The Jewish Story: Purim 5779 – The Oldest Hatred, A Practical Analysis

you have enemies as Victor Hugo why it's the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea fame must have enemies as light must have gnats do not bother yourself about it disdain keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear while I'm trying to stay serene and see the clear horizon ahead because I'm not Mike Feuer and this is the Jewish story interlude analyzing before mates perform this week in amongst the many things that we're celebrating we're celebrating the novel foo Asha huge tabbouleh iagoo of the name of this or nay M we're celebrating the victory over our enemies you know and it's a little bit unique amongst all the moments of salvation that we've seen throughout the course of our history this victory was actually in our hands and we can and we should even seek the divine face that lies behind the mask of poram if you want send him in an email and I'll send you a connection to different ideas but right now I want to focus on what I see to be an essential message that our sages wanted to impart by presenting us with a megillah' as a story of political intrigue and that is this fight is on our hands Haman is the enemy he's the sort of opposite of Mordecai and Esther in the Megillah and we'll look soon enough and his particular beef with M Israel and it's important actually to focus on its worst because just as our friends often define us so do our foes you know everybody agrees that you can know someone by the company they keep that I adventure to say that the opposite is true as well we choose our friends God willing as a reflection of the values and character traits that we hold most dear and our enemies choose us for the exact same reason and it might just be that the more aggressively they fight us the more essential the value which they're opposing and thus we have quite a bit to learn from a Haman's evil statement there in the third chapter the Megillah when he says the hot Rios there is a certain people scattered and dispersed amongst the other peoples in all the Robinson's of your realm whose laws are different than those of other people and who do not obey the Kings laws it is not in your Majesty's interest to tolerate them and before we parse these words let's just recall that Haman doesn't stand alone as Magilla says a hard Reema a laughter these things Deedle mamela cacabelos at aman been ham gotta higaki that the king ahaz lifted up he magnified Haman the son of ham Tata the agha guy and this line is there to clue us into the epic battle that underlies the local struggle the Esther and Mordecai are forced the way John Hammond because a GOG Haman's ancestor in this verse was the last king of I'm awake now who's Amma Lake that's a big discussion and a bit of it will come out in what follows but for those of you who don't know anything about the epic struggle between am Israel and I'm a lake down through the generations I'll just give you two foundations from our foundational text first is the portion that we read last week in the synagogue as the special Mitzvah there's a special commandment to not only remember what I like did but to wipe them off the face of the earth Zoho - a Solomonic remember what I Malik did to you but their potato hem me meets rhyme on the way when you're coming out from Egypt a shake or cabidela visa never only maha-rathah rayon who either came upon you on the way or tried to cool you down as we'll see in a second right any attack the weak that were coming from behind a flag yeah below yeah hello him and you were weary and worn out and he did not fear God now a lot of what I'm like is can be learned from the source I mean after all who would jump an Amish rail right after the Exodus and why right the Midrash which is bought by Rashi if you're familiar with the text tells us a sure Cahaba Derek who cooled you down along the way gives an image that imagine I'm Israel was like a boiling bath that nobody in their right mind would jump into we were on fire with God and the purpose of history come out of Egypt and this madman Amalie who had no personal stake in the question we weren't coming out to take his land jumped in that boiling bath and even though he himself was scorched forever he cooled it down so that everybody afterwards could take their turn meaning there was a point in our history coming out of Egypt when it was so apparent to not only ourselves with the world as a whole where we were coming from why we were leaving and what we were meant to do that the world might just have been filled with the light of God and along comes ambling and pours cold water on that excitement not only that but that sort of teaching phrase at the end there that I usually give a lawyer Elohim but you were sort of worn out and weary and didn't fear God poses a particular question which one does that apply to is it I'm awake not fearing God or I'm Israel not fearing God or both there's something in the essence of I'm awake they appear in our history at a time that we lose our faith in God and they represent what it is to live in a world without God and that leads me to the other texts you want to take a look at it it's in the 25th chapter of the book of a Meade bar and it's bilam the great prophet of the nations after he's gone through many iterations in his failed attempt to curse the Jews who finally opens his eyes and sees what history is all about and it says viennetta Malik and he saw more like we saw Mahalo for your money continued with his FEMEN said Rashid going Imam a lake Rock Rito are they evade right that that I'm like is there a she claim is the first of nations but his fate is to perish for ever now what does that mean race sheep going it could mean a lot of things but for our purposes and for this understanding of the oldest hatred this strange antagonism that the Jews seem to evoke in every society where we find ourselves then you can just know this that it means the raineesha green means that there's two ways in which the world can go there's Israel and there's a Malik that ah Malik is somehow the inverse of what it is were meant to do in the world Nats why by the way when we don't fear God we won't stand in the all of the divine presence well those who don't fear God rule the world two ways it can go and that's perhaps why God actually declares the war down through the generations between God and I'm awake because the reality is the question for our material is not why there's war between God and Hama lake why in general by-the-by is a question that lies above most of us pay grade and it rarely bears useful fruit I'm not really going to say why the hatred of the Jews is the oldest most pervasive and persistent hatred that humanity knows and by the way why making a stunning comeback right now I mean I have what to say about that but the real question is and the one that we have to embrace isn't why but what what can we learn from this hatred about our essential mission in the world and what can we do about that hatred that will get us back on track and of course there's also the how how do you feed I'm awake so sometimes in order to understand thing you've got to go to its roots and the roots of the hatred of amirul are somewhat hard to discern if you ask our sages you can open up the Gemara and Shabbat page 89 a and B and you'll see that they saw the roots of that hatred actually at Sinai Mount Sinai when we received the tour they say y'all are the Cena the almost a lump that a hatred came down and it's a little bit ambiguous what they mean that what came down with the Torah was either a hatred of the nations or the nations hatred of us and really as we'll see as this podcast goes on these are two sides of the same coin that the Jewish insistence on being different is something which both causes antagonism in the eyes of the world and something which causes within us an antagonism to others and furthermore that the tour of course isn't just about us being different it's an assertion that there is one God in the face of the whole idolatrous practice there's an idea born into the world at Sinai that there's a right and wrong way to be in the world that there one God and none like unto that God now that's within our tradition but if I look in the text in the so called extra-biblical portions the earliest reference I'm aware of of a somewhat deep-seated antagonism toward the Jews toward M Israel is actually found in a case of avid era I'm sure I said his name wrong but we're talking about four century before the Common Era Greek who tells a very interesting stories as an in ancient times a disease arose in Egypt and the common people ascribe their troubles to the workings of a divine agency and because they had many strangers of all sorts Wehling and their myths practicing different rites and religions and their own traditional observances in honor of the gods had fallen into disuse and what do people do when they suffer and there's a stranger in their myths well you guessed it they drove out the foreigners I mean it he goes on to say that the most outstanding an act of Monken banded together and as some say were cast ashore in Greece and certain other reasons this is part of the whole Greek origin story that sees their culture as rooted in Egypt but he says also the greater number were driven in what is now called Judea which is not far distant from Egypt was at that time utterly uninhabited the colony was headed he says by a man called Moshe outstanding both for his wisdom and his courage but get this the sacrifices that he established differ from those of other nations as does their way of living for as a result of their own expulsion from Egypt he introduced a kind of misanthropic an inhospitable way of life now this is the earliest characterization that I'm aware of of the Jews as intrinsically misanthropic and inhospitable now there's a more than a little bit of irony in this because here's a Greek labeling the Jews as inhospitable while the Greeks were well known to despise all barbarians and in fact that that sort of hatred of the lower cultures around them was something that they bequeathed to the Romans who of course were the inheritors of the Greek culture and the next great civilization that learned to hate us now if you've been a listener of the Jewish story for some time then you know that the Romans had their political beef with us and all fairness it wasn't without cause right it's what I call the insistence of um Israel to be the ended Jessel element of empire we would not bow knee to the foreign tyrant within our land but it turns out the Romans also had a fair measure of this Greek cultural hatred as well because if you look into the Roman historian Tacitus second century very important recorder of the events here in the Middle East right before he describes the Roman siege of Jerusalem in the first century he offers a brief account of Jewish history it's a mix of fact fiction and downright slander listen to what he says whatever their origin these observances are sanctioned by their antiquity the other practices of the Jews are sinister and revolting and have entrenched themselves by their very wickedness the rest of the world they confront with the hatred reserved for enemies they will not feed or intermarry with Gentiles though most lascivious people the Jews avoid sexual intercourse with women of alien race the jewish belief is paradoxical and degraded now we could wallow in the self satisfaction of knowing the world hates us but i want to note that there's an important message for all jews in this particular type of hatred which seems to be the oldest one that we can find whether it's the kumaras origin story at sinai or the greek or here in Tacitus by the way it's a hatred that maintained his energy right up to today and that is that the hatred of the Jews stems from the fact that we insist on being different as Haman said whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king loss now I believe that the Torah is our source code it's kind of the spiritual DNA of a mistrial and that means that even though we can argue from noun to Michele about what exactly the tort is where it came from and even what it's asking of us that in my eye is what it means to be a Jew is to struggle to make the Torah's vision real in the world and we have to embrace the fact that being separate is part of that mission right before giving the Torah Sinai in the bookish mode in the nineteenth chapter God cleared us Mamluk economy big boy kadosh right let a kingdom of priests or ministers as I like to say because there's an element of service in the word coin and Kadosh are holy people and the live a holy life means to live separate from much of what binds the rest of the world together but that separateness is meant to be symptomatic not essential and I think that that is a key element of the hatred that we've suffered ever since the Torah came down to Sinai what do I mean take the word in Hebrew for marriage get douching right it comes from the same word Kadosh but why well the toast was explained because when you get married you are devoted to your spouse now it's true that you're separate from all other women if you're married but your separateness from other women is not what makes you married to your wife but rather the inverse your devotion to your spouse is what you makes you separate from all other people the real meaning of Kadosh is devotion and if we want to succeed in defeating Amalek and not just in surviving in the world then standing separate from the world has to be in service and service in particular of our mission of redemption redemption by the way which applies to the whole world and as far as I can tell it was the combination of these two elements political and cultural stubbornness or the insistence on being the indigestible element of Empire and on being different that effectively built the hatred of Jews into the very base a greco-roman culture where it remains to this day ironically in history once the Roman occupation really began and the Jews were scattered in exile throughout their empire suddenly holding fast these so called misanthropic and in-hospital ways of life became the key to our cultural survival and frankly the keystone to any hope for fulfilling our mission of universal redemption and it's amazing can you hear him ins words there's a certain people scattered dispersed amongst all the other peoples and the province is a realm right which the Romans did to us whose laws are different from those of any other people which we had to hold fast to lest we disappear and who do not obey the Kings laws well that one frankly is just a lie and it's not in your Majesty's interests to tolerate them you know if emmonak wants to win then physically scattering us isn't enough our memory our story our very way of being has to be erased and so how convenient it is the opposition to the Jews was able to take on a new non-political form Joss is our political life was coming to an end so we went from being the indigent of Empire holding fast or in hospital and misanthropic ways and perhaps missing the boat in understanding that being separate was meant to be in service of our devotion to mission went right from that into being the obstinate refuse errs of salvation you know there's no fight like a family fight every child has to differentiate themselves and in the case of the birth of Christianity and the advent of what's called replacement theology these children actually needed to get rid of their parents not just walk away and in the story of the history between the Jews and the Christians there are a particular personality who really owns the credit for starting that fight and it would have to be Justin Martyr he was born around a hundred in the Common Era he was known as a early Christian apologist he came to Rome actually during the reign of Antoninus that's 138 to 161 for those you like numbers meaning he set up his school in Rome after the three Roman Jewish wars were over after this idea that the Jews were in de jessabelle and culturally repugnant had already been baked into Roman society and his ante Judaic writings had been called by some scholars the origin of Christian anti-semitism it's a new face he was the first to argue that the Romans were not responsible for the death of Jesus of Nazareth meaning that the Jews killed him but most importantly Justin Martyr appears to be the originator of the idea that the church is actually spiritual Israel that has replaced physical Israel as he says for the true spiritual Israel are we who have been led to God through their savior now in his eyes the suffering of the Jews is just because the church has replaced them and that Jesus has replaced the law and the Christians are fulfilling that which was given to the Jews and he wasn't alone in the coming generation Tertullian would argue that the problem wasn't the God of the Jews or the Texas news the problem was the Jews themselves and this type of hatred based on the need to eliminate the Jews in order to replace us arguably reached its peak in John Chrysostom in the 4th century use the Archbishop of Constantinople you know his big issue was to try to stop the Christians from going to synagogue on Saturday and taking communion on Sunday it's kind of a spiritual hedging of the bets that apparently was still quite common in the 4th century and so he delivered a series of eight sermons on the wickedness of the judean yet this do you see that demons dwell in their souls and that these demons are more dangerous than the ones of old and this is very reasonable in the old days the Jews acted in piously toward the prophets now they outraged the master of prophets notice refusing salvation tell me this he says do you not shudder to come into the same place with men possessed who have so many unclean spirits who have been reared amid slaughter and bloodshed you know it's interesting then in his sermons crisis thumb actually pulls his characterizations of the Jews from proof text that he found in the Bible and not from his experience in 4th century Antioch and that's because he's really beginning a path that will set itself in stone during the Middle Ages the Jews are rapidly becoming an idea that needed to be subdued rather than just the people that needed to be conquered or even eliminated and notice what they are as unclean spirits there are whole studies we could go on hours and hours characterizing how the Jew becomes the Anti salivation becomes the devil himself this source of evil demonic possession you name it within early Christian culture but it's not the whole story it's not enough just to say because we're the OPP's and it refuses of salvation that they hate us right because we spoken elsewhere back in season one about what's known as the Witness doctrine an oxen of Hippo provides a theological framework that actually gave space within the mind of the church for the continued existence of the Jews because Justin Martyr and Tertullian and John Chrysostom were headed for the final solution they saw no space for the Jews to continue in particular since the church had actually been meant to replace us whereas Augustine said that the Jews actually will never perish that we will continue to live on for two critical reasons one because the Jews are living proof that the Christian scriptures are true I mean after all they're deriving all their theology from our books and if some pagan happens to say to the church father well hey where'd you get that idea from here from the Jewish prophets who are these Jews oh uh there aren't any left it's a hole in the argument whereas if you can point to the Jews well then you've got what to talk about however he points out that the Jews must be in a degraded state because the goal isn't just to prove the veracity of scriptures it's to prove the truth of their interpretation and therefore the Jew must live on his witness but in a degraded state testifying to what it looks like when you refuse salvation as he says right they make visible to the Christian faithful the subjection that they merited because they and the pride of their Kingdom put the Lord to death and so the Lord placed a mark upon Cain lest anyone coming upon him should kill him meaning you keep the Jews alive just like God put a mark on Cain but he's got the Mark of Cain a decade after Augustine wrote that that was in Contra folks know if you want to look it up he actually says little eyed his doctrine around the verse in Psalms which says slay them not less my people forget scatter them with your might and thus you get the model for the whole medieval role of the Jews scattered amongst the nations kept alive but in a degraded state in order that they testify to the truth of Christian interpretation and this is what we call the hermeneutic battle it's a fight over who has the proper reading of the text right meaning whoever can read the text in a way which not only explains the present but can get us to the future in which we believe has the true power now I'm not gonna try to recapitulate the entire Middle Ages go back and listen to season one if you really want to understand the death of this struggle but it is important for our purposes in understanding the oldest hatred to get two things first of all for the masses of European Christianity who were neither as learned it as the Church Fathers nor frankly as concerned with the finer points of theology and textual analysis the old political cultural hatred of the greco-roman world was just as good it just gained a new let's call it religious impulse or in lidge's impetus in this era where the other obstinate refuses of salvation and the Christian lifestyle just as we've been the indigestion island of the greco-roman world there's nothing new here it's a new paint on an old hatred but the second point is critical because it actually offers us an insight in what we can do about this hatred the hermeneutic battle is a struggle to read our sacred texts in a way that can shape the future according to Christian belief and the very attempt by those who hate us to claim our most sacred stories should be a big wake-up call it should tell us just how powerful those stories are now I'm not recommending that anybody go out there and engage in interfaith polemics and start telling all the non-jews they see that they got it wrong but I am saying this first and foremost know your story people and you're gonna know your story means you have to take these texts seriously frankly I don't care if you believe they're written by God humanity a committee or somewhere in between it makes no difference to me know your story and second of all look into those stories into those texts and learn to tell a healing story a story that empowers that unites one that can not only bring our people home physically but that can help us see the presence of God here on earth which is after all the entire goal of that story so it's unavoidable I have to make at least a brief stop in the modern era Late Antiquity gave us that political cultural hatred of the Jews which was rooted in our unwillingness to quote obey the Kings laws as Haman said we were the indigestible element inhospitable and misanthropic Christian Jew hatred added to this replacement theology by the way the original identity theft and that led to a bitter struggle over our story and the fight to be the ones who can actually hold the task of bringing creation to fruition of telling a redemptive story and thus the Jews became the obstinate refuse errs of redemption by the by I did leave Islam out of this.look quick overview because I can't do everything and because frankly they actually don't really jump on the jew-hating bandwagon until the modern or even postmodern era maybe will reflect on that some other time but for now from indigestion element of the Empire to absent refuses of salvation to alien other in the modern era once again can't do it all go back to season 2 for the whole picture but for now what you need to know is the price which enlightenment ask of the Jews for entry into modern society was to check our culture at the door they were willing to accept this as long as we were willing to finally melt into that universal human stew which by the by wasn't so universal was actually secular Christian culture in Europe and how this hailed because once the Jews were actually ready to become citizens end quote obey the Kings laws like Haman ask and even give up our culture but giving up the religious laws that made us different from those of any other people up pops racial anti-semitism and our desire to conform and assimilate suddenly becomes irrelevant because the Jews are irredeemably other that's right the message here is quite clear if you're a Jew you can run but you can't hide you know the ultimate expression of this was the fact that the Nazis pulled monks and nuns out of their monasteries and convents to kill them in the concentration camps as Jews these were people who didn't just see themselves not as Jews they had joined the other side now I don't have a time to analyze modern anti-semitism the literature is too vast and frankly the bill is still out but in order that I can set the stage for the final part of this somewhat grim look at the oldest hatred I do want to point out that in the mind of modernity the Jew wasn't just a corrupting racial element that had to be purified right racial anti-semitism because as Hitler said the Jews have inflicted two wounds on the world circumcision for the body and conscience for the soul I come to free mankind from their shackles that racial national element represented of course best by circumcision is nothing new in this story in a sense it goes back to the greco-roman roots of Jew hatred where that element that simply isn't like everyone else just like Haman said but this idea of conscience adds a new piece to our story and it deserves a thought you know philosophically most people agree that Hitler was borrowing the idea from Nietzsche who claimed that the Jews worth their quote revolt of slaves had subverted the natural order and instituted in the world the morality of slaves it was a morality which was opposed what he called the morality of masters meaning the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must now in fairness Nietzsche didn't hate the Jews he just hated this idea and he particularly blamed Christianity for popularizing within Europe there's so much that could be said here about the world in which we live but for now to me Hitler was a powerful proof that you can know a people by its enemies that we could indeed call Israel the conscience of the world and that gives an insight on the origins of the hatred of on Israel in the modern era listen no one likes that conscience but at least when it succeeds it can make it proud of ourselves the problem with the conscience is not when it succeeds in making us the best person that we believe we can be problem is when the consciousness fails because when the consciousness fails to actually change our behavior it doesn't just go away persist it lives on it's an indelible part of who we are but it becomes an annoying voice which just nags from the side prevents us from enjoying doing what we want to do rather than what we ought and that's why so many people who are set on living either a meaningless life or an evil life must eliminate their conscience from this perspective at the risk of blaming the victim I could say that the failure of um Israel to live up to our divine mission is actually the source of the world's hatred for us our desire to be separate to live by our own laws to tell our own story could be a source of great joy and love in the world if we succeeded at doing it if we indeed became the orlag I am the light of the nations which we were designated to be listen I know that this is problematic I have upset a number of people by saying it but I can't deny it's how I feel it take as a call to revisit our mission focus because I do indeed believe that one of the reasons that their opponents are along created us was to be the conscience of the world and nobody likes their conscience when it's failing for now though I'm not ashamed of being labeled as the people who first challenge the notion that might makes right and it's fascinating that this is why the postmodern wave of hatred that threatens to engulf us right now that's all over the newspapers which focuses specifically on the dynamics of a now once again powerful Jewish people is so painful and important to understand as far as I can tell in the postmodern era the hatred of amis Rael Springs from our reality as a story that can't be reduced to a simple power discourse now first of all I place the boundary marker of the modern and postmodern at the gates of Auschwitz or in the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima if you like it's not really so critical either way the last great myth of secular society died in these two places the notion of progress this idea that humanity was still on an inevitable track toward a cleaner safer hat your world a minute by the way that could not possibly survive those horrors right how could it be that this was the end progress of the most cultured nation in Europe or the greatest concentration of technological know-how that the Western world had ever seen but you know what just cuz a myth dies doesn't mean that we're so quick to let go of it and so coming out of the Nazi era um Israel actually had a shine in the eyes of the world that we'd never had we had a moral purity that sprang from our absolute victimhood even those who refused recognize our attachment to this land as a positive assertion looking into the Bible or looking into our history they were still able to overcome the long train of hatred there was no longer a need in that moment that the Jews be a people quote scattered and dispersed amongst the other peoples whose laws are different from those of any other people in who do not obey the Kings laws it seemed in the eyes of both the Zionists and the United nation that we could suddenly be a nation like any other once again just a people in our land well that was 70 years ago and 70 years is a very long time in our age long enough for the perpetrators and the bystanders to forget about the gas chambers if not for the victims trust me we haven't forgotten and furthermore those seven years have been a time of continual war well as we've discussed elsewhere reimburse a very messy process and in all honesty our struggle with the Arabs over this land is quite complex go back and listen to the end of season 2 I'm not trying to dish you off any simple story oddly enough its complexity that doesn't seem to work well in the postmodern mine what you think worships complexity for complexities sake now I have to make something clear in my eyes the two hallmarks of a shallow post-modernism Arnim one the belief in the death of the grand narratives right all the great stories and myths whether they're religions or cultural tales or progress that kept us going and put a sort of a broad frame on all the particular elements of the world so the death of these grand narratives and the subs grand notion that everything in life is therefore just a struggle for power and on a more simple level you need to know that in the eyes of the postmodern mob out there there are only victims and perpetrators there can be no heroes because a hero is someone who wields power in the name of what's right and good but the sacred stories of right and good died with the death of these grand narratives they're just fairy tales to the pseudo-intellectuals of our day and therefore a hero is nothing more than a clever villain with good PR he must be so because he's wielding power and maybe just maybe this is why the idea of Jews having power is now the new source of hatred in the most recent phase of our story of the oldest hatred humanity knows just think about it the old left was willing to tolerate us when we were wholly victims but now that were wielding power or evil avoid just remember hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned and that's why the intersectionality movement if you're familiar with it today and if you're not you can write me an e-mail I'll give you some thoughts on it that's why their hatred is so fierce for the Jews because Jews don't fit the new righteousness of victimhood model because we have power and we furthermore compound it by being betrayers because once upon a time we were the perfect victim and whether it's the power of Israel the nation state or the power that American Jews became when they became white as the phrase goes you need to learn something about this dynamic you know there's a new definition of racism out there when I was growing up racism meant acting prejudicially towards someone based on their race it was of quite straight forward and it didn't matter what that race was but that's no longer true today racism is prejudice plus power by definition only involves what they call punching down when someone who's in a position of privilege and power who's part of the structural oppression and violence on which our societies are actually built I do see a lot of that as truth and they reach out to the week that's racism and that's how can be in a crazy sense that if an african-american man runs amok and shoots white police officers out of hatred that it may be an act of hatred but it's not an act of racism right or when a congresswoman petals time-honoured he written conspiracy theories about Jewish domination that's not racism it's punching up it's a fight against Jewish privilege and the power structures within America or against the International colonial structures which are the structural violence or pressing the peoples of the world represented by yeah the State of Israel because fighting power and privilege in their eyes is justice not anti-semitism because if you're no longer the victim then you can only be the villain now there's so much more to say about this particularly that post-colonial element don't worry there's gonna be another show coming up soon some of you guys asked me to have another conversation with you Cohen I think he's the man to talk post-colonialism with but if you want to actually a classic and chilling example of how outside of recent American politics this dynamic of Jews as villain rather than victim really plays itself out check out article 22 of the Hamas charter you can google it it's right there on the internet you'll notice that it makes the Jews out to be the most powerful people in the world I mean it's bizarre who elevates their enemies like that I'll tell you who those who see righteousness only in victimhood and are willing to harness the world behind them but for right now I want to end with this so we've gone from this indigestion element of Empire that cultural holding fast to being ourselves too obstinate refuser of salvation and the assistance that we're gonna be the ones who tell the redemptive story to alien other of modern society when it comes down to is that um Israel is a story that won't go away in our current world culture which equates morality with abstract perfection rather than the humble progress that the Taurus sees and furthermore our world culture was just more concerned with deconstructing its myth and destroying its heroes than in crafting a meaningful society that unites the world toward the goal of redemption be it secular or religious I want to be clear in my eyes I do believe that I'm Israel is spinning our wheels in the mud right now and we're spattering it everywhere there's good reason to be upset with the Jews but I've got news for you the Jews aren't going away wouldn't allow Rome to digest us we wouldn't allow Christianity convert us or modernity to assimilate us we're not gonna let this postmodern challenge deny the significance of our story and now lo and behold for the first time in two thousand years our refusal to disappear is actually backed by an incredible ability to wield force this is the great gift that Thomas Rell is poised to offer the world and it is in my eyes the source of their current hatred and if we want to learn from this latest challenge what to do then I say this learn to wield power in service of the right learn to tell a story in which there are perpetrators and victims and heroes as well you can be the hero of that story too and have no fear we honest transit people together with all the people the world that want to tell the Israel story will keep failing forward through history will keep transforming our myth steps into learning opportunities and let it be soon let it be now God when the day will come when we learn to tell a story in which the whole world can rejoice I just wanna thank a few people before I wrap it up here I want to thank all the folks that give their hard-earned money help making this show happen for giving free and widely available and I want to invite you to join them right now you can go to Jewish story dot Co that's my website you'll find all the content there in the upper right hand corner you also see a button that says be a patron and you can click on that bunny right on through give a little bit of her podcast support help me make history people this is a lot of Labor I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network that's the Land of Israel calm the creating a platform that allows me to reach so many amazing people I want to thank the partes Institute VAR des org dot IL and I want to thank you for listening I'm off my choir and this is the Jew