Tangle - PREVIEW - The Friday Edition: Okay, let's talk about "The Jews."

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Something I’ve learned over the years of talking about “The Jews” is that it helps to think critically about the things people are saying and address them head on. It has been my experience that antisemitism, like racism, thrives when swimming in ignorance. So my message for Jews, or friends of Jews interested in combatting antisemitism, is this: We have nothing to hide! It’s okay. All we need is defenders who know our history and aren’t ignorant enough to be tricked by antisemitism. You can let your guard down and address these issues honestly. And, today, in an effort to walk the walk, I’d like to do just that.Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Jon Lall.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. and today, we're going to talk about the Jews. When I was in college, a friend told me that black people were overrepresented in professional basketball because American slavery was an exercise in survival of the fittest

and that the black Americans who made it to the modern era were therefore predisposed to be more athletic. At first blush, this explanation made some sense. Even as an adult, I can see how it feels intuitive. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it's a commonly held belief today. Of course, the idea only really works if you're ignorant like I was the first time I heard it. So by this explanation, you have to think slavery was a highly selective process of breeding big, strong men to labor in the fields, basically the story that you see in Hollywood. In reality, slavery was

a brutal, messy exercise and violence and greed. It fueled rampant malnutrition and disease. It fueled rampant, malnutrition and disease that limited the lifespans of slaves who were sold and traded and killed with little thought or reason. To the extent that slave breeding happened at all, it was usually through haphazard force coupling or masters raping their female slaves and then enslaving their own children. The work itself was varied too, more than just manning farms. It involved domestic work, crafting, cooking, and child care. Basically, the only way this seemingly intuitive theory works is if you actually don't know anything about slavery at all, or genetics for that matter, since physical characteristics of a group require hundreds of generations to manifest, not just

four or five. Deconstructing a silly idea like this is simple enough, but to close the loop, you have to be able to offer real explanations too. Otherwise, people will continue to invent their own theories to explain the patterns they can see with their own two eyes. researchers discovered that a higher concentration of type 2 muscle fibers or fast-twitch muscles was present in populations of West African descent. Similar observations apply to distance runners from East Africa or power lifters from southern or eastern Europe. These are just bell-curved trends, not destiny. One athlete isn't going to be faster or stronger than another just because they are part of one group,

but we don't get to these explanations without first noticing the trends. There's also a cultural explanation, rooted in historical fact. Black Americans were excluded from high-status careers for generations, so they turned to sports and entertainment. Sports like basketball became highly visible routes to success in the black community. And community institutions like the YMCA or AAU or HBCUs, they built pipelines for young black kids to play basketball and hone their craft at an early age

so they could use their skills to get scholarships and unlock the opportunities available to them. All of this cultural pressure explains why a particular racial demographic outperforms others in professional sports, a highly meritocratic space. This same concept applies to anti-Semitism. Something I've learned over the years of talking about the Jews is that it helps to think critically about the things people are saying and address them head on. It has been my experience that anti-Semitism like racism thrives when swimming in ignorance. So my message for Jews, or friends of Jews, interested in combating anti-Semitism, is this. We have nothing to hide.

It's okay. All we need is defenders who know our history and aren't ignorant enough to be tricked by anti-Semitism. You can let your guard down and address these issues honestly. And today, in an effort to walk that walk, I'd like to do just that. We'll be right back after this quick break. But first, a little bit about me. Broadly speaking, I reference my Judaism when I think it's relevant for readers. I'm a proud Jew.

I just don't want it to be a central theme of my work. With a name like Isaac Saul, most people make assumptions. Anyway. Still, before we begin, here's a little bit about me. I was raised in a reformed Jewish household. My mom's side is the European Ashkenazi kind of Jew, with ancestors hailing from Russia and Lithuania and Austria. My dad is a convert, having gone through a traditional conversion process before I was born. His roots are deeply tied to the Philadelphia Quakers. The story in our family is that we are the descendants of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, who championed the separation of church and state. When I was a kid, there was no ambiguity about my faith, religion, or ethnicity. We were not half and half. I went to synagogue for all the high holidays. I went to Tuesday and Sunday school every week. I was bar mitzvahed. I spent Christmas eating Chinese food and going to the movies with other Jews. As a teenager, I rebelled, went through my, I am an atheist and smarter than all of you years, and declared that I'd never returned to synagogue. I grew somewhat less annoying and less arrogant by the time I got to college, and I realized

how much I missed Judaism, not just culturally, which I can never give up, but religiously. too. I missed the faith and the practice that came with it. In the midst of my uncertainty, a campus rabbi invited me to his house for Shabbat dinner. I accepted. I went, and then I ended up going almost every Friday night for several years in college. This relationship motivated me to take my birthright trip to Israel, which inspired a six-month stay at a Baltashova yeshiva in East Jerusalem after I graduated. Boltashuva yeshivas are designed to cater specifically to Jews like me, who are not raised in Orthodox backgrounds, but wanted to become. religiously observant. That experience of living in Israel, traveling in the Middle East,

and spending half a year as a religious observant Jew, it informs much of my perspective on topics like Israel, Judaism, and faith more broadly. When I got back to the U.S., I moved to New York, found an Orthodox synagogue in Harlem, and formed a close relationship with a rabbi there. I learned and studied and immersed myself in the community for the next three or four years until, tragically, political and culture war issues tore the synagogue apart, culminating and the rabbi being forced out after a rather moving sermon he gave on the scriptural basis for welcoming trans people into religious spaces. Since then, I've been, how do I say it?

Roaming. Moving in and out of Jewish communities in New York and Philadelphia, trying to find a new home, a new community to attach myself to, going through periods of deep observance and periods of renegade refusal to participate. Some days I find myself eating kosher and putting a yama con and studying Talmud in my free time. Other days I find myself cursing Hashem and refusing to do morning prayer and wondering how any of this could be by design. That's my honest experience, one I'm sure anyone who allows skepticism to creep into their faith has shared. Amid all this, antisemitism began to bloom around me.

Anti-Semitism the kind my mom used to warn me about. It always felt like a myth. I thought she was paranoid to believe it was still here, just lying dormant like crazed cicadas waiting for their moment to rise and shriek their hate. But in case you haven't noticed, we Jews have been in the headlines a lot recently. Historically speaking, this is not a good sign.

Ask any self-aware Jew about whether it's good when the Jews are being talked about and the answer will probably be, no, please stop talking about us. Even when the attention might sound positive, like, wow, Jews sure win a lot of nonsense. Nobel Prizes, you know the conversation won't inevitably turn dark. Unfortunately, both for me and all the other Jews following along, I don't think ignoring

the limelight is an option. We're everywhere. We're everything. We're all at once. And so we have to respond. In 2025, the excuses for why Jews are getting so much attention is largely the Jewish state's actions in Gaza and the organized jury's political influence in the United States. But the truth, the one I realized now, but denied before, is that it was always going to be something.

These realities are fodder, but they are placeholders. How do I know this? Well, just take stock of things. In the debate around Israel and Gaza, Jews are the villain. They're Israel. They're the victim, Jewish victims of October 7th and anti-Semitism since, and the ones fighting the villain, Jews against genocide, somehow all simultaneously. When Charlie Kirk was killed, there was suddenly talk about the hummus eaters who crucified Jesus, and all the very large donations that went to Trump from Jewish donors.

Weasily youthful whites raising a generation of Hitler-loving youth are ascendant at the exact same time the most famous black artists and radio hosts are quote-unquote asking questions, and they're all very curious about the Jews. Here's a short list of events and dynamics I've seen the Jews blame for just in the last few years. A genocide in Gaza, anti-Jew hatred over the war in Gaza, mass migration, anti-Semitism broadly, pornography, democracy, Democrats, success, Trump's success, the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVID-19 vaccines, Charlie Kirk's assassination, JFK's assassination, RFK's assassination, Abraham Lincoln's assassination, yes, seriously, social decay in

America, social decay in Ireland, child sex trafficking, the Bolshevik revolution, the weather, good and bad, rigged elections, good and bad, wokeism, and also anti-woke culture. All at once. One thing that frustrates me about the dialogue around Jews is that it never seems to include an honest exchange of perspectives. A couple years ago, when Kanye West was first coming out as a loud and proud anti-Semite, I came forward to try to have the discussion. West was right about some stuff. He was so, so very wrong about many others.

But he looked around at the music industry, and he saw lots of Jews in positions of power. He said he'd be blamed for this observation, which is generally true? No. Does stating such a thing make one an anti-Semite? Not by itself, no.

It becomes worrisome, though, when that same person is accusing Jews of being the reason his wife cheated on him and tweeting promises to go, quote, DeathCon 3 on Jewish people. Hey, everybody. This is John, executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview

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more. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offering, so stay tuned. I will join you again for the Daily podcast. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Law.

Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kback and associate editor, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saw. Lindsay Canuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and John Law. And to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for our membership, please visit our website at readtangle.com.