April 29, 2025 • 58 mins
Antisemitism isn't a modern phenomenon—it's a 3,000-year-old pattern revealing profound truths about human psychology and social instability. In this riveting conversation, Rabbi Steve guides us through the intellectual history of anti-Jewish sentiment, starting with its earliest recorded instance in Exodus when Pharaoh feared Jews would side with Egypt's enemies.
The most illuminating insight emerges through a powerful metaphor: Jews function as a "blank screen" onto which societies project their deepest anxieties. Like a movie theater screen that remains unchanged while different films play across it, Jewish communities have stayed relatively consistent while antisemitism transforms to reflect whatever fears dominate each era. During medieval times when religious anxieties peaked, Jews were linked to Satan; during the Red Scare, they were associated with communism; today, they're painted as either "colonialists" by the left or "globalists" by the right.
Rabbi Steve traces how Jewish identity evolved through interactions with empires—from Greeks to Romans—and reveals fascinating historical details, such as how the term "Jews" originated from Roman references to people from Judea after destroying the Second Temple in 70 CE. We explore theological antisemitism (which targeted Jewish religious identity but allowed redemption through conversion) and racial antisemitism (stemming from 19th-century pseudoscientific theories).
Most profound is the observation that antisemitism serves as "the canary in the coal mine" for societal health. When a society begins mapping its anxieties onto Jews or other outsider groups, it signals broader sickness—not because Jews are causing problems, but because society has reached a point where it needs scapegoats to explain its discomfort with change.
Understanding antisemitism's historical patterns helps us recognize that today's rise in anti-Jewish sentiment reflects America's anxiety about the pace and direction of social transformation. What lessons can we learn from this pattern to build a healthier society that doesn't require scapegoats? Join us to discover how history illuminates our present moment.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to Real People, Real Life.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Okay, Steve.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on the show.
I really appreciate it.
Came out here to see Eric.
Eric was on yesterday Fantasticconversation.
Came out here to see Eric.
Eric was on yesterday Fantasticconversation.
What I want to talk to youabout is the rise of
anti-Semitism that we're seeing.
It's palpable.
You know it's something I cansee in my own communities.
(00:38):
You see it on the news everysingle day.
You know there's a lot ofthings that are sparking this,
but what I want to do is go to amore basic understanding.
So why, historically, we'veseen this with the Jewish
population.
Tell everyone a little bitabout your expertise as far as
understanding the history, etc.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
So I mean my own personal acquaintance with the
topic.
Of course I'm a rabbi and Ihave a background in
intellectual history.
Okay, you know, particularly,my doctorate was in the area of
Second Temple-era literature, sofrom about the year 400 BC or
(01:22):
BCE up until about the year 200AD or CE, but and then kind of
how ideas migrate and movethrough different cultures and
civilizations based on Jewishintermediaries is the specifics.
But it's really justintellectual history in general.
Okay, and so you know, withyour permission, what I'll do is
(01:50):
show that what's happeningtoday is not disconnected from
what actually has been afunction of Western human
history, at least for 3,000years.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Understood.
Yeah, absolutely, that's reallywhat we want to get into.
I intend to learn and I know alot of people would be very
interested in understanding theintellectual path.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So I mean the earliest, really the earliest
manifestation of what we wouldcall anti-Semitism today is
found in the book of Exodus inthe Bible.
So the Pharaoh is talking tohis advisors and he says, listen
, we've got to do somethingabout these Jews.
There's a whole lot of them,and what happens when our
(02:33):
enemies invade?
The Jews are going to help ourenemies, and so Pharaoh says we
have to enslave them.
That's really the first time inrecorded history that you find
anti-Semitism.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And what was Pharaoh's logic behind the Jews
siding with the enemy versuswith the Egyptians?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
So it's.
You know, some of your reader Imean some of your viewers may
be.
Some of your viewers may be orlisteners may be familiar with
Thomas Sowell.
He's a conservative thinker,african-american, brilliant man.
He's written a number of reallydeeply incisive sociological
(03:32):
studies and in one of his bookshe talks about anti-Semitism and
the function that Jews play indifferent societies, and so kind
of the surface take onanti-Semitism is Jews are a very
convenient blank screen.
I mean Jews have been aconvenient blank screen for
3,000 years because they're notpart of the majority and so the
cultures in which they live seethem as a blank surface onto
(03:57):
which you can map those issuesthat are troubling or unsettling
, or that people who are angry,those issues that they're angry
about.
So a scapegoat populationScapegoating.
And Jews.
You know, in Asia and ThomasSowell talks about it in Asia
(04:19):
it's the Chinese, and in Europe,in many cases it was the
Volksdeutsch.
And so after World War II ended, there was a tremendous
persecution of Volksdeutsch.
What?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
are Volksdeutsch, they are ethnic.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Germans who maintained their German identity
.
They spoke German, they dressedGerman, they ate German food,
even though they lived inCzechoslovakia or they lived in
Poland or they lived in othercountries, and the Volksdeutsch
became the symbol of rage of theculture in which they lived.
But Jews and the issuesurrounding Jews throughout
(04:58):
history has transcended culturebecause Jews are a different
religion.
So any society outside ofIsrael where Jews live, they're
immediately a religious minority.
And when religion plays a veryimportant role in society, it's
very easy to map those religiousfears onto that minority
(05:23):
population, religious fears ontothat minority population.
So a good example is in theMiddle Ages there was a real
fixation on Satan and Satan'spresence in the world,
particularly, but not restrictedonly, I mean the Catholic
Church.
Clearly the role of Satan inthe world is a very powerful one
(05:44):
and therefore when you hadpeople who dressed differently,
spoke a different language, atedifferent foods wouldn't marry
your children and your childrenwouldn't marry them.
You could look at them and say,well, our anxiety about Satan
we're going to map onto them.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
They're allied with.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Satan Got it Okay.
Okay, If you look in the 1950s,during the red scare in the
United States, politicallypeople were very anxious about
communism and there werecertainly, you know, Jewish
communists, you know.
I mean, there were Catholiccommunists, there were Lutheran
(06:28):
communists, there were there's apolitical ideology Right it's a
political ideology, but it waseasy for people to map onto this
minority oh, the Jews arecommunist, and so a
disproportionate number of thepeople who were blacklisted were
Jews.
But nobody said we'reblacklisting them because
they're Jews.
They just said you know, thisgroup is infiltrated.
(06:51):
Richard Nixon there's a famoustape now that was released and
Billy Graham was in the WhiteHouse speaking with Richard
Nixon and Richard Nixon madesome comments about Jews and and
and their lack of loyalty tothe United States, and Billy
Graham, who was in all respectsa pretty ethical, decent guy,
(07:13):
said yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Wow, I'd like to.
I definitely want to look thatone up.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So it was shocking.
I mean, when it came out, billyGraham apologized very deeply
when, when the tapes werereleased, because he said this
is not me.
But so what I'm saying is youknow what is anti-Semitism?
Anti-semitism is really at itssimplest level mapping your
(07:37):
anxieties or your anger onto theblank screen.
And I say it's a screen.
You know, if you go to a movietheater, there's no such thing
as a horror movie screen.
You project a horror movie ontothe screen, correct, there's no
such thing as an action screen.
You go to the movie theater andmaybe yesterday they had a
(07:59):
romance and today they have acar chase and crashes, and
tomorrow there's a horror movieand the next day it's a
historical.
You know treatment.
The screen itself hasn'tchanged.
It's what you project on thescreen.
So it's the same thing withJews.
It's whatever movie aparticular society in a
(08:19):
particular moment chooses toproject onto Jews as the blank
screen of anxiety in thatsociety.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And what would be the reason that such a tight
community?
Because the Jewish people thatI know and are friends with,
they have strong family values,strong ethics.
They put people first, they,they have the their, they serve,
they serve people.
I think that they're, uh, andvery kind.
(08:53):
Why, do you think it?
They don't come together andfight this historical
persecution?
Almost is it a passive natureof the?
I don't even know, I'm justtrying to figure out.
You would think, and some, andI know they, they fought um.
You know, biblically there'sbeen many fights um, but they
(09:15):
just, it just seems,historically they are the screen
, the projected screen, andsociety just projects this.
There, I it's, I never thoughtabout it this way, but the fear
of the masses are then portrayedon the minority.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Well, I mean.
So there are organized effortsto resist anti-Semitism and I
hate to use the word combat itbecause it's kind of
militaristic, but there are.
So, for instance, in the UnitedStates there's the
Anti-defamation league ofbenebrith and they have been
around for over a century to tryto, you know, legally challenge
(09:53):
anti-semitism, uh, to um,educate the public about the
phenomenon of anti-semitism.
You know why the the problem isto a certain extent.
You know every infant that isborn doesn't know anything.
So, yeah, every human being.
(10:14):
Every time a kid is born youhave to start all over again.
There is no incrementalprogress as a species.
You know individual societiesmay have incremental progress.
You know people.
Have you seen Monty Python?
And the Holy Grail, of course,okay.
So you remember the scene withthe witch.
You know how do you know she'sa witch?
(10:36):
Well, witches float.
You know what else floats?
Well, ducks float and woodfloats.
So you remember that scene andit's kind of like, how could
people be that ignorant?
But every child without aneducation is going to be that
ignorant.
And a reflection of how they'reraised Right, and so you know
(11:00):
there was a famous medievalJewish philosopher named Moses
Maimonides and there actually isschools named after him, jewish
schools there's, you know,hospitals named after him.
He was really a Renaissancethinker, one of the greatest
minds of the Middle Ages.
He and again going back to myown field, he took the Islamic
(11:22):
philosophy of the Muslimphilosophers Al-Farabi and
Averroes and he kind oftranslated them for his Jewish
audience and applied it toJewish theology and philosophy.
And then it was translated intoLatin by Jews from Judeo-Arabic
(11:44):
, by Jews who had converted toChristianity.
It was before the split betweenthe Protestants and the
Catholic Church, so it was justChristianity and it was
translated into Latin.
And then Thomas Aquinas usedMaimonides' book in his Summa
Theologica.
So, maimonides, you know, thequestion was why did prophecy
(12:09):
end?
You know we had all these greatprophets in the early period
and I'm not going to go intoMaimonides' philosophy of how
prophecy works, but basicallywhat Maimonides said was
prophecy works.
But basically what Maimonidessaid was no one can rise above
(12:29):
the level of knowledge andethics of the society in which
they live.
We're all a prisoner of theculture and the society in which
we live.
Some people can be at thesummit of Mount Everest and some
people can be at the bottom ofDeath Valley, but you can't rise
above the limits of the societyin which you live, and that was
that was around the year 1200that he wrote that.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And was that the basis of what prophets actually
did by increasing the level orenlightenment to a new level in
society?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Was that the historical he didn't go into
that at that level, butbasically he said that the
society in which you livecontrols the amplitude.
That makes sense, yeah, and sowhat he said was, for instance,
in the Golden Age and he was,you know, in the Middle Ages
they tended to look backwardsand he said, in the Golden Age
people were so morally perfectedthat they perceived God's truth
(13:27):
in the universe around them allthe time.
And he also, I mean he believedthat scientific knowledge and
theology were very muchinterrelated.
If you want to understand God,look at the world around you,
because no human being iscapable of immediately
perceiving and connecting withGod per se.
(13:49):
You can only connect with Godthrough your surroundings.
And so I mean he saw Moses asthe most perfected prophet
because he was the mostperfected moral person and was
the most perfected in terms ofknowledge, of science.
And again you see an echo ofthe Islamic theology of Muhammad
(14:14):
.
You know the idea that Muhammadwas a perfected human being and
therefore he received prophecybecause he was so spiritually
and morally and intellectuallyprepared to receive prophecy.
Got it so.
But, maimonides, you know, it'svery interesting because if you
look at it that way, you knowmy dad always used to say Jews
are the canary in the coal minefor any society in which they
(14:38):
live.
If the society is persecutingJews and is rife with
anti-Semitism, it means societyis very sick Because it has
reached a point of Morally,morally, intellectually,
intellectually.
Because it means that a societyhas reached the stage where they
(14:59):
are beginning to map theiranxieties onto human beings that
they consider to be outsiders.
Map their anxieties onto humanbeings that they consider to be
outsiders.
And so you know.
Right now, you knowanti-Semitism and hatred of Jews
is apolitical.
You know there are anti-Semiteson the left.
There are anti-Semites on theright.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Their reasons for hating Jews are different, but
you know.
So, if we look, yeah, becausethe fears of the right, the
fears of the left, then getprojected on the scapegoat.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Right.
And so if you look, forinstance, you know the most
visible discussion aroundanti-Semitism right now is
college campuses and you knowthe protests last spring against
Israel and anti-Israelsentiment.
(15:51):
So you know there are some onthe left who argue that I'm
anti-Israel.
I'm not an anti-Semite and infact there are not a small
number of Jews who were part ofgroups that are very anti-Israel
.
I mean, as an educator I taughtsome young students who became
(16:14):
leaders in the pro-Palestinian,anti-israel movement.
I mean, it's kind of a shock tome because I tend to think of
myself as very much a moderateon vis-a-vis either extreme.
But so if you look on thecollege campuses, well what's
the prevailing ideology oncollege campuses right now?
(16:35):
It's not anti-Semitism, it's aneo-Marxist, anti-colonial
fervor.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Okay, it's this idea that white Europeans came in.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, let's, yeah, I want to.
You're doing perfect Cause.
I wanted to define that Cause.
It's a big long sentence.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, neo-marxist, but it's white.
Colonists came in, theycolonized all of the global
South.
You know Brown people dependingon how you break that down but
you know they were the classicalMarxism.
It was the rich against thepoor and it was the.
(17:25):
The.
The owner ownership class haveoppressed the brown and black
and indigenous peoples.
Okay, I understand.
Okay.
And so they look at Israel andthey say we don't hate Jews, we
hate colonialism and Israel is awhite European colonial
(17:47):
experiment.
Okay, and I mean they call it.
You know the Zionist projectand those.
I mean there's all kinds offancy terms for it, I won't go
into it.
So what they do is they takethis neo-Marxist lens and then
they map it onto the blankscreen of Jews.
I mean the archaeologicalevidence is that Jews have lived
(18:10):
in Israel since at least theyear 1500 BC.
You know Jews, and before Jewsis a term that was coined by the
Romans, because the I didn'tknow that.
Yeah, so I mean the history ofterminology.
If you look in the Bible it'sIsraelites.
That's correct.
You know, the children of thechildren of Israel After the
(18:34):
northern 10 tribes wereconquered and carried off into
captivity by the Babylonians inthe year 597 BCE.
And I say BCE because Jews saybefore the Common Era, not
before Christ.
So in 597 BCE the northern—I'msorry, in 713, the northern
(18:54):
tribes are conquered and they'recarried off into.
You know Sennacherib and youknow if you've read the book of
Tobit.
You know Catholics have theapocryphal books, are part of
their canon and Protestants callthem apocryphal or
deuterocanonical.
This guy whose family wascarried into captivity, who
(19:25):
still identifies as Jewishliving in exile, that was
carried off, um, but at at thatpoint, the majority, there were
two, really two and a halftribes left that that were left
in the original land areaidentified with, with Israelites
, which is the current Israel,the tribe of Judah yeah the
tribe of Judah and the tribe ofBenjamin, okay, and then there
(19:45):
were also remnants of the tribeof Levi, you know, the priestly
families, that kind of were leftbehind.
So the overwhelming majoritywere Judean.
I mean, they were probably 85%of the population, 80 to 85%.
They were the descendants ofthe tribe of Judah.
They affiliated with the tribeof Judah.
So the Romans come in.
(20:10):
I mean, it's it's a long story,but the Romans wind up
dominating that region.
Um, originally the Greeksdominated the after Achille
after I'm blanking, what's hisname?
The great having a seniormoment here Alexander.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Alexander the Great comes in.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Israel becomes a.
I mean actually goes out andthere's a.
It's obviously again, it's anapocryphal story.
But the high priest goes outand welcomes Alexander and says
thank God you're here, we hatethe Persians, okay.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Plenty of hate to go around.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Plenty of hate to go around.
Listen, hate is something thatyou know we never run out.
There's enough hate to keepgoing.
If only hate were electricityright We'd have no energy crisis
.
We'd have no energy crisis, butthe issue is so Jews get along
(21:08):
with the Greeks for a long time.
But then you know there's thisperiod of instability in the
Greek empire.
You know, after Alexander theGreat dies, his empire is
divided up among his 12 topgenerals.
It's called not that anybodycares, but it's called the
period of the Diadochi, whichmeans 12 guys in Greek.
And you know, kind of the mainrivalry in the Middle East is
(21:30):
between the Ptolemies in Egyptand the Seleucids in Syria, and
Israel is kind of a land bridge.
And this also goes back to whyis Israel always in the news?
Because if you want to get toAfrica from Asia Minor, you've
got to go through Israel.
If you want to get to AsiaMinor from Africa, you've got to
(21:50):
go through Israel.
Well, africa has very rich.
Particularly Egypt has a richkingdom, very fertile.
You know the source of cotton.
The word cotton comes from anEgyptian word.
And since we're sitting here,in clothing manufacturer.
But so, and Asia Minor has veryrich trade routes, so you wind
(22:16):
up having to go through Israel,and so everybody wants to
control Israel.
And so you wind up having to gothrough Israel, and so
everybody wants to controlIsrael.
And so, during this period offriction between the Ptolemaic
and the Seleucid empires, israelwinds up under the Seleucids
and the Seleucids go through aperiod of social instability,
political instability, economicinstability.
(22:36):
They're waging all these warsof conquest against other people
, they bankrupt the treasury.
They wind up with these reallycorrupt, lunatic kings who beat
up everyone around them.
And so if you read the book ofMaccabees, you know he takes a
look and he says oh, you know,there's a temple over there in
Israel.
They don't worship the godsthat we worship, they don't like
(22:59):
the things that we like.
They dress funny, they eatfunny, they smell funny.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
They talk funny.
And what is the book ofMaccabees?
Which religion and or what isthat part of the apocryphal?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
books.
So, for instance, again kind ofgoing far field.
But so the Orthodox churcheshad them in the Greek and so
it's pseudepigrapha, becauseit's 1 Maccabees, I think, is in
the Catholic canon, it is inthe Protestant apocrypha books,
(23:31):
and for the Orthodox churches,because they use the Septuagint
as their base text, it's part oftheir canonical books, got it?
So in the book of Maccabees,antiochus looks and says hey,
listen, we're broke, they're not.
Let's make them pay taxesbecause they're not Greek,
they're not like us, so they'renot paying their fair share.
(23:54):
And he sends his army and itgoes back and forth and you have
, that's where Hanukkah comesfrom.
You know, the Maccabees fightback and it's like you're not
touching our stuff.
Didn't know that?
Yeah, beat it, get out of here.
But then the Maccabees turn outto be monsters too.
I mean the Hasmonean dynasty,really, king Herod.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Herod of.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Let's drown all the babies and Jesus and everybody.
Go back to where you came from.
Fame Herod marries the lastHasmonean princess.
Miriam winds up killing herbrother.
He has him drowned.
He not a good guy, really not agood guy.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It kind of doesn't come across that in the Old
Testament.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts,
absolutely.
That's correct.
But the point is that whathappens with Jewish identity is,
you know, so the Israelites,and at the time they still
weren't called Judeans.
The Israelites really look,they were called the sons of
Judah to some extent, but theylook at the Greeks and say these
(24:55):
guys are not our friends andsay these guys are not our
friends.
And so what happens is,ultimately there's a civil war
between two Hasmonean princesand one of them says to the
Romans listen, we need your help, could you come over here and
chop some heads for us?
And the Romans come over andthey chop some heads and they
put the prince on the throne andthey say but you know what?
(25:16):
You guys have really nice datepalms and you make some really
sweet olive oil and we had noidea life was so good over here.
We're taking a cut.
May sound familiar.
We want your natural resourcesin exchange for our help.
Because where's our thank you?
Correct?
You know, people change.
(25:37):
Human nature doesn't Nothingnew under the sun.
No, not at all.
So anyway.
So the Romans, the Israelites,begin rebelling against the
Romans because the Romans areexploiting them and as the
economy declines, because theRomans spent a huge amount of
(25:58):
money on foreign wars and otherthings and protecting their
colonies, the Romans startpulling more and more taxes out
of their colonies.
And the Israelites tended to beextremely independent and
warlike.
And so after the destruction ofthe Second Temple, I mean there
(26:19):
was a rebellion, there weremultiple rebellions against Rome
, but the great rebellionagainst Rome was in the year 66
AD to the year 70, which is whenthe Second Temple was destroyed
and the Romans began referringto the Israelites as Jews,
because they referred to themnot as Jews religiously, but
because they came from theprovince of Judea, got it, and
(26:42):
so they were called Judeans andthat became Jews, and that was
one of many tribes yeah, it wasone of the— One that survived as
far as the most amount ofpeople, right, Well, because I
mean the others kind of gotdispersed and the tribe of
Benjamin was never particularlylarge.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
So, and these are all tribes descendant of Abraham.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
They're all the tribes descended from Jacob.
You know his 10 sons, and thenthere were two half-tribes
because his grandsons, the sonsof Joseph, phryam and Manasseh
actually a half a tribe each.
So there were really 12-ish,because there were 12 sons, but
there was never a tribe ofJoseph.
There were the half tribes ofManasseh and Ephraim, and so it
(27:31):
was again, if you look, you know, you kind of project forward in
terms of waves of the health ofa society.
So when Roman society was veryunhealthy and unstable, they
hated Jews, they mapped ontoJews.
They're rebellious, they don'tworship the right gods, you know
, they're holding back on theirtaxes.
They're.
You know, we need to deal withthem.
(27:52):
And that's when Christianssplit.
There was a big rebellionagainst Rome in the year 117,.
There was a big rebellionagainst Rome in the year 117,
and there were riots in Rome andin Jewish cities across the
Middle East, and so theChristians came to the Romans
and said, hey, we're not Jewish.
You know, we don't know whattheir problem is, but whatever
(28:15):
their problem is, it's not ourproblem.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Separation Right.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And so there was really kind of this split, and
that's where Christians reallylegally split from Jews.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
So real quick, because I grew up in a Christian
church but, very blessed with agrandfather who was an
intellect, so he studied,challenged.
I got his Bible when he diedand there's not a page that
doesn't have questions on itmarks, it's torn to bits, it's
(28:46):
duct taped together and hechallenged me to not just accept
what they say from the pulpit,et cetera.
Like this when Christianitystarted to rise, there was the
Jews and the Christians gotalong pretty well at the time it
(29:08):
depends.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
So if you read the Gospels, the first generation of
Jews, I mean the firstgenerations of Christians, the
first generations of thefollowers, the Jewish followers
of Christ, correct, okay, thedisciples.
They didn't get along so wellwith the Jewish authorities at
the time.
I mean, if you read the Gospelsand I wasn't there.
I had a teacher once who Iloved, you weren't, and he used
(29:33):
to say I wasn't there, so Idon't really know.
But going by what I've read, soI wasn't there, I don't know.
And there's certainly a polemicmeans you know there's a
religious, argumentative side toit, which is the Gospels were
largely written under theinfluence of the Romans hating
the Jews and the followers ofChrist trying to say, hey, it's
(29:55):
not Rome, we have an issue with,it's them.
We're team, rome Got it Becausewe don't want you to kill us.
Interesting, okay, but I wasn'tthere, so I don't really know
what happened.
But if you look, so Jesus wouldargue with the Pharisees and
Jesus went to the temple andflipped over the tables of the
money changers.
So even in that early era therewere friction, but it was a
(30:22):
fractious time.
So, again, anybody who'sinterested, any of your
listeners, who wants to learnmore about this if you read the
histories of Josephus andspecifically the histories of
Josephus.
At that time, there werenumerous Jewish religious
factions and political factionsand they were largely fighting
(30:44):
with each other, and some ofthem part of their fights.
They were millennialist andthey were fighting with the
Romans, expecting the Romans tobe defeated by God, even though
they were outnumbered.
And so, you know, I explainedto people during, you know, I
(31:05):
was in the military during the,you know, the wars against ISIS
and Al-Qaeda, and I mean therewere factions of Jews who were
the Jewish version of ISIS andAl-Qaeda.
You know, just as an exampleBack in the day, back in the day
, yeah, so I mean the.
You know, just as an example.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Back in the day, back in the day.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Yeah, so I mean the Romans.
You know, there's a debate inthe Talmud, which is kind of the
large encyclopedia of Jewishlegal tradition that was
compiled around the year 600 ADin Babylonia.
And in the Talmud there's adebate between two rabbis while
the Romans were there, and theone said these Romans are
(31:42):
horrible.
I mean, they're vile, they'redisgusting.
And the other rabbi said no,actually they brought some good
things to us civilization.
And so the one rabbi who'sdefending Rome says you know,
they built roads, they builtbathhouses, they built
marketplaces.
We didn't have any of thatstuff before they came here.
And the other rabbi said theybuilt roads to traffic slaves,
(32:06):
they built bathhouses becausethey're sexual deviants, and
they built marketplaces to selltheir slaves.
And I mean again, if you go tothe developed world and their
opinions that run the gamut.
So, for instance, theanti-colonialists.
Colonialism is terrible.
Anything bad that has everhappened is because of these
(32:31):
Europeans who colonized andbrutalized and betrayed.
And it's in English literature,there's this theory, this
literary icon called the noblesavage.
Okay, it's this person who isauthentic, indigenous culture,
(32:52):
unpolluted by the West.
And so it's the noble savage.
Have you seen Dances withWolves?
Yes, noble savages.
These guys were allhumanitarians, right?
Well then you actually look.
Have you been to the AmericanSouthwest?
Yes, okay, one of my favoriteYouTubers actually just died.
(33:12):
Tragic, tragic situation.
He used to go, 34, 36 years old, was hit and killed by a drunk
driver a month ago.
Oh, his channel was a desertdrifter Used to go, 34, 36 years
old, was hit and killed by adrunk driver a month ago.
His channel was a desertdrifter and he would go to the
American Southwest.
He lived, I think, in GrandJunction in Colorado and he
would go to Utah and he would gooff grid he was a wilderness
(33:35):
guide professionally Go off gridand hike into these remote
areas where there were thesecave dwellings and he would kind
of record them and talk aboutthem, without ever disclosing
their location because he waspreserving the archaeological
value of the site.
Because they're either beingencroached on or, because of
climate change, a lot of thesesites that are 800 or 1,000
(33:57):
years old are now beginning tocollapse.
So if you've been to theAmerican Southwest and you've
seen the cave dwellings I havenot Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
But I will.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Not the cliff dwellings the cliff dwellings.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
I haven't, yeah, I've seen it on TV.
Yeah, Mesa Verde National Parkall that Okay.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
So why did people build on cliffs?
Difficult?
Well, it's hard to get up toright.
Well, there must be a reasonthat people would expend that
kind of energy to build on theedge of a cliff and risk their
two-year-old falling off theedge.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Yeah, it's militarily or it's a good defense.
Being up high, you can seewhat's coming.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Yeah, but after all, they were noble savages.
Yeah, before these awfulEuropeans came and I'm not
saying the Europeans weren'tawful, but before they came
everybody lived in peace andharmony.
And it's hey, you ran out ofcorn this year.
I'll give you some of my corn,hey can, I can.
I borrow a couple of cup ofbeans.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
All the basic, all the all the uh human instincts
we were talking about beforejust disappeared.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, we're a defective species.
I mean, that's what religion issupposed to address and not be a
tool to help the defects.
Anyway, so well, the reason is,if you listen to Navajo
tradition, because after thecollapse of the Incan and Mayan
civilizations in South America,some of them migrated north and
they had pretty sophisticatedweapons and military training
(35:19):
and they said we got a bunch ofsavages here that we can eat.
So they literally took theirlands and they are now beginning
to realize that some of thesearchaeological sites are sites
where cannibalism was practicedand human beings were butchered
and others were enslaved.
So people moved up to thecliffs to protect themselves
(35:41):
from these peoples that hadmigrated north from South
America.
So when I say the noble savage,it's this idea that there is
some human society that you canfind where people are untouched
by the basic defects of ournature, of our nature.
You know the.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
It's all through the perspective of ideology.
Yeah, it's whatever ideologyyou have and the lens you're
looking at it.
That's what you see.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
So your grandfather was looking through the lens of
rationalism.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Very much so.
He had a very, very personalrelationship with God that you
actually believed, but it wasbuilt on a detailed dissection
of the Word of God as wedescribe, and that, for him, was
the Old Testament and the NewTestament.
(36:34):
But the Old Testament is whatwe studied, because he strongly
believed in the Old Testamentand, it being the foundation, he
believed in foundationalprinciples.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Yeah, which is again your grandfather was a product
of the educational system inwhich he was raised and the era
in which he was raised.
What year was he born?
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Oh, probably 1920s something like that Okay and
where?
Massachusetts.
Well, he was born inMassachusetts, but his parents,
my great-grandparents, just cameover from Sicily.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Okay, so they were Catholic.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
He was raised.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Protestant.
He was raised Protestant.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
He was raised Catholic, uh-huh, and then
converted and became aCongregationalist.
That's you know.
Christian is what you know.
But I go back and forth.
He'd actually say, well,catholic, christian, same thing,
but on, you know the split.
At the time it was theCatholics.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
And everybody who was not Catholic.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
And then he became what they were deeming as a
born-again Christian, and theywere diametrically opposed.
Growing up, his family is likewhat did you do?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Right?
Well, because the CatholicChurch in that era and again I'm
not, I mean, I'movergeneralizing.
So that's the first thing youknow.
You always have toovergeneralize.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
And I'm speaking to a very specific example, but the
Catholic.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Church is very much founded.
You know, there's always atension between revelation and
reason.
You know, revelation is Joshuamade the sun stand still.
Okay, that's revelation.
Reason is the sun can't standstill.
It must have been a perception,ok.
(38:24):
So American Protestantism basedon really English, the
Protestant movements you know,and the Protestants who came
over, they believed inindividual, the individual
experience of religion and theindividual encounter with the
Bible.
And so, actually, I mean therewas a, there was a vote on which
(38:46):
would be the official languageof the United States.
Um, number one was English,number two was Hebrew and number
three was, uh, german.
Hmm, when did this happen?
This was pre-colonial, I mean,you know, during the colonial
period about.
You know which religion I mean,which language.
(39:07):
And the early Protestants inEngland studied Hebrew
intensively and it was part of atradition of the Enlightenment.
I'd sent you that article about.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Johannes.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Reuthlin.
So the Renaissance humanistsstudied Hebrew because they
wanted to understand the Biblein its original language,
because they felt that that wasan authentic encounter.
So today, you know, if somebodysays you know, I had a kid when
I taught at the Naval Academywho came up to me and he said
(39:38):
you know, chaplain, I wish Icould believe in religion and
the Bible, because my friendswho believe in the Bible and
believe in religion seem so muchmore at peace with me.
It seems so much more at peace,he said, but I just can't
believe it, it just doesn't makeany sense.
(39:59):
And I said to him as a humanistand I mean I'm very liberal, I
mean that's my own theology, Icome from an extremely liberal
tradition and what I said to himis you can read the Bible as
the greatest anthology of humanwrestling with what it means to
(40:21):
be a human being.
And all human beings in theirlifetime, if they live a
fulfilled life, have to addressthree things what was here
before we got here, Correct?
What is going to be here afterwe leave and what am I supposed
to do while I'm here?
Those are the three greatquestions that any religious
(40:44):
system deals with.
And I said so if you read theBible, you're looking at roughly
a 2,000-year anthology ofdifferent opinions in different
times, different politicalcircumstances, different
economic circumstances,different geographies and
(41:08):
countries of hundreds of peoplesaying what does it mean to me
to be human?
Speaker 1 (41:18):
And what was his response?
Speaker 3 (41:20):
He said I hadn't looked at it that way.
You know I mean, but for me, itreally is.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
I hadn't looked at it that way.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah, so people who are secular can still look.
Now I mean, am I opposed inAmerica to teaching?
Well, to begin with, there's aproblem with saying the Bible,
okay, which Bible Bible?
Because there's the HebrewBible and then there's the, you
know, the post-Old Testament,post-hebrew scriptures.
(41:48):
Okay, so you're going to teachthe Old Testament, new Testament
, are you going to approach itin the lens of Hebrew scriptures
and Christian scriptures?
Okay?
Then there's the Orthodoxchurches, which use the
Septuagint as their foundationaltext.
So they have books that theCatholics don't have.
The Catholics have books thatProtestants don't accept.
The Protestant Reformation saidwe're going to go back.
(42:08):
And anything that Jerome, whenhe did the Vulgate translation,
anything that he couldn't find aHebrew or Aramaic antecedent to
, he labeled deuterocanonical.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Deuterocanonical.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Canonical means kind of a secondary level of sanctity
, Okay, but modern Protestantsfor the most part don't use the
Apocrypha at all.
I mean, if you go to mostBaptist churches you're not
going to see people preachingfrom the book of you know, 4th
Maccabees, Okay, Not even 1stMaccabees, they don't get.
So I mean, my challenge is wedon't have that many people who
(42:47):
are biblically literate.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
We have people who have read the Bible, their Bible
, whatever their Bible is, and Iwould disagree that Well within
my own circle, the amount ofpeople that have actually read
the Bible shocks me that theyhaven't.
(43:09):
We, you know, I always tellpeople just read Genesis.
It's one of the most insanebooks you'll ever read.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah, kind of these giants walking around eating
people and having babies withthem.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah, it's like science fiction and people all
they know is God created theheavens and the earth.
They know like they havesoundbites, they live a
religious soundbite life without, and I don't think that there
is a in my life.
I haven't seen.
I have very few people and Ihave some great friends Rob,
I'll throw your name out therewho does deep dives on this and
(43:46):
really wants to know the answers, and but that just doesn't
exist.
The curiosity to understandjust doesn't exist.
And then, but the hatred I meanthere's.
I mean I mentioned before, yousee, this rise in anti-Semitism,
rise against Judeo-Christianvalues, just the basic values
(44:12):
that are being attacked.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
And I will say, by the way, and again, kind of, the
term Judeo-Christian is amisnomer Okay, because what we
tend to read as Judeo-Christianvalues are really Western
Enlightenment values.
It's not Judeo-Christian.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah, go into more detail on that.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Well, I mean again, you know what is authentically
Christian?
Well, I mean believing inChrist, correct Okay.
Authentically Christian, Well,I mean believing in Christ,
correct Okay.
Once you get past that, there'sreally a diversity of opinions.
So, for instance, a lot of mydoctoral research was in the
fight between the OrthodoxChristians and the monophysites,
(44:56):
they were called, inMesopotamia, specifically in two
Mesopotamian cities, Edessa andUrhoi.
I mean Edessa and Nisibis.
Okay, so Christians werekilling each other because one
said Christ was born divine andhuman simultaneously and the
(45:18):
other group of Christians said,no, he was fully human when he
was born and then he becamedivine when he was baptized and
the dove settled on him and thatwas a sign that the Holy Spirit
had now entered his body and hewas now divine.
And Christians killed eachother over there.
Okay, so if Christians, there'sno such thing as a Christian
tradition.
There's no such thing as aJewish tradition.
(45:39):
There were Pharisees, therewere Sadducees, there were
Essenes, there were, you know,the various tribes.
If you read the book of Judges,they believe different things.
Where the modern Samaritans are, they worshiped at Mount
(45:59):
Gerizim and there was no centraltemple in Jerusalem, and the
centrality of the temple inJerusalem wasn't accepted really
fully until the restoration andthe second temple was built,
and the Samaritans who livedkind of in the north.
They were the descendants ofthe Israelites, the 10 tribes
(46:24):
who lived there and the Assyriansettlers who intermarried.
And so the Judeans said you guysaren't Jews.
You know the Good Samaritan,you know the parable of Good
Samaritan.
So the Judeans said you guysaren't Jews.
And the Samaritans said no,we're the real Jews.
You guys aren't Jews.
You know we're the real Jews.
You guys aren't Jews.
You know we're the realIsraelites.
You guys, because you went toBabylonia and you got influenced
(46:47):
by these people and you guysare modernists.
And I'll just give you a quickexample.
When you talk about the Bible,everybody knows what Hebrew
letters look like, but they'renot Hebrew, they're not Jewish.
Actually, the Samaritans usethe first five books of Moses.
You know the first five booksof.
You know Genesis, exodus,leviticus, but it's written in
(47:10):
it's called paleo-Hebrew script.
It's actually authentic Hebrewscript and what is called Hebrew
script now is actually acursive script.
That was a Syrian cursive.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Because, Jews.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
When they went to Babylonia, they learned this new
script and it's a differentalphabet.
And so when they come back, youknow, if you read the book of
Ezra, you know Ezra institutesthe public reading of the law
from an authorized version ofthe Bible.
Why does he do it?
Because it's written in theBabylonian script and it's a way
(47:47):
of saying this is a purity testAre you a real Jew or are you
one of those kind of crookedJews who you know you slept with
Assyrians.
You know your mother was anAssyrian.
Okay, and so there's noauthentic Judeo tradition,
there's no authentic Christiantradition.
There's what what we refer toas Judeo Christian values are
(48:12):
really the, thepost-enlightenment values of the
deists.
You know George Washington andJames Madison and Thomas
Jefferson, which was based onkind of a universalist set of
assumptions that all humanbeings.
We hold these truths to beself-evident.
All men are created equal andendowed by their creator with
(48:33):
certain inalienable rights,among them life liberties, and
all people are equal, and eventhe people who voted to become
the first colonies I mean tobecome the first states they
didn't believe it because theydidn't believe that their black
slaves were created equal.
(48:55):
They didn't believe that theNative Americans were created
equal.
It was always, and so the Bibleand the Judeo-Christian value
system that your grandfather wasraised with.
It wasn't a stated fact.
It was a goal to aspire to,which is a good goal to aspire
to, which is a good goal.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
But right now.
So Potentially religionsfollowed correctly are goals to
aspire to.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah, but like the anti-Soros rhetoric, potentially
religions followed correctlyare goals to aspire to, but like
the anti-Soros rhetoric, youknow I mean, because we've
talked about anti-Semitism onthe left, anti-semitism on the
right, you know, theanti-Semitism on the left is
basically this neo-Marxist,post-colonial rage, okay.
Okay, the anti-Semitism on theright, some of it is theological
(49:40):
antisemitism.
You know when, when, if youread the gospel of John, when
Jesus is is being tried and MelGibson okay, If you've seen, you
know the, the passion of theChrist.
Mel Gibson is a theologicalantisemite.
He reads the book of John andthe Jews said and I mean, who
(50:04):
elected them?
The Jews Like they didn't speakfor everybody, but you know,
courtney, and I wasn't there, Idon't know if the leadership
actually said it or not, butthey said upon us and our
children be his death.
Okay, so that became thefoundation for theological
anti-Semitism throughout theMiddle Ages.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
That makes sense.
Yeah, actually I understandthat.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
They won't embrace Christ, so they're evil, so we
need to punish them.
But theological anti-Semitismjust kind of very quickly,
because I know we're getting upon an hour already.
But theological anti-Semitism,we'll just go for eight hours.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Okay, yeah, all night long we could do part two.
We will definitely do part two.
I'm so intrigued.
This is very interesting.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Yeah, I mean, it's a fascinating intellectual
movement.
Theological antisemitism saidas soon as you converted, you
were okay, you were team Jesus,so we don't hold a grudge
Because your baptism absolvedyou of your original sin and the
(51:02):
sins of your ancestors.
So if you were Jewish and thenyou converted and there were
famous Jews in the Middle Ageswho converted to Christianity
and many of them bent overbackwards and they were some of
the most rabid anti-Semitesaround Because their Jewish
relatives said he did it for themoney, their Jewish relatives
(51:22):
said he did it for the money.
And the Christians said he'sthe most pure because we were
baptized into this as infants.
We didn't know any different.
But look at that.
He was raised in this vile,filthy, sin-filled culture and
he rose above it and herecognized truth independently.
So we love him more than weeven love our own.
(51:43):
Wow, so that was theologicalantisemitism and there's still
remnants of theologicalantisemitism.
I had a dispute with a guy inthe Navy who published on his
Facebook page that Jesus is thelaw of life and that the Old
Testament is the law of death.
And I said what you're doing isand he was not at his core
(52:07):
anti-Semitic, but he wasanti-Jewish and I said you know,
there are people that serve inuniform alongside you, who
follow the law of Moses, and yousaying this is the law of death
makes it more difficult for usto practice our faith.
And he was an officer, so I saidso you may be setting up
enlisted to be persecuted bypeople who listen to you on
(52:29):
Sunday.
And he said I'm not ananti-Semite, I love Israel, I
love Jews.
Then there's racialanti-Semitism, you know, and if
you look at uh, uh again, it'sfascinating.
Um, I think his name was um nut.
He was one of the founders.
He was the founder of themedical school in um, alabama,
(52:52):
in in Mobile Alabama.
Vile racist in the 1840s andfifties published hateful things
, um, and studying all the raceson earth.
And there was a rabbi who hadcome over from Belgium, who was
a rabbi, who wrote him a letterabout.
This is so brilliant, this isso wonderful.
Your work is.
You know, you've identified itcorrectly because, look, jews
(53:12):
are all the same, they're allwhite and smart.
Well, there were Jews fromSyria, jews from Iraq, jews from
Ethiopia.
Jews aren't all white.
But this guy, you know he wrotethis horrible thing but it was
based on American racistwritings and racial
pseudoscience from the UnitedStates in the 1840s and 1850s,
(53:50):
that kind of predated butimmediately fit in with Darwin
and this idea of a master race.
You know the.
What's his name now I'mblanking on his name now.
The German philosopher who wroteThus Spoke Zarathustra,
nietzsche.
Nietzsche writes about kind ofthis, post-sentimental religious
(54:19):
movements and human ideologies.
And he said you know, we haveto be ruthless.
You know, there was an articlethe other day about the death or
the decline of empathy inWestern societies, particularly
in the United States right now,this idea that empathy is a
weakness, not a strength.
And Nietzsche proposed this.
You know, there's nothing new.
(54:39):
And so the Nazis said look, Imean, we are good people and we
are human.
So of course we are inclined tofeel sorry for the Jews we have
to kill, but we have to do itfor the good of the human race
and evolution.
And it fit in with Americanracial politics and American
(55:02):
racial ideology in the 1830s,1840s and 1850s.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
The canary in the coal mine, the canary in the
coal mine.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
So right now, here's the problem that I see American
society is undergoing atremendous upheaval.
You know, there's in the Talmudthere's an expression.
So we've had these argumentsgoing back and forth for 22
pages already in Aramaic.
And you know, I believe thisand you believe that.
So what's the practicalconsequence of this?
(55:30):
And in Yiddish there's anexpression.
You know, nu Vuden, you know,okay, so now what?
So what is the practicalconsequence of this?
The rise of antisemitism thatwe're seeing in America right
now is a symptom of a sicksocial system.
Anti-semitism isn't drivingchange in America.
(55:54):
Change in America and uneaseand discomfort with the pace of
change, the nature of change andthe direction of change is
driving people to show whatevermovie they want on the movie
screen.
And so some it's a politicalright-wing narrative of the Jews
(56:14):
are globalists.
They're bringing brown peoplein the great replacement thing.
On the left, it's Jews arecolonialists.
They're part of the oppressionof, you know, the indigenous
peoples.
You know there are people whoare returning to religion and
there's particularly an upsurgein people returning to the
Catholic Church.
(56:35):
Yeah, you had mentioned that,yeah, yeah.
So JD Vance, who was raised inan evangelical Christian setting
, who embraces the CatholicChurch and a conservative
Catholic Church.
So my watch reminding me theparking meter's running
Absolutely yeah.
So basically, the answer toyour question is anti-Semitism.
(56:55):
Right now, because there's somuch social angst, so many
people are looking for a way tomake sense of it in a situation
that you can't make sense of.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
Understood the canary in the coal mine.
Speaker 3 (57:07):
The canary in the coal mine.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Scapegoat mentality, a level of social anxiety,
perhaps fear, lack of direction,and they're projecting their
fears onto.
Jews Steve.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Yeah, thank you so much, Ryan.
This was fun.
I got to use my brain.
Speaker 1 (57:28):
My brain is boiling right now.
I think you overloaded me.
I think it's fantastic.
I could do this for hours.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
If you want to wait a few months and we can do part
two and sort of.
Absolutely, you know which formof anti-Semitism seems to have
the upper hand right now?
Speaker 1 (57:42):
Yeah, we can definitely go in.
Yeah, let's go into a deeperdive.
I guarantee you this is goingto be well.
We're going to get a lot ofcomments on this and I'll do my
best and if I've got anyquestions, I'll reach out to you
and you can answer questions asthey come in.
Steve, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (58:03):
You've been listening to Real People, Real Life.
Our passion is to have realconversations with real people
who've made it.
Real people who've made it whodid it on their own terms.
We'll be back soon, but in themeantime, catch us on Twitter or
X at RPRL Podcast and onYouTube at Real People Real Life
(58:24):
Podcast.
Welcome to Real People, Real Life.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Okay, Steve.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on the show.
I really appreciate it.
Came out here to see Eric.
Eric was on yesterday Fantasticconversation.
Came out here to see Eric.
Eric was on yesterday Fantasticconversation.
What I want to talk to youabout is the rise of
anti-Semitism that we're seeing.
It's palpable.
You know it's something I cansee in my own communities.
(00:38):
You see it on the news everysingle day.
You know there's a lot ofthings that are sparking this,
but what I want to do is go to amore basic understanding.
So why, historically, we'veseen this with the Jewish
population.
Tell everyone a little bitabout your expertise as far as
understanding the history, etc.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
So I mean my own personal acquaintance with the
topic.
Of course I'm a rabbi and Ihave a background in
intellectual history.
Okay, you know, particularly,my doctorate was in the area of
Second Temple-era literature, sofrom about the year 400 BC or
(01:22):
BCE up until about the year 200AD or CE, but and then kind of
how ideas migrate and movethrough different cultures and
civilizations based on Jewishintermediaries is the specifics.
But it's really justintellectual history in general.
Okay, and so you know, withyour permission, what I'll do is
(01:50):
show that what's happeningtoday is not disconnected from
what actually has been afunction of Western human
history, at least for 3,000years.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Understood.
Yeah, absolutely, that's reallywhat we want to get into.
I intend to learn and I know alot of people would be very
interested in understanding theintellectual path.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
So I mean the earliest, really the earliest
manifestation of what we wouldcall anti-Semitism today is
found in the book of Exodus inthe Bible.
So the Pharaoh is talking tohis advisors and he says, listen
, we've got to do somethingabout these Jews.
There's a whole lot of them,and what happens when our
(02:33):
enemies invade?
The Jews are going to help ourenemies, and so Pharaoh says we
have to enslave them.
That's really the first time inrecorded history that you find
anti-Semitism.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
And what was Pharaoh's logic behind the Jews
siding with the enemy versuswith the Egyptians?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
So it's.
You know, some of your reader Imean some of your viewers may
be.
Some of your viewers may be orlisteners may be familiar with
Thomas Sowell.
He's a conservative thinker,african-american, brilliant man.
He's written a number of reallydeeply incisive sociological
(03:32):
studies and in one of his bookshe talks about anti-Semitism and
the function that Jews play indifferent societies, and so kind
of the surface take onanti-Semitism is Jews are a very
convenient blank screen.
I mean Jews have been aconvenient blank screen for
3,000 years because they're notpart of the majority and so the
cultures in which they live seethem as a blank surface onto
(03:57):
which you can map those issuesthat are troubling or unsettling
, or that people who are angry,those issues that they're angry
about.
So a scapegoat populationScapegoating.
And Jews.
You know, in Asia and ThomasSowell talks about it in Asia
(04:19):
it's the Chinese, and in Europe,in many cases it was the
Volksdeutsch.
And so after World War II ended, there was a tremendous
persecution of Volksdeutsch.
What?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
are Volksdeutsch, they are ethnic.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Germans who maintained their German identity
.
They spoke German, they dressedGerman, they ate German food,
even though they lived inCzechoslovakia or they lived in
Poland or they lived in othercountries, and the Volksdeutsch
became the symbol of rage of theculture in which they lived.
But Jews and the issuesurrounding Jews throughout
(04:58):
history has transcended culturebecause Jews are a different
religion.
So any society outside ofIsrael where Jews live, they're
immediately a religious minority.
And when religion plays a veryimportant role in society, it's
very easy to map those religiousfears onto that minority
(05:23):
population, religious fears ontothat minority population.
So a good example is in theMiddle Ages there was a real
fixation on Satan and Satan'spresence in the world,
particularly, but not restrictedonly, I mean the Catholic
Church.
Clearly the role of Satan inthe world is a very powerful one
(05:44):
and therefore when you hadpeople who dressed differently,
spoke a different language, atedifferent foods wouldn't marry
your children and your childrenwouldn't marry them.
You could look at them and say,well, our anxiety about Satan
we're going to map onto them.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
They're allied with.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Satan Got it Okay.
Okay, If you look in the 1950s,during the red scare in the
United States, politicallypeople were very anxious about
communism and there werecertainly, you know, Jewish
communists, you know.
I mean, there were Catholiccommunists, there were Lutheran
(06:28):
communists, there were there's apolitical ideology Right it's a
political ideology, but it waseasy for people to map onto this
minority oh, the Jews arecommunist, and so a
disproportionate number of thepeople who were blacklisted were
Jews.
But nobody said we'reblacklisting them because
they're Jews.
They just said you know, thisgroup is infiltrated.
(06:51):
Richard Nixon there's a famoustape now that was released and
Billy Graham was in the WhiteHouse speaking with Richard
Nixon and Richard Nixon madesome comments about Jews and and
and their lack of loyalty tothe United States, and Billy
Graham, who was in all respectsa pretty ethical, decent guy,
(07:13):
said yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Wow, I'd like to.
I definitely want to look thatone up.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
So it was shocking.
I mean, when it came out, billyGraham apologized very deeply
when, when the tapes werereleased, because he said this
is not me.
But so what I'm saying is youknow what is anti-Semitism?
Anti-semitism is really at itssimplest level mapping your
(07:37):
anxieties or your anger onto theblank screen.
And I say it's a screen.
You know, if you go to a movietheater, there's no such thing
as a horror movie screen.
You project a horror movie ontothe screen, correct, there's no
such thing as an action screen.
You go to the movie theater andmaybe yesterday they had a
(07:59):
romance and today they have acar chase and crashes, and
tomorrow there's a horror movieand the next day it's a
historical.
You know treatment.
The screen itself hasn'tchanged.
It's what you project on thescreen.
So it's the same thing withJews.
It's whatever movie aparticular society in a
(08:19):
particular moment chooses toproject onto Jews as the blank
screen of anxiety in thatsociety.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And what would be the reason that such a tight
community?
Because the Jewish people thatI know and are friends with,
they have strong family values,strong ethics.
They put people first, they,they have the their, they serve,
they serve people.
I think that they're, uh, andvery kind.
(08:53):
Why, do you think it?
They don't come together andfight this historical
persecution?
Almost is it a passive natureof the?
I don't even know, I'm justtrying to figure out.
You would think, and some, andI know they, they fought um.
You know, biblically there'sbeen many fights um, but they
(09:15):
just, it just seems,historically they are the screen
, the projected screen, andsociety just projects this.
There, I it's, I never thoughtabout it this way, but the fear
of the masses are then portrayedon the minority.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Well, I mean.
So there are organized effortsto resist anti-Semitism and I
hate to use the word combat itbecause it's kind of
militaristic, but there are.
So, for instance, in the UnitedStates there's the
Anti-defamation league ofbenebrith and they have been
around for over a century to tryto, you know, legally challenge
(09:53):
anti-semitism, uh, to um,educate the public about the
phenomenon of anti-semitism.
You know why the the problem isto a certain extent.
You know every infant that isborn doesn't know anything.
So, yeah, every human being.
(10:14):
Every time a kid is born youhave to start all over again.
There is no incrementalprogress as a species.
You know individual societiesmay have incremental progress.
You know people.
Have you seen Monty Python?
And the Holy Grail, of course,okay.
So you remember the scene withthe witch.
You know how do you know she'sa witch?
(10:36):
Well, witches float.
You know what else floats?
Well, ducks float and woodfloats.
So you remember that scene andit's kind of like, how could
people be that ignorant?
But every child without aneducation is going to be that
ignorant.
And a reflection of how they'reraised Right, and so you know
(11:00):
there was a famous medievalJewish philosopher named Moses
Maimonides and there actually isschools named after him, jewish
schools there's, you know,hospitals named after him.
He was really a Renaissancethinker, one of the greatest
minds of the Middle Ages.
He and again going back to myown field, he took the Islamic
(11:22):
philosophy of the Muslimphilosophers Al-Farabi and
Averroes and he kind oftranslated them for his Jewish
audience and applied it toJewish theology and philosophy.
And then it was translated intoLatin by Jews from Judeo-Arabic
(11:44):
, by Jews who had converted toChristianity.
It was before the split betweenthe Protestants and the
Catholic Church, so it was justChristianity and it was
translated into Latin.
And then Thomas Aquinas usedMaimonides' book in his Summa
Theologica.
So, maimonides, you know, thequestion was why did prophecy
(12:09):
end?
You know we had all these greatprophets in the early period
and I'm not going to go intoMaimonides' philosophy of how
prophecy works, but basicallywhat Maimonides said was
prophecy works.
But basically what Maimonidessaid was no one can rise above
(12:29):
the level of knowledge andethics of the society in which
they live.
We're all a prisoner of theculture and the society in which
we live.
Some people can be at thesummit of Mount Everest and some
people can be at the bottom ofDeath Valley, but you can't rise
above the limits of the societyin which you live, and that was
that was around the year 1200that he wrote that.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
And was that the basis of what prophets actually
did by increasing the level orenlightenment to a new level in
society?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Was that the historical he didn't go into
that at that level, butbasically he said that the
society in which you livecontrols the amplitude.
That makes sense, yeah, and sowhat he said was, for instance,
in the Golden Age and he was,you know, in the Middle Ages
they tended to look backwardsand he said, in the Golden Age
people were so morally perfectedthat they perceived God's truth
(13:27):
in the universe around them allthe time.
And he also, I mean he believedthat scientific knowledge and
theology were very muchinterrelated.
If you want to understand God,look at the world around you,
because no human being iscapable of immediately
perceiving and connecting withGod per se.
(13:49):
You can only connect with Godthrough your surroundings.
And so I mean he saw Moses asthe most perfected prophet
because he was the mostperfected moral person and was
the most perfected in terms ofknowledge, of science.
And again you see an echo ofthe Islamic theology of Muhammad
(14:14):
.
You know the idea that Muhammadwas a perfected human being and
therefore he received prophecybecause he was so spiritually
and morally and intellectuallyprepared to receive prophecy.
Got it so.
But, maimonides, you know, it'svery interesting because if you
look at it that way, you knowmy dad always used to say Jews
are the canary in the coal minefor any society in which they
(14:38):
live.
If the society is persecutingJews and is rife with
anti-Semitism, it means societyis very sick Because it has
reached a point of Morally,morally, intellectually,
intellectually.
Because it means that a societyhas reached the stage where they
(14:59):
are beginning to map theiranxieties onto human beings that
they consider to be outsiders.
Map their anxieties onto humanbeings that they consider to be
outsiders.
And so you know.
Right now, you knowanti-Semitism and hatred of Jews
is apolitical.
You know there are anti-Semiteson the left.
There are anti-Semites on theright.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Their reasons for hating Jews are different, but
you know.
So, if we look, yeah, becausethe fears of the right, the
fears of the left, then getprojected on the scapegoat.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Right.
And so if you look, forinstance, you know the most
visible discussion aroundanti-Semitism right now is
college campuses and you knowthe protests last spring against
Israel and anti-Israelsentiment.
(15:51):
So you know there are some onthe left who argue that I'm
anti-Israel.
I'm not an anti-Semite and infact there are not a small
number of Jews who were part ofgroups that are very anti-Israel
.
I mean, as an educator I taughtsome young students who became
(16:14):
leaders in the pro-Palestinian,anti-israel movement.
I mean, it's kind of a shock tome because I tend to think of
myself as very much a moderateon vis-a-vis either extreme.
But so if you look on thecollege campuses, well what's
the prevailing ideology oncollege campuses right now?
(16:35):
It's not anti-Semitism, it's aneo-Marxist, anti-colonial
fervor.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Okay, it's this idea that white Europeans came in.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, let's, yeah, I want to.
You're doing perfect Cause.
I wanted to define that Cause.
It's a big long sentence.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, neo-marxist, but it's white.
Colonists came in, theycolonized all of the global
South.
You know Brown people dependingon how you break that down but
you know they were the classicalMarxism.
It was the rich against thepoor and it was the.
(17:25):
The.
The owner ownership class haveoppressed the brown and black
and indigenous peoples.
Okay, I understand.
Okay.
And so they look at Israel andthey say we don't hate Jews, we
hate colonialism and Israel is awhite European colonial
(17:47):
experiment.
Okay, and I mean they call it.
You know the Zionist projectand those.
I mean there's all kinds offancy terms for it, I won't go
into it.
So what they do is they takethis neo-Marxist lens and then
they map it onto the blankscreen of Jews.
I mean the archaeologicalevidence is that Jews have lived
(18:10):
in Israel since at least theyear 1500 BC.
You know Jews, and before Jewsis a term that was coined by the
Romans, because the I didn'tknow that.
Yeah, so I mean the history ofterminology.
If you look in the Bible it'sIsraelites.
That's correct.
You know, the children of thechildren of Israel After the
(18:34):
northern 10 tribes wereconquered and carried off into
captivity by the Babylonians inthe year 597 BCE.
And I say BCE because Jews saybefore the Common Era, not
before Christ.
So in 597 BCE the northern—I'msorry, in 713, the northern
(18:54):
tribes are conquered and they'recarried off into.
You know Sennacherib and youknow if you've read the book of
Tobit.
You know Catholics have theapocryphal books, are part of
their canon and Protestants callthem apocryphal or
deuterocanonical.
This guy whose family wascarried into captivity, who
(19:25):
still identifies as Jewishliving in exile, that was
carried off, um, but at at thatpoint, the majority, there were
two, really two and a halftribes left that that were left
in the original land areaidentified with, with Israelites
, which is the current Israel,the tribe of Judah yeah the
tribe of Judah and the tribe ofBenjamin, okay, and then there
(19:45):
were also remnants of the tribeof Levi, you know, the priestly
families, that kind of were leftbehind.
So the overwhelming majoritywere Judean.
I mean, they were probably 85%of the population, 80 to 85%.
They were the descendants ofthe tribe of Judah.
They affiliated with the tribeof Judah.
So the Romans come in.
(20:10):
I mean, it's it's a long story,but the Romans wind up
dominating that region.
Um, originally the Greeksdominated the after Achille
after I'm blanking, what's hisname?
The great having a seniormoment here Alexander.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Alexander the Great comes in.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Israel becomes a.
I mean actually goes out andthere's a.
It's obviously again, it's anapocryphal story.
But the high priest goes outand welcomes Alexander and says
thank God you're here, we hatethe Persians, okay.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Plenty of hate to go around.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Plenty of hate to go around.
Listen, hate is something thatyou know we never run out.
There's enough hate to keepgoing.
If only hate were electricityright We'd have no energy crisis
.
We'd have no energy crisis, butthe issue is so Jews get along
(21:08):
with the Greeks for a long time.
But then you know there's thisperiod of instability in the
Greek empire.
You know, after Alexander theGreat dies, his empire is
divided up among his 12 topgenerals.
It's called not that anybodycares, but it's called the
period of the Diadochi, whichmeans 12 guys in Greek.
And you know, kind of the mainrivalry in the Middle East is
(21:30):
between the Ptolemies in Egyptand the Seleucids in Syria, and
Israel is kind of a land bridge.
And this also goes back to whyis Israel always in the news?
Because if you want to get toAfrica from Asia Minor, you've
got to go through Israel.
If you want to get to AsiaMinor from Africa, you've got to
(21:50):
go through Israel.
Well, africa has very rich.
Particularly Egypt has a richkingdom, very fertile.
You know the source of cotton.
The word cotton comes from anEgyptian word.
And since we're sitting here,in clothing manufacturer.
But so, and Asia Minor has veryrich trade routes, so you wind
(22:16):
up having to go through Israel,and so everybody wants to
control Israel.
And so you wind up having to gothrough Israel, and so
everybody wants to controlIsrael.
And so, during this period offriction between the Ptolemaic
and the Seleucid empires, israelwinds up under the Seleucids
and the Seleucids go through aperiod of social instability,
political instability, economicinstability.
(22:36):
They're waging all these warsof conquest against other people
, they bankrupt the treasury.
They wind up with these reallycorrupt, lunatic kings who beat
up everyone around them.
And so if you read the book ofMaccabees, you know he takes a
look and he says oh, you know,there's a temple over there in
Israel.
They don't worship the godsthat we worship, they don't like
(22:59):
the things that we like.
They dress funny, they eatfunny, they smell funny.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
They talk funny.
And what is the book ofMaccabees?
Which religion and or what isthat part of the apocryphal?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
books.
So, for instance, again kind ofgoing far field.
But so the Orthodox churcheshad them in the Greek and so
it's pseudepigrapha, becauseit's 1 Maccabees, I think, is in
the Catholic canon, it is inthe Protestant apocrypha books,
(23:31):
and for the Orthodox churches,because they use the Septuagint
as their base text, it's part oftheir canonical books, got it?
So in the book of Maccabees,antiochus looks and says hey,
listen, we're broke, they're not.
Let's make them pay taxesbecause they're not Greek,
they're not like us, so they'renot paying their fair share.
(23:54):
And he sends his army and itgoes back and forth and you have
, that's where Hanukkah comesfrom.
You know, the Maccabees fightback and it's like you're not
touching our stuff.
Didn't know that?
Yeah, beat it, get out of here.
But then the Maccabees turn outto be monsters too.
I mean the Hasmonean dynasty,really, king Herod.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Herod of.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Let's drown all the babies and Jesus and everybody.
Go back to where you came from.
Fame Herod marries the lastHasmonean princess.
Miriam winds up killing herbrother.
He has him drowned.
He not a good guy, really not agood guy.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
It kind of doesn't come across that in the Old
Testament.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts,
absolutely.
That's correct.
But the point is that whathappens with Jewish identity is,
you know, so the Israelites,and at the time they still
weren't called Judeans.
The Israelites really look,they were called the sons of
Judah to some extent, but theylook at the Greeks and say these
(24:55):
guys are not our friends andsay these guys are not our
friends.
And so what happens is,ultimately there's a civil war
between two Hasmonean princesand one of them says to the
Romans listen, we need your help, could you come over here and
chop some heads for us?
And the Romans come over andthey chop some heads and they
put the prince on the throne andthey say but you know what?
(25:16):
You guys have really nice datepalms and you make some really
sweet olive oil and we had noidea life was so good over here.
We're taking a cut.
May sound familiar.
We want your natural resourcesin exchange for our help.
Because where's our thank you?
Correct?
You know, people change.
(25:37):
Human nature doesn't Nothingnew under the sun.
No, not at all.
So anyway.
So the Romans, the Israelites,begin rebelling against the
Romans because the Romans areexploiting them and as the
economy declines, because theRomans spent a huge amount of
(25:58):
money on foreign wars and otherthings and protecting their
colonies, the Romans startpulling more and more taxes out
of their colonies.
And the Israelites tended to beextremely independent and
warlike.
And so after the destruction ofthe Second Temple, I mean there
(26:19):
was a rebellion, there weremultiple rebellions against Rome
, but the great rebellionagainst Rome was in the year 66
AD to the year 70, which is whenthe Second Temple was destroyed
and the Romans began referringto the Israelites as Jews,
because they referred to themnot as Jews religiously, but
because they came from theprovince of Judea, got it, and
(26:42):
so they were called Judeans andthat became Jews, and that was
one of many tribes yeah, it wasone of the— One that survived as
far as the most amount ofpeople, right, Well, because I
mean the others kind of gotdispersed and the tribe of
Benjamin was never particularlylarge.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
So, and these are all tribes descendant of Abraham.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
They're all the tribes descended from Jacob.
You know his 10 sons, and thenthere were two half-tribes
because his grandsons, the sonsof Joseph, phryam and Manasseh
actually a half a tribe each.
So there were really 12-ish,because there were 12 sons, but
there was never a tribe ofJoseph.
There were the half tribes ofManasseh and Ephraim, and so it
(27:31):
was again, if you look, you know, you kind of project forward in
terms of waves of the health ofa society.
So when Roman society was veryunhealthy and unstable, they
hated Jews, they mapped ontoJews.
They're rebellious, they don'tworship the right gods, you know
, they're holding back on theirtaxes.
They're.
You know, we need to deal withthem.
(27:52):
And that's when Christianssplit.
There was a big rebellionagainst Rome in the year 117,.
There was a big rebellionagainst Rome in the year 117,
and there were riots in Rome andin Jewish cities across the
Middle East, and so theChristians came to the Romans
and said, hey, we're not Jewish.
You know, we don't know whattheir problem is, but whatever
(28:15):
their problem is, it's not ourproblem.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Separation Right.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
And so there was really kind of this split, and
that's where Christians reallylegally split from Jews.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
So real quick, because I grew up in a Christian
church but, very blessed with agrandfather who was an
intellect, so he studied,challenged.
I got his Bible when he diedand there's not a page that
doesn't have questions on itmarks, it's torn to bits, it's
(28:46):
duct taped together and hechallenged me to not just accept
what they say from the pulpit,et cetera.
Like this when Christianitystarted to rise, there was the
Jews and the Christians gotalong pretty well at the time it
(29:08):
depends.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
So if you read the Gospels, the first generation of
Jews, I mean the firstgenerations of Christians, the
first generations of thefollowers, the Jewish followers
of Christ, correct, okay, thedisciples.
They didn't get along so wellwith the Jewish authorities at
the time.
I mean, if you read the Gospelsand I wasn't there.
I had a teacher once who Iloved, you weren't, and he used
(29:33):
to say I wasn't there, so Idon't really know.
But going by what I've read, soI wasn't there, I don't know.
And there's certainly a polemicmeans you know there's a
religious, argumentative side toit, which is the Gospels were
largely written under theinfluence of the Romans hating
the Jews and the followers ofChrist trying to say, hey, it's
(29:55):
not Rome, we have an issue with,it's them.
We're team, rome Got it Becausewe don't want you to kill us.
Interesting, okay, but I wasn'tthere, so I don't really know
what happened.
But if you look, so Jesus wouldargue with the Pharisees and
Jesus went to the temple andflipped over the tables of the
money changers.
So even in that early era therewere friction, but it was a
(30:22):
fractious time.
So, again, anybody who'sinterested, any of your
listeners, who wants to learnmore about this if you read the
histories of Josephus andspecifically the histories of
Josephus.
At that time, there werenumerous Jewish religious
factions and political factionsand they were largely fighting
(30:44):
with each other, and some ofthem part of their fights.
They were millennialist andthey were fighting with the
Romans, expecting the Romans tobe defeated by God, even though
they were outnumbered.
And so, you know, I explainedto people during, you know, I
(31:05):
was in the military during the,you know, the wars against ISIS
and Al-Qaeda, and I mean therewere factions of Jews who were
the Jewish version of ISIS andAl-Qaeda.
You know, just as an exampleBack in the day, back in the day
, yeah, so I mean the.
You know, just as an example.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Back in the day, back in the day.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Yeah, so I mean the Romans.
You know, there's a debate inthe Talmud, which is kind of the
large encyclopedia of Jewishlegal tradition that was
compiled around the year 600 ADin Babylonia.
And in the Talmud there's adebate between two rabbis while
the Romans were there, and theone said these Romans are
(31:42):
horrible.
I mean, they're vile, they'redisgusting.
And the other rabbi said no,actually they brought some good
things to us civilization.
And so the one rabbi who'sdefending Rome says you know,
they built roads, they builtbathhouses, they built
marketplaces.
We didn't have any of thatstuff before they came here.
And the other rabbi said theybuilt roads to traffic slaves,
(32:06):
they built bathhouses becausethey're sexual deviants, and
they built marketplaces to selltheir slaves.
And I mean again, if you go tothe developed world and their
opinions that run the gamut.
So, for instance, theanti-colonialists.
Colonialism is terrible.
Anything bad that has everhappened is because of these
(32:31):
Europeans who colonized andbrutalized and betrayed.
And it's in English literature,there's this theory, this
literary icon called the noblesavage.
Okay, it's this person who isauthentic, indigenous culture,
(32:52):
unpolluted by the West.
And so it's the noble savage.
Have you seen Dances withWolves?
Yes, noble savages.
These guys were allhumanitarians, right?
Well then you actually look.
Have you been to the AmericanSouthwest?
Yes, okay, one of my favoriteYouTubers actually just died.
(33:12):
Tragic, tragic situation.
He used to go, 34, 36 years old, was hit and killed by a drunk
driver a month ago.
Oh, his channel was a desertdrifter Used to go, 34, 36 years
old, was hit and killed by adrunk driver a month ago.
His channel was a desertdrifter and he would go to the
American Southwest.
He lived, I think, in GrandJunction in Colorado and he
would go to Utah and he would gooff grid he was a wilderness
(33:35):
guide professionally Go off gridand hike into these remote
areas where there were thesecave dwellings and he would kind
of record them and talk aboutthem, without ever disclosing
their location because he waspreserving the archaeological
value of the site.
Because they're either beingencroached on or, because of
climate change, a lot of thesesites that are 800 or 1,000
(33:57):
years old are now beginning tocollapse.
So if you've been to theAmerican Southwest and you've
seen the cave dwellings I havenot Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
But I will.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
Not the cliff dwellings the cliff dwellings.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
I haven't, yeah, I've seen it on TV.
Yeah, Mesa Verde National Parkall that Okay.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
So why did people build on cliffs?
Difficult?
Well, it's hard to get up toright.
Well, there must be a reasonthat people would expend that
kind of energy to build on theedge of a cliff and risk their
two-year-old falling off theedge.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Yeah, it's militarily or it's a good defense.
Being up high, you can seewhat's coming.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Yeah, but after all, they were noble savages.
Yeah, before these awfulEuropeans came and I'm not
saying the Europeans weren'tawful, but before they came
everybody lived in peace andharmony.
And it's hey, you ran out ofcorn this year.
I'll give you some of my corn,hey can, I can.
I borrow a couple of cup ofbeans.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
All the basic, all the all the uh human instincts
we were talking about beforejust disappeared.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, we're a defective species.
I mean, that's what religion issupposed to address and not be a
tool to help the defects.
Anyway, so well, the reason is,if you listen to Navajo
tradition, because after thecollapse of the Incan and Mayan
civilizations in South America,some of them migrated north and
they had pretty sophisticatedweapons and military training
(35:19):
and they said we got a bunch ofsavages here that we can eat.
So they literally took theirlands and they are now beginning
to realize that some of thesearchaeological sites are sites
where cannibalism was practicedand human beings were butchered
and others were enslaved.
So people moved up to thecliffs to protect themselves
(35:41):
from these peoples that hadmigrated north from South
America.
So when I say the noble savage,it's this idea that there is
some human society that you canfind where people are untouched
by the basic defects of ournature, of our nature.
You know the.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
It's all through the perspective of ideology.
Yeah, it's whatever ideologyyou have and the lens you're
looking at it.
That's what you see.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
So your grandfather was looking through the lens of
rationalism.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Very much so.
He had a very, very personalrelationship with God that you
actually believed, but it wasbuilt on a detailed dissection
of the Word of God as wedescribe, and that, for him, was
the Old Testament and the NewTestament.
(36:34):
But the Old Testament is whatwe studied, because he strongly
believed in the Old Testamentand, it being the foundation, he
believed in foundationalprinciples.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Yeah, which is again your grandfather was a product
of the educational system inwhich he was raised and the era
in which he was raised.
What year was he born?
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Oh, probably 1920s something like that Okay and
where?
Massachusetts.
Well, he was born inMassachusetts, but his parents,
my great-grandparents, just cameover from Sicily.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
Okay, so they were Catholic.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
He was raised.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Protestant.
He was raised Protestant.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
He was raised Catholic, uh-huh, and then
converted and became aCongregationalist.
That's you know.
Christian is what you know.
But I go back and forth.
He'd actually say, well,catholic, christian, same thing,
but on, you know the split.
At the time it was theCatholics.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
And everybody who was not Catholic.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
And then he became what they were deeming as a
born-again Christian, and theywere diametrically opposed.
Growing up, his family is likewhat did you do?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Right?
Well, because the CatholicChurch in that era and again I'm
not, I mean, I'movergeneralizing.
So that's the first thing youknow.
You always have toovergeneralize.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
And I'm speaking to a very specific example, but the
Catholic.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Church is very much founded.
You know, there's always atension between revelation and
reason.
You know, revelation is Joshuamade the sun stand still.
Okay, that's revelation.
Reason is the sun can't standstill.
It must have been a perception,ok.
(38:24):
So American Protestantism basedon really English, the
Protestant movements you know,and the Protestants who came
over, they believed inindividual, the individual
experience of religion and theindividual encounter with the
Bible.
And so, actually, I mean therewas a, there was a vote on which
(38:46):
would be the official languageof the United States.
Um, number one was English,number two was Hebrew and number
three was, uh, german.
Hmm, when did this happen?
This was pre-colonial, I mean,you know, during the colonial
period about.
You know which religion I mean,which language.
(39:07):
And the early Protestants inEngland studied Hebrew
intensively and it was part of atradition of the Enlightenment.
I'd sent you that article about.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Johannes.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Reuthlin.
So the Renaissance humanistsstudied Hebrew because they
wanted to understand the Biblein its original language,
because they felt that that wasan authentic encounter.
So today, you know, if somebodysays you know, I had a kid when
I taught at the Naval Academywho came up to me and he said
(39:38):
you know, chaplain, I wish Icould believe in religion and
the Bible, because my friendswho believe in the Bible and
believe in religion seem so muchmore at peace with me.
It seems so much more at peace,he said, but I just can't
believe it, it just doesn't makeany sense.
(39:59):
And I said to him as a humanistand I mean I'm very liberal, I
mean that's my own theology, Icome from an extremely liberal
tradition and what I said to himis you can read the Bible as
the greatest anthology of humanwrestling with what it means to
(40:21):
be a human being.
And all human beings in theirlifetime, if they live a
fulfilled life, have to addressthree things what was here
before we got here, Correct?
What is going to be here afterwe leave and what am I supposed
to do while I'm here?
Those are the three greatquestions that any religious
(40:44):
system deals with.
And I said so if you read theBible, you're looking at roughly
a 2,000-year anthology ofdifferent opinions in different
times, different politicalcircumstances, different
economic circumstances,different geographies and
(41:08):
countries of hundreds of peoplesaying what does it mean to me
to be human?
Speaker 1 (41:18):
And what was his response?
Speaker 3 (41:20):
He said I hadn't looked at it that way.
You know I mean, but for me, itreally is.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
I hadn't looked at it that way.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah, so people who are secular can still look.
Now I mean, am I opposed inAmerica to teaching?
Well, to begin with, there's aproblem with saying the Bible,
okay, which Bible Bible?
Because there's the HebrewBible and then there's the, you
know, the post-Old Testament,post-hebrew scriptures.
(41:48):
Okay, so you're going to teachthe Old Testament, new Testament
, are you going to approach itin the lens of Hebrew scriptures
and Christian scriptures?
Okay?
Then there's the Orthodoxchurches, which use the
Septuagint as their foundationaltext.
So they have books that theCatholics don't have.
The Catholics have books thatProtestants don't accept.
The Protestant Reformation saidwe're going to go back.
(42:08):
And anything that Jerome, whenhe did the Vulgate translation,
anything that he couldn't find aHebrew or Aramaic antecedent to
, he labeled deuterocanonical.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Deuterocanonical.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
Canonical means kind of a secondary level of sanctity
, Okay, but modern Protestantsfor the most part don't use the
Apocrypha at all.
I mean, if you go to mostBaptist churches you're not
going to see people preachingfrom the book of you know, 4th
Maccabees, Okay, Not even 1stMaccabees, they don't get.
So I mean, my challenge is wedon't have that many people who
(42:47):
are biblically literate.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
We have people who have read the Bible, their Bible
, whatever their Bible is, and Iwould disagree that Well within
my own circle, the amount ofpeople that have actually read
the Bible shocks me that theyhaven't.
(43:09):
We, you know, I always tellpeople just read Genesis.
It's one of the most insanebooks you'll ever read.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah, kind of these giants walking around eating
people and having babies withthem.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah, it's like science fiction and people all
they know is God created theheavens and the earth.
They know like they havesoundbites, they live a
religious soundbite life without, and I don't think that there
is a in my life.
I haven't seen.
I have very few people and Ihave some great friends Rob,
I'll throw your name out therewho does deep dives on this and
(43:46):
really wants to know the answers, and but that just doesn't
exist.
The curiosity to understandjust doesn't exist.
And then, but the hatred I meanthere's.
I mean I mentioned before, yousee, this rise in anti-Semitism,
rise against Judeo-Christianvalues, just the basic values
(44:12):
that are being attacked.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
And I will say, by the way, and again, kind of, the
term Judeo-Christian is amisnomer Okay, because what we
tend to read as Judeo-Christianvalues are really Western
Enlightenment values.
It's not Judeo-Christian.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah, go into more detail on that.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
Well, I mean again, you know what is authentically
Christian?
Well, I mean believing inChrist, correct Okay.
Authentically Christian, Well,I mean believing in Christ,
correct Okay.
Once you get past that, there'sreally a diversity of opinions.
So, for instance, a lot of mydoctoral research was in the
fight between the OrthodoxChristians and the monophysites,
(44:56):
they were called, inMesopotamia, specifically in two
Mesopotamian cities, Edessa andUrhoi.
I mean Edessa and Nisibis.
Okay, so Christians werekilling each other because one
said Christ was born divine andhuman simultaneously and the
(45:18):
other group of Christians said,no, he was fully human when he
was born and then he becamedivine when he was baptized and
the dove settled on him and thatwas a sign that the Holy Spirit
had now entered his body and hewas now divine.
And Christians killed eachother over there.
Okay, so if Christians, there'sno such thing as a Christian
tradition.
There's no such thing as aJewish tradition.
(45:39):
There were Pharisees, therewere Sadducees, there were
Essenes, there were, you know,the various tribes.
If you read the book of Judges,they believe different things.
Where the modern Samaritans are, they worshiped at Mount
(45:59):
Gerizim and there was no centraltemple in Jerusalem, and the
centrality of the temple inJerusalem wasn't accepted really
fully until the restoration andthe second temple was built,
and the Samaritans who livedkind of in the north.
They were the descendants ofthe Israelites, the 10 tribes
(46:24):
who lived there and the Assyriansettlers who intermarried.
And so the Judeans said you guysaren't Jews.
You know the Good Samaritan,you know the parable of Good
Samaritan.
So the Judeans said you guysaren't Jews.
And the Samaritans said no,we're the real Jews.
You guys aren't Jews.
You know we're the real Jews.
You guys aren't Jews.
You know we're the realIsraelites.
You guys, because you went toBabylonia and you got influenced
(46:47):
by these people and you guysare modernists.
And I'll just give you a quickexample.
When you talk about the Bible,everybody knows what Hebrew
letters look like, but they'renot Hebrew, they're not Jewish.
Actually, the Samaritans usethe first five books of Moses.
You know the first five booksof.
You know Genesis, exodus,leviticus, but it's written in
(47:10):
it's called paleo-Hebrew script.
It's actually authentic Hebrewscript and what is called Hebrew
script now is actually acursive script.
That was a Syrian cursive.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Because, Jews.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
When they went to Babylonia, they learned this new
script and it's a differentalphabet.
And so when they come back, youknow, if you read the book of
Ezra, you know Ezra institutesthe public reading of the law
from an authorized version ofthe Bible.
Why does he do it?
Because it's written in theBabylonian script and it's a way
(47:47):
of saying this is a purity testAre you a real Jew or are you
one of those kind of crookedJews who you know you slept with
Assyrians.
You know your mother was anAssyrian.
Okay, and so there's noauthentic Judeo tradition,
there's no authentic Christiantradition.
There's what what we refer toas Judeo Christian values are
(48:12):
really the, thepost-enlightenment values of the
deists.
You know George Washington andJames Madison and Thomas
Jefferson, which was based onkind of a universalist set of
assumptions that all humanbeings.
We hold these truths to beself-evident.
All men are created equal andendowed by their creator with
(48:33):
certain inalienable rights,among them life liberties, and
all people are equal, and eventhe people who voted to become
the first colonies I mean tobecome the first states they
didn't believe it because theydidn't believe that their black
slaves were created equal.
(48:55):
They didn't believe that theNative Americans were created
equal.
It was always, and so the Bibleand the Judeo-Christian value
system that your grandfather wasraised with.
It wasn't a stated fact.
It was a goal to aspire to,which is a good goal to aspire
to, which is a good goal.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
But right now.
So Potentially religionsfollowed correctly are goals to
aspire to.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah, but like the anti-Soros rhetoric, potentially
religions followed correctlyare goals to aspire to, but like
the anti-Soros rhetoric, youknow I mean, because we've
talked about anti-Semitism onthe left, anti-semitism on the
right, you know, theanti-Semitism on the left is
basically this neo-Marxist,post-colonial rage, okay.
Okay, the anti-Semitism on theright, some of it is theological
(49:40):
antisemitism.
You know when, when, if youread the gospel of John, when
Jesus is is being tried and MelGibson okay, If you've seen, you
know the, the passion of theChrist.
Mel Gibson is a theologicalantisemite.
He reads the book of John andthe Jews said and I mean, who
(50:04):
elected them?
The Jews Like they didn't speakfor everybody, but you know,
courtney, and I wasn't there, Idon't know if the leadership
actually said it or not, butthey said upon us and our
children be his death.
Okay, so that became thefoundation for theological
anti-Semitism throughout theMiddle Ages.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
That makes sense.
Yeah, actually I understandthat.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
They won't embrace Christ, so they're evil, so we
need to punish them.
But theological anti-Semitismjust kind of very quickly,
because I know we're getting upon an hour already.
But theological anti-Semitism,we'll just go for eight hours.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Okay, yeah, all night long we could do part two.
We will definitely do part two.
I'm so intrigued.
This is very interesting.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
Yeah, I mean, it's a fascinating intellectual
movement.
Theological antisemitism saidas soon as you converted, you
were okay, you were team Jesus,so we don't hold a grudge
Because your baptism absolvedyou of your original sin and the
(51:02):
sins of your ancestors.
So if you were Jewish and thenyou converted and there were
famous Jews in the Middle Ageswho converted to Christianity
and many of them bent overbackwards and they were some of
the most rabid anti-Semitesaround Because their Jewish
relatives said he did it for themoney, their Jewish relatives
(51:22):
said he did it for the money.
And the Christians said he'sthe most pure because we were
baptized into this as infants.
We didn't know any different.
But look at that.
He was raised in this vile,filthy, sin-filled culture and
he rose above it and herecognized truth independently.
So we love him more than weeven love our own.
(51:43):
Wow, so that was theologicalantisemitism and there's still
remnants of theologicalantisemitism.
I had a dispute with a guy inthe Navy who published on his
Facebook page that Jesus is thelaw of life and that the Old
Testament is the law of death.
And I said what you're doing isand he was not at his core
(52:07):
anti-Semitic, but he wasanti-Jewish and I said you know,
there are people that serve inuniform alongside you, who
follow the law of Moses, and yousaying this is the law of death
makes it more difficult for usto practice our faith.
And he was an officer, so I saidso you may be setting up
enlisted to be persecuted bypeople who listen to you on
(52:29):
Sunday.
And he said I'm not ananti-Semite, I love Israel, I
love Jews.
Then there's racialanti-Semitism, you know, and if
you look at uh, uh again, it'sfascinating.
Um, I think his name was um nut.
He was one of the founders.
He was the founder of themedical school in um, alabama,
(52:52):
in in Mobile Alabama.
Vile racist in the 1840s andfifties published hateful things
, um, and studying all the raceson earth.
And there was a rabbi who hadcome over from Belgium, who was
a rabbi, who wrote him a letterabout.
This is so brilliant, this isso wonderful.
Your work is.
You know, you've identified itcorrectly because, look, jews
(53:12):
are all the same, they're allwhite and smart.
Well, there were Jews fromSyria, jews from Iraq, jews from
Ethiopia.
Jews aren't all white.
But this guy, you know he wrotethis horrible thing but it was
based on American racistwritings and racial
pseudoscience from the UnitedStates in the 1840s and 1850s,
(53:50):
that kind of predated butimmediately fit in with Darwin
and this idea of a master race.
You know the.
What's his name now I'mblanking on his name now.
The German philosopher who wroteThus Spoke Zarathustra,
nietzsche.
Nietzsche writes about kind ofthis, post-sentimental religious
(54:19):
movements and human ideologies.
And he said you know, we haveto be ruthless.
You know, there was an articlethe other day about the death or
the decline of empathy inWestern societies, particularly
in the United States right now,this idea that empathy is a
weakness, not a strength.
And Nietzsche proposed this.
You know, there's nothing new.
(54:39):
And so the Nazis said look, Imean, we are good people and we
are human.
So of course we are inclined tofeel sorry for the Jews we have
to kill, but we have to do itfor the good of the human race
and evolution.
And it fit in with Americanracial politics and American
(55:02):
racial ideology in the 1830s,1840s and 1850s.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
The canary in the coal mine, the canary in the
coal mine.
Speaker 3 (55:09):
So right now, here's the problem that I see American
society is undergoing atremendous upheaval.
You know, there's in the Talmudthere's an expression.
So we've had these argumentsgoing back and forth for 22
pages already in Aramaic.
And you know, I believe thisand you believe that.
So what's the practicalconsequence of this?
(55:30):
And in Yiddish there's anexpression.
You know, nu Vuden, you know,okay, so now what?
So what is the practicalconsequence of this?
The rise of antisemitism thatwe're seeing in America right
now is a symptom of a sicksocial system.
Anti-semitism isn't drivingchange in America.
(55:54):
Change in America and uneaseand discomfort with the pace of
change, the nature of change andthe direction of change is
driving people to show whatevermovie they want on the movie
screen.
And so some it's a politicalright-wing narrative of the Jews
(56:14):
are globalists.
They're bringing brown peoplein the great replacement thing.
On the left, it's Jews arecolonialists.
They're part of the oppressionof, you know, the indigenous
peoples.
You know there are people whoare returning to religion and
there's particularly an upsurgein people returning to the
Catholic Church.
(56:35):
Yeah, you had mentioned that,yeah, yeah.
So JD Vance, who was raised inan evangelical Christian setting
, who embraces the CatholicChurch and a conservative
Catholic Church.
So my watch reminding me theparking meter's running
Absolutely yeah.
So basically, the answer toyour question is anti-Semitism.
(56:55):
Right now, because there's somuch social angst, so many
people are looking for a way tomake sense of it in a situation
that you can't make sense of.
Speaker 1 (57:05):
Understood the canary in the coal mine.
Speaker 3 (57:07):
The canary in the coal mine.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Scapegoat mentality, a level of social anxiety,
perhaps fear, lack of direction,and they're projecting their
fears onto.
Jews Steve.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Yeah, thank you so much, Ryan.
This was fun.
I got to use my brain.
Speaker 1 (57:28):
My brain is boiling right now.
I think you overloaded me.
I think it's fantastic.
I could do this for hours.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
If you want to wait a few months and we can do part
two and sort of.
Absolutely, you know which formof anti-Semitism seems to have
the upper hand right now?
Speaker 1 (57:42):
Yeah, we can definitely go in.
Yeah, let's go into a deeperdive.
I guarantee you this is goingto be well.
We're going to get a lot ofcomments on this and I'll do my
best and if I've got anyquestions, I'll reach out to you
and you can answer questions asthey come in.
Steve, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (58:03):
You've been listening to Real People, Real Life.
Our passion is to have realconversations with real people
who've made it.
Real people who've made it whodid it on their own terms.
We'll be back soon, but in themeantime, catch us on Twitter or
X at RPRL Podcast and onYouTube at Real People Real Life
(58:24):
Podcast.
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