wise was best friends with Roosevelt and he failed. He failed to convince the um the the Roosevelt administration to take more decisive action as the Shoah was unfolding. So, after the war, the American Jewish Congress is kind of like we can't we can't allow that to happen again. We have to take our fate into our own hands, which is almost as American version of Zionism.

[00:36:12]And so, they begin to hire a group of brilliant lawyers um to take on discrimination. And Bickel was the most brilliant of the bunch and he wrote essays which are now long forgotten and one of the wrote a bunch of them for the New Republic, which is a magazine I was once associated with. And wrote this manifesto called full equality in a free society. And you can't find it on the internet now, but I went back and I found this essay and I was like, oh my god, this is like the most brilliant robust statement of American Jewish liberalism. And it was all about agency.

[00:36:52]Which is another word that we haven't used in this discussion. Which was about how you take your fate in your own hands.

[00:36:58]And I think you talked about fatalism, that is the opposite of agency. And um basically he's like we we we Jews have been the objects of history and now we need to become its subjects. We need to become protagonists. And it became the basis for this massive fight against discrimination in all of its many forms and brilliantly articulated.

[00:37:22]He in 1947 went to his Zionist conference in Basel, Switzerland.

[00:37:29]And as the flight was coming back through Shannon in Ireland, crashed. And he died on the flight along with Alfred Dreyfus's grandson, who was also going to this this conference. And so for me he's kind of this this like long forgotten um person who just embodied so much about um American Jewry.

[00:37:54]So that would be number one. Sorry, I I just went on and on and on.

[00:37:57]>> No, I was just going to say that that's First of all, I'm going to place a good bet that that person is going to feature strongly in your new book.

[00:38:05]Uh I might it's my strong bet. But no, I think the fact that he's a legal scholar is really interesting because we've been asking listeners to nominate their own big three or top three Jewish Americans.

[00:38:14]And it's a may it's striking how many suggest people in the legal sphere.

[00:38:19]Right. So it's either Louis Brandeis, first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, it's Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you know, famously on the Supreme Court until her death.

[00:38:30]That's one cluster, and I wonder what you think of the fact that law features strongly in this conception of Jews in America. And then the other one is the number of Jews nominated on my desk.

[00:38:42]There we are, you're just showing us the the bust of Brandeis. That's fantastic that's on your desk.

[00:38:47]But the other thing which goes to another one of your passions, Frank, which is numbers of people nominating athletes, whether it's Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax, the baseball player who famously wouldn't play on Yom Kippur, Mark Spitz, the gold medal-winning Olympic swimmer.

[00:39:03]Lawyers and sportsmen, it's not what I would have expected, but what do you make of the fact that our listeners, a lot of them converge on those names?

[00:39:12]Well, I wouldn't I wouldn't have thought that they would associate it with greatness in quite that way. They would think that's just routine. So it interests me. But what do you think, Frank? Well, I think that, you know, what again, if we think about diaspora American diaspora Judaism and Zionism kind of as as cousins of one another, that what was a Zionist project about? It was like about proving that Jews kind of were not the effeminate bookish effete pale weaklings, and that you know, there's there're different ways to do that. You can have an army, or you can compete on the athletic field. And when Max Nordau had his vision of muscle Jews, like that was something that that that American Jews took in as well. And that you have figures like I mean, what makes Koufax and Greenberg so important is that they were they were both succeeding on the playing field, and at various moments they were asserting their their Jewishness. Even if they were thoroughly assimilated, they were still saying, you know what, there's there's still a way in which I'm going to I'm going to maintain my difference, and I'm going to proudly assert my difference, and that that took on a heroic dimension for a generation of American Jewry. That's what made them mythical characters.

[00:40:39]So, where who is your number two and three?

[00:40:41]So, I'm going to go in two two two radically different uh directions here.

[00:40:48]Uh I'm going to do Bob Dylan for number two.

[00:40:52]Okay. Nice.

[00:40:54]Good.

[00:40:54]>> Yeah, we like him. Cuz Dylan goes through his own experience of like assimilation and rejection. That it could the idea that he had to reinvent himself as Bob Dylan, even though he went to he went to Herzl Camp, like he grew up going to a Zionist summer camp.

[00:41:10]He he had a Bar Mitzvah, the the the biggest Bar Mitzvah in the history of Hibbing, Minnesota.

[00:41:17]Great fact.

[00:41:18]>> [laughter] >> Um and uh it and then kind of runs away from his Judi- Jewishness by changing his name to Bob Dylan. Um and in fact, uh becomes like Why does he become famous? He becomes famous because he's singing Scotch-Irish folk songs, which is kind of the least Jewish thing, if you know, in Lenny Bruce's kind of uh goyish-Jewish dichotomy. I can't think of anything more goyish than that. But in fact, like the folk scene in the United States was like a like a just a magnet for American Jews who were in search of trying to find their own authentic Americanism.

[00:41:55]And then there's this moment where um he ends up kind of some reporter basically discovers that he's actually Robert Bobby Zimmerman, uh who son of Abe and and Betty Zimmerman, um who who sold like dishwashers and and uh uh Frigidaires. And it causes this existential crisis for him. And I think that he had this moment where he was like, you know, I just need to be me.

[00:42:23]And when he has to be him, he can dispenses with a lot of the the Scotch-Irish folk songs. He goes electric. He starts to become kind of his true self. Granted, eventually he becomes a a shanda. Uh he he he and he becomes a born-again Christian. But then he ends up coming back. Uh kind of ish-ish. At least he dispenses with the the born-again Christianity. And you know, and I think he's I think he's probably much more comfortable. He doesn't talk about this, but I think he's probably much more comfortable with his Jewishness um now than when he was in the 1970s. And the writer of one of the I mean it's a it's a Hasbara song. I mean it's one of the most pro-Israel advocacy songs, "Neighborhood Bully."

[00:43:08]Um is a is is really, you know, it could be AIPAC talking points in that song. Um so he you know, that's after his slow train coming Christian journey. Okay. So Frank, we need your third choice.

[00:43:19]Okay. Um All right, I'm just going to say for my third, uh Abraham Joshua Heschel, who um I gets a little bit of a I I and I I'm doing this I'm improvising this on my feet here. Like I don't I didn't pick these three in advance. But I mean, I think his book on I think he's You didn't One of the things that could be said about American the golden age of American Jews is that it wasn't great for for Judaism, American Jew- Judaism. That um that part of the reason that America was so seductive was that Jews were free to be whoever they wanted to be, which meant that they ended up ditching traditional Judaism.

[00:44:04]And of course, like Abraham Joshua Heschel, descendant of uh great family of of scholars.

[00:44:12]I think he understood and decried some of the vacuousness of American Jewish life in a way that I think feels very prescient to me and and still kind of spot on.

[00:44:25]Um and I think that if I was to give anybody a book that explained kind of the majesty of Judaism I would start with his book on the Sabbath because it is the most beautiful eloquent ode to kind of the the the the very beating heart of what it means to be a Jew.

[00:44:51]This is you improvising?

[00:44:53]I'm I'm scared to think what it is when you're prepared when you come prepared for this question. That's a beautiful choice and it also responds to what is a again there was a dissenting note in some of the responses where people said what about you know religion and Judaism etc. you've now plugged that gap for us brilliantly.

[00:45:09]Frank for it has been an absolute delight having you on the podcast we we will have to have you back back on again again. I had a long list of other questions to ask you we got so into where our conversation we are going to have to have you back as soon as that book is finished or even before we will have you back to talk about it but for now thanks so much for coming on Unholy.

[00:45:29]It feels it it feels like I'm at home.

[00:45:31]So it's like the response to the alienation of the American Jews like I found my I'm in I'm in my Zion Unholy.

[00:45:37]So thank you. That is hands down the the nicest thing anyone has ever said to us.

[00:45:41]So thanks thank you so much.

[00:45:47]>> [music]