Transcript
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The conversation opens with a light personal introduction, including Lipstadt’s approachable style and memorable socks. It then turns to her receiving the Jonathan Sacks Prize and what the honor means to her personally and intellectually.
Professor Deborah Lipstadt, such a pleasure having you here today, and a just need to tell you the first time I ever saw you was at Limud in the United Kingdom, and you were curled up in an armchair nextto a fire.And I thought to myself, what ivory tower?Are you are a very approachable person, and I wonder if it is deliberate that you have come down from the ivory tower as, you know, so few academics have.
My hobby is people.I love people.I love get I'm curious.I'm a curious person.I'm curious about people.I'm I I spend a lot of time in airports, on airplanes.I watch the human drama.And when you're a event like Limud, you wonder know why did someone come there?How did they come there?Who are they?So, no, I it wasn't coming down from the ivory tower.In fact, I have all always uh I wouldn't say disdain, but but I never wanted to be that hoity-toity, you know.
So, I appreciated that then.And can I tell our listeners what socks you're wearing today?
you absolutely can.
You are You have the most glorious socks for a David Bowie.
I could show the full can't see them on camera, so okay.
Take my word for it.The best socks ever.And so, welcome to another a mandatory listen.
Welcome to a mandatory listen.I'm your host, deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan here at The Times of Israel.We're in Jerusalem with Professor Deborah Lipstadt.Deborah, I know you're here because you have just received or about to receive the Jonathan Sacks Prize from Bar-Ilan University.What is this prize specifically for?
It's a prize that which I First of all, and to get anything on the name of Jonathan Sacks is a great honor.He was one of the great voices of our time, sorely missed now.He was someone I was pleased to know personally.I know his family, his kids.Um but he had a voice.He had that resounded in the Jewish community, but also resounded outside the Jewish community and um so to get that prize, anything on his name is a is a great honor.But on top of it, it's the Bar-Ilan created this prize for public intellectuals.Now there was a time in academia, oh I would say 20 years ago, 30 years ago, where being a public intellectual was a put down.An academic always is a public intellectual.In other words, a popularizer.And I never quite understood that cuz I thought that if you're teaching something and you think it's important and you think it's significant, then why not bring it to the people who are not in the field, who are
outside the field?Many academics would talk about it as dunning down.I never saw it as dunning it down.I saw it as making accessible.So to get an award in the name of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and for public intellectuals is is quite a nice honor.
Well, that ties in so well with what how I first saw you when you were in the people with the people
There's one other connection also which is very meaningful to me.One of the former presidents, past presidents of Bar-Ilan was Rabbi Emmanuel Rackman.Rabbi Rackman was the rabbi of the synagogue I grew up in and after my parents, he probably had the greatest influence on shaping my life.He was a public intellectual and he spoke.You always learned something from his sermons.And in 56 during a short period of glasnost or early perestroika, he went to the Soviet Union.I remember when he came back and spoke about it.So it it brings together many many strands of my life.
Well, Mazel Tov for the prize.
you.Thank you very much.
Lipstadt reflects on being in Jerusalem during the Six-Day War and compares that era to the post-October 7th climate. She argues that antisemitism has surged in distorted ways and begins unpacking the relationship between anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred.
We are here to discuss antisemitism surprise.It's Deborah Lipstadt, but I first want to talk to you about the differences that you're seeing in terms of how Israel is being received on the international stage now post October 7th versus 1967 when you were here inIsrael during the Six-Day War.
In Jerusalem.
Right.First of all, what was that like for you to be here in Jerusalem?
first I was the first couple of days I was at a children's home outside of Bnei Brak, um working there because the whole staff had been drafted.And then I came up to Jerusalem about day three or four of the um of the war.And um it was so moving.It was so moving.But for me there was a particular residence because in the the preceding April during the uh Hofesh at the university before the vacation at the university, the break before Pesach, um I flew to Greece to meet my sister.My sister was studying at LSE, London School of Economics on a Fulbright.She flew to uh Greece.We met there.We traveled to Turkey and then from Turkey from Istanbul I flew to Beirut.And by land I went Beirut, Damascus, Amman and then through the Mandelbaum Gate to into Israel.So I had seen some of these places before.
I'd been to Jericho.Uh I had been to certainly East Jerusalem.I'd been to the Kotel, except I couldn't ask where the Kotel was.I was just walking around the in the old city and some um Arab kids just were yelling, you know, for three dinars we'll take you here.We'll take you to the Temple Mount.We'll take you to the Wailing Wall.I said, oh, I'd like to go see the Wailing Wall.Um and while I was there a tour guide brought a group of tourists, English-speaking tourists, I think British, and he said to them, this is was the was for Jews the holiest place in Jerusalem.And they used to come here and he made some And we've been scratching whatever.And now they don't come anymore.Okay, let's go up to the Temple Mount now, you know.So I was thinking, yeah, now they don't come anymore.
And then um you know, eight weeks later I was back there, but in a very different capacity.And I also went to the Kotel um on the six-day war was right before Shavuot.It was beginning of June.And for the Shavuot, in that Shavuot morning, they opened up the walk to the Kotel, and that was tremendous.You walked.It was really an Ali Al-Rago.
That is amazing.And of course, obviously you were alive during '73 as well, but I wonder the resonance of Israel on the stage.
Right now, compared to today, you know, um, you know, for for let me talk particularly about the American context because that is what I know best.Um, there was a certain, um, admiration for Israel, a certain pride in Israel.That was changing, and particularly on the left, there was, you know, a push a push and on the right, but much more much more evident on the on the left at um, but since October 7th, it it almostsounds, I don't know, like Alice in Wonderland upside down.Israel experiences its worst uh, massacre, tragedy, invasion.I mean, they they were on their way, you know, to Ashdod, you know.Um, and what happens as a result?Antisemitism.You know, I was just the the anniversary of Bondai Beach is coming up, and I was just asked to write something for for a major Australian newspaper.And I was reflecting on what I'm going to write, you know, and preparing to sort of sit down to put it actually on paper.
And I was thinking the irony of ironies, one would have thought that a tragedy like Bondai Beach would generate sympathy.Not that I want those tragedies happen to get sympathy, you know.Uh, thank you very much.No, thank you.But instead, in Australia, we've seen now a rise in antisemitism.So we are living in a topsy-turvy world uh, that is, uh, you know, whichever way you turn.And in the Jewish community, I know there's great attention to antisemitism on the left.Rightfully so, rightfully so.I mean, we've seen it in progressive, the red-green alliance, etc.Um, sometimes there's too little attention to antisemitism on the right, um which we're seeing now.And and if you look at young evangelicals, um I don't have the exact statistics, but if you look if you compare the attitudes towards Israel and by extension towards Jews amongst older evangelicals and younger evangelicals, the difference is
startling.It's striking.Uh the that it's it's far lower.Um and with the political tsunami we saw on Tuesday in the United States, uh that's going to change too cuz they're going to need someone to blame.
So I want to delve a little more into this connection between Israel and antisemitism because so many people write me, well of course there's antisemitism and rising antisemitism.Just look at what Israel is doing, right?Pointing towards allegations of genocide in Gaza, etc.etc.And how did this happen?Meaning has it always been like this?
No, it's it's such a complicated way of or thing to sort of unpack even in the in a in a lengthy podcast.Um first of all, the idea of course there's antisemitism.Let's say legitimately Israel was doing terrible things.Let's just say for for sake of this argument or conversation.Um we have Russian cultural centers in the United States.You know, Russian immigrants came or we have Russian restaurants and Chinese restaurants.No one no one who thinks that the Chinese are committing a genocide against the Uyghurs, the Chinese Muslims, goes and pickets outside a Chinese embassy or consulate.But here it's just seen as accepted.Uh this there's a plan now for a bicycle ride around an area in Philadelphia where they Israeli and kosher and Jewish style restaurants in order to intimidate.
It's so so the the idea of of course there's anti-semitism.Look what Israel did is is is a non-sequitur in that in that sense.But going back to stepping into the morass of the difference between anti-semitism and anti-zionism, I actually have evolved on this issue.For many years I said look you deny the Jews the right to self-identify.You deny the right to them to call themselves a people.You deny the right to them to have a state which you don't deny to any other.You say oh I don't want an ethno-religious state.Well what about the I don't know how many Muslim you know majority states there are countries there are.You know question that.I always said that's a form of anti-semitism and there are great parallels.There are distinct parallels.But I've been convinced mainly by younger scholars and younger people writing about this that anti-zionism is a hate in and of itself.
She develops her framework for understanding antisemitism on the far left, far right, and among Islamist jihadists, moving from a horseshoe model to a Venn diagram. The discussion also covers protest culture, ideological rigidity, and the lack of compromise in contemporary activism.
And so when you get people say oh I'm not an anti-semite.There still is anti-semitism is still seen as something so that people most people who want to be somewhere near the mainstream don't want to be called an anti-semites.So say I'm not an anti-semite.I'm just an anti-zionist.Well there's some young scholars who've been working on this who've been writing about this who make the argument and I think it's quite persuasive and you know being able to be persuaded is a good thing.Not always but you know if it's if it's a legitimate argument that it's a hatred in and of itself.It it it I'm against it immediately attributes to the zionist genocidal tendencies, racist tendencies, all sorts of things that are are bad in and of themselves, you know?Um, so I think that it's important that that distinction is important.
You mentioned of course Bon Di Beach and the shooters didn't say they're anti-Semites, they said they're anti-Zionists.
That's right.
And yet shot indiscriminately at Jews.
At Jews.Well, or or um you know, we see that all the time, you know.
So what is the Venn diagram here?
The Venn diagram, I'll tell you, and that's exactly where I've ended up.I used when I was before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for my confirmation hearing cuz I had the status of ambassador and I had so that's the highest status that you can have other than a cabinet officer umto be presidentially nominated and Senate confirmed.In the world of protocol and diplomacy that's that's it puts you on a higher madriga or some of your listeners may hear it madriga, you know?Um level than than none.So when I was before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I was asked by one of the senators what do I think anti-semitism on the left, on the right?I said I'm an equal opportunity hater of anti-semitism.I don't wear no care where it comes from.And afterwards in private conversation with him, I said you know, I have friends on the left who see anti-semitism on the right and they're very accurate about what they're seeing.
They don't exaggerate, they don't, you know, they're not and I have friends on the right who see it on the left and they too are accurate.The problem is they fail to see it right next to them.So um you know, I think that that that that's really important.But I talked about a spectrum, that there's a spectrum.I gave that up because uh it suggested that those on the far ends of the spectrum, far right, far left were separate from each other.And when you pay attention to the stereotypes and the tropes and the the things that they say, it becomes very clear that there is very little difference.Someone, I forget who it was, some group put together a mash, I guess it would be, of a mixtape of someone on the far left and the far right saying the exact same things about Jews.
So I began to talk about a horseshoe.Deborah, a friend who happens to ride horses and she said to me, Deborah, horseshoes, the two ends of a horseshoe never meet.So I thought about that.I said, you know what?I'm giving up the horseshoe.I was one of the people who really a lot of people picked up on the horseshoe analogy.I wasn't the only one who made it, but I I did spread it about.And I gave up on the horseshoe analogy and went to the Venn diagram for two reasons.First of all, the two ends of the horseshoe don't meet and I think the extreme left and the extreme right when they talk about Jews use the exact same stereotypes, all controlling, secretive, manipulative, genocidal, etc.Um out to destroy the non-Jewish world at their for their own benefit.But also because it only had two ends.
And I think we have three sources of a Jew hatred.And I talk now about a Venn diagram where of course the middles overlap.Um far right, far left, and Islamist jihadists.And the glue they're two in that overlapping area, there's an ideological glue and a structural glue or a functional glue.The ideological glue is hatred, Jew hatred, which probably is a more efficacious, more useful term than antisemitism.Um but there's also a functional overlap.All three of them want regime change.Different regimes.Uh the far right would like a white nationalist, white supremacist uh authoritarian.The far left wants a socialist, communist, whatever, more probably more like socialist far left.And in the Islamic jihadist, it's either a Sharia for the religious amongst them a Sharia based um uh government or rule rule of law or a sort of third world is some kind of rule of law.
But they they're different.They can't but they're all trying to destabilize the democratic um western in its broadest terms, you know, uh enlightened in its broadest terms.It wasn't much of what we talk about the enlightenment wasn't so enlightened.Um uh but to change what is.So I think we're really dealing with that Venn diagram and it leads to this weird red what was what's come known as the red green alliance.Um one point I remember I was coming from the White House and I was going back walking back to the State Department and I was with a number of members of my staff and we were going in entrancenot the main entrance but we got all got this was common after October 7th if there was a demonstration or it's common even before but more so after October 7th if there was a demonstration in front of the
State Department the security people they would let you know so you could use a different entrance you could whatever.Uh so it said on the entrance we wanted to go in there's a demonstration so I said let's see what it is.I mean we would walk that that's the way we would normally walk.Well it was six or seven people queers for Palestine, you know, queers for Hamas, queers for Palestine.And I said to members of my staff I said I'm going to go up to them and offer them free trips to Gaza but they have to be fully refundable tickets cuz they won't need the way back andI want to get my money my and they said Ambassador let's go into the office you know.But I mean it makes no sense.It makes no sense.Um there was you know a gay couple that was interviewed on some you know station and they oh we're going to leave the country we're in I forget it was some European western European country.
We're going to go live in Gaza where we can live in peace and in thinking you know don't go up on on roof cuz you you know you won't, you won't have to come down.Um
Or you will come down.You will never go up again.
by the steps.Not by the steps and not if you're own volition.Um it's it makes no sense.I mean feminists, you know, I mean uh it it it it is absolutely um illogical and it's just and and I I'm sure you and I I know you get it and you many of your listeners and thosewho watching will get it, but uh it's just absolutely common now and it's become it's become an orthodoxy um where you can't deviate at all.I'll give you an example.There's a Remember the San Francisco City Council Scott Wiener, he was running in fact actually to replace Pelosi.I don't know what happened in in that uh
believe he won.
Did he he did win.He did win.He did win.That's what I thought.I mean there's too many races that you know you you sort of mind begins.But back in I would say June there was a video posted of him.He was headed to a Kabbalat Shabbat Friday afternoon Kabbalat Shabbat in a San Francisco park sponsored by the queer trans community.I don't know which organization precisely.Now he had um initially refused to call what happened in Gaza a genocide.And then after two weeks of hesitating he turned around and said yes, now I believe it's genocide or whatever.I've been convinced.But he had strong con he had previously strong connections to Israel.So when he came into the park he was accosted by a number of people violent very they didn't push him, but you could see there was violence in there and they posted the video.
Uh you don't deserve to call yourself queer.You're you're you're an embarrassment and they and he had to leave.He left cuz he was afraid for his own security.Now here's someone who has um authored some of the most far reaching everyone says this about him I you know that he has authored some of the most far-reaching trans legislation, legislation projecting the rights of transgender people umin San Francisco.I self-identify as queer.Um and yet he had broken on this orthodoxy.There's an orthodoxy.There's no room any sort of compromise.Look even Mayor Mohammad Dani uh when he issued his statement on October seventh what was it two sentences on October seventh was terrible and three paragraphs on Israel is awful and genocidal and implication doesn't deserve to exist.He got booed.He got booed.There's it's an orthodoxy.There's no room
got booed because he mentioned Israel.
because he was he yes not be yeah yeah of course he he went to a left-wing some sort of progressive gathering he got booed.Um there's no room for compromise.Do you know there there I was talking to one of my one of my colleagues who was has a lot of experience on the hill he worked with me in the State Department now works with me at Emoryum and he pointed out that there are two different approaches to to uh uh campaigning.One you in the primary you always take a more radical left or right conservative or liberal position but then in the general you go to the you move to the middle so you can attract.He said that's the one we're most familiar with and many of us you know expect a candidate to be more extreme in the primary because they're trying to get a smaller group of people to vote for them and
then more middle in the general election.He said but there's another philosophy that there're very few people who are undecided.There're very few people in the middle that that idea of I'm not going to attract them.So what you want to do is keep firing up your base and you don't compromise.You know and you stay and and I think we've seen that with El-Sayed in Michigan.He saw no need to compromise no need to to you know that he couldn't pick which was a a bigger enemy, Iran or Israel is is just mind-boggling.Um, and so much else.Um, but I'm those kind of things worry me that it is legitimizing a certain um uh progressive worldview um that is inherently um contemptuous of the existence of Israel, not Israeli policies, but the existence of Israel, and withit contemptuous, if not more so, of those who support Israel.
After a brief sponsor break, the interview shifts to what Israel means as both an ideal and a real country. Lipstadt emphasizes that Israel is a normal, flawed society, while still remaining a historical miracle, and she discusses disappointment, betrayal, and internal Israeli problems.
Let's go to a short break.
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And we're back.I'm Amanda Borschel-Dan here in Jerusalem with Professor Deborah Lipstadt.Deborah, I'd like to talk about what is Israel.Is Israel a notion?Is Israel an actual place?Is Israel the Holy Land?Is Israel the demon?And for so many young people, I think it might be all of the above.And I imagine that for your generation, it's something a little different from my generation as well.I always wonder if people start feeling betrayed after a while when they grow up on the notion of Israel as this majestic celestial
Mhm.
body in a way as one may be taught in church, right?Or even in the Jewish community.And then you grow up and you start to
real place.
Oh my gosh.And there's garbage and there's rats and there are bad people and good people.
Was it a who said um the famous Zionist writer and thinker, etc.?I'm sure one of your listeners will know immediately um who said Israel will be a normal place when it has pickpockets and prostitutes and, you know, criminals, etc.I remember when I was a student here uh in '67 and I went to meet a group of people from my hometown, my home community who were coming on a trip and it was it was very exciting.For many people, it was their first time.So we were pulling out of what was then Lod Airport and used to go through Ramla.And as you go through Ramla, there was an I don't know if it still looks I'm sure it still looks The building still exists.There was an old British prison which I think is still there, you know, and and and was still functioning as a prison.
So someone said to me, what is that?I said, it was a prison.They said, oh, for the Arabs?I said, I don't think so.I think it's for everyone, Arabs, Jews, you know.And um Israel, you know, there's Israel the vision and Israel the real place where people push and shove and get in line and are obnoxious and, you know, etc.Maybe not anymore so than other places.Maybe more so.Maybe more so.Right.I just came from the airport.So, you know, um but uh it's a normal place.
Right.
And we do a disservice by portraying it as this celestial kind of place.It is a normal place.On the other hand, it is a miracle.I wrote a book on Golda Meir for the Yale the Jewish biographies Jewish Lives series.And I was so touched when I read the her recollection.She was sitting with I think it was Marie Syrkin, Nachman Syrkin's daughter, who was a close friend of hers and they got along.They were she and Syrkin was her ghost writer at certain things and and co-writer on on certain things.And it was shortly after I think it was right after the establishment of the state Ben-Gurion sent her to the states to raise money.I mean they need had a war to fight and raise, you know, and she raised an incredible amount that far more than anybody imagined they would she would be able to do.
And she described sitting with Marie Syrkin and she said giggling like two little school girls.That's my I mean I don't think I don't know if she used that exact term.Imagine we have a state.
It was really a miracle.It was really a miracle and you read the description I wasn't a lot I was a baby of people gathering in front of the Waldorf-Astoria where the Israeli delegation was staying, you know, when the state was declared.Um it was a miraculous thing.But it also became a normal I mean with all the flaws and all the wrongdoings.I mean I hate when I'm I'm not shouldn't say I hate.I get discomfort when you say the IDF is the most moral army in the world.It never I mean I think the IDF is is tries very hard um to avoid I mean drops leaflets we're going to bomb the building, you know, the bad guys get out, you know.Um uh it could have it have destroyed things much more rapidly and much minimized loss of life and casualties.Um, but but it's not a perfect No place is perfect, you know?
So I think if we if we create that image in kids' eyes they're they're bound to they often will be disappointed.On the other hand, I also want that even though it's now, you know, 80 years later and the the creation of the state etc.Um,it'd be a pity if people didn't lost sight of the miracle of the whole thing.So it's it's it's a it's a it's a combination, you know?Um, it's like people who love Israel but can't stand Israelis.Including Israelis who can't stand
Sure.
Yeah, I'm being facetious, but you know but there are a lot of problems.There are a lot of problems.I mean serious problems.I feel that you know if America's on a cusp, Israel is even more on a cusp, you know, with a government Someone said to me, where are you going?I said I'm going to help form the government, you know?Joking of course.I have no idea.But it's it's a it's a real problem.
But don't you think Deborah that along the way when you take an ideal and you call it a miracle and it seems to be miraculous again and again miraculously fending off the evil outsiders I'm talking about 67 73and then you start to realize oh this is actually a human and fallible thing that you feel betrayed in a certain sense and turn on it.
Well, yes.There are people who have done that.There's one woman I'm thinking now who doesn't even who grew up in in the San Fernando Valley and went you know USY and Jewish day school.I was told the lies about it.She's very self-righteous.Um, you know and and that's that's that's the the far I think I think you need balance.You need a balance.Um but you also need recognition and acknowledgement.I mean, my Israeli friends and relatives and family acknowledge that it's a very difficult time.Um this is, you know, you look around and uh whether it's relations externally with your neighbors um or internally.You know, I was on a plane.There were lots of on the plane and I wanted to, you know, uh ask them what units they served in, you know.When I don't In my community, people they've sort of controlled uh the um people going from door to door, knocking on doors, collecting.
But I once had some you know, guy come and say, I'm collecting for my Yeshiva.And I said, oh, your Yeshiva boys don't go to the army.Oh, no.I said, then I'm not interested in giving, you know.Um but it's a it's a real problem.What, you know, what will be here and what kind of society will be built?
I wonder if that explains a little bit what we hear about the young anti-Zionist Jews.And this is something that has gotten a lot of headlines.You're much more in touch with the youth of America today than I am.I wonder if it's outsized headlines.That's quite possible, but the sense of betrayal that I was taught that
No, I don't think I think for for some the hardcore, it's a sense of betrayal.You know, I went to camp and we Israel, Israel, Israel now and then they committed genocide, you know, or that kind of thing.But I think for some first of all, it's they just certainly since October 7th genocide, Israel did this at BBC, you know, or or NPR or whatever NPR pales in comparison to BBC.Um but uh you know, they got this and and but I think it's also, you know, look, I'm part of Vietnam generation.You wanted to be you protested.You When I think about some of the things we protested for, they were completely stupid and not more than stupid, they were deleterious.They were harmful.I mean, I I went to a university where we demanded open admission, City University, to all students who graduated of city high schools.
Well, some of those kids were not capable of going to these universities and suddenly the universities were giving remedial courses, you know, at the All we think we went to a very good university which had good admission policiesand we tear them down.It was all it was, you know, fed but that that seemed like the right thing to do.Um, is this many of these things are not organic, I think they come from a small group and they spread.Um, so I think some of those Jews some of them have a a strong Jewish identity but some of them don't, you know, but um never have so many known so little about so much.
Yeah, I guess throughout this whole conversation I'm trying to puzzle for myself the role that Israel is playing in the anti-Zionist movement in the anti-semitism, the surge throughout and it kind of sounds like to me that it's notIsrael, meaning it's not what Israel is doing or not doing, that there are many other forces at work.
There are other forces but what's going on in the West Bank, Judea, Samaria, call what you may, um you know, that even though there there certainly are Palestinians who terrorize Jews but that's that's a whataboutism uh and thefailure of the government to control it.Look, even the president, President Herzog um has publicly and and and enough leaders have but nothing's nothing's happened, nothing's stopped.Um, that is a blot on Israel's reputation that is just horrendous, horrendous.
The conversation turns to the hardening of political and activist orthodoxy, especially around Gaza and Israel. Lipstadt then describes the normalization of security guards at Jewish institutions and the unsettling reality that children now grow up expecting them.
Um, and and then you have ministers.Now, of course, people say, well, you know, you have American cabinet ministers who say stupid things.Why are we paying so much attention to a Ben Gvir or Smotrich or whatever, you know?But they do and they say things that I mean nothing's going to stop them.They get a certain uh you know, they they believe in a uh we can go it alone kind of world.Well, you can go it alone economically, you can go it alone, you know, in many different ways.Um and this sort of uh there's this there's a uh in I think it's in
that it's in the I think it's in the and the rebuke that uh my own strength and my own power has made me able to do this.In other words, rejection of God's role.Um it's that sort of kind of thing.Um certainly there there rooms for you know, if there's if there's lawlessness and all that you can but to allow this kind of behavior
it's it's outrageous.It's outrageous and it's akin to you know, some of the things we saw in the States or in England, other places and the protests certainly in the States with the you know, there were schools who said, well, wewe don't allow encampments, but we don't want to just you know.So after came the encampments came take over of buildings came, you know, with it's like they're testing.They're going to go further and further.Um so it's uh there are things that are wrong.Now, you could say, well, Israel get lots of countries have these kind of things or or have wrongs that they do.Well, first of all, Israel is under a spotlight.That is true and that's not fair, but that's the reality.Um second of all, this is government looking the other way if not uh wink nod you know, the head of the police um nod nod wink wink uh giving a silent imprimatur,
to to horrific violence.
You're speaking with deep knowledge and deep nuance, and I just do wonder if everyone who is on the streets chanting free free Palestine.
No, no no nuance.Nuance, you know, first of all, a couple of years ago I was getting a an honorary degree from the University of Haifa.When you get these degrees, you give a speech at the on the campus the day before the day after the graduation, whatever.And I was giving my speech and I had prepared in very flowery Hebrew, sort of ritual Shabbat, you know, even maybe a little like not that I write, but I have a literary friend who helped me write avery, you know, explaining why in the most flowery even archaic Hebrew, I wasn't going to give my speech in Hebrew because while I can speak in Hebrew and answer questions in Hebrew, I don't have certain professional words inHebrew.And then I said which of course is a outmoded such as, but it no no one uses it.
They say Oh, today would people say
I'm married to somebody who's from the Hebrew Language Academy, so
okay.So okay, but most people would say you know.Uh nuance nuance I said nuance.
And the whole audience, 300 people go nuance.But I often point out the fact that there is no Hebrew word for nuance.This is not a
take it up with my husband.
There and they may create one, but there's there's also no Hebrew word for religion.is a is a philosophy.
Philosophy.
Yeah, because it's we Judaism didn't see itself as a didn't If you had said to the you know, ancient you know, the rabbis of Yavne or whatever, it was not a religion, it's a it's a way of life.It's the way you walk, you know, it's the path you go in.Um but um this is not a country that does nuance well.
Right.
Um and in that sense and the protesters don't even they don't want it.It's the Orthodox.If you have Orthodox, there's no room for nuance.You know, if Scott Wiener waited two weeks to declare it was a genocide, Mondami put a sentence and a half in his statement about the gen October 7th was a tragedy.There's no room for nuance.
And then in Michigan with the large Muslim voter base, we have the new senator, newly minted senator talking about apartheid and genocide.
That right.Making it even people say, well, he's just one and the people one one he just w o n n w o n e.Um but uh he's going to have an outsized voice.He's going to have an outsized voice.And he's he's one of those who doesn't feel like compromises, you know, he's going to push further and further and further.
So as one who has studied antisemitism forever, several decades, and one who has said before that antisemitism has no cure, do you feel however that we're at a critical stage in terms of um I don't know, our safetyas Jews globally?
Um yes.Yes.Uh and the answer is not all the Jews of the world moving to Israel.I have friends in the States who are here looking for apartments, plan B, etc.I think that's ridiculous because if Jews don't feel safe in America at all and they feel like they have to then then Israel's not going to be safe, you know.Um not that I'm against anybody moving to Israel.I have hundreds of relatives here.I'm going to spend most of my day tomorrow seeing them, you know.Um but umI think things are changing.I'll tell you there was a video uh I think it was on X, Twitter.Um put up by a teacher from the United Kingdom, Adam Boxer.He teaches at a uh British school, secondary school called TTA.I forget what that stands to.Bridge Teaching Academy or whatever.And it was his job one morning to shortly after there had been stabbings in Golders Green, you know, which is a very Jewish neighborhood north London, um to give the thought for the day.
Two or three minutes a teacher gives a thought for the day.So he chose to describe for the students at this secular, you know, non identi non certainly not Jewish school where he teaches, um what he does as a CST Community Security Trust volunteer.You know, if you go to any for years long before in America before you go to any synagogue in or any Jewish gathering or limud or whatever there place are just full of volunteers and professionals from the CommunitySecurity Trust providing security.And he's he is he is a volunteer with CST at his synagogue and at his children's Jewish school, which is down the block from where he teaches.So the two schools are adjacent one to the other and the students at where he teaches know the Jewish school is over there and so on.So he's very calmly, doesn't raise his voice, very even keeled.
He says, this is my stab jacket.It's a Kevlar reinforced jacket.And he puts it on and he shows and he shows how it closes.And while he's talking, he's doing this and he's just says and then I said we're not supposed to be heroes.We're not, you know, Marvel characters or whatever.Our job is if something happens is to in the synagogue is to or at the school to get as many families or children behind the gates for safety.He said you can save a lot of people in 10 seconds.And then he explained that when he's on duty, he has a bright yellow cap in the pocket.So if something happens, he puts it on immediately.So when the police come, they know who is he does this very calmly.It was a very very powerful.And then in the end he says, so this morning I was driving to school.
I was dropping my daughter off at the Jewish school.And I had my stab jacket on the in the car, and she said, Daddy, why do you have your stab jacket with you?He said, because today I'm doing the thought for the day at the school where I teach.And I'm going to describe for them what I do as a a guard when I'm on duty at your school and at the synagogue.And my nine year old daughter said, what?They don't have guards at their school?
We're raising a generation of children who believe it's the norm to have a guard outside of every Jewish event.Um party Bar Mitzvah, dinner, synagogue.They think it's the norm.They think it's the norm.The synagogue I go to in Atlanta is across the street literally from a very large church which has a sign outside periodically, welcome all all come in.When I was in living in Washington when I was at the State Department, I used to walk home past a Catholic church from the State Department.I was lived in Foggy Bottom, and it said all are welcome.Please come in and pray.I said, not a Jewish institution.The synagogue I went to, there was a uh keypad, and they put up the the code in Hebrew.I said, all you need is some terrorist who knows the alphabet, you know?Or they'll Google it, you know?
Um but we we look someone comes in who's doesn't look quite right, isn't dressed quite right, is a different color in most synagogues, um we get nervous.Get nervous.
In the closing section, Lipstadt answers whether Jews can swing back from this low point by recalling the Bayeux Tapestry and the Lachish reliefs. She ends on a note of historical resilience, insisting that Jews have survived worse and will endure again.
I hate to end it here, so I'm not going to.And I'm going to ask you, you're one who's seen the ebb and flows of antisemitism over the thousands of years.This is, in my opinion, a low point, what you're describing.Do you see a way that we can swing back?
I'll tell you a story and I'm I'm just writing finishing up a book now about my time in office and I end the book with this story.And I just did it last two weeks ago.I was in London.I was there for something called the Clifden Literary Festival, which is fabulous, unbelievable, wonderful experience of just every author you're reading, you know, and playwright is there etc.And and it takes place in a Downton Abbey kind of thing.You know, if your British listeners, they should get tickets for next year.Um but then I was in London for a few days and I managed through connections to get tickets to the museum to go see the Bayeux Tapestry.
Ooh.
And it is amazing.It was and they've worked out the problems with weights.They've you know, people were waiting an hour or two.They've got it very smoothly organized and I saw the tapestry.And then after the tapestry, when I'm in the British Museum, irrespective of when it is, I always go to see two things.One I and then I'll see other things as well, but two things are always on my list.One is the Rosetta Stone cuz I look at it I said, could I have figured this out?It's clear I couldn't have figured it out, but I always go to look and see how did they do this, you know?Um and then I go to room 10.I I'm not sure if it's 10A or 10B, which is in where the Assyrian collection is.And what do I go to see in I think it's room 10B?
Um reliefs from Lachish.The they're called the Lachish reliefs.Where are they from?They're from a palace in uh what is today Mosul, northern Iraq, but used to be known as Nineveh, the city you know, Jonah had to go to when when he had that unfortunate encounter with the whale.Um and it was the Paris of Sennacherib.And Sennacherib, as many of your listeners will know or will gently remind them, was the king the Assyrian king who destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, the when we talk about the 12 lost tribes.But after he did that, he came back to finish the Southern Kingdom.And this is all described in Malachi Second Kings.I think it's chapter 36 and 37 and in in the Chronicles.Um and he had destroyed Lachish, uh which was the second largest city um after Jerusalem.And he was on his way up to Jerusalem figuring he was going to destroy Jerusalem.
He didn't.Um but had he destroyed Jerusalem, that would be the end of our history.And the reliefs show and so it's unclear if the the carvers make and the artists making the reliefs for the palace were celebrating his anticipation of victory in Jerusalem or the victory in Lachish.But either way, it was his victory.And he sits in a throne these big stone panels.So they're, you know, they're all the room surrounds or they surround the room.Um and you see uh men, women, and children and livestock being taken off in exile.And you see Jewish leaders being brought before him forced to bow down to him um or being flayed alive or hanged.And um it's it's a victory over the Jews.So the reason I go especially now, who today speaks of Sennacherib?If you want to know about Sennacherib and his palace, you got to go to room 10B in the British Museum.
Or the Bible.Or the Bible.We're still here.We have faced worse before.You know, the Persians had We're We're We're We're still here.Um we'll make it through.It's going to be hard.It's going to be tough.It is tough.It is tough.But you know, Sennacherib go to the British Museum.Jews were living breathing sometimes annoying noisy people.
Deborah, thank you so much for joining me today.Thanks for listening to a mandatory listen with Deborah Lipstadt.I'm your host Amanda Borschel-Dan.Please check out another installment next week.This episode was produced by Yitzhak Lede.Until next week, shalom.