The Gate of Tears

This is Episode 6 of BAD COUSINS, the final episode of the season. As we’ve been promising from the very beginning, this is where we take some time to discuss more radical and even optimistic ways of reading the Abraham story.

For this purpose, we invited scholar Avi-Ram Tzoreff to join us for a conversation grounded in a very unusual text, As For Ishmael I Have Heard You by Rabbi Yosef Kaminer (no relation to Matan). With this ultra-orthodox Jewish author, we dare to imagine a State of Abraham open to all.

We reclaim a revolutionary, transformatory, even messianic future from the religious Zionists, whose Messiah enters town riding a tank, intent on destruction. Our Messiah - and this is a traditional position - rides the humble donkey, listens to the voices of the downtrodden, and rebuilds destroyed cities.

Central to this reading is the figure of Hagar, the Egyptian immigrant. What if instead of focusing on the conflict between Ishmael and Isaac, we set our sights on all the ways the tradition commands us to honor the stranger in the person of Hagar? What would the world look like if we lived out that holiness?

As the world gets crazier by the day, we’re looking for little points of light in the dark. Hopefully we’ve found some. 

Looking forward, as always, to hearing your thoughts.

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Transcript

Introducing the episode and Rabbi Yosef Kaminer (Ben and Matan)

SPEAKER_00 0:01

We came to the land of the Lord by His will and His abundant mercy. If we had lived with the correct awareness that this land is the Lord's land and that we are strangers and residents within it, we would have accepted with humility the actions of the Lord, who has settled the descendants of Ishmael alongside us. Welcome to Bad Cousins, Episode 6. I'm Ben Shimon Stoller.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Hamatan Kemeter.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Hey Matan. Hi. We're in the studio together. Finally. And we've been um teasing this, but we've been talking all along about the need to provide like a positive, progressive, maybe even radical, you would say, reading of the Abraham story. And we thought for a while about doing a round table with more Muslims and Christians, but this is looking like it's gonna be a very Jewish episode, which is was first a disappointment, maybe, but then you're saying it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

I think it's okay. I think um it's kind of fitting in some ways. Why? Well, several different reasons. I mean, one, maybe the least important one is that this is like an originally a Jewish story, right? Abraham is the Genesis kind of character, and that's the Hebrew Bible. But um, more importantly, you know, we're Jews, both of us. Maybe not religious ones, but uh we need to own that. Um I think a lot of the the bad theology, um not oh not exclusively by any means, but a lot of it is is is Jewish these days, as we'll be getting into today. And um we're not like you know detached from that. I think part of the the the moral of the story is that we don't get to nobody really gets to be an outside arbiter here. And if we're if we thought that we could play that role, then we were gravely wrong. We're we're in we're involved in the story ourselves, and we have some responsibility also as as Jewish people to dig into our own tradition to see uh where it's really uh problematic and has contributed to to shitty things for humanity and and and vice versa, where it can also uh have some really liberating potential. I think that's the the core task that we have ahead of us today.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Aaron Ross Powell Uh, the through line of the episode is a text by a rabbi in Palestine, Israel called Yosef Kamener. Again, no relation to you. And the the pamphlet is called As for Ishmael, I have heard you. For now, what do we need to know about Yosef Kaminer and this text that he wrote?

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Okay, so Rav Yosef is a really interesting guy. He's uh a Guru Hasid. He comes from this uh uh very ultra-orthodox background. We'll maybe say a few more words about what that means. Um and he's a very uh sort of prominent member of his community, he's kind of a cultural and social entrepreneur. He's started this uh uh ultra-orthodox version of Wikipedia, which is open to his community. Um he's a member of uh, or I think actually the founder of uh the Khochmat Torah Institute, which is kind of like a think tank. Um and he's a very sort of prolific writer and uh an intellectual. Anyway, I first heard of him uh actually after I published my uh original article, um the the Abrahamic ideology. And then uh a mutual friend introduced me to this pamphlet that you mentioned, which is in called in Hebrew Velishmail Schmaaticha. That's a um uh a quote from Genesis uh where God is uh is saying to to Abraham, I I'm heeding your your prayer for Ishmael to be protected and to be strong. And it is a very Jewish, very traditionalist, very uh ultra-orthodox, which again will explain what that means in a second. Reading of the Abraham story, um, which has a very specific and very, I think, powerful political punch. So providing uh references within the Jewish tradition for the various things that he's saying. The the pamphlet is mostly citations. I loved it, I have to say. I found it I really did. Yeah, I mean it's a lot of the stuff is wild and it's kind of eye-opening in what in various ways. What he comes to at the end though, I think is probably the most important thing, which is he has this uh vision of what he calls the state of Abraham. And the state of Abraham is not um importantly, I think, the state of the sons of Abraham. It's not uh necessarily just a binational state for Arabs and Jews, although of course that's utopian enough uh uh today. It's actually a much more sort of universalistic uh uh approach towards uh transcending the nation state and having uh a political form that is really uh quite open to everyone. So if it's a very sort of you could say utopian vision in one way, maybe another w uh way of of describing that would be messianic. So that's also I think going to be an important trope for us today.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah, I wanted to give folks like an idea of how he writes, and also I want to say what I found really interesting because he is coming from a certain religious tradition, so the the starting point of the entire pamphlet is what have we done wrong from this ancient religious idea that you will be punished if you don't follow correctly.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Right. And he comes to he comes to a very specific and I think important understanding that is loving the stranger, loving the uh and and respecting those people who do not belong to your nation or tribe is an extremely important commandment, and that by violating that commandment, uh going all the way back to the way that Abraham and Sarah treated Hagar, um, there are consequences, there are divine consequences for that very grave sin.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Right. So I just I just want to read a couple lines that I'm kind of picking from the end of it, where he introduces the state of Abraham, and he says, We did not come to the land by our own strength or power. We came to the land of the Lord by his will and his abundant mercy. He says, If we had come to the land of the Lord with such awareness, we would have proclaimed that the land of Israel is the inheritance of the Lord and not our own land. Within it, all who have formed the oneness of God without flaw have the right to dwell, etc., etc., etc., we would have dedicated ourselves to managing the holy land, its needs, and the needs of its inhabitants with seriousness and vigor on the one hand, and with humility and disdain for sovereignty on the other, and he says such an awareness would guide all our relations with the other inhabitants of the land who live alongside us in a manner that does not seek to dominate them or push them out of the land. If we had lived with the correct awareness that this land is the Lord's land, and that we are strangers and residents within it, we would have accepted with humility the actions of the Lord who has settled the descendants of Ishmael alongside us.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

Yeah. It's pretty obvious that that's a very uh radical kind of position to be taking in Israel today. And maybe before we we move on, we we should say a little bit more about the sort of uh community that that Reviv Yosef belongs to. Sure. Go ahead. Um because so far I think on the show when we've been discussing modern Jewish theology, we've ma mainly been talking about religious Zionism. And it might be kind of difficult to tell the differences between uh what we call religious Zionism, including especially it's these very uh sort of hairy, extreme uh uh Khanist uh streams that are very dominant within religious Zionism today. And as politics.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

And are sort of in control politically.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

Exactly, who are who are steering Israeli politics today in many ways. Uh and this other stream, which is sometimes we call it Kharedi in Hebrew or ultra-Orthodox in English, um, which is very different actually historically. Today there's there's a little bit of confluence between these between these streams in Israel today, although they're quite still quite distinct. Uh Kharedi or ultra-Orthodox Jews uh include Khasidim, like uh uh like Rav Yosef, you know, the people that uh I don't know, if you live in New York, you've probably seen these people with their big hats. Um it's a it's it's a large community, it's I think uh uh close to a million people in Israel today. And it's uh traditionally anti-Zionist. So this is maybe the most important thing for our uh for our discussion today. The leaders of Kharedi uh Judaism opposed Zionism w in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century, and they also uh had a very ambivalent sort of uh relationship with the founding of the State of Israel, and to this day they have an ambivalent relationship with the state. One thing that people abroad may have seen is that there's been uh um sort of constant uh back and forth and and even like demonstrations, even riots in Israel over the question of conscription to the army. So Kharedi oppose uh sending their the their their kids to the army. As you can imagine, during a war, this sort this sort of opposition becomes uh uh uh more sort of politically uh contentious and heated, and we've seen a lot of uh sort of friction around that in Israel today. So Raviosef really comes from the very center of this of this Kharedi community. The people that he cites, including in the in the in the in the quotation that you just read, are uh are leaders of this community in the 20th century. So again, it's important for him to to sort of place himself within that tradition and to show that these really very uh, you know, in today's context, very radical positions are very actually mainstream or orthodox positions from within the Kharedi community.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Yeah. So as we do Unbed Cousins, we brought in an expert um to to help us understand and unpack some of the some of the fineries of it all. And we brought on uh Aviram Torev. Um do you want to introduce him and why you wanted him on here?

SPEAKER_02 8:30

So Aviram is a very good friend of mine, a colleague and a comrade at Academia for Equality, which is a membership academics organization in Israel for democratization of academia and society. Uh he's a scholar of Judaism, both traditional and modern, and I think a very uh interesting and radical thinker and uh a great guy.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

You know, I produce a lot of podcasts and I do a lot of interviews and remote interviews, and uh I think Aviram is the first interview I've helped record where the windows were broken because of an Iranian missile. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 9:00

I mean I think so. Aviram is in Israel, there's a war going on. Um there's a broken window somewhere, there's somebody drilling.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

It's yeah, it's uh Yeah, it's and again, I think that this is part of the truth of Bad Cousins that yes, we're talking about these myths and these texts and these ancient stories, but once again we see that there is war. And and as we showed in the bonus episode, which you should go listen to if you haven't yet, the stories are being used again to justify these assaults and these wars.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

Right. So no complaining about the audio.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Thank you. Alright, so let's uh let's play the interview and then you and I will come back and rehash.

Interview with Matan and Avi-Ram Tzoreff

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Uh hello to Aviram Toro. So let's let's talk about uh about Ravyosov's intervention. Um maybe Aviram, you can say a little bit a little bit about the sort of genre of literature that this this pamphlet belongs to and what what it is that in what way it's trying to make its political intervention.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Um so what I think um that was like prominent in your uh earlier episodes was the fact that people uh identify the Abraham Accords and notion of uh of the story of Abraham as something which is connected to genealogy. And I think that what uh Rabbi Kaminer trying to do in his pamphlet um is uh a different thing, which is going to the midrachic and uh Mudic notions of what is the character of Abraham, which is more identified rather than with genealogy, it's identified with the notion of youth, of uh conversion in traditional Jewish thinking. Abraham is not um is not a genealogical ancestor, but rather the um the ancestor of the framework of Jewish law. So this notion of Abraham is to create the ability to make what I think Rabbi Kaminer also wants to create, to differentiate between state and Jewish collectivity.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Yeah. One other aspect that we should mention is that the political context for the writing of the pamphlet is actually not the Abraham Accords, as we might expect. The real sort of immediate political event which triggers the writing of this of this pamphlet is October 7th. This is what he begins with, right? And maybe uh uh an interesting kind of uh aspect of of his reaction to this event is that he, in line with the long line of Jewish thinking, whenever uh such a uh such fearful sort of events of of violence uh uh occur to the Jewish community, these are used as an opportunity to sort of rethink uh uh rethink basic political kind of uh uh precepts, which is of course not the way that most of Israeli society has experienced these events at all.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

In this case, in this specific case, to see the 7th of October as something as an opportunity to re-examine the the way in which Jews in Israel maintain their relation with the Palestinian Arabs, he goes in a in a in the traditional way of binational thinking, which also in the violent confrontations of 1929 also took the same idea that the this uh explosion of uh of violence should be taken as an opportunity to rethink the way in which Zionists conduct their the way in Palestine.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

So let's get into the into the Genesis story, which is where it always starts and where where where Ravy Yosef starts as well. Um I want to concentrate on the way that he talks about Hagar. So Rav Yosef goes uh to great lengths to encounter within the Jewish tradition uh accounts which show the the great value and the great uh actually closeness to God of both Hagar and uh and and and Ishmael. Uh uh way of valorizing Hagar is by identifying her with uh with Katurah, who is uh uh a wife that that Abraham marries after after after the whole uh uh kind of uh intense part of the saga is over. So Hagar is no longer just a maidservant, actually, after a sort of reconciliation of some kind takes place, uh he marries her. She becomes a she comes she becomes an official wife and they have additional children. Of course, then Ishmael also comes back to bury Abraham. We do have all these uh um kind of in uh uh um intimations of a reconciliation between the two branches of the family, which are very, very important to Torah of Yosef. Why? Uh there is a there is a there is a principle in Jewish uh exegesis, which is the acts of the fathers are the signs for the sons. So this the stories that we hear about about uh uh about fathers, about patriarchs and matriarchs in Genesis and elsewhere in the Torah uh can tell us about what will happen in the future. Uh can can have can serve as signs for uh for for the messianic future, for basically for the the the uh the the the divinely ordained uh good future that we that we are we are commanded to expect. An additional point here is uh Raviosa seeks in the tradition identifications of Agar as a prophet, as someone who has a real uh a real close relationship with God. Um she is she she gives God a name, which is a very unusual thing to do. She calls him El Ho'i, the God who sees me. But she recognizes God as as having seen her. She knows that we even when even when she is in the in the midst of great suffering, right, even when she and her son are in the desert, when they're when they're when they're when they're starving and thirsty, um, the well the well opens up, right? A miracle is is is done for them, and that is because God sees them. He sees their their great suffering, right? Um Kaminer quotes the uh Renaissance uh Jewish authority here, the Sforno, uh, who says, When when Hagar prayed, she praised God who had spoken to her, saying to him, You are the God who sees me. You are the God of seeing in every place, not only in Abraham's house. As is said, all of the gates are closed except for the gate of tears.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

I think that we need to put Hagar in a like broader uh the broader scene of the what uh what is called as the mothers of the messiah, which the prominent figures in this part are uh Ruth, which is also the prominent manifestation of Eger, uh the one who said uh your people is my people and your God is my God, and Tamal, which presents herself as a whore in the in uh for uh Judah and becomes the mother of the messiah. So the identification of the mothers of the Messiah with women which are not an integral part of the um of the community, or uh women which are identified with the transgressions of norms um is very um like it's it's something which is well known.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

Now Agar is a stranger, she enters she enters into the into the Abrahamic family from the outside, and uh the mitzvah of loving the Gare, of loving the stranger, is really, really central to Judaism. So one of one of one of the main sort of justifications, if you want to call it that, for this commandment is for you are strangers in the land of Egypt, right? This is very uh you know, it's a very central part of the Passover story, the Pesar story, right? Uh that Jews uh have the have the historical national experience of having been strangers and having been oppressed by strangers, having been slaves in a foreign land. And that that experience is supposed to have taught us something, right? And that what it should what it should it should teach us is not you know what uh uh what uh Netanyahu and his ilk might might learn from such an experience, it's just that we should never let such a thing happen to us again, not at all, right? What it is supposed to teach us is that we need to take the the perspective of other people who are suffering uh similar sorts of similar sorts of situations under our you know under our watch, whether they're being directly oppressed by us or even they're just being oppressed in our presence. And I want to read a quote that that Rabbi Kamener brings um from uh Rabbeinu Bahia, who is uh another medieval authority. He says, You shall not wrong again. In several places, the Torah won't warns about the stranger again, for he finds himself alone in a foreign land, people mock him and harm him. Therefore, God says, Do not think that he has no one to fight for him, for I am the one who fights for him and avenges his oppressors. I will have mercy on him, just as I had mercy on you when you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Their tears are always present. For again, this quote the gates of tears are never closed. This is the God of the oppressed. This is the God who takes care, who is always watching out for those who are who are who are who are who are enslaved, who are cast out, who are starved, uh, who are not who are not members of the of the of the of the of the of the community. And to be to be in his good sights, to not be punished by him, this is of course important as well, we have to be, we have to be, we have to open our hearts you know to see the real suffering of these oppressed people. And and and and Cameron goes on to say, I think this is also an important part of his of his argument, is that the affliction of Hagar, the oppression of Hagar by Sarah and Abraham, was a grave, great sin that they committed. And the Jews to this day are paying the price for that sin in the oppressions that we suffer as strangers under various other rules, right? And and the violence that the Jews suffer. And and you know, Jews, Jews are suffering violence, whether whether, you know, what we even though we have, we supposedly have a state that's supposed to be there to protect us.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Yeah, yeah, so so I think this notion of uh of the gates of tears, which uh are not are not being locked in any time, and the way in which they have the capacity to change cosmologically, it like shift our our gaze to something else, and I think we can see this also in the in the way in which the issue of the messiah is identified. And here I think that the the way in which traditional Jewish thinking finds the Messiah and the way in which or messianic imagination, traditional Jewish messianic imagination is very interesting because it's not a figure of a sovereign, but the prominent figure of the one who is poor and riding a donkey. It's the figure that the uh the Zionist messianic imagination struggles with. To quote Abba Khimeir, one of the main intellectuals of the right wing, he says, Our messiah won't be poor and riding a donkey, our messiah will come riding a tank and take his pictures to the people. Yes, so this is this is the way the the struggle of Zionist Messening imagination is against Jewish traditional figure of the Messiah which is poor and riding a donkey. Where where are we going to find the messiah? And Eliyahu tells the sagist comes to him and tells him, go to the gates of the city. And the the mess the messiah is sitting there with poor people and people who suffer from illnesses. And this is the messiah which is being negated by uh secularized Zionist notions.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

I think there's also something that's come up uh uh a lot and that we need to be more critical about is this idea of hospitality, right? So Abraham is very much is very very associated with the idea of hospitality. But the idea of hospitality, um, you know, it's it's it's a virtue. You know, in Middle Eastern cultures, it's very commonly recognized as a virtue, as we talked about with Yusuf also, right? To be hospitable, to be welcoming to guests. But the the relationship here remains one in which the roles are very well defined, right? There is the host and there is the guest, and there is also a limit to hospitality. If we understand the mitzvah as one which is addressed to Jews as opposed to others, that is, we are we are the masters of the house. And okay, so we we should be nice to the guests, whether the guests are are are Arabs or whether they're Micro. Workers. We should not over-exploit them. We should be we should be uh uh you know uh not overly uh mean to them, etc. But the the categorical distinction between us remains. We are the citizens, we are the ones whose who the state belongs to, and they are they they they are the guests. They need to be treated nicely, but they're still guests, they don't have equal rights. But uh but Ralph Kaminer doesn't he doesn't stop here. Kaminer also brings us uh two quotes, uh the first of which is is from Abraham himself. So when Abraham uh is buying the tomb, as we the the two uh what becomes the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron, when he's buying the cave of Mahbala from the Hittites, who are the indigenous people in the country that he migrates to, he says Genesis 29 to 13, I am a gale among you. Please sell me a burial site among you that I may bury my dead. This is Abraham, this is the man that the land was promised to. He is calling himself a migrant, he is he is uh accentuating the lower political status that he himself has among the people that he has immigrated uh uh to live with. And many generations down the line, uh the supreme messianic figure of King David in the Psalms says, Hear my prayer, O God, do not disregard my tears. Here again we have the gates of tears that open up heaven, right? For I am a ghetto with you. I am a stranger, like all of my forefathers within the land. And Kavanaugh learns from this that we are all getting, we are all strangers, the Jews included, within our supposed land included, because the land does not belong to us. No land belongs to any any human being. The whole world belongs to its one and only master. So we are all strangers everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

So I think this is the basis for the understanding of uh of the radical theology which which sees the very phenomenon of nationalism as an idolatry. Common understanding of the citizens of the nation stand is seeing the the nation as something which is divine, and therefore it's something that you can kill for and being king of killed for. So this is the basis for the critique of the notion of nationalism and creating the notion for being a gear in the citizen as a gear, but not but all citizens as gareem in the in the state. And therefore, as one who has the relate the same relation, equal relation, but it's not a qu a a relation of sovereigns, but uh but a relations of a relation of uh of the non-owners of the state.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Yeah. Yeah, that's really important for me because I think binationalism is isn't is not enough for me. I think uh and we do see this with the Abraham Accords, as we've discussed at length, with with you know, this idea, you know, that you know the Arabs and the Jews can can can can figure can figure something out between them, and then and then and then everything will will be okay. But both in Israel and in the Gulf states, we've had we've had we've had people, we've seen people die uh during during the current war, who are neither Arab nor Jewish, who are migrant workers, who are exploited and disenfranchised uh subjects in both of these in both these types of countries. And we it's really we're really not going far enough if we're not providing a political vision which can also include these people. And this is what I I find so so so moving, you know, about about Kaminer's vision of of the state of Abraham, that it's not the state of the descendants of Abraham. Because what Abraham really uh signifies here is is the submission of all human beings before before this you know this this this external authority for for whom it is extremely, extremely important that we treat each other with justice, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Uh it's important for me to to say a thing which also is the danger in this notion. And the danger where we, I, as uh Jewish Israeli, which is one of the perpetrators, which is one of the colonizers, which is one who takes the ownership of the indigenous people on the land. So what does it mean for the one who currently owns the state to speak about non-ownership? For people who strive for their own lands they they were expelled from, exterminated in. What is the meaning of drawing this future picture when we are speaking about this the issue of being in one's land, this possibility which is negated from the indigenous people in Palestine. So I think we must put it in mind when we are talking about about this future which which can be which can be a very uh a very important picture in order to create a political imagination for a future potential state, but we are in the current state when we are the owners, and to sp to speak as an owner about non-ownership when the ones who are oppressed by me and my community are struggling for their land, for maintaining their relation to their land, and it's something that we we should understand. When we can and I I think, yes, we we can still think outside the notion of ownership of the land, but as ones who are currently in this situation, we must put it in mind as the what is the limit of what we are talking about?

SPEAKER_02 28:05

And that I think really brings us to the to the final thing that we wanted to talk about, which is this question of messianism. There is a there is a very strong liberal tendency to identify messianism with with the with the bad guys, with the right wing. Um in Israel for sure, definitely the people like like Ben Gvir and Smutric are often called messianic. This is often kind of related to questions about uh entering the Temple Mount, right? Whether uh at least uh traditional distinctions between ultra-orthodox or Kharaidi Jews on the one hand and kind of messianic religious Zionists on the other is their attitude towards the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, right? Where the Khaladim would say that it's absolutely pro prohibited to to enter that that that area so long as there is no temple, and the religious Zionists are interested in in getting that temple up and running as soon as possible. So, yes, of course they're messianic in that one sense. But in but in another sense, and I'm here I'm I'm picking up from uh a great article by uh um Abraham Kelman who talks about their messianism as actually being very, very limited. In many ways, this this uh this religious Zionist Messianism is basically the current reality plus a king in a temple. It's a very sort of dry and and uninteresting and unradical in many ways, uh, Messianism. And you know, from a left-wing point of view, there is there's a lot to be said in favor of Messianism. The world that we live in is so fallen that we need uh uh a world that is that is so different from the world that we live in right now that we can't really imagine it. We can eve we can try to imagine it and we should try to imagine it, but you know, there are leaps that need to be made here, uh even you know, in terms of thinking about climate change and human survival in the in the current in the in the coming decades, which are currently inconceivable. And this has come up I think so many times in our conversation already, because uh messianism is so important within the Jewish tradition. The stories that we that we read about in Genesis are um they're not just stories from the ancient past, they're stories that will tell us what will happen um or what needs to happen in the in the messianic future, right? And that future is one that we need to we need to pray for, we need to help to to to hope for every day. And what it is that we can do to bring that future about, that's a really difficult question, right? It's not enough to say, okay, well let's have a let's have a uh you know an equal state for for everybody who lives in it. There's also a need for restitution to be made. There's also a need for the Palestinian refugees to have the right to return, right? And that means that the society that will rise up in place of the current society that we have in Palestine, Israel will be an unimaginably different one from the one that we currently have. So we need to have a sort of messianic courage to really hope for something that we that we have no we have no way of of of of foreseeing what exactly it'll be looking like.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Yes, so um I I think that the question should be what is which kind, which picture, which messianic imagination do we adopt? What is the religious messianic imagination? It's the same one as though it's it it has the notion of incompleteness incompleteness of an already redeemed present. Actually, it goes back to secular revisionism, Zionist revisionism. Um which the messianic figure is this lion in chains, the which the son of a king. This is the Zionist uh Zionist imagination which see the current present as already redeemed. Already redeemed. While traditional Jewish Messianic imagination is different, it's a Messianic imagination which tries to see the oppressed, it was to see the ones who sit in the gate of the city, the poor people and the one who suffers from illnesses, which sit in the in the gate of the city. And we need to hear their voices. And while the Zionist messianic imagination is of the state that creates destruction, I can I can posit a different uh a different notion which uh last year I've read to my son an anthology of uh uh midrashic uh stories um edited by uh Jochevetzegal, the new Orthodox woman, and she ends all the anthology with three messianic stories. And the last one she mentions from Shmot Rabbah, from one of the Midrashim, uh a quote which said that in the future there will be no destructed city. Every city will be rebuilt, even Sdoma Namurah will be rebuilt. Now, this is the total opposite messianic imagination from the Zionist one, which think that in order to fulfill the messianic imagination, Israeli must destruct everything, create the apocalypse of the total Kurban of Palestine and beyond. So here is we can we can grasp this this issue of Jewish traditional messianic imagination, and this should be our future of our picture of the future. This is what can guide our political imagination and our messianic imagination because as Matan said, we need messianic imagination for political activity. We need to a picture that we can imagine.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

Yeah. Yeah, we need to be able to imagine Gaza rebuilt and uh all the Palestinian cities that were destroyed in 1948 rebuilt. And uh and and and then maybe that's um that's the state of Abraham. I don't know. It's just a lot of a lot of a lot of uh really strong uh imagination work that needs to be done here for sure, but all a lot of political work as well. Okay, tada. I'll see you, I think, uh talk soon.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Thank you for thank you for inviting me.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

All right, we're back, Matan. I think it's worth going back to the sort of big, cringy question that's that's been haunting us the whole season. And also when we've talked about it when we had our live event, we had questions from the audience. You know, w we don't necessarily believe in these stories or that any of these things actually happened. So why do they matter? Let's let's go back one more time now that we've done six episodes and try and try this again.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

Yeah. One way of answering the question, I think that's the one that we started with, is that these narratives matter to other people. So even if they don't matter to us, we need to understand what other people think and what other people believe in in order to be sort of effective in our acting in the world. But I think this is this is this answer is like it's not sufficient in any way. It's even there's something something of a cop-out in it. Because I mean, if those other people are just wrong, then what use is it to engage them on their own terms, right? Why don't we just explain to them that they're wrong? Um and there's also something a little bit even condescending about it. I think, you know, like I said at the top, we're not outside of the story, we're in it. So we d we shouldn't, you know, presume that we know better than 90% of the people involved. That said, I think I mean the think the the question of belief is like maybe something that we need to decenter here a little bit. Because, okay, if you put a cut if you if you put a gun to my head and ask me, do I believe in the Lord of hosts? Well, no. I have to be honest there. But I'm not sure that it matters all that much because a lot of our sort of secularized ways of understanding the world are are not really not all that far removed from religious ways of understanding it. Take this this notion of messianism that we've been discussing a lot today with Aviram. As uh as a leftist, as a communist, um, I believe in something which is very similar to the sort of kind of messianic transformation of the world. And you know, when I when I read these these these messianic texts um in the Bible, then I can really feel something uh resonating inside myself, which is not just due to some sort of I don't know aesthetic appreciation. There's something there's something deep there. Uh and I think that's because a lot of you know my my deepest kind of uh emotional, uh intellectual, uh uh psychic constructs are not really all that far removed from these religious traditions, right? The ones that I uh uh come from in in in in one way or another. So I don't know. Uh I I thought maybe we'd re we'd actually read one of these with these prophecies. Please, go ahead. Yeah, so this is this is a very well-known one. I'm not gonna read all of it, but uh Isaiah 11, uh from yeah, the book of I of the Prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament. Uh he says, A twig shall sprout from his stalk. The spirit of God shall alight upon him, a spirit of wisdom and insight, a spirit of counsel and valor, a spirit of devotion and reverence for God. He shall judge the poor with equity, and decide with justice for the lowly of the land. He shall strike down a land with the rod of his mouth, and slay the wicked with the breath of his lips. Justice shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his waist. The wolf shall lay down with the lamb, the leopard shall dwell with the kid, the calf, the beast of prey, and the lamb together, with a little child to herd them. The cow and the bear shall graze together, their young shall lie down together, and the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw. A babe shall play over a viper's hole, and an infant pass his hand over an adder's den. In all of my sacred mountain, nothing evil or vile shall be done, for the land shall be filled with devotion to God, this water covers the sea.

unknown 38:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

I you know, I read this and it it really, I don't know, resounds in my in my soul somehow. I don't know how to put uh put that in a in a less uh kind of corny way. And and I feel like, you know, this is uh this means that I'm also uh uh a sprout from that tree, right? I'm in that I'm in that story, whether I uh you know consider myself a religious person or not. And this, you know, this messianic uh longing that we feel through the text, I think it's really it's it's really I don't know, if it feels very, very uh relevant to to today's world. To the way that the things are going in the world. I mean, things are so bad, right? And whenever we think that they can't get worse, then they do get worse. You know, we're in at the end of March now and who knows how how much worse things are gonna be getting by by the time uh uh people hear this, or maybe they won't get worse, but uh they might, you know. And we really need to transform our world in ways that, as we said with Aviram, are really currently unimaginable. And having this sort of um determination to see through a transformation of the world, I think is is a very powerful uh moving energy uh that doesn't only have to be appropriated by by you know the worst people around. It can also have really positive valences, and and those valences, like like Rav Yosef shows us, they're in there, they're in the texts.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

Yeah. It's it seems unlikely that by the time this is published the wolves will lie with the lambs. But I do think there's a reason why in messianic traditions of any religion, the Messiah always comes when things are horrible, like worse than you can possibly imagine. Right. Which is why the Messiah came so many times for Jews of the Pale in the 18th century. Um and why is that? It's because of hope, right? It's because people were looking were grasping for something to hope for. People are still today hoping. I mean, if if you're serious about not giving up, if you're serious about trying to avoid the kind of doomsy end of the climate law, the climate fight is over, the AI fight is over, the political fight is over, we've lost. If you're serious, that that's not your answer, that there is hope, that there is a way through.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

I don't think anybody progressive would uh would ever want wish for things to get worse for anybody. Um but we also, on the other hand, I think we need to understand that that there's we we all I think we also are all sort of instinctively understand that um so long as structures of oppression are kind of stable and and holding strong, then things tend to sort of grind and grind along on their own sort of uh you know uh inertia. And we're not in that kind of moment anymore. We're in a moment where uh the existing structures of power are collapsing in one way or another, and their collapse is incredibly destructive, but it does also create space for something else to be to be constructed in instead. And again, we can't know what that will look like right now. Um to try to live within that uncertainty and to create and to produce something new within that uncertainty is a very tall order, but I think that's exactly what needs to be net that's what needs to happen. And in order to, you know, to have the energy and to have the the the um the motivation to do that, you know, it's not I don't think it's enough to just say hope. We need to have hope. Like it's not it's not really a thing that you can just conjure up out of nothing. You need to have some sort of uh uh to strike some roots into um into history and into culture, you know, and into uh religion. I think those those things are all very closely um related to one another and we don't need to to disconnect them from one another in looking for how we come up with something new. Um Rovi Yosef did that, you know, with his with his pamphlet, and uh hopefully we've you know can contributed a little bit to doing that here with on this show as well. That's my hope.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

I really agree. I I think that uh the easy way out is to say screw it. Let's not read the Bible, let's not teach our kids the Bible, let's ignore these texts. I don't think that does anything. I think uh we have to try a bit harder to to to find not only in the stories, but also in ourselves and how we understand the stories and how we pass the stories on and how we understand the world basically uh to find the solutions. And that requires imagination and that requires uh I don't think it requires fancy literary analysis uh techniques. I think it requires uh more to Rabbi Yosef's point, it requires a kind of humility to the land and to whoever gave us the land, and it's not the Belfort Declaration.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

Yeah, no, totally. I think we don't have like a good answer to that question. To be honest. W why does this matter? I don't have a fully kind of written out answer to to people who are skeptical about this. We said that it was cringy, and I think kind of staying with the cringe is is is kind of important here. We're living in this fallen age when nothing makes total sense, so we're exploring, we're kind of I don't know, like trying to grab something in the dark, right? To to find something to hold on to. And this is not a project that I think we could expect to really finish before the Messiah comes. Or before the revolution, or before we're in some sort of future that we can only try to hope for today and try to uh grasp at in some very sort of incoate way.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

I think the employee of Spotify I'd lunch with yesterday would say before the singularity. Before the singularity.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

So I think okay. The the the the the scripture as always says it best, the Mishnah, um, this kind of earlier uh strata of the Talmud Lo'alekam el Khaligmo, veloata ben koin libatal mimena. So it is not up to you to finish the work, but you are nevertheless not permitted to neglect it. So we haven't finished it. Good. Maybe in season two.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Maybe in the in season two, bad theology.

SPEAKER_02 43:56

Season two, the Messiah cometh.

SPEAKER_00 43:58

What I hope listeners From all this who've stuck with us to the end, take away is exactly that. We are not permitted to neglect it. We're not permitted to just let other people tell the stories, other people speak for us, other people decide how how the world is interpreted. I hope that if nothing else, the sort of structure of the show in that we really challenge the obvious wielded interpretations of these stories. We got some disagreements from of some right of some people who wrote in and did other ends. That's fine. But like let's always challenge, let's never neglect. And um and maybe my newborn son will pass his hand over the adder's den. Inshallah. Amen. That was episode six of Bad Cousins. Before you go, we did publish a somewhat incomplete but very thorough sources list of the whole show on our website, and I'll also put it up on the Colo Media Instagram. You can see a whole bunch of reading and articles, it's good stuff, and you can spend a lot more time with the ideas in the show. We'll have more extra content coming for you. We're making extra content. We'll have some reels on Instagram, we'll have some more stuff. So stay tuned and keep sending us emails, keep sending us criticisms. We really appreciate it. Um but that's mostly a wrap. I'm Ben Schumann Soller.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

I'm a thon caminer. Thank you, Ben. This has been great.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

This has been really fun. And Adam Awar again, thank you for the music. Queen Mary, School of Business and Management, shout out. And thanks to Gulli de la Vashaloni for producing. And uh back then, it seems like years ago, but the right the the Diasporus, of course, we'll mention, but the Kunzahaus Batannion, where we had that event in whenever that was last year in the rain.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

November 1st.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

Crazy. Day of the dead. Crazy. And it's been a run. And um, of course, thanks to Julia and everybody at the Diasporus. Um.