A New Segment! & “Jews Don’t Count” with British comedian David Baddiel

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Racists, don't give a f**k about religion.

(00:03):
What made this particularkind of racism so hard to see?
The British government are suppressinginformation about the Holocaust.
When terrible stuff happens to Jews,they must be in some way responsible.
Responsible.
Maybe they deserve it.
They kind of deserve it.
Yeah.
A few times this season, I'vementioned the three books that

(00:23):
have been the most influentialin my journey of Jewish advocacy.
One is people love Dead Jews by DaraHorn, who was on this show twice.
One is Israel by Noah Tishbe, whowill be on the show next week.
And the third, the one book I wish wasrequired reading for everyone on Earth.
His Jews don't count.
Written by my guest today.

(00:43):
He is a multi-talented creativewhose career spans numerous genres
and mediums, from sketch comedy tochildren's books, to soccer anthems.
He's been a fixture on British TV andradio for decades, which is probably
why most of you haven't heard of him.
But he was technically born in America, soI think we're free to claim him as ours.
Sorry about the soccer thing.
Please welcome from across the pond,author, comedian, filmmaker, and

(01:06):
public Jew extraordinaire, David Badal.
Thank you, Joah.
That was a very nice introduction.
Thanks.
Well deserved, David.
You were really the first personat least that I came across to
name and explain this phenomenon.
Of leftist anti Jew racism back in 2021.
How did you decide to pivot intononfiction, which you hadn't

(01:28):
written before and and cover thistopic and in such a clear way?
So I was asked by the Timesliterary supplement, which is a
posh newspaper that's run for years.
They said, we're gonna have essaybooks, we're gonna have short
essay polemical books in the style.
They said.
Of George Orwell and Orwell used towrite these books called Things Like
Politics and the English Language,and there's sort of punchy 10,000

(01:51):
word essays on the way we live now orthe way they live then or whatever.
And it was because itwas asked of me in 2019.
I. Round about the time that the CorbinLabor Party, Jeremy Corbin used to be head
of the Labor Party, had gone through along period when something that I hadn't
expected to see, I guess in my lifetime,which is that antisemitism as a thing,

(02:13):
as an issue, was suddenly live in Britishpolitics like being talked about all the
times, uh, all the time that you wouldsee headlines in British newspapers about,
you know, existential crises involvingJews, British Jews, almost as soon as.
I was asked, I said, I wanna write abook about how the guardians, the people

(02:33):
who think about discrimination andracism and offense and inclusion and
representation and all those things.
I. The people who worry about minorities,they don't think of Jews as a minority.
You had observed that youknew that's what was going on.
You said this is the thing.
I mean, I had done some stuff beforehand,so in soccer, and I talk about this
in the book, um, there'd been a thingthat my football club, which is called

(02:56):
Chelsea, uh, every so often, there'sanother club called Tottenham, right?
And they're perceived there's a Jewishclub and every so often there'd be
unbelievable anti-Semitic abuse.
Using the, what I call the why word.
It's I, we can perhaps go into veryspecifically why I call it the Y word.
Mm. But for this, for thispodcast, I will use the word yid.
Mm-hmm.
There'd been a lot of this veryextreme antisemitism built around

(03:19):
the word yid involving also.
Chances about Auschwitzand all sorts of things.
Oh, wow.
Because it wasn't a shock to me that theywere anti sea mindsets, soccer matches.
Sure.
What was important was that overthe course of time I'd been going
to football, the attitude towardsthat kind of offensiveness in
football had shifted enormously.
So I started going, 'cause I'mold to football in the 1970s

(03:41):
when everyone was a racist.
But by the time you get to 2008.
There's stuff in the, in the programthat says anyone spotted on CCTV or
by a steward doing any kind of racistabuse will be thrown out, uh, and banned
for life, which is great, by the way.
I'm very supportive ofthat, of that monitoring.
Right.
Unfortunately, none of that applied.

(04:04):
When someone started shouting at me andmy brother who go to Chelsea football
club every, every week, fuck the Jews.
Fuck the fucking Jews.
Fuck the fucking Jews.
Over and over again.
Following an out, a, a general amountof chanting about the word yid at this,
at this other club and blah, blah, blah.
Specifically directed at you.
Basically what happened was the, thewhole crowd, I mean, this is something

(04:25):
you should know, is that it's not like.
Normally just one person.
It's like 30,000 people arechanting y know, y know y know
this very, very violent sortof y Jewish, anti-Jewish chant.
Uh, and I'm used to that.
But then on this one particulartime, a guy behind me started

(04:45):
shouting, fuck the Ys.
Fuck the yids.
And then when we turn round.
To sort of say, look, comeon mate, that's enough.
He started specificallygoing, fuck the Jews.
Fuck the Jews over and over again, a a,and actually in my book, because I always
like to humanize things, I say my olderbrother, who I very much look up to and
think of as surrogate parent, 'cause myparents were unbelievably neglectful.
He stood up this guy and he said, shut up.

(05:07):
Fucking shut up to this guy.
And there was a then a sortof to and fro for a while.
And then the guy did sit downand my brother sat down and he
said, I think I'm going to cry.
Mm.
And I still find thatkind of deeply moving.
But the important point really,as I say, is not that there was an
anti-Semite at a football match.
The important point isthat no one did anything.
And when me and my brother tried,which we did to contact the club, to

(05:30):
contact the stewards, to contact kickraces about our football, which was an
organization to talk to 'em about this,we were met with kind of like, well.
You know?
Wow.
Is
it really a thing?
Anyway, this is a verylong way of saying that.
I had been talking about it before.
Yeah.
I actually made a film.
I made a film, a short film called TheY Word, which has got lots of famous
soccer players from the time on ittrying to raise awareness of this issue.

(05:53):
Wow.
By the way, that film, that film wasmet with unbelievable internet hatred.
What I'm talking about issomething which does apply.
To other minorities, which is a very liveconcern, a very, um, monitoring policing
sense that we're trying our best to fightback against unconscious bias, against,
you know, disenfranchisement against,disempowering against all the things

(06:16):
that we know, we know have applied to allsorts, and not just by the way, ethnic
minorities, also to gender minorities,disabled people, et cetera, et cetera.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And yet, isn't there.
For Jews.
And the most extraordinary thing,I think, and, and you, you probably
know this about me, but I shouldhave maybe said it earlier, my mother
was a refugee from Nazi Germany.
Mm-hmm.
And, and I think what is important aboutthat, and I know that, that, you know, in

(06:39):
some people this inspires not Jews, butin some people inspires a sort of like
fatigue and yawn and all the rest of it.
But the closeness of that isvery, very strong within Jews,
and particularly within Jews whohave that level of connection.
To, to that level of trauma.
Yeah.
And so I think it is quite hard when whatI'm doing in that book and in that film

(07:03):
is saying it's a bit weird, isn't it?
That this minority is the one thatisn't thought of as vulnerable,
isn't thought of as prey to racism,discrimination, extermination,
extreme violence is the one that very,very, very recently generationally.
I, I, I, I was sort of there, Imean, genetically without any doubt.

(07:25):
Right.
I mean, I don't know if you, in theyears since you've written this or while
you're writing it, thought about this,but can you articulate what made this
particular kind of racism so hard to see?
So the book is really sort oflike, it begins like 12 examples,
one of which is the football one.
Mm-hmm.
Another one is, I, I go to kindof high culture and low culture.

(07:46):
So for example, I talkabout the fact that, um.
In 2017, uh, radio four, whichis one of the most sort of, sort
of vanguard stations of the BBC,it had Jeremy Irons reading every
single one of Ts Elliot's poems.
Right?
And one of ts Elliot's poems.
Burbank with a Beac, Ithink, uh, has this line.

(08:07):
The rats are underneath the piles.
The Jew is underneath the lot.
And I remember thinking,how are they gonna.
Get away with that one.
Maybe they won't have thatone, even though they're saying
they're doing the whole lot.
And of course they did have that one.
They had a Jewish academiccome on and try and make it.
Okay.
I didn't think he did make it.
Okay, but that really isn't the point.
The point is.
Yeah, there is loads and loadsof terrible racism in art and

(08:32):
literature from times past.
Mm-hmm.
That would not be on Radiofour on New Year's Day read by
Joe under any circumstances.
There's just no way.
Right.
If you imagine that supplanted to anotherminority, it just wouldn't be there.
I'm sure people have said this onyour podcast already, but we exist
in a time very turbocharged by theinternet, whereby the easiest way of
seeing the world is a binary betweenthe powerful and the powerless.

(08:56):
Mm-hmm.
Uh, the oppressed and the oppressors.
And the trouble is that Jewsare a glitch in that binary.
Right.
Ju Jews are an absolute glitch inthat binary, because actually I accept
that some Jews are rich, some Jewsare powerful, certainly in America,
there's no question about that.
But Jews are also, they have anenormous history of disempowerment, an
enormous history of disenfranchisement.
And lots and lots of Jews do notfit the stereotype, including Jews.

(09:18):
In my immediate family,
there are 10,000 Holocaustsurvivors in Los Angeles living
below the poverty line, you know?
Right,
exactly.
I mean, exactly.
Exactly.
And so the notion of.
Jewish power, which is, goesback centuries and centuries
and centuries, well before.
Obviously the sort of, you know, whatwe are talking about, which is a kind
of modern, if you like, left wing,although I don't think it's just left

(09:40):
wing to be honest, but a modern wayof thinking about Jews, it persists.
And if the way you see the worldis, well, I'm on the side of the
vulnerable against the powerful, it issomehow hard to see Jews as vulnerable
despite the unbelievable history.
But that's the part that's that, you know,where the math ain't math in, you know,

(10:01):
it's, yes, it's the mass, you know, as,as you said, you know, the Holocaust is
only 80 years ago, and yet there is this.
Very concrete perception of Jewsas as powerful despite, yeah.
Them being the most recent victim ofhorrific mass genocide for which the
word genocide was invented, you know?
Yes, that's
correct.

(10:21):
Um, that's correct.
And also one of the things thatyou said you had Dara on your show.
Yeah.
One, one of the things that is.
Interesting thinking.
People are like, oh, the Holocaust blah.
You know, they tend there.
There's an element of Holocaust fatigue.
You know, when I read Dara's bookand speaking to Dara, who was on my
film as well, there are so many otherplaces, places I had no idea where
Jews have been exterminated China.

(10:42):
There, there's been massacres ofJews in China who knew, right?
There's been massacres of Jewsin India, there's been massac
of Jews all over the world.
I mean.
I went, uh, I actually have done adocumentary about Theodore Herzl.
Oh wow.
Uh,
and uh, yeah, I dunno if it's ever gonnacome out, but I have done it partly
'cause I didn't know much about himand I wanted to learn more about him.
Uh, and I was in Basel where theworld's artist Congress was for,

(11:05):
and they just happened to have ahistory of the Jews in, in Ed Basel.
It's all just, you know, we setfire to them, we exiled them.
We tried to get some money from them.
Then we didn't pay them back,so we set fire to them again.
Yeah, there it's, I mean it'sreally, it's sort of amazing, right?
How much shit, you know, the Jewsobviously have been the extreme scapegoats

(11:27):
of whipping boys for Christian culture.
Other cultures as well were forcenturies and centuries, and yet.
It's interesting how meaningless that is.
You use the term anti-Jewish racismin your book, which is a term
that I like and use all the time.
You use it more in your book than I'veheard it used, like collectively ever.
Yeah.

(11:48):
What do you think the aversion is, evenfrom Jews and Jewish organizations,
from calling it what it is, whichis a form of anti Jew racism?
Racism as a word seems to be.
Ringfence, particularly inAmerica for people of color.
If you asked me what was the onebit in Jews, don't count that got

(12:08):
through that maybe landed withpeople who don't really get it.
It's a bit where I say that mostpeople think that antisemitism.
I calling it that for themoment, the antisemitism is
religious intolerance, right?
That's what they think It's, theythink that's why all those people
were killed in the Holocaust.
But that's wrong, and I can prove it'swrong because I am an atheist, right?

(12:30):
And that would make nodifference to the Nazis.
I would still be shotimmediately by the Gestapo.
And in fact, my great uncle whodied in the Warsaw Ghetto was,
as far as I'm aware, an atheist.
He certainly wasn't an observer Jew.
And though not just the Nazis.
Those men chanting the Jewswill not replace us, right?
With like torches in Charlottesville,they wouldn't ask me if I kept kosher

(12:54):
before they set fire to my house,
right?
So the point is, racist don'tgive a fuck about religion.
As a result.
It's racism, right?
Because all they careabout is that your blood.
Is Jewish as far as they conceive it.
Mm-hmm.
And sadly, sadly, that's the thingpeople sometimes say to me, oh
right, so you identify in termsof how, what the racist think.
And I say yes, because that's whatracism is and that's why I call it

(13:16):
anti-Jewish RA racism rather thananti-Semitism, which is a complicated
word anyway in terms of its history, butalso I think leads to that confusion.
Well, one thing I wanna mention thatI just like your phrasing of, and
I think I saw this, maybe it was inan interview or, or maybe it was in
the documentary, that, uh, in termsof the Jewish racism piece that.
Connects, I think is that weare Jews by accident of birth.

(13:38):
Yeah.
As I've heard you say.
Yeah.
And I just, I just likethat turn of phrase.
I think that's a veryclear way to understand it.
Like there's nothing you can do about it.
Yeah.
It is who you are.
And if someone's hating you for that,they're hating you for who you are.
Not because you go to Templeon Rosh Hashanah or whatever.
It's,
yeah.
Well, well, I mean, on that note actually,uh, you, you know, the terrible massacre
of, uh, 11 Jews in Pittsburgh in 2018.

(14:01):
Yeah.
You know, again, I've heard that.
Well, I've heard many things referred to.
I talk about it in that book as likesomeone in Britain immediately decided
that was to do with Israel Palestine.
It wasn't other people dec havedecided it was to do with the
fact that they were at Senegal.
It wasn't, it was a far right shooter whobelieved in the great replacement theory,
who believed as far right people do that.

(14:22):
Jews, because of this idea of power, aresecretly behind immigration and secretly
trying to undermine the white racesin America, and that's why he killed.
That many Jews, right?
He actually says, so that's so easyfor people to jump to conclusions
about how anti-Jewish hatredstarts, but in fact, you are right.
It always starts from anaccident of birth, which is then
stereotyped or imagined by racistsin very, very expected ways.

(14:47):
With Jews,
uniquely, you can punch up oryou can punch down at them.
They're the vermin, they'rethe rats, but they're also.
Controlling the world andthe banks and the weather.
Why do you feel like Jewishsuccess uniquely is so resented?
Uh, more so than with perhapsother minorities or ethnicities
where it's more admired or at least

(15:08):
neutral.
This.
A truth to that, that that Jews areimagined by racists the way all other
minorities are in a low status wayas stinking, vile, thieving, alien
or whatever, but also in Jews case,as monstrous in, in control of the
world, in control of politicians,extremely rich, et cetera, et cetera.
In fact.

(15:28):
There's a weird con, whateverthe word is, con sanity.
That's probably not the wordbetween those two things.
So when you look at sort of Nazicartoons or indeed modern cartoons
of Jews, they will be both monstrous,but they will also be in control of
the world or that sort of, uh, right.
A alien, octopus version of Jews,that sort of both at once, right?
But the power thing isunbelievably important.

(15:50):
It's unbelievably important, what youjust said about punching up, um, because
that is where you get a situation.
Whereby anti-Jewish racism feelsto a lot of people like heroism.
It feels to a lot of peoplelike virtuosity, right?
Righteous, uh, and right righteousness.
And you know, it, there's no questionthat, Kanye, let's go to this.

(16:11):
You know, the hard end of this,Kanye doesn't think that he's being.
A racist.
Right, right.
What Kanye thinks is he's punchingback at the people in control of the
world, but almost, almost specificallyhis career or whatever else.
It's right.
You know, it's a, it's a fight back and,and certainly in the creative arts, of

(16:32):
course, people are always interested inthe idea of the underdog fighting back.
That's what most films, you know,most Hollywood films at some level are
about the underdog fighting back and.
The imagination of thepower is very, very easy.
It's a hop, skip, and jump all thetime to imagine that that is Jewish.

(16:54):
The question is a very good one aboutwhy other minorities don't have this.
Yeah, I think we should becareful a little bit about
speaking for other minorities.
I think there are Asians.
Who definitely feel,feel, feel a bit of this.
Uh, and I think Asian Americansparticularly, uh, because they're very,
but in this country as well, there'sthis sort of economic success, uh.

(17:14):
But it's, it's not quite the same.
Um, and one way in which I, I pointout that it's not the same, and again,
you must remember that I'm talkingmainly about the psychology of people
who care, the psychology of peoplewho would like racism not to exist.
Right.
Rather than psychology of the far right.
Or whatever.
Sure.
And, and there's lots of reasonsI, we haven't mentioned whiteness,

(17:36):
which I think is very important.
Yeah.
And obviously not all Jews are white.
It's incredibly importantto note that Jews are.
There's lots of Jews of color.
There's obviously manyMiddle Eastern Jews.
The majority of Jews in Israeldon't even present as white.
Again, I don't really thinkin terms of skin color, right?
I think in terms of racism and howyou have to think about racism, and
here's the problem with imaginingJews as white, which is that races

(17:59):
for years and years and yearshave not thought of Jews as white.
Of course, you know, within O,obviously Nazi Germany, they're
not thought of white, but obviouslywhite supremacists in America.
Loads and loads of them don'tthink of Jews as properly white.
And that's a constant throughout,you know, racist history.
And so the word I use in the book isschroder as whites, by which I mean

(18:21):
Jews are white or non-white, dependingon the politics of the observer.
So for the far right, Jews are non-white.
They're part of the non general,you know, mess of non-white races
that should be kicked out of.
America or whatever.
Whereas for the left, I sometimes thinkthat their imagination of Jews is kind
of super white, sort of like Jews arerich and powerful and all the things

(18:43):
that are associated with whiteness now.
And so therefore, there's awoman who was one of these women
who was pretending to be black.
It's not the famous one, it's another one.
Okay.
Not, not Delle.
Wasn't that her name?
Yeah.
Not Rachel
Delle.
There's another one.
Yeah.
Okay.
There's another one who'spretending to be black and.
When she was discovered like RachelDelle to be, to be actually not black.

(19:05):
There was a, you know,huge shape make of her.
But in her particular case,all the news about her said
that this woman is not black.
She's white and Jewish.
I. Jessica Krug, that's her name.
Mm.
Right.
She's white and Jewish.
And you kinda think like, why?
If you, why, why do you need to know that?
'cause the rad is that she's not black.
Right.
And I'll tell you why.
It's because somehow in the imagination,her Jewishness adds to her whiteness.

(19:29):
It's somehow like she's more notblack as a result of being Jewish.
Right?
That's right.
And, and that's a big problem.
We are a minority who are discriminatedagainst for reasons and nothing to do.
Except with an accent of birth.
And that's what happens tonon-white people, right?
Mm-hmm.
And so
it doesn't really matter howyou actually present, even

(19:50):
though obviously you can pass.
Some people say that to me.
They say, well, Jews can pass.
Would you say to gay men,don't worry about homophobia.
You can stay in the closet.
It's fine.
Right, right.
No, I don't think most Right on, right.
Most politically correct.
Most woke people would saythat to, to a gay person.
But they do say to Jews, well, youhave privilege because you can pass.
That's
exactly right.

(20:10):
In the book you talk about not havingan emotional connection to Israel.
Yeah.
And I actually emailed youabout this like a year plus ago.
Yeah.
You defined yourself as a non Zionist,not an anti Zionist, but a non Zionist.
Yeah.
Uh, and, and sort of articulated.
Uh, I think both in, in interviews inthat email and in in the book, that

(20:31):
like your stance on that has sort ofbeen hardened by what you call a racist
pressure to be collectively responsiblefor Israel, and you shouldn't have
to be just because you're a Jew.
Is, is your feeling.
That's correct.
I am wondering, obviously in, inthat sense, there's no emotional
connection, but can you at least,uh, would you say intellectually

(20:51):
you can understand that Israel is.
A central piece to the religion andnecessary practically for the millions
of people who'd be dead without it.
Yes.
Uh, I mean, there's all sorts ofreasons why I, I obviously understand
Jewish emotional connection to Israel.
Uh, and I, I obviously, you know, whenpeople talk about, uh, you know, Israel

(21:14):
in turn, they, they sort of like don'trealize that it just exists as a thing.
So there are 7 millionpeople there who obviously.
The idea of, of them beingdestroyed is a problem.
Right, right.
For people who just imagine that like,yeah, that's the way to sort things out.
Here's the thing, as youknow, in Jews don't count.
I'm trying to say, canwe imagine Jews please?

(21:37):
As we imagine other minorities and otherminorities, and I know other minorities
have more countries, so it's slightlydifferent and the focus isn't so great,
but basically other minorities arenever held beholden in whatever way.
Pro or anti to a host country or aheritage country 4,000 miles away,
right?
You know, I am quite close friendswith a British Chinese comedian called

(22:01):
Phil Wang, Chinese heritage comedian.
Brilliant comedian.
By the way, if anyone's watching andI. I'm not aware of any person, any
person, but certainly not any person ofthe left who would ever, ever go up to
Phil Wang and say, can you just tell mebefore we carry on to it, can you just
tell me how you feel about the Chinesegovernment's treatment of the Uyghurs?
Uh, can you talk, I wanna knowbecause I can't really be friends

(22:22):
with you or No, I, but that'snever gonna happen to Phil Wang.
Right.
And until that does happen toPhil Wang, I will continue to say.
I don't have to give you, notyou, not you, Jonah, but the
people endlessly demand it of me.
There's endlessly people say, whyhaven't you spoken out by the, my
position on, on Israel Palestine?
Because the truth is, it's interesting.

(22:43):
I did interview this, what I wasgonna say about my documentary,
someone called Miriam Maritz,who's a very famous actress here.
Mm-hmm.
Ria Margolis is, is Verily anti-Israel.
And what I noticed in my, in, inmy conversation with her is that
what she's also is much, much moreconnected to Israel than I am.
She feels very connected to Israel.
She feels very like they're my people.
She said at one point, and I dunnohow you, she said to me could be so

(23:06):
like, you know, unbothered about whatyour people are doing in your name.
And what I thought is, well that'snot how other minorities feel.
Other minorities.
And it's an extremelyimportant thing in anti-racism.
If they live somewhere,that's what they are.
They're British.
Right, right.
Or they're American, orwhatever as it might be.
And it's very importantin the way we think about.

(23:27):
Immigration and cultural assimilationand all that stuff that we don't
carry on thinking of these othermin of minorities as primarily
actually this, this other country.
Right, right.
So, so that's essentially my position andI continue even in the face of it being,
I, I admit this by the way, that position,which held for a long time and I still
hold it, but it's kind of overwhelmed now.

(23:49):
By something that I can't hold back,which is people sort of like deciding
anyway, you know, Israel and Palestineis such an important thing to talk about.
Now, you know that youcan't have this position.
Like, I think, well,I'm, I'm still having it.
Have your feelings or connectionsshifted at all since October 7th?
This is what happened with October7th, which I think is more of an

(24:11):
emotional thing than anything else.
Uh.
Which is obviously I was movedand upset by what happened.
Uh, obviously, and I did speak aboutit on the BVC, I think I was moved in
a very particular way, which was, and Ithink this is partly to do with, with how
I view Israel to some extent, which isa country that doesn't feel to be very

(24:32):
Jewish in the way that I think about Jews.
Right, right.
And here's how I can explainthat, is that Jews don't count.
Only quite recently came out.
In, well, I mean soon afterOctober the seventh, it came
out in, in Israel, in Hebrew.
Right.
And I was being interviewed by Harts, youknow, the big progressive newspaper there.
Mm-hmm.
And the journalist, the young journalistwho was interviewing me, I said to

(24:52):
him, why do you think this book?
Because I was a bit pissed off about it.
Why do you think this book hasn'tcome out in Israel until now?
I said, is it becausein the book, I'm quite.
Not dismissive as Israel, but Imake clear that it's not a country
that I feel immensely connected to.
There's quite a short chapter aboutIsrael and all the rest of it.
He said, no, I think it's not that.
He said, I think it's because your bookis about how Jews should be seen as a

(25:14):
minority, a proper minority in Israel.
They're not a minority,they're the majority.
Right?
And
I never really thought about that.
And I said, oh, right.
That's interesting.
I said, but, but is it the case now?
And maybe that's to do with the bookcoming out now that October the seventh,
made Jews in Israel feel like a minority.
Mm-hmm.
Even though they aren't a minority.
In fact, what I then said was,is it the case that October the

(25:35):
seventh for perhaps the firsttime, made Israelis feel like Jews?
Now, that's an incrediblybleak view of Jewishness.
'cause what I really mean isyou have to be in a pogrom.
To understand what it means, but remember,my mother was born in Nazi Germany.
Yeah.
I'm not an anti-Zionist.
I'm not a pros artist, but I wouldsay that the element of Israel that is

(25:57):
kind of macho, that is kind of like,you know, fairly gun toting, fairly
kinda like bronze, blah, blah, blah.
Whatever doesn't feel very Jewish to me.
And I know it might be stereotypical of meto imagine that Jews have to be all nehi.
I mean, you, you look fairly,fairly ripped to be honest.
Well thanks.
But isn't that racist of you against Jews?

(26:17):
I don't think it's racist.
I think it's okay.
Let me tell you a joke, right, soactually lemme tell you two jokes.
Is that okay?
Even better.
I do used to do a joke about how.
My best friend, this is true actually.
My best friend who was Jewish, uh, becamein his later life, became a Buddhist.
So a Jewish Buddhist that's likesomeone who believes you should
renounce all your material possessions,but still keep the receipts.

(26:39):
And I used to do that joke, andthen I decided not to do that
joke anymore because with my.
You know, expanding consciousnessabout Jewish stereotyping and racism,
I thought, no, that plays into Jewishstereotypes about Jews and money.
So I don't do it anymore.
I do re But I was once asked ona radio show about Jewish comedy,
and I noticed that all the otherpeople, and they weren't Jewish, were
doing jokes about Jews and money.

(27:01):
And I thought, no, no, I'm not gonnado a joke like that, even though I
know loads, I'm gonna do this joke.
And the joke was, there's an Englishman.
A Frenchman and a Jew on a parkbench, and the Englishman says, I'm so
tired and thirsty, I must have beer.
And the Frenchman says, I'm sotired and thirsty, I must have wine.
And the Jew says, I'mso tired and thirsty.
I must have diabetes.
Now you might think that'sa, it's not a racist joke.

(27:22):
What it is, it's a joke.
It's a Jewish person making ajoke about stereotypes of Jews
that I'm happy to play with.
Because I don't think that stereotypeof Jews that we're all hypochondriacs
play, it's not gonna lead to anyJewish houses being burnt down.
Right?
Where, whereas the money one.
Actually that does,
going back to the October 7th of it all,what would you say, if anything, surprised

(27:44):
you most about the world's response?
What I've noticed is if you talk, which Idid quite a lot at that time, and I still
do, uh, about antisemitism rising andpeople being anxious about antisemitism
and terrible stuff that's been going on inAmerica and elsewhere in terms of attacks
on Jews, what will instantly happen.
Is that people will say, oh, right,and, and you don't think it's much, much

(28:05):
worse for the people of Gaza, right?
You're not thinking about thepeople of Gaza, all these Jews being
slightly, slightly uncomfortable.
What about, and what I think isyou see what you've done there
is exactly what I'm resisting.
What you've done there is assumedthat American Jews or British Jews,
that their situation needs to becompared with Israel Palestine.
Right?
And, and it's almost impossible now.

(28:27):
To, to try and just talk about risingantisemitism or indeed antisemitism
in any way without people immediatelyaccusing you of not caring about
terrible stuff happening to Palestinians.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
And, and of course I do care about that.
I do think it's terrible.
I do think the, you know,everything should be done to stop

(28:48):
that happening, is what I think.
But I also think one should be able totalk and define and explore and challenge.
Antisemitism and indeed its rise.
Without that being immediatelyundercut with a comparison.
That in my mind is notreally a comparison.
I, I mean, what hap I tell youwhat happens is that even quite

(29:10):
thoughtful people, certainly quiteleft with people give a sense that
if there is un rising antisemitism,if there is very awful violet attacks
on Jews, I think what happens is.
Particularly 'cause people justimmediately say, well obviously it's to do
with what's happening in the Middle East.
Right.
There's a sense in which it'sunderstandable right now.
I think that's really, really problematic.
A hundred percent.

(29:31):
It is.
At the same time, just the phrasing.
Well, that's understandable.
Is a kind of rationalizing excuse for it.
Your documentary that you madealso called Jews Don't Count.
Yeah.
What, what did you setout to do with that?
How, how was it different or whatwere you trying to do to expand
on what you had done in the book
at some level, which is very banal,uh, I just wanted to spread the word.

(29:54):
You very kindly said you felt this isa book that should be read by everyone.
Yeah, certainly I feel that.
Uh, and if you do a TV show, youknow, that's one way of doing it.
But then I did another thing, which wasa few people weren't sure about this, but
I. Did it was, I had some big stars on it.
I had David Schwimmer on it, right?
I had Sarah Silverman on it.
I had Steven Fry, Miriam Margolis, who's amassive star in Britain, and that's partly

(30:15):
because I want to make it clear, a, theseare issues that I wanted to hear people
talk about the word just me and articulateand interesting people, but also people
that are, that maybe you'd, you'dhave in your homes as it were, without
really thinking about their Jewishness.
I mean, even though Sarah and David areprobably people, I don't know if they do.
I mean, there was aninteresting conversation with

(30:36):
David about friends, right?
And one of the things we talked about,uh, and this is a, I would say is an
expansion of the ideas in the book inan interesting way, is like I said,
obviously friends has got quite alot of stick deserve stick stick.
Sorry.
It's an English word for, youknow, criticism for being not
diverse enough for being too white.
And of course that's trueand it's completely true.

(30:57):
And it, it's an issue with that show.
But I said to him, but if you wereto say maybe just even as a thought
experiment, maybe not even tryingto say this makes it okay, but to
say, well, actually there were two.
There was a minority in that show.
Two.
Two of the characterswere part for minority.
There were two Jews inthe three Jews, right?
Three.
No, I don't think so.
You think Rachel?
Well, because.

(31:18):
Rachel, Ross and Monica.
I think Rachel isn't Jewish, is she?
Rachel Green is not Jewish.
See, by the time you get that, I thinkyou'll start getting the race saying,
you see there were too many Jews.
What?
I think she might've been initially.
And then it seems to fade.
Mm
Uh I mean it is interesting.
American TV and all that stuff.
'cause of course American comedy in thesort of like up to the nineties, I would
say the voice of it was incredibly Jewish.

(31:39):
Oh yeah.
At the same time, there was stillan antisemitism towards that.
So.
I haven't really finished the same thingabout friends, but I mean, in Seinfeld,
which is an incredibly Jewish show,they still had to make George Greek.
Right.
I talk about that a lot.
Yeah.
George Costanza, he's Greekand that's because the network
said, oh, Jerry is Jewish.
So that's enough Jews.

(32:00):
And it's interestingthat that's enough Jews.
Right.
With friends.
I was, I, I was talking toDavid about how, how much.
Trouble he would get, I said,I can say it, I'm gonna say it.
How much trouble he would get forsaying, well, there was a minority
in that show, you know, uh, I do it.
And, and then he said, yeah, peoplewould just say not a proper minority.
Right.
Having said that, Jonah.
Someone said to me the other day, and Ithink this is true, they're a, a filmmaker

(32:24):
who said, oh, I was in a meeting the otherday and there was the, they were, we were
talking about the casting of a Jewish partand people started saying, oh, we should
probably get a Jewish actor for this part.
And he said, that would neverhave happened before your book.
And of course, I'm not verybothered about authenticity casting.
What I was bothered about was the leavingout of Jews from authenticity, casting.

(32:45):
Right.
And what that, what that saysabout people's attitude to Jews.
I think that's an importantdistinction and one of of great value.
Yeah.
So now I wanna shift to a different book.
Okay.
Your more recent book, I. My family.
Oh, cool.
Which is a, a book you wrote aboutyour upbringing, your family.
Yeah.
Uh, re really candid, totally open.
Yeah.
Funny, vulnerable.
Yeah.
Let's start with your dad.

(33:06):
Your father Colin was raised in Waleswhere there were almost no Jews at all.
The story I'd always heard.
Was that his grandfather, mygreat-grandfather, barred it.
The deal had come from Lithuania orLavia, fleeing from Russian pogrom.
So let's be clear, my mom's fleeingfrom Nazis on my dad's side.
They're fleeing from Cossacks, andyeah, he gets, he smuggles himself.

(33:30):
On a timber boat or something andhe wants to get to New York, but he
doesn't speak any English and the boatstops for refueling at Swansea and he
just gets out and I assume 10 yearslater he sees has got enough English
to say, where is the Statue of Liberty?
And someone says, well,it's a long way over there.
And I think that's why a lot of Jews arein Manchester or Swansea or Liverpool

(33:52):
or all these ports in Britain becausethey were trying to get to America,
but they didn't know where America was.
That's hilarious.
And that's why my grand, my, my familyon that side are in, in Swansea.
And actually that side ofmy family became very from.
Became massivelyorthodox, set up Yeshivas.
Oh wow.
All over Britain.
And sometimes I bump into the Frommersand there's normally 10 of them and

(34:15):
they don't really like me 'cause theydon't watch telly and I'm not orthodox.
So actually the young ones are very sweet.
But the older ones, they all hate me.
Was your father's experiencegrowing up of being like an extreme?
Isolated minority or he felt like, youknow, he had community and that wasn't
really part of what he imparted to you.
One of the things about the book isI'm trying to make it clear to people

(34:35):
how mixed up a Jewish childhood isin London in 1970, and so my mom
and her parents are really the onlyside of my family who get away.
Who aren't murdered and they ar arrive,they arrive in, they go to Cambridge.
Then my grandfather is, um,interned on the Isle of Man.
I've written another whole novel aboutthis, which is about, yeah, the term of

(34:58):
Jewish German refugees or the Isle of Man.
It's a very, very screwedup charter that my mom has.
But then we are having, say, Sader Knightsor whatever at our house, and they are
the sort of, they're reformed Jews.
They lead it.
Meanwhile, my dad, who is a very workingclass Welsh guy, is sitting there saying,
saying he used to call it Ly Wally Bally.
And when's the fucking Olly Wally Ballygonna finish so that we can eat right?

(35:21):
And generally he was like that.
We went, me and my brothers to avery Orthodox Jewish primary school,
right, the
northwest under Jewish Day school.
We went there 'cause it wasthe nearest school that Jewish
kids wouldn't get beaten up forbeing Jewish in London in 1973.
And we were wearing couples and sit sitand eating kosher and learning Hebrew.
Meanwhile, our dad is making usbacon and eggs for breakfast.

(35:41):
Right.
So it's all screwed up essentially.
Very confusing.
Yeah.
But my dad, I think he was muchmore Welsh than he was Jewish.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
But he was, was Jewish.
Um, I mean obviously he was Jewish,but I mean, I. I wouldn't say
that was at the core of his being.
It was more at the core ofmy mom's being, I think.
So let's talk about your mom.
As you mentioned, she and her parentsescaped Nazi Germany in August of 1939.

(36:05):
Like just, just slipping through.
Yeah.
Um, and I know your grandfatherwas impacted on Crystal Knocked.
Yeah.
Can you tell me about that story?
As far as I can make out,my grandfather was a.
They came from a beautiful place, butit was beautiful then called Burg.
It's now called colliding grad.
It's not beautiful 'cause it was bombedto fuck during the war and it's in Russia.

(36:26):
Uh, and he was arrested after Krisnaand along with a lot of Jewish men,
I think like over 80,000 Jewishmen were sent to concentration
camps before the war, like 1938.
And he was sent to Dachau.
And as far as I understand it,my grandmother basically sold.
All they had left, which wasn't verymuch by 1938, you know, obviously.

(36:49):
'cause it'd
already been taken bythe, it had already been
stolen.
It'd already been.
When I did, I did a show called,who Do you Think You Are, which is
a ancestry show and I actually wentto Linden Grand, I saw the stumps
of my grandparents' brick factory.
They owned a brick factory.
Wow.
There, it was amazing actually.
Um, and I also met a woman.
A very sweet woman who said thather dad, she cried as she told me.

(37:12):
Her dad, who was non-Jewish, had carriedon trading with my grandparents'.
Brick factory.
After that was illegal, uh, becausehe liked my grandfather and wanted to
give him something, uh, but basicallythey had nothing left and what they
had left, my grandfather sold it,grandmother sold it in order to bribe.
The authorities to get mygrandfather out of dca.

(37:33):
Uh, and when he got out, they hadan incredibly small window of time
to try and get outta the country.
They were trying to get to New Yorkas well, but they didn't get there.
Um, and yeah, I mean the lettersare just so terrifying because they
essentially are letters from theJewish Refugee Committee in London
saying, yeah, if you can get your.
You know, visas and if you can go toBerlin, these are Jews being asked,

(37:56):
'cause they lived in Burg a long way.
Then we, we will giveyou entry to Britain.
And then they have a baby, whichis my mother, and they get another
letter saying, okay, we'll tryand get a card for your baby so
you can, it's just terrifying.
Right.
Wow.
I know it's so, I, I find it reallydifficult at some level to imagine it.
Of course.
Uh, how, how much did your grandparentsspeak to you about this stuff?

(38:18):
Well, I was young.
I think I tell a story in the book.
Uh, there was a show I. Uh, oddin Britain called Dad's Army.
And it had a, a theme tune.
It was about the Home guard.
It was a sitcom about this sort of old manwho, who tried to defend, uh, England from
attack in the, in 1940s, a comedy show.
And it used to have a song that began, whodo you think you are kidding, Mr. Hitler?

(38:42):
And that was really my only my sense oflike the Nazis when I was really young.
I didn't really understandthem as a terrible force.
And then I spoke to my grandmotherone day and I said to her.
Oh, did you have any brothers and sisters?
And she said, oh, you'll have to askMr. Hitler what happened to them.
And I remember thinking what thatguy they sing about on Dad's army.
And then later when I realized she meantHitler, and uh, that was one of the first

(39:05):
times that she spoke to me about it ina way that meant my brothers are lost.
They are lost, right?
Because of Hitler.
And when I start to thinkabout that properly.
This woman who wasn't even that oldthen she would've been in her sixties.
I am 61 now.
I mean, that's one of the things, right?
Like how old are you, Jonah?
I'm 38.

(39:26):
Okay, so you are still quite young,but you'll still know what I'm talking
about when you are young, properly.
I'm speaking to my grandma when I'mlike nine, asking you that question.
Yeah, right.
The war.
This would've been in theseventies or whatever the war
seems like years and years ago.
But now I realize that I was born 19 yearsafter the war ended, 19 years ago now.
I can remember the TV shows I was doingin Britain like they were yesterday.

(39:49):
I mean, it really feelslike right no time at talk.
So my grandparents, I now understandthey were in this country and their
brothers and sisters had been murderedyesterday as far as emotionally right.
They felt right.
Uh, and so obviously it wasreally hard to talk about it
and they didn't talk about it.
My grandfather actually was in and outof mental hospital with depression.

(40:09):
What I often think about that is I'vehad depression, uh, in my time, but what
I always think, like, I always feel likeimposter syndrome with depression, right?
'cause like, what the fuck haveI got to be depressed about?
But meanwhile, my grandfather,his whole family was murdered.
Right?
So, fair enough that he was depressed,
right?
The main thing in my family, the memoir.
Is it's really about mymom and my mom, right?
And an affair that she had with agolfing memorabilia as salesman, right?

(40:32):
Uh, and the way that she became obsessedwith golf memorabilia as a result
of this, had transformed our lives,which had nothing to do with golf.
We were a soccer family.
Suddenly everything in the houseis a golfing memorabilia ornament.
She sets up a business called Golf Fi.
It's unbelievable.
And later on, I find.
Erotic poems, essentially aboutgolf memorabilia that she's
written, et cetera, et cetera.
That's also the name of the golfmemorabilia store of her lover, right?

(40:56):
It's the same name.
That's correct.
She said some business, bless youfor knowing that called Golf Fi.
The way she showed this guy that she wasin love with him was to set up a rival.
Golfing memorabilia company.
Right.
And but the reason I bring it upnow, it's all, the book is mainly
I hope, funny although, funny.
Sad, but funny.
Yeah.
But there's a bit in the book, whichis very typical of the way that I
think now and maybe didn't, when I wasyounger, my mom in her subconscious

(41:19):
had notion of this other life.
I. That she would've had ifHitler had never existed.
She was from a very wealthyfamily, a society woman.
She'd have married some kindof Austro-Hungarian Jewish
prince, and she didn't get that.
She got my dad, who was an unbelievablyworking class, unbelievably sweary
Welsh bloke, and so this affair.

(41:39):
I think that was the nearest thing shecould get to this Austro-Hungarian prince.
So I think when she said that affairmeant that I was living a good life,
I think she meant her good life,the one that was stolen from her.
I think that's, that's what she means.
I found it interesting.
I forget if this was in the book or if Iwas reading something about the book, but
even just the notion of golf, uh, as beingthis thing that, you know, Jews were not.

(42:04):
Always welcome at.
Yeah.
And like that being the thing thatshe sort of became obsessed with.
No, I think the psychologyof That's really interesting.
I,
I think that's unquestionably part of it.
Jews were basically not allowedinto golf clubs in Britain until, I
don't know the, the nineties, right?
Mm-hmm.
And I think unquestionably,my mom was possibly always.
In a very subconscious way trying toprotect yourself from the possibility

(42:26):
of more anti-Semitism, and one wayof doing that was to fall in love
with a man who felt very non-Jewish,know so much so that he was part
of this very non-Jewish milieu.
Gulf.
Yeah.
Okay.
So moving back to the secret purposes.
Yeah.
2004 German refugees in Britain, verymuch like, you know, Japanese people
in America were interned because thegovernment said, oh, they might be spies.

(42:48):
Yeah.
Clearly this was impactful onyou as you wrote a book about it.
Uh, how, how much of that book is.
Is is directly biographical ofyour grandfather's experience.
How much of it was research?
How much of it came from him?
Right.
I'm just curious about it.
It's not that biographical.
It's inspired by my grandfather'sexperience and by the fact that I
didn't really know until I discoveredthat my grandfather had been interned

(43:10):
about this guy's secret history, secretBritish history, uh, of the way they
treated Jews, Jewish refugees, so.
There's like, I don't know,a hundred thousand Jewish
refugees in Britain in 1940.
And very similar in a way to sometimeslike migrant hysteria happens now,
the right wing tabloids are sort ofwhipping up this storm about 'em.

(43:33):
And one reason they can do that isthe British government are suppressing
information about the Holocaust.
Mm-hmm.
And the reason for that arevery interesting in themselves
and they're quite anti-Semitic.
Um.
And so just let me, I'll comeback to your question, but
there's a very interesting thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Thing I discovered, which is in that book,a Real Thing, which is in that book, which
is that a memo went out and the memo says,and it's a real memo that, uh, atrocities

(43:59):
as put out by the Ministry of Information,uh, they must only be described as
things that happen to what the memocalls indisputably innocent people.
And then it goes on tosay, not violent criminals.
And not Jews.
Right.
That's a real memo from 1940 tothe Ministry of Information in

(44:20):
Britain, IE don't talk about Jewsand terrible stuff happening to them
because we are not sure they belongin the category of the indisputably.
Innocent and British people only respondif we could think that they are, which I
would say at some level sums up everythingwe've been saying, by the way, about
Jews, 100% about Jews not counting.
There's a basic sense that whenterrible stuff happens to Jews.

(44:42):
They must be in some way responsible.
Responsible.
Right.
Maybe they deserve it.
They kind of deserve it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But the interesting thing about it is thatthe Isle of Man was somewhere where they
just basically Churchill in 1940 said.
Just arrest all theseGermans in Britain Right.
With no sense.
Like, well, obviously they can'tbe Nazis 'cause they're Jewish.
Right?

(45:02):
But he, he just did that.
And then what the British did in a veryBritish way was be quite lazy about it.
So, so they put 'em in camps, but notconcentration camps, just literally.
Bed and breakfast hotels, that'swhere my grandfather was behind.
Barbed wire on the Isle of Man, but abig barbed wire, so the whole of one
city would've barbed wire and thenthey'd put them in bed and breakfast.

(45:23):
And then the Jews, and this is thereally interesting thing, did a
very Jewish thing, which is in sixweeks, Douglas on the Isle of Man.
Is Vienna, right?
In six weeks there is lecturesand recital and art exhibitions.
There are six Nobel Prize winners inDouglas on the Isle of Man in June, 1940.
Wow.
The abode quartet meat on the Isleof man, Kurt Schwitters, the greatest

(45:47):
montage, uh, painter of that time.
It starts working with sort ofstuff with porridge and stuff
in, I mean, it's unbelievable.
The Jews just turn it intothis incredible cultural center
and actually my grandfather.
Told me, uh, that he liked it on thea of man, which is kind of weird, huh?
Of course.
He was separated from my,from my mom, his baby.

(46:10):
And I dunno if you would like itto be separated from your baby
and sent to Not the best, no.
No, but he kind of liked it'cause it was interesting.
I'm sure It was interesting anyway.
Right.
I thought that was a great setting.
For a novel.
So that's why Sure why I set it there.
Now I wanna talk about your,I mean, you've been very busy.
I wanna talk about your 2023 book, the GodDesire, which I, I resonated a lot with.

(46:32):
I would call myself more anagnostic than an atheist.
Uh, atheist is a, you know, I'm a little,I'm a little more humble than you.
I think it's moreunknowable than conclusive.
I experienced that God desire, andit's something I've actually spoken
about on this show for my audience.
Can you define the Goddesire and have you.
Totally.
You know, have you madeup your mind giving up?

(46:52):
You know, there's never ending, gonnabe a connection to the divine period.
We talked about how atheism isat the heart of my explanation
of anti-Jewish racism, right?
That it's not religion, right?
That was sort of the startingpoint for that book, which is that
for me, Jewishness is definitelynot about a supernatural.
Hash she, it's not about that.
Even though it sort of contains that.

(47:13):
Ironically or indeed sometimes.
Not ironically.
'cause there's a section in the book whereI talk about how moved I can get listening
to Jewish songs and Jewish prayers andHebrew, but it's still nothing to do.
It's to do for me withsurvival and tradition.
Mm-hmm.
And defiance that that stuff survives.
Not to do with the idea that God islistening to any of that stuff, but.

(47:35):
But then I thought more about itand I, and I thought like, I wanna
write an atheist book that isdifferent, I think from most atheist
books, because what it acknowledgesis how much I want God to exist.
Uh, and in fact, it's my desire,it's my want that makes me know
he doesn't, in so far as I think.
Mm-hmm.
Well.
Everyone wants this thing.

(47:56):
Everyone is frightened of death.
Everyone is frightened of meaninglessness.
Everyone would like to see theirloved ones again, if they've gone.
Everyone would like to feel thatthey have a purpose in life.
That justice will prove all the stuff thatwe want that isn't real about the world.
We want that stuff.
And so we have an answer if wewant it, which is that God will
make that stuff happen, right?

(48:17):
Or in whatever mysterious way.
That God has a plan, and that planincludes that we are being witnessed
and that there is a meaning, and weare not just knocking about as atoms
for no particular reason and so.
The more I feel that desire for thatstuff to be true, the more I think
yeah, that's what leads to God.
That's why we project God intothe world because he answers all

(48:39):
those problems for us, right?
Uh, all those very, verydeep psychological problems.
And the difference is.
That I therefore don't dismiss religion.
I mean, I wouldn't dismiss itanyway, and I think that's to do
with being part of a minority.
But I also, because I, I own the desire.
So when I think of the book, when Isay that Bertrand Russell says, after
I die my body and my ego shall rot.

(49:00):
And then he goes, but I scorn those.
Who would shiver at thethought of oblivion?
What I think is, what do you mean scorn?
Right?
Why?
Why are you scorningpeople who are frightened?
I don't, I don't believe Youare not frightened, Bertrand.
Right?
Right.
Everyone is frightened of death andit's okay to be frightened of death.
It's okay to hope that there'ssomething magic that will mean that
there is something beyond death.

(49:20):
I'm gonna give a quick shout out tomy cousin Alexander, who, who sent me.
A little something about this onceI did my monologue about how I don't
believe in God, and, and he, heintroduced me to some thinking by
Heiddeger, the famous Nazi philosopher.
Yeah.
Um, uh, but you know, we're,we're gonna separate the art
from the artist for a second.
Yeah.

(49:40):
I think if he was on Twitter now,someone would say this you and have a
picture of him with a swastika old man.
And people wouldn't believe that
this idea that my cousinsent me, which is.
The notion that there is not a God aswe, you know, picture this, you know,
man with the beard, whatever, but maybe.
To experience the divine requiresa certain level of attunement or

(50:03):
openness to it in order to receive it.
And by being closed to it andsaying it does not exist, you
are essentially closing the dooron being able to be open to it.
Should it exist.
I would say.
I'm pretty open to it in a way, in thatI, throughout the book saying, look,
I'd love to be able to find somethingthat makes me feel that this is true.

(50:27):
And the nearest I get to it isquantum physics, by the way.
Uh, I, I, I know why I am fascinated byquantum physics, and that's because what
I really want to believe in is magic.
That, by the way, is whatwe all want to believe in.
When we believe in God, wewant to believe that there is
something beyond the material.
Yeah.
So in that sense, in terms of your Hegerpoint, I think I'm pretty open to it.
And if the door.

(50:48):
Was there with the key and I, that was it.
I would be rushing through it to meet Godand then apologizing to him about all the
stuff I said about how he doesn't exist.
Fair enough.
I'm open to it in away, is what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Okay, so, um, you mentioned earlier yourpodcast that you did over this past year.
Yeah.
A Muslim and a Jew go there.

(51:08):
Yeah.
I think it's terrific and there'sa lot of great value in it.
I think listeners of thisshow would really enjoy and
appreciate those conversations.
I thought it was really great.
It was also really difficult.
That's what I mean.
I wanted to ask about that.
Well, I'm probably the most well-knownor, you know, well known for putting
his Jewishness in the foregroundperson in Britain, public Jew

(51:29):
extraordinaire, as I said,in the public extraordinaire.
And so,
but I'm an odd choice for it because I'mnot, as you know, I'm, I'm a non Zionist.
And what was problematic for me aboutit, and difficult, even though I think
there was some very good episodes of that,was that Sida is very pro-Palestinian.
And she therefore was one sideof the, and I wasn't really this

(51:49):
other side of the argument, right?
Mm-hmm.
Um, so a lot of the time I'd besaying, well, I think what most
Jews might be saying is rather thannecessarily just speaking for me.
However, it was still a reallyinteresting show, a very interesting
thing psychologically, which is.
You know, whatever my positionon Israel Palestine, I would
often not agree with her.
And then there'd be an interestingthing, which I think people liked,

(52:11):
which was, okay, we are just gonna sitwith the discomfort of disagreement.
And that is something which I thinkpeople find really, really hard now.
Absolutely.
Because
of social media.
Social media, which has createdthis terrible, terrible thing,
which is everyone is going to argue.
Which is fine, but not this in public.
Everyone is gonna argue with a spotlighton them and lots of people watching,

(52:35):
which means they can't argue in anykind of constructive way because it
feels like a humiliation if you lose.
It's all about winning and losing.
Mm-hmm.
And that's why you've got thisunbelievably toxic thing whereby
it's just people shouting ateach other because they feel.
You know, triumphant or humiliatedor whatever that stuff is.
Instead of that, we managed, 'causeit was a public place, a podcast like

(52:55):
sometimes we would really disagree.
We couldn't find a place of resolutionand we would just sit with, as it were,
listening to each other's difference.
And that was a good thing.
And I think that podcast was reallygood from that point of view.
And I certainly heard lots of stuff fromSIDA that was outside my normal kind of
comfort zone and was really interesting.
I haven't done it again, I haven'tdone a second series of it.

(53:17):
And that's partly to do with the MiddleEast, which is like, I don't, I wanted
to do a show, which the show sometimeswas about, the general stuff, the general
issues affecting these two communities,mainly in Britain, globally a bit.
Mm-hmm.
But mainly, but every week it wasjust because of when it started
relentlessly about Israel Palestine.
Yeah.
And after a while I thought, hang ona, I don't want to talk about this

(53:39):
every week 'cause it's very, very grim.
But also I've sort of built my whole.
You know, non Zionist castle on, I amnot someone who feels that the way I
talk about Jewishness and antisemitismis gonna be all about Israel and
all about the Middle East, right?
And here I am doing that.
And so after a while Ifound that quite difficult.

(53:59):
I. We, uh, we might go back to it.
I would prefer to go back to itwhen the terrible conflict is over.
Sure.
And who, who knows when that will beso that we can feel that isn't what
we have to talk about every week.
I'm curious as to what kindof relationship the two of
you had prior to the show.
Were you already to close?
Was this like, we're gonna jump in andjust see how it goes with this person?

(54:21):
I don't know that, well,what, what was the vibe?
I did a film, which I would.
Re recommend you watch andyour viewers watch if you can.
Uh, it's called the Infidel.
That's was gonna be my next question.
So in 2010, I wrote a film calledThe Infidel with a brilliant British,
uh, Iranian comic called Ahmed ly.
And it's about a Muslim who discovers thathe was biologically born Jewish, and he
has a kind of comedy nervous breakdown.

(54:43):
And when that film came out in Britain.
The, um, producer who's a guy calledArvid David thought it might be a good
thing in terms of the Muslim audiencefor that film to go and speak to and get
her to say a nice thing about the film.
So we went and saw her at the Houseof Lords, uh, which she was in.
She's a Baroness.
Just for the folks who don't know,she's Britain's first Muslim cabinet.

(55:03):
Yeah.
Member, like major politician.
Very, very well known.
Yeah.
She's first
woman Muslim to be amember of the cabinet.
She's an incredible voicefor Muslims in Britain.
Astonishing woman in loads of ways.
Uh, anyway, I'd never met her before thistime and we went and saw her and all she
talked about was another film called ForLions, which I dunno if you know, but a
very funny, it's a very funny film about,it's a satire written by the guy who

(55:27):
wrote succession Jesse Armstrong about.
Shit terrorists about very,very bad sort of, uh, sort of
jihadi terrorists in Britain.
It's a hilarious film, but it wasannoying to go and see Sida and all
she did was say, uh, yeah, I knowyou've done this film, but there's
this other really funny film.
I did a show which was about comediansmentoring people who weren't comedians.

(55:50):
It was like a TV show for charities forstandup to cancer in Britain, and so.
I was mentoring a priest and anothercomedian was mentoring Sa de Varsi.
And as soon as I saw her start to dostandup, I thought she's gonna win.
Because even though she's not acomedian, she's so got a voice,

(56:10):
she's so got something to say andshe's brilliant at delivering it.
And she did win.
And I think we bonded a bit when I,'cause I was like very positive about her.
But no, we didn't know eachother well, but we haven't met.
So you've got the infidel, you'vegot this podcast, clearly you have
some sort of connection to theMuslim, Jewish, you know, connection.

(56:33):
Uh, what, what is there in that for you?
Why is that important to explore?
I am interested in how one's identity.
As a Jew relates to other minorities.
So in a completely different way.
My wife is Catholic.
My best friend or the personI've done most comedy with is a
devout Catholic Frank Skinner.
Um, and, uh, one thing I've noticedabout Catholics is that in Britain they

(56:57):
were for years a persecuted minority.
There is something about that identitythat makes them marked in some way,
and that's the truth of all minorities.
And it's not true.
Of the majority, uh, and I'm sorry,white British people watching this, there
might not be that many, but if you'rejust white and Christian and Anglican
and British and you go to the Church ofEngland, you, you might be a wonderful

(57:19):
person in many ways, but somewhere aroundthat culture doesn't mark you, right.
You're not freighted with it in the waywe are freighted with Jewishness, and
indeed Catholics are, and Muslims are,and whoever, you know, being a minority,
it touches you very deeply, right?
And.
That could be in loads of positiveways, including comically, right?
Including musically, including whatever.

(57:39):
But also you have to think about it interms of racism that you're gonna face.
And so for me, Muslims are asmuch as that as anything else.
Now, I know there's meant to be thisbig polarity between Muslims and Jews.
I don't recognize that.
And I also think.
And in the infidel, I try andtheologically draw attention to this.
We are the same, utterlythe same religion.
I didn't really noticethat, but I didn't know.
The Koran is basically, basically thesame stories as in the Old Testament.

(58:03):
David, I'm gonna leave it there.
Okay.
That's a great, great way to finish.
Thank you so much for the time and forgetting into all the stuff with me.
You're doing amazing work andwe'll look forward to seeing
what you come up with next.
Thank you so much, Jonah.
It's been a pleasure.
It's been a long pleasure.
But definitely a pleasure.
I'll take it.
Thanks for the time.
Thank you very
much.
Cheers.
Thank you to David Bede.

(58:24):
Enjoy the being Jewish book sales bump.
Send me some crumpets.
Our season is winding down, butI've got an exciting announcement
about a new project coming up forsummer, so stay tuned for that.
If you wanna be first in the know, makesure you're signed up for my newsletter.
Which you can do in the little box at thevery bottom of being Jewish podcast.com.
And if you're watching this on JBS,make sure you follow the podcast on

(58:47):
YouTube or audio so you don't miss it.
That's it for me folks.
See y'all back here on the nextjolly good episode of being
Jewish with me, Jonah Platt.

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