Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Simon Schama with David Gregory: Genius and the Story of the Jews

[Music] thank you all Thank You Susan what a pleasure to be here she stole my thunder a little bit because when I'm in front of a Jewish audience the way I usually like to begin is yes I am and I like to allow for a little space in the room because as you all just demonstrated there's a moment of of some surprise with this Irish looking finem as you turn and you say who knew but he's so tall Jon Stewart told me before I was on The Daily Show that I am in fact the tallest Jew he's ever met in the history of not very tall Jews this is really an honor for me to be here tonight these two men Simon Schama who I've just met tonight but rabbi sacks who I've known and studied for some time are just such huge figures and have so much to say which begs the obvious question why do you need me I don't have a great answer other than I'm lucky enough to be able to ask them some questions and to draw as much as I can out of them for all of our benefit and to have them engage each other so we'll get right to it rabbi Lord Jonathan Saxons life work is synonymous of course with the word faith he is a global religious leader philosopher author and moral voice of our time currently the ingerborg and ira Renard global distinguished professor of Judaic thought at NYU and the Kressel and F Fred Family University professor of Jewish thought at Yeshiva University he is professor of law ethics and the Bible at King's College London he served as chief rabbi of the United Hebrew congregations of the Commonwealth's from September 1991 through 2013 only the sixth incumbent since the role was formalized in 1845 rabbi sacks is a prolific author of 25 books and published commentaries to the daily Jewish prayer and holiday books his most recent book the great partnership god science and the search for meaning and he's so gonna work on on on his studies because I think he's he hasn't done enough so far Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is with us tonight rabbi please come out my wife always tells me when you talk about faith it just gets so serious all the time so we have to laugh a little bit right professor Simon Schama is with us as well a prolific author prolific and his scholarly pursuits as a university professor of art history and history at Columbia University also a Brit and is a master at conveying the highest level of intellectual thought to the general public he's done so brilliantly he's the author of 16 books his latest project the story of the Jews is his most personal today the culmination of many years in the making the story of the Jews was broadcast on television and volume one has been published in the UK in the US this is a marvelous very personal incredibly emotional and expressive series which I really urge you to watch and and since I'm endorsing also of all rabbi sacks his book a letter in the scroll I think is required reading I'm reading it again it's in my briefcase tonight professor Shama is also the writer presenter of more than 40 documentaries on art history and literature he is the recipient of numerous awards including an enemy a national magazine award for criticism in a National Book Critics Circle Award professor Shama please join us so we will we'll get right to it I think they're gonna reset the clock otherwise we only have eight minutes to talk and that's not nearly enough so the genius of Jewish survival I've been thinking about this these past few weeks and to me it is it is an invitation really to think about how Jewish survival occurred why it occurred and it also begs the question in order to do what it's a question for the Jewish people writ large but I would also say that it's a question for all of us as individuals as we think about who we are and who we want to be in relationship to God I'm going to start with both of you on a single question and I'll ask for the purpose of brevity and getting the conversation going for just a sentence or two in reply rabbi SiC sax why have you survived I think we are the people who were called off to jacob's wrestling match with the angel he was given the name Israel he who's wrestles with God and man and survives and to my mind the most significant sentence in that encounter is when the angel as dawn is about break says let me go and Jacob says I will not let you go until you bless me and somehow we have wrestled with some of the worst persecution and suffering any people has ever known and we have said to every tragedy I will not let you go until you bless me so we are not only the people who survived but the people who took out of every crisis some new generativity some new creation and out of every bad thing that happened to us we were determined to bring a blessing out of the curse well that's very poetically beautiful and I really said that skeptically at all but inevitably Jonathan I was saying I shall we these mighty and taxing questions from slightly different point of view and the more prosaically historical view is that whether through a blessing or whether through necessity Jews really had a code of ethics as the core of their collective existence rather than the markers of what were commonly taken to be the way to survive power armies monuments force which is not to say that we were not in the force and monuments business through the biblical period we we certainly were but it was you know for me if I had to take one one moment out of the Bible it would be a much less poetically profound one than Jonathan's it would be the possibility of Uriah reproaching King David for iniquity the possibility of a dialogue between morality and power is so central to Jewish existence so when as inevitably all those markers which were assumed to be a source of strength the list i've just mentioned were ripped away from us the way to survive was with everything else was with reflection spirituality and ethics and you know on and on through generations and generations rights of this moment in Israel and in the gullet in the Diaspora now that same argument between power and not power power and I'm not saying that it's a zero-sum game that still goes on I believe if I can just add to Simon I think Simon my favorite anti-semite is Nietzsche because he was that rarest of things an original anti-semite everyone else hated Jews because they rejected Christianity Nietzsche hated Jews cuz they created Christianity and to my my Nietzsche framed the choice which Simon is rightly laid before us because Nietzsche's philosophy was based on the idea of power and the Jewish choice was always the power of ideas and that makes a central I think to the human you right in a letter in the scroll the following Moses realized that a people achieves immortality not by building temples and mausoleums but by engraving their values on the hearts of their children and they on theirs and so on until the end of time is that a is that ethics based is that a spiritual blueprint is that different than a people who go through oppression and and savagery and Massacre and hold together somehow hold together what's specific about that prescription well I think you know Jews came up with this sentence and the first book of the Bible that every human being regardless of class color cultural creed is then the image and likeness of God so Judaism created this idea of a society of equal dignity now that's been a human search for a very long time and most people to echo Simon have looked at it in terms of either wealth or power you can be a communist and say we achieve equal dignity by equal wealth or you can be in favor of participative democracy we have equal power Jews knew that neither of those works um we'll always get more power than others more wealth than others and therefore they came up with I think the most radical and workable idea of an equal society equal access to knowledge because with knowledge the more you share the more you have whereas with power or wealth the more you share the less you have so I think we became the people whose Citadel's were schools whose heroes were teachers and whose passion was studying the life yeah again I think I'm good to spend the whole evening really just footnoting job which was which is a good thing to be able to do I couldn't agree more but I said my little footnote here is that the Jewish inquiry is an inquiry which again you know the classical world does produce - especially the castle world has rediscovered by the Renaissance where it looks in a mirror and says what is it to be human what is it to be human and you know in much of the classical world actually outside Greece I'm thinking of Mesopotamia and Egypt and and so on the image that is looked at is is the image of the king god the the emperor with all his battalions Jews were asked to consider the nature of humanity in terms of words in terms of language we now know through an extraordinary kind of linguistic scholarship into the early origins of the Bible that actually vernacular Hebrew it sort of precedes the writing of the Bible even if you push the Bible which I rather do I'm just a student of amazing scholars - about the eighth century approximately the reign of Hezekiah is a continuous set of adaptable scripts that there are so called ABCD there are alphabetic exercises have been discovered in a northern negative going back to the 11th and 12th century BC which extraordin extraordinary there Ian Thanh West Semitic Kanaya Knight 22 letter and if you think about that absolutely speaks throughout Jonathan's just said it is very hard to master hieroglyphic language or to master cuneiform if you're not in a very small educated elites 22 letters written down an alphabet is for everyone and a lot of those scholars at least they persuaded me when I was researching Volume one of the story of juice a part of the genius of the many generations of Bible writers will actually take the sacred texts and actually sieve it through this pre-existent earthy language so in Judaism it's not just a matter of kind of the sacred penumbra of mystical illumination and subservience before the god-king if you all speak and if you're all encouraged to read out loud there's that wonderful moment isn't there in kind of Ezra when Ezra reads out loud the Torah and you know Correa totora is is a vocal thing which presupposes around a community of Ratlam presuppose it's why Jews never shut up you know my Latin boy and in fact it's a tradition of course as Jonathan knows all the ways to remember samuel peeps goes into that first synagogue in the predecessor of verbis marx and he like so many people is shocked by how noisy it is people are constantly going into the great synagogue here's a footnote Simon when Prince Charles came to Silla Gog for a synagogue service for the first time in our shul in st. John's Wood he sat in the warden's box during the evening service was the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel and the first time a royal of that seniority has been to his service in a synagogue and I asked him afterwards did he enjoy it and he said you do talk a lot don't you as I said your old highness exactly so people say the art of conversation is dead I say it's alive and well and happens in the synagogue when you're supposed to be Prime it's in the Talmud Jews that that non-jews know be a lot here I hope Jews essentially communicate by agreed mutual interruption cuz we all right so I went before I get into some contemporary matters and I want to come back to the spiritual question that we started in in the green room I like Simon let me start with you can you describe a physical journey that you have taken as part of your Jewish life and what you learn from it physical journey well I was hmm it's an old restore its story of Orthodoxy wandering away myself sound like a kind of errant Old Testament figure but that certainly be true I grew up it's that what you want to know David I mean I grew up in an orthodox but not Hasidic or certainly not a rady the world was unknown background but we we kept cash roots and I went to fade out as a head a teacher of standing Lee for a little bit and so you know went through all that and then Oh many things happen adolescence happened the nuclear disarmament movement happened Marxism happened Cambridge University happened happened to be in a different way Jonathan had the fortitude to resist the sixties and it's manifestation in in Cambridge University yes we so were you in the same shul in Cambridge which I was there every Shabbat so I were but I became I suppose I became as far as I was still Jewish in that way and this I know interests you very much David a Jew of comfortable social habit I guess you would say and and that I I think you know you were egging me on earlier on say ah but that's not enough and he probably isn't enough really then I was very bad and stop me if this gets really very rambling it probably already has I did write a book of Jewish history called two Rothschilds in the Land of Israel about Edmond de Rothschild the French Rothschild and the issue of in fact the beginnings really that all the poverty on even pre first Aliyah beginnings of the transplantation of Jews from Poland and Romania into Eric's Israel in the 1870s and 1880s tonight I long story about that you don't want to hear but I'm the kind of historian at that stage of my life in Cambridge in the late 60s and 70s who felt that history was about writing the culture to which you did not belong that part of history was really about a communion with people other than yourself in a different time in a different place and then we also when the book came out it was you know no one needs dash out and buy it but I have nothing to apologize for it but my auntie Esther never spoke to me again I thought I don't want to be dealing with this so I ran away basically to different kind of to France to Holland and but I had a little seminar in Cambridge actually which was just kind of post-biblical with with a friend of mine called Nicholas too long she you know was a massage his translator and a great scholar of Late Antiquity Judaism particularly a filer and and we just had we just had a kind of reading group that's really good of tortoise but it was we had it was just a wonderful thing so it was my kind of philosophical secret and it became more murky and more cowardly as and went on until you know but it was it was always there I was rare Dora Johnson or it Leo and I read it it was it was a voice talking to me and then when the BBC said the BBC producer Fermi up and said after I finished I come where it was a series on American politics think it was yeah he said I've got the obvious idea for you and you're either going to run a million miles away or you could I have to do it and he didn't have to tell me what it wants the Jews rabbi sacks actually Simon answered two questions in one even though I only asked him the one but but that's what makes him brilliant I'd like you if you talk to us about your spiritual religious background how you grew up but also for you was there a an actual trip an actual journey of swords that you learned something that was proof shown Jewishly sure I went up to Cambridge 1966 by which time Simon was already a legend he was the Eloi the prodigy of Cambridge had just been appointed the youngest ever Fellow of the Cambridge College and it was wondrous in our eyes on the other hand we didn't see Simon all that off and I have to say in the synagogue until that moment that was a turning point I think in many lives which is May June 67 that's Joe's very very anxious three weeks leading up to the Six Day War when Israel seemed outnumbered outgunned I said spoken about driving Israel into the sea we who had been born after the Holocaust thought god forbid there's gonna be a second Holocaust and at that moment a kind of free song a real sense of Jewish identity touched an awful lot of people and the fact that Simon used to come in every day to Thompson's Lane two dozen Mimico with this tell me wow if something's here this is serious and that you know when there's sudden day no more this extraordinary victory the question then really stayed with me until then I'd thought Judaism is what a small bourgeois a group in Finchley kind of do with their spare time I suddenly realize that there's history here there's people who had here all of us felt connected to people and we didn't know 3,000 miles away in a country that I know he just visited for the first time and so that question stayed with me for a year and I decided the next year the summer of 68 that I was going to make a journey to discover a little more about my Judaism and I kind of came here to the States why I'd heard that there were a lot of great rabbis I bought a Greyhound bus ticket four hundred dollars went all the way around meeting every rabbi I could think of and I met two rabbis who had a huge impact and I who changed my life one of them was the late rabbi Joseph salivate chick who had been he was the leading Jewish thinker of the 20th century but he'd written a doctorate on neo-kantian matter for metaphysics epistemology he knew he'd read everything and from him I learnt that you've faced the entire intellectual world of Europe and not be afraid that was number one but the really transformative impact came with my meeting Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson little bothered sharaba and that was an extraordinary moment that changed my life because you know the first thing I did was I you know I'm a total schlemiel you know I come along to America not knowing where anyone is and I ask where do you find little Bubba Trevor so they said go to 717 Parkway I took the subway there I walked in I said I've come 3,000 miles to meet the lubavitcher rebbe they all collapsed laughing they say thousands of people who would come back next year you know so you know I I don't know what to say you know adequate so that's you know that's number one survival mechanism so I said look I don't know where I'm gonna be I'm wandering around the states but I do know that I'll be marked with my aunt in Los Angeles say if he finds in spare me a couple of minutes please phone through to this number one Sunday night the call came through the lubavitcher rebbe can see you on Thursday now I had no money I just had this Greyhound bus ticket it took three days non-stop on a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to 770 Eastern Parkway and I sat for a half an hour with this crepe man and I thought to myself what does he need to waste time with a schlemiel like me from nowhere with nothing but I found it very dramatic because after he'd answered all my questions he started interrogating me what are you doing for Jewish life in Cambridge I began one of the I was terribly English in those days it's rubbed off since c'est bien this English sentence in the situation in which I find myself was not rude like us he cut through in the middle of the sentence and said nobody finds the Descartes's in this situation they put themselves in a situation so if you put yourself in that situation you can put yourself in another situation and so he challenged me to go to Cambridge and lead there used to be he used to have something called love for Brennan wait thousands of cacilie many would speak for hours and every 20 minutes they'd pause and they'd sing songs and if you were about to leave I was about to leave for the next day and during the songs you came up with a bottle of vodka and he poured a little in a thimble and the rubber would say look I am and that would be the rubbers vodka that you took with you into the world so I go up to the Roman file of thousands and thousands of Hassid him and instead of doing what he normally did we say laughs I'm he turned when you said you're going already I said yes he said why I said because I have to get back to University he said the Cambridge term doesn't begin until the middle of October I think you should stay now how I knew I don't know but he stayed I stayed I said I can't stay because it's a charter flight and I can't so the next morning they kind of kidnapped me they locked me in a room I said how am I going to get back they said we'll tell the airline you're ill I said what how by ill they said tomorrow we'll take you to the rubbers doctor and he'll find what's wrong with you and so I got to spend Rosh Hashanah with the Lubavitcher ever heard him blow chauffeured I mean it was a transformative experience why because this in Cambridge I met very very brilliant human beings and the Lubavitcher rubber for the first time I met a holy human being and that to me was very powerful why is it so hard for Hughes to talk about God and spiritual life Simon personal relationship with God well you can you can hear your own you know your own wonder about that amplified by massive silences you I we're not a confessional at least I i I'd never felt Judaism to be confessional I think it was argue about God and they argue with God in the Bible famously and there's some but the sense actually really I never had a very strong mystical sense I mean of course there is Kabbalah you know under there there is a certain kind of Hasidic mysticism and all very important but I don't know I mean I belonged and grew up in a kind of more discursive argumentative verbally interrogatory kind of Judaism and a huge amount of Judaism you never read the Mishnah and the larger tone but really it's about life on Earth really my question is more about my own spiritual longing it's certainly not a judgement I mean because for you and for so many others there's great satisfaction in that but it's just it's it's a question for me because I do think that so much of our it you find it in a scripture you find it in our liturgical life there is a very personal conversation with God but I think in modern Jewish life in my life growing up as I have and in my community I find that it's it's more absent well let me try a different tack I think actually you know we've really broach this a bit actually and that's to say first of all God does not have a face in Judaism as he does in Christianity the notion of God as somebody something that can be really embodied as in a Christian tradition is is I was going to say a pourraient that's too extreme but it's certainly alien to the Jewish tradition so the manifestation of God is in a set of teachings and the teachings are overwhelmingly about how to comport oneself in in this world I think that's that's part of it I think actually rabbi I I think Judy God's face we seek God's face in our tradition we seek God's face Psalm 27 says so I think Jews were until relatively recently the god-intoxicated people I don't think there are any more profound conversations with God than in the Book of Psalms I don't think there are any more passionate love songs about God than the Song of Songs I would say it's extraordinary that anyone put that book in a Canon of sacred scriptures and that this is I mean the eros is part of what it means to love God in Judaism this is a passionate longing and I have this feeling that something happened around 17th 18th century somehow exile had gone on too long we say in our prayers it may have had to a new Gulino me I'd say no because of our sins we were exiled from our land we said God says through Moses you know return to me and I will return to you for 16 centuries Jews were the most pious people you know they there were not the people of the biblical age constantly tempted into idolatry wherever they went they raised up scholars they built you vote they you know there were fastidious in keeping the commands and some our Redemption never came there was a tidal wave of Messianic longing around the time of shaveh Deitz fee in the 17th century and that was disappointed and then you know this huge op there's this this gift by the Europe of Enlightenment and emancipation which is you know play down your Jewish identity and become one of us and I think Jews made the terrible mistake I have to say of opting for that bargain rather than keeping their faith because number one all that enlightenment and emancipation led really to the worst anti-semitism we have ever known and to the worst human catastrophe we've ever known and it also became something very problematic because anti-semitism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century became something not only out there but something also in here because for centuries millennia Jews had seen their reflection in the eyes of God and they had define themselves as a people loved by God when they lost faith and they first encountered anti-semitism they stopped defining themselves as the people loved by God and came to the conclusion that they were the people hated by the Gentiles and out of that there was no way out and and it was a terrible moment so I happen to believe that you keep your faith whatever happens because somehow or other when you're drowning you reach your hand up to heaven and sometimes God grabs hold of that hand and lifts you and that's my personal experience well this is a very shocking thing to say about the Enlightenment actually here we're going to disagree I think it's terrible to blame anti-semitism on the naivety of someone like Moses Mendelssohn putting words into your mouth a bit but let's say he's a classic example of for my skill and what is so deeply moving about Jerusalem Moses medicines great workers said that he presupposes and I know what happened to his family and generations on is true but he presupposes with the greatest blessed optimism that Jews can live out in the world without sacrificing their Judaism I and we're here in America Jonathan which is the product of Enlightenment optimism I'm not critical of the Enlightenment Simon I'm saying the Enlightenment was a flight from particularity and what we saw is the 18th century the age of reason in the 19th century the return of the repressed romanticism nationalism and so on so I'm not at all critical of the Enlightenment and we would never the Enlightenment was one of the great blessings of European culture and I'm not negative negative about it one little bit however I have to tell you that in his letters and his diary Moses Mendelssohn was one of the first already in the 1780s to pick up Jew hatred because he was roughed up in the street in the park and and you know he was one of the very first who had that intuition the second thing is in the closing two pages of Jerusalem in 1783 he defines Judaism as a burden bear York this double burden as best you can and now I mean what am I going to say this is one of the ironies of history no one no one ever wrote more beautiful music at the age of 16 then his a Nicole Felix incidental music to a midsummer night's dream I mean you know we gave some of the world's most beautiful music to the wall but let us see the Enlightenment is great blessing but let us be Jewish enough to know that every great blessing comes with the dark side you know the venom of anti-semitism since we've raised music is is the Vulcan Aryan moment if you gentlemen music 1815 so we did exactly so it's the overthrow it's what happens Jews from Manasseh ben-israel earlier from Simone Inlet Sato from Lyon a modern are through to you know from the Venice ghetto commemoration 500 years of that next year through you know the age of the mask you was was was an intense struggle to find how Jews can live in the world were there not only Jews sure it's great to live surrounded if you're Lubavitch up over by your followers and in in a community of completely shared beliefs but the majority of the people here maybe not a majority you know a living out in the world along with non-jews the the comradeship between Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing yeah was a great moment in the history of Jewish life I think that blessings Nathan the wise which was his tribute to Mandelson is one of the high points one of the greatest contributions in the Enlightenment it is in an extraordinary statement of religious tolerance of way ahead of its time still relevant today and all I'm saying is this Simon I believe Jews must go out into the world I've written books about this I believe it I've done it myself I believe that to remain confined within the ghetto is a betrayal of what we're here for in the first words of God to Abraham he says through you shall all the families of the earth be blessed I think we've got to go out there we've got to be engaged with the intellectual currents of our time with with the social issues of our time I think we've got to be that the only thing on which I disagree with the assumptions of the Enlightenment is that you know enlightenment was universalism we're all the same which meant the Jews had in effect to be secular Marat but Mendelsohn doesn't say that does he actually what is special about Jerusalem is that he says well should we let him say something let me do this I apologize for that I'll clean it up in just a few minutes you've raised anti-semitism and I know a great many in the audience will want to hear about where we are in this crisis moment today how do you see the crisis of anti-semitism today is it different from this period that you've studied the the post-enlightenment period of the lie of assimilation in Europe and the anti-semitism that occurred then what are we seeing today how would you describe it is it a crisis is it something less well it's a horrible marriage between the kind of you know the poisonous venom which will not go away of classic post-enlightenment anti-semitism that instead of Jews being accused of the blood libel although they do go on being accused of committing the blood libel Damascus 1840 the bailiffs trial in the early 20th century the vampirism of which Jews were supposed to be guilty was capitalist vampirism wasn't it that was you know Edward written long those terrible things so if you read the if you can bring yourself to read the obscenely vile charter of Hamas you're redeemed only by its comic lunacy when it says be on your guard against Jews because they dominate Lions Clubs and wrote Aryans not any racial Club I've ever been safe inadvertently idiotic things but you know then swallowing the protocols of the Elders of Zion hook line and sinker probably more people through the web now believe in the protocols of the Elders of Zion than at any other time since the four turi was made but I said it's a marriage between that and ferocious anti-zionism ferocious anti-zionism so I do think the kind of Lord of the you know what Benjamin Netanyahu said everybody should go to Israel leave Europe it's the end of the road that I could not disagree with more part of actually what Jews are I don't know what I think Jews should be doing is actually bringing the long history of Jewish experience the high points as well as the low points for instance give you one one one thing example Zionism is grotesquely caricatured as an entirely alien colonial incursion into a Muslim Arab indigenous world as though there was from the Bible to the 20th century no Jewish history any roots with any living presence in Eretz around and what's heard of safar they don't know about Laurie and it couple out you know in any of that long history you tell people there was a Jewish majority in Jerusalem at the turn of the 20th century they think you're kidding or lying or both so there is there is it you know one of the things that sort of has to be done in addressing non-jewish audience is and this this is an Enlightenment ideal is essentially an educational and I would say that there's so many difficult aspects because actually part of the murderous virulence which starts with anji Zionism and then morphs into the kind of idiocy seen in the Hamas Charter is a result of the blowback of the death of Empire so we have large Muslim populations of disaffected often disadvantaged young people all over Europe who buy into the crude equation rabbis you wrote in The Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago the notion that Israel's foreign policy or national security policy is hatched in a kosher supermarket in Paris is lunacy that's anti-semitism yeah how are these two forces though linked in a way that makes us a unique threat well look first of all let's just you know let's the first thing is the Jewish way have never been too intimidated is to make a joke out of it so my favorite story is these two Jews in Vienna and the coffee house in 1933 one is reading the local Jewish newspaper the other is reading the notoriously anti-semitic rag called their stormer the first one says how can you read that that's full of anti-semitic vile poison and the second one with the big smile says when you read your newspaper what does it say the Jews are arguing they're divided they're assimilating they're disappearing when I read mine what do I discover Jews control the bank's they control the media he says now if you want the good news about the Jewish people always read the anti-semites but the real question is this and it's an interesting question anti-semitism is a virus Europe after the Holocaust created it's it's the most sophisticated and complete attempt ever to strengthen the European immune system so that it could never be exposed to the virus of anti-semitism again 50 years of anti-racist legislation 50 years of interfaith dialogue 50 years of Holocaust education and somehow or other what a virus does to defeat any immune system is to mutate so in the Middle Ages Jews were hated for their religion in the 19th 90 20th century they were hated for their rice today they are hated for their nations state that is a major mutation the other thing that happened is you can cure an epidemic within a given population but you are seriously in trouble if it spreads to another population so while Europe was curing itself of the virus of anti-semitism meanwhile the Arab inand Muslim world was getting infected by an anti-semitism that was strictly European and Simon's alluded to both elements of it number one the blood libel I think his Brits we have to admit the blood libel was created in England yes in Norwich in 1144 Lincoln and in 1983 the Syrian defense minister Mustafa plus wrote a book called the matzo of Zion explaining why Israelis kill Palestinian children to use their blood to make matzo in 1991 the Syrian representative at the United Nations Commission of Human Rights advised every member of the UN Commission on Human Rights to read the book so they would understand what was the nature of Zionist racism the protocols of the Elders of Zion exposed as a forgery Berlin London Times in 1921 was taken into the Arab world by the grand mufti of Jerusalem who spent the war in Berlin you know working for the SS and it has been you know a major it is a major text and as Simon said incorporated in the Hamas charter Egyptian television did a 40 part application in 2002 Syrian television did a 40-pound app tation during Ramadan in 2003 so the blood libel and the protocols have infected a world that didn't know these particularly are you offended by the notion of what nan Yahoo said that you should leave Europe I'll tell you the irony and and it's a very important one that there is one huge difference between anti-semitism now and anti-semitism in the 1930s today we have thank God a State of Israel we have a home in the Robert Frost sense of the place where when you have to go there they have to let you in and therefore it is not only Jews in Israel but it is Jews in Europe who can say I am not homeless therefore I refuse to be intimidated I am going to stand and fight and Israel has changed Jewish life for those inside and for those outs yes I mean there's a moment I could it has had that mutually nourishing effect I'm just concerned really though that it's you know that it's not seen as a zero-sum game and what we're two very English even though I've lived half my life in United States you her into very English voices here I because because people constantly ask me identity are skewed Jonathan you know is it all over in Britain as well as France and so on and you want to make a distinction the most venomous anti-zionism and he is really hostility which which exactly is he beautifully put it's only mutates into a more traditionally odious anti-semitism in Britain in my view is in the treachery classes as we call them in Britain is actually in the world this doesn't make it less distressing I have to say in the world of intellectual comment just two days ago a hundred cultural personalities if that's not an oxymoron in this case I think it is signed on to a cultural boycott of Israel including some of my friends who bloody well should know better or ex-friends who should know better the population at larger britain unless i mean you you're there more than i am and in every way does not strike me as munich 1931 1932 or at all although probably that's what german jews were saying in munich in a t31 recorded levels of anti-semitism in britain and i'm referring to the latest surveys are actually lower than they are in the united states so you're talking about a general population that is not he's submitting in the slightest but there is an additional fact which i think is incredibly important and I already said this 12 years ago in the EU headquarters in Brussels when we had the first European conference on anti-semitism with Romano Prodi we've done so since with Jose Manuel Barroso and Angela Merkel and I I said and I repeat this always Jews cannot fight anti-semitism alone the victim cannot cure the crime the hated cannot cure the hate I will lead the fight and I really have done this for the right of Christians throughout the world to lead their faith live their faith without fear but I need you Christians to fight for that Jewish right in Britain we led the fight against Islamophobia but I say to Muslims you must help us lead the fight against Judea phobia let me ask and I think we're close to taking your questions as well and before I turn to those Simon there was this and just like that let there be questions Thank You Simon there's one of the really poignant moments of of your series was you standing at the security barrier and kind of reckoning with what modern-day Israel represents to Jews to Israelis to the concept of Jews being allied unto other nations and when you spoke to an a settler and your your discomfort was was evident in that interview you wrote in that that the Bible is many things but a blueprint for peace in the Holy Land it is surely not what do you make of Israel today what what gives you hope what troubles you oh the hope well if we're talking about the internal character of Israel the Hope over I'm always you know I'm always deeply moved and thrilled and astonished actually that last chapter in Irish of its wonderful book I think actually not perfect but none of us right perfect except Jonathan so I think it was very you know profound about that so I think first you have to ask Jonathan babe movingly putted we have a home now that is that that is the big difference it doesn't presuppose divided Allegiance or make our home in the United States or Britain or France forever compromised at all but that is that is extremely important and the one figure I you know I don't know why dice this out from when you asked me about my journey was that when I mean three or four years before Jonathan was sitting with with the Lubavitcher robber with Menachem Mendel Schneerson I was meeting ben-gurion actually not one to one I have to say they're all and he was an extraordinary figure then he'd retired he was living in stable care he came to talk to a bunch of kids in Jerusalem and then there was also the message that the only place for young Jews of truth of any kind was to go on alia and to come to Israel but that was the kind of official speech he was really wanted to know what Jewish life was actually like if he weren't going to do this if you're gonna put a layer on hold and I was in Hibernia my was a you know baby Zionist I was working on Hibernia kyboots I had that kind of sense but the sense I had of Israel then and have always had is of a kind of combination of a sort of Commonwealth built on a sense of sadaqa on justice rather than pure power I mean I don't all the way with Martin Buber you know those were times of impossible idealism but I'm a two-state scientist I always have has been and you know Israel is not a monolithic place half of israel's polity a proctor we'll see what happens in the election half of Israeli Israelis also believe that there has to be some way in which the Palestinian population and Israeli population live side by side and the settler was someone for whom biblical prophecy about territory Masonic Redemption defined in kilometers of real estate was the most important thing and that I I think and still a thought and still think was kind of profoundly misguided but Israel is apart from other great miracles but you know a true democracy in a region where democracy is not only absent but shrinking with every day that passes and Jonathan when you look at surveys around the world that show that Israel is increasingly isolated do you worry about its path do you worry about the role that Israel can play as a tie that binds Jews around the world look I I have to think that Israel is an extraordinary human miracle Israel has taken the Hebrew language the language of the Bible and made it speak again it's taken a land the lay desolate for so many centuries and make it bloom again but it is taken this scattered shattered people and make it live again and I think Israel is the most extraordinary thing as you know in terms of democracy I call Israel a hyper democracy you know every taxi driver is a political pundit if you could that's better than the op-eds you know and so I think Israel it's an extraordinary place of creativity diversity there's more diversity in this tiny country than you'll find in whole continents elsewhere and I I think it's incredibly incredibly power at the same time it's also I say you know I say the Greeks gave the humanity the concept of it's a very powerful concept of tragedy and I say that because there was never a nice glass or as Sophocles among the Jewish people instead we had in Isaiah Jeremiah and and and I said Judaism is the principle defeat of tragedy in the name of hope and what I see in the Middle East is one of those things I never expected it is an unfolding Greek tragedy in a nation and a culture that always lived by the principle of Hope so I've always said that no Jew knowing what we know of history can be an optimist but no Jew worthy of the name ever gave up hope and it is no accident that Israel is the country that called its national anthem a tikva that is the song Israel sings for the world and so I think a day will come as we see Syria Iraq now Libya Yemen and other places collapsing into cows into barbarisms and crimes against humanity of a kind we haven't seen since the Middle Ages and there is Israel doing its little thing of showing that in a area a region of the world that never really knew democracy you can be a successful democracy in a country that has no natural assets except its people you can move from a third world to a cutting-edge first world economy at some stage there must come a time when peace will come if only well they said about one of my predecessors the late Chief Rabbi JH Hertz who was a fairly argumentative guy I would never come into that gallery at all no The Dictionary of National Biography says about Chief Rabbi Hertz that he never despaired of appellee peaceful solution to a problem once every other alternative have been exhausted so I think one day peace will come if only from exhaust let me get to some of our our questions here and we'll try to get through as many of these as we can so maybe we'll try to be a little bit briefer now you are trying to provoke thought I'd be ridiculous what is your view of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians it's a very unhappy situation I mean incredibly unhappy situation you know you can't but look actually at what Palestinians have to go through in order you know for example to get to you know one bit of the West Bank into Israel to work and and not feel desolate about it but it's some as I said it's it's it's it's essential first of all it's essential to make a distinction between Hamas ruled Gaza and the West Bank as we know from the negotiations between Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen in 2008 it's possible to actually come to some sort of understanding with the Palestinian Authority but it's incredibly difficult to do so with Hamas but the argument part of the argument that's going to happen in the in the next election will be do we have a partner to work with or not the treatment of the treatment of Palestinians will will not get better until there is kind of active political engagement on that front I think they look the alternative the alternative to accepting that there will be a Palestinian state at some point is annexation in which case Israel has a terrifying demographic problem and it's difficult you you know it's not kind of doves who came to this conclusion it's it's Ariel Sharon who came this conclusion that if Israel needs to if Israel couldn't you know has if Israel will remain a Jewish democracy it can't be a Jewish democracy that annex is the worst bag rabbi what again from our audience what role do you think the concept of tissue VAR and forgiveness have on Jewish survival I think you've on forgiveness two of the most important concepts that Jews brought into the world if you want you know one of the problems in philosophy for two and a half thousand years human free will are we free do we have a choice you remember what Isaac Bashar Bashevis singer said we have to be free they have no choice and if I want an empirical proof of free will I'll say it's chuhwa you know we can change and that is one of the most important contributions Jews made to the world Carol to work at Stanford mindset you know this idea of the growth mindset the Judah the you dad the brother of Joseph that we meet in Genesis 37 the one who proposes selling Joseph into slavery is the judo a few chapters later is the one who's prepared to stay as a slave rather than see his brother Benjamin made a slave so when you look at the Bible this idea that you know it was when I read Emma for the first time that I suddenly read a novel where the the chief character is different at the end of the novel than she was at the beginning and I think that's this very Jewish outset inside the other thing is forgiveness and forgiveness you know the first recorded act of forgiveness in all of world literature's when Joseph forgives his brothers as the philosopher non Jewish I think called David constant wrote a book in 2010 called before forgiveness and he analyzes the fact that the Greeks didn't have a concept of forgiveness they had a concept of appeasement which is different for forgiveness and again you know the trouble is we didn't emphasize this enough we like Christianity say Judaism is not a religion of forgiveness and it's not a matter religion of love whereas when Jesus talks about love he's quoting terrorised quoting vow after if I come up I love your neighbor as yourself from Leviticus 19 and then he's quoting from Shamar Bob - love the Lord your God with all your heart and all yourself now I plagiarizing hello Pledger so you know when I read Hannah Arendt in the human condition saying Christian Christianity invented forgiveness I'd find it quite hard to forgive her but I but I will tell you how we have lost touch with our own deepest ideas there's a rabbi know an Orthodox rabbi workers it teaches at a Mennonite University and works in peace and reconciliation and he goes around the country to places where there very few Jews and he talks about peace and reconciliation and he told me that he went to one town where there weren't that many Orthodox Jews but an elderly Orthodox couple hearing on Orthodox rallies going together talking the local university sit in the front row elderly and he's give us a lecture about love and forgiveness and he tells me the the man turned to his wife and says he talks like a Gentile you know why did we give away our best ideas and the finest idea we ever had was that God created the world in love and forgiveness asking us to love and forgive one another another question here does progressive Judaism have a future and if so where does it find its social its soul and how best can I communicate that honest search that's for you you know I grab a one of the I'm gonna I'm gonna impute something into this that kind of you know I think part of this question about progressive Judaism is to me where the role of Zionism and Israel is in Jewish life among progressive Jews yeah is their Jewishness defined by their Zionism and if their Jewish identity and their love for Israel is perhaps a little bit more removed from the core then what makes up women you lost in the reformed synagogue I belong in a reformed oh we're all lost but why do you have that idea because particularly Simon younger Jews who do not wake up in America fearful of the end of Israel or of anti-semitism do not feel the same a collective sense of identity revolving around Israel and I think there's a longing I think that there is a quest to to know God to be inspired to have spiritual life to have a sense of meaning and purpose and I don't believe that collective identity around even arguing over sacred texts which many of you unaffiliated Jews do or even a deep interest in Israel's present or future is what is what motivates them and brings them together in community that's my experience which I spoke here just four days ago at the National Convention of bBYO the B'nai B'rith youth organization which is I think majority reformed Jews in Atlanta and I have to tell you these kids know the joy of Judaism that their soul sings though they were noisy yeah I mean but I think you know I knew a guy called Avram Enfield used to for some years ran Hillel in American I remember him coming to me and saying you know I've just been to a Hillel convention that an Orthodox I was conservative service reforming in Anna reconstructionist minion and all for mignon him work Alba and I think that's one very powerful discovery you know we were terribly cognitive but at the end of the day when Jews talk they argue but when they sing they sing together as usually mo shared the Red Sea they sang as song together so if you want to end the arguments move from words to music because words of the language of the Jewish mind but music is the language of the Jewish soul and I think that's what reform of rediscovered and it's gonna reconnect us all do you think that's a real issue what Simon and I were just going back and forth I'll tell you I think the problem reform have with Israel is because of the way they framed Israel you know we identify with Israel by being pro-israel at a political level I think that is completely the wrong way to look at it I cannot begin to tell you how wrong it is do you think it's just a reform and a denominational issue or do you think it's part in part generational or you think it's mostly that mostly a reform and unaffiliated Jewish issue well I'm not sure I accept the premise that you're saying really essentially reformed identity is built so disproportionately around a kind of unexamined support for Israel it can appeal it so I'm just saying I mean I'm saying whether it's in my community where there I think represent there's more criticism of Israel politically but I also mean generationally I'm 44 and generationally I don't think that there is as much adherence to Israel and all it represents as the core of Jewish identity as opposed to a kind of spiritual longing which i think is accessible and is in our tradition it's in our Scripture it's in our liturgy it's it's in our songs it's so rich David I'd like to tell you that what I think is the way of framing this for the future of American young people Jews have been almost everywhere in the world one way or another but if you read the Torah what you fine this is not a manual for the sole individual souls that are sent to heaven it's an instruction manual for the construction of a society built around justice compassion human dignity freedom everywhere that Jews have been in the world in 40 centuries there was only ever one spot on earth where Jews were able to construct a society in light with their deepest beliefs and that's Israel the tikkun olam projects that happen in israel whether you know at an educational level medicinal level you know their guys out there in the Galil using medicine to reach out to bedouin christian and muslim populations there are people out there using music to bring people together and that is how they should relate to Israel if you want to change the world this is the one place where you can build a society along Jewish lines so forget the political debates that you will run into on campus and focus on the humanitarianism of this incredible country that's taking handicapped kids the light Reuven Feuerstein was the world's greatest in dealing with Sevilla handy captain and brain-damaged children or the incredible medicinal thing so that the economic you know raising up difficult families to do all these things Israel is absolutely outstanding that's not the Israel we see that's not the Israel they relate to and that's the Israel every one of them could relate well I want to say unfortunately first of all I want to come back to you your point because I just want to clear this up and there'll be a lot of people in conservative congregations here reform congregations I'm sure you know actually that one of the joys because I mean particularly West London synagogue I remember I brought stools on two different sides of the Atlantic but the pleasure in detailed discussion of the Torah or the Mishnah or the Town Board is is every bit there's intense and preoccupied and Allah in an intellectually complicated way in these communities as I imagine it is in in in ultra-orthodox communities secondly I would say that division of opinion about Israeli policies is certainly I didn't know how one would actually measure it in in the United States but it seems to be something actually which does not divide along denominational lines you can go to Israel as you know and you'll find plenty of critics actually of yes I'll bet I know and the right-wing parties among the Orthodox but I think it's about whether it's in conservative reform it's not there are vast numbers of these congregations who do not know our history who do not know the liturgy of course there are those who are and I'm sure you're in groups that do as I am in groups that do but there are a lot of Jews and they are more in reformed and maybe even conservatives guys who do not know of these debates who do not know of our tradition I do believe I mean that's the best thing American jury has done in recent years is the birthright program yeah which instead of talking about Israel but I don't disagree with you that there is that robust dialogue you know across all communities but I want to say one more thing actually can I of course I guess that's the most disingenuous question I thought I also want to say there is work look we're living in a world in which there are three horrible horrible problems one is the slow death of the planet not so great secondly is the colossal distance between rich and poor worldwide the third is something which you and I think I don't think speaking of the Enlightenment we thought would happen the hideous return of tribal barbarism and the most brutal forms of religious intolerance if there's one thing that Jews can do outside Israel here in the world actually and this is you know waving the flag of Manasseh bin Israel and Moses Mendelssohn is to talk as you've been doing this is your whole life spin about this is actually the possibility of coexistence without the adulteration of your core beliefs yeah you're the Builder by a most distinguished example of saying those very things and that it's work to be done in the Golan hey let me just add a little footnote daily because you've been incredibly patient and I say it takes us Brits a while to realize that America they use the term footnote like what takes us a while to realize that not every word means the same in American English is English and one of the key examples the word momentarily which in English English means briefly but in American English means soon and so people introduced me by saying rabbi sex will speak momentarily yeah I know and I reply friends rabbis never speak I remember American Airlines flight surgeon and say it's all right folks we'll be in the air momentarily and I thought conservative Jews I don't know spiritual longing or nobody you were talking about something he was praising you about the work you've done about about the return to Bible hatred and in my next book yes out in the States in September is a protest against violence in the name of God and it will be called not in God's name that from heaven God is saying not in man I'll be the strongest book I ever wrote and I'm reaching out to Christians to Muslims and let me tell you David I have spent days with an X comma snik from from the West Bank who has become a peace activist so I don't give up one in Israel yeah in Israel so I don't give up on anything but I think what we're seeing with ice is what we're seeing in with Boko Haram and so on he's simply unacceptable and we have to stand up as religious leaders and say not in God's name Amen I wanted one there's a final area that I'd like you both to weigh in on and the question here invited something that I wanted to ask anyway but I want to read the question because I thought it was well well struck here where is the future of Jewish life Zionists say Israel cassadines say Williamsburg Lithuanian say you Sheva Modern Orthodox a university where is the future but I'm gonna combine that with something that I was thinking about that rabbi you've written about in a number of books including future tense which is if we if we celebrate Jewish survival we must ask then to do what so what is Jewish purpose in 2015 and I mean not just in the collective and out of our sense of as a people but I do return to something I care about which is as individuals as well what is our individual purpose what is the point the meaning of this survival that we as individuals take out as Jews into the world as those individuals but also as part of something larger I once asked Paul Johnson a Catholic historian who wrote a very fine history of the Jews and I said him Paul you know you're a Catholic you must have spent years researching Jews and Judaism what most impressed you and he gave a very interesting answer he said they're been through histories and very famous individualistic cultures Athens Renaissance Italy contemporary West there been some very collectivist cultures you know serving you Chinese communism he said nobody managed to do both at the same time Jews have had that gift an incredible sense of the importance of the individual but at the same time an equally powerful sense of collective responsibility and I thought it was extraordinary that this caliph Catholic had come in effect to the same conclusion as hillo who said if I am NOT for myself who will be but if I am only for myself Who am I what am I and I actually think that that is what the world needs right now the West having lapsed into various idolatrous most obviously the nation-state or the race is now worshiping the individual you know because you're worth it I want it all I want it now the icon of our age is the selfie so we're worshiping the self so yeah we can relate to that because Jews valuing itself on the other hand you've got these very collectivist cultures in the Middle East where you know everyone's a bit Jews are the only people who've managed to combine the best of both every Jew is an individual we say in Psalm 23 the Lord is my shepherd but no Jew was ever a sheep so we're a nation of individualist but at the same time we say Kali Allah Raven Zabuza we are all linked to one another as Shimon bar Yohai put it in the late first century when one Jew anywhere is injured all Jews feel the pain so I think that is a unique message no other religion has combined particularity and universality the self and the greater good and I think the world needs that message and I think now is the time to engage with the world now is not the time to be fearful and stand alone let us reach out our hand in friendship to our brothers and sisters in the Abrahamic monotheism sin Christianity and Islam I just reach out beyond faith all together and say that we're not the only truth but we're a voice I call Judaism the voice of hope in the conversation of humankind the sense of the lesson of this evening in this conversation what is Jewish purpose as you see it in 2015 well I you know coming back I think to where we began which is as Jonathan says the preoccupation is it is obsessively with the maximization of individuals you know individual wealth individual power and also I think actually partly because of the digital world were all in the short shelf life of memory not too long from now we're going to be sitting down at the Seder table were the only religion in our particular way in which were required by the Torah suhoor to remember what we remember we don't remember victory and triumph in Imperial slaughter we remember servitude and suffering and freedom and a Redemption which included the blessing of a code of ethics how to be a human being and the purpose also is to uproot terrible prejudices so yet it's how can Moshe bypassing a church one day and a sign was up which said converts needed 50-pound bonus for signing so Moshe says record is so Shonda misses 50 pounds time is hard and how bad can it be I'm morano's constantly doing is coming back to shofar there's no problem so he comes out and it's acceptor how was it and it's except both lips all right and Moshe says well you know can I have my share of the 50 pounds and it's accept that's all you choose think about money money money over to you Gregory and my my theory of how to fill an empty synagogue put an enormous sign out front saying no Jews admitted I just have to conclude by saying what an honor it's been to to be on this stage of both of you I I I just I'm privileged to learn from both of you before now and tonight so thank you both thank you all [Applause] [Music]

Channel: 92Y Plus

Views: 396,315

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Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Rabbi (Profession), The Story Of The Jews: Finding The Words 1000 BC-1492 AD, Simon Schama (Author), Jonathan Sacks (Politician), David Gregory (Award Winner)

Id: 17fw5ZC8ArM

Length: 82min 14sec (4934 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 18 2015