The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - The Holy Land with Liel Leibovitz

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine, host of its weekly culture podcast, Unorthodox, and author of the new book, How the Talmud Can Change Your Life.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy seller, coming at you on SiriusXM 99, Raw Comedy, formerly Raw Dog. I just got an email that the name has been changed. Yeah, they changed it again. Oh, I didn't... What was it before it was Raw Dog? I don't remember. It was the Comedy Channel or something? In any case, it's now Raw Comedy, and also available as a podcast. I'm here with Noam Dorman, the owner of the comedy seller Periel Ashenbrand,

and we have with us via Riverside teleconferencing, Liel Leibovitz joins us, an Israeli-born journalist, author, media critic, and video game scholar. Video game scholar? I don't know if we'll get to the video games or not. We should start with that. Liel also has a new book that just came out. Do you want to tell us what it's called? How the Talmud Can Change Your Life.

Surprisingly modern advice from a very old book. And it makes the argument that the 2,711-page, 63-volume Talmud is the world's greatest self-help book ever written. Wow. Okay, I'm not... The only thing I know about the Talmud is what anti-Semites post about how it's supposed to be this evil book. I don't know if you have any quick commentary

on some of that. My only commentary is that, as always, the anti-Semites seem to be way more familiar with the Talmud than any Jew. Okay. All right. So, actually, you've written a couple articles, and now you've brought in the Talmud and anti-Semitism, and I guess we'll leave video games. I don't know if I can draw video games into the whole thing, but let's start with Barack Obama's. Now I see a countdown on the screen what's going on there

there's uh i'm recording just that as like a backup but we have okay let's start with barack obama's um pretty upsetting i would say uh uh remarks on this whole hamas gaza thing first he first he wrote something. I don't know if it was a sub stack or whatever, however he released it. And then there was on this pod, Save America thing, where he talked about us all being complicit. All of us. Yeah, all of us complicit.

And then his complicity seemed to be that although he had the scars to show it, he thinks maybe, you know, was THERE SOMETHING POSSIBLY THAT I COULD HAVE DONE THAT I DIDN'T DO. THAT'S HIS COMPLICITY. I MEAN, LISTEN, I'VE NEVER BEEN AN OBAMA BASHER, BUT, I MEAN, IT'S TIME MAYBE TO CONSIDER THAT HE'S SOME KIND OF NARCISSIST IN SOME WAY. BUT ANYWAY, WHAT'S YOUR TAKE ON THE WHOLE OBAMA THING? GO AHEAD. WELL, LOOK, I TOT the whole Obama thing? Go ahead. Well, look, I totally fell for it in 2000.

The first time he ran, I took off three months off my life and went to Canvas for him, knocking on doors in trailer parks in Pennsylvania. I really believed in the guy. I thought he had a good message. Can I stop you there? Let me just stop you right there, because it's interesting to me.

But are you religious? Did I see a kippah? There's not one in my head right now, but, you know, I'm a drunk Jew. That's the only affiliation I'm attesting to. Okay. So we found out pretty early. I'm sorry to stop you, but it's just interesting, and I'm afraid we won't be able to get back to it. We found out pretty early with Obama that he had been in the thrall of Reverend Wright, who was a vicious anti-Semite.

It was not believable that Obama knew that Wright was not a vicious anti-Semite. Obama dedicated his, named his book, The Audacity of Hope, whatever it was, which was taken from a Reverend Wright sermon. Wright had married him. Wright was his mentor. How did you rationalize all that at that time? Well, the thing that really helped was that it came after, you know, eight years of Bush and the war in Iraq, which I initially was kind of, you know, mildly enthusiastic about, but then saw the great disaster that it was. And so I said to myself, look, whatever else this guy is, he's a much needed course correction to I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA.

I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA.

I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GREAT IDEA. And then you watch him come up with the Iran deal and provide the murder had these attitudes about Jews, we would have run in the opposite direction. The second we saw this guy, we would not have found these answers satisfactory because you're just too close to a guy who's celebrating Jew hatred. But you're not exactly old. And I'm not calling you out. I'm just asking, how did you get past that at that time? Just because you hated Bush? I was born in Israel, so I don't speak race. These kind of very American, intricate obsession

with race and slavery and guilt are totally foreign to me. So I don't think I even picked up on that, to be honest. I don't think I knew very much what Jeremiah Wright was and what it stood for. It was just like, okay, well, you know, everyone has skeletons in their closet. Does that make sense? No, if you didn't know, you didn't know.

I get that. That's a good answer. That's usually the answer. I mean, I think in general, racism coming from white people and anti-Semitism coming from white people is always scarier than the same thing coming from the black community, I think, in general. Not to me. Anyway, I mean, I understand that temptation, but the moral defect in some ways is I've always found more offensive from people who spent their lives on the receiving end of bigotry. Because you would hope that someone who has been a victim of it would have even less tolerance for such things.

So it depends which way you want to look at it. And I actually, although I gave Obama the benefit, I kind of forgot about it after a while. At the time it was going on, I was not at all satisfied with his answers about Reverend Wright, and I thought his speech where he kind of, you know, that Chris Matthews said, wasn't that, they said to chill up his leg and we should read it every year like the Gettysburg Address. I thought the speech was logically flawed.

And I just thought the whole thing was bull. But I guess I would have written it off as that's the way it was in Chicago politics at that time. And whatever. I didn't mean to get hung up on that. I just thought maybe you might have some insight. So continue. So go ahead. So now fast forward to wherever you want. I'm sorry to sidetrack.

Fast forward to watching him not intervene in Syria. Fast forward to watching him empower the Iranian mullahs. And all of a sudden you look at it and you understand, oh, wow, this person is not only in charge of these disastrous policies in the Middle East, but he seems to have a view of America that is radically different, not just from Republicans, but literally from every other Democrat before or after him. Here's a person who actually doesn't seem to believe in American exceptionalism or, for that matter, in American power. That's when I stopped and said, whoa, that's one of these

things is not like the other. You know, there's an issue that this touches on. I'm almost afraid to bring it up, but I'm going to bring it up because it's dossier to charge them with the likelihood of bias. So, for instance, it's perfectly reasonable to say, well, you know, Trump appointed that judge, so therefore we can't trust that judge's opinion but then if trump says well that uh he's a mexican judge and he's in he's a member of la rosa and i'm building a wall i don't try how dare you question a judge's you can say uh you can't trust a white guy to blah blah blah blah blah and um you know you can say well of course uh the um you know, you can say, well, of course, you know, Bill Kristol and David Frum being Jews are going to be pro-Israel, whatever it is. But there was this line drawn around the fact that him, but that in some human way, having been raised, where is it, Indonesia and having a Muslim father, that he was just sympathetic to Islam and Muslim points of view in a way that no previous American politician ever had been.

And that we should have seen that coming now again that is not a knock on him because I would imagine that like you know many any like what's his name of Anthony Blinken said as a Jew I'm upset you know this is this is the most human kind of thing in the world but you can only talk about it in certain cases and other times you just assume it right look I blame something much more pernicious than a childhood in indonesia or religious faith i i blame colombia university the the madrasa of anti-american imperialism house go ahead continue it now he went there a long time ago

he did it was like that then oh i i firmly believe so believe so. Again, I'm a little dim. I'm a little slow to catch up on things. I didn't necessarily know that while getting my own education at Columbia University. But if you look at the institution, and for that matter, all of our Ivy League universities, if you see the Nazi-making factories that they've become, I think it's reasonable to believe that a person like Obama goes to a college like that with people like Edward Said who tell him, well, you know, it's all Orientalism. It's all, you know, white guilt.

It's all the fault of the West. It's not hard to assume that person would get a worldview that doesn't necessarily like America that much. Now, when you say Nazi making, you mean you're being hyperbolic. Oh, no. At this point, I really am not. Go ahead. What do you mean by that? Look at what happened to these campuses.

You have Jewish noses smashed in Tulane. You have Jewish heads smashed in Columbia. You have people at Cooper Union literally having to hide. People in the College of California suggested by the librarian to hide in the attic because they have a pro-Khamas mob marching on campus. This is a very different world now than anything. Hiding in an attic doesn't even have a good track record, does it? No, it doesn't. Well, we go ahead. I'm sure it worked for some people, not just not the most famous case. Oh, that's fair enough. We don't know about that most... Listen, she really gives other Atticaiders a bad name.

So listen, I just want to be clear about the Obama thing. I really, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, it's not a knock on any human being that they are prone to sympathy to their heritage. I think it's the most natural thing there is. And it's just interesting to me that you can bring these sorts of things up without risk in certain directions. And in other directions, it's considered to be totally uncalled for. Right, but you know, there's something that really is always fascinating to me. I'm a huge baseball fan and I never understood why the people who run baseball seem to really

hate baseball and want to make it as unlike baseball as possible. It's the same thing with Obama. If you grow up and you have a world view that sees this country as predominantly somehow sinful, guilty of some

great big charge, then why is this your course of action? Yeah, and I think that's something that's really as predominantly somehow sinful, guilty of some great big charge, then why is this your course of action? And also his father apparently had a worldview that cast America as kind of a villain in some senses around the world. And then he came from Chicago politics at the time. What was the name?

Was it Jeff? Shit, my memory's going. But there was a guy in that circle who was blaming Jews for inventing AIDS. Coakley, was that his name? Need to do a fact check on that, Coakley. But anyway, so there's a lot there. But of course, he had Axelrod and Ari Emanuel and a lot of very

pro-Israel Jews who embraced it and surrounded him, and none of them seem to have come out since the administration and knocked him on his actual sympathies or lack of sympathy towards the Jewish state. So, you know, he managed it with some finesse even around people very close to him, right? I mean, Ari Emanuel, certainly not going to be... Rahm Emanuel, I mean, Rahm Emanuel certainly not going to be soft on Israel. Right, but Obama's...

I mean, the point is that Obama is still in power. He's the only president since, I believe, Rudra Wilson who finished his term and did not leave Washington, D.C. And Rudolf Wilson at the time, I believe, was incapacitated by a stroke and literally could not move. Yeah, his wife was running and he had that advisor. What was his name? House? Was that his name? Who was running things? Anyway, all right, so what is Obama's hypocrisy here. There was. I've been reading about the way that we conducted our military operation in Mosul. Are you familiar with all that stuff. I am familiar with that. Tell us about that is that that is one thing. Look to come and have orchestrated yourself attacks that ended up with very limited

military gains and cost the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians already puts you in a special category. But I think his hypocrisy is even greater because throughout his entire tenure, his main foreign policy goal, the Iran deal, was kind of a bait and switch. You know, he told the American public, we are only doing this to keep Iran from getting the bomb. In reality we now know because there's enough time and enough testimonies have passed that what he meant is to integrate Iran into the Middle East to create a brand new Middle East in which these murderous mullahs are much more empowered and much more central which Obama genuinely believed would bring balance

and peace to the Middle East. It was an insane belief, and the most duplicitous thing that he ever did is not be forthright about it and be like, look, this is what I believe, because he knew that it sounded crazy. But didn't he believe more likely that, and this is the mistake we seem to have made with China,

that by bringing Iran into the rest of the world, that eventually this would lead to the demise of the mullahs because Iran was supposed to be like a more cosmopolitan society, which I think they are actually, right? That was his insane belief. All right, well. Get the guns. It seems to have turned out not to have worked out. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA.

I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA.

I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA.

I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA.

I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I THINK IT'S A GOOD IDEA. I call the bluff because in 2009 we had the Green Revolution in Iran. We had hundreds of thousands of young Iranians marching in the streets and begging the United States please help us. We would like to overthrow these people who are throwing homosexual off roofs who are forcing women to cover themselves who are doing terrible things to us rather than the United States saying oh well if the goal was a democratic thriving Iran, we just got a shortcut to the end goal that we want here. Let's help these good people overthrow these tyrants and restore freedom and be worthy of our American promise.

Obama did whatever he could to stand on the side of the mullahs. I mean, this makes absolutely no sense. Well, there was another predicament that he was in, which I sort of remember, which was that intelligence was saying that Iran had something like a six- to eight-month breakout period for a bomb. And he was kind of up against it. And by making that deal, although the deal expired in like 10, 15 years, whatever it was, I don't remember the details, 15 years, he was kicking the can down the road for something like 15 years, playing for time in the hope that maybe in those 15 years, the situation would change and then somehow this could all be avoided. Because if he had just said no flat out to the deal at that moment, wasn't there a good chance Iran would have a bomb by now? I think only a professor could be stupid enough to believe that.

Well, go ahead. That's fine. But why is that? Why is it stupid enough? First of all, because it doesn't make any sense on the surface. If you truly believe that Iran is close to a nuclear weapon, you have in your capacity as the commander in chief of the greatest army in the world, enough means even without sending American boys into war, which is something that none of us want, a lot of means, including very, very, very major sanctions that could retard Iran's ability to reach the bomb in significant ways, as we had seen the moment someone whose name was not Barack Obama took office. You could do things, and Lord knows I have my share of criticism on the demon emperor Donald Trump.

But by doing things like targeting Qasem Soleimani and doubling down on the sanctions in Iran, we now have proof that these measures work very well, even without putting American lives at risk. So to say, oh, it was inevitable, the only way to do it was to support the Iranians and hope for the best, that just doesn't hold long. You're right. In retrospect, there's nothing I can say. It's a high-stakes game, a high-stakes game that the commander had to play. And I'm the person who's predisposed to be on your side of all these issues. But I remember at the time thinking that this was a tough one.

But once I heard that there was a six- to eight-month breakout period, I really didn't know or I didn't feel that I knew enough to know what the right thing to do was. Maybe let the Israelis bomb them like they wanted to do. That would have solved a bunch of problems. Yeah. I can remember now. When was Stuxnet?

Was that at this time, after that time? Around that time. Around that time. So that bought us a lot of time, right? And what did Obama do? He kind like kneecap Israel at every turn. So, OK, so let's get to it. So what do you think motivates Obama? A naive worldview or a a anti-Israel bent? Do I have to choose? Well, let's start with the second one.

Do you think he has and came into office with some sort of bias towards Israel or the Jewish state? I think he looks at the world. I think he looks at the Middle East. I think he says to himself, rightly, America should not be in business in this corner of the world. And then he looks at the potential partners here. He looks at the Saudis, right uh the saudis are basically republicans he said like i can't be with these guys because they're basically members of the bush family he looks at the israelis and he says these guys are uh they're they're bearded they have religion they are not the most

trustworthy uh partners and from my point of view he looks the Iranians is like OK. You know they're powerful. They're a minority because they're Shia in a largely Sunni Middle East. And as you said they have a young population. Maybe if we invest in them it will be OK. I think I don't want to ascribe any kind of anti-Semitic sentiments. I don't know the person and I don't like kind of analyzing humans I had not met. But I think it's perfectly feasible, even without malice, to see why he would own in on the Iranians, except for, again, the second thought after this first thought ought to have been, oh, wait, this is a genocidal terrorist spreading Holocaust-denying maniacal regime that we absolutely should not be in bed with.

What about the fact that Bill Clinton, who I think demonstrated deep affection for Israel and for Rabin and for Barack, could not stand Benjamin Netanyahu? And Obama was cursed with, I believe, eight years of Benjamin Netanyahu. So to be fair, one does have to acknowledge that there's one constant there, is that no American president has been able to get on well with Netanyahu. Most Israelis these days are not getting along with Netanyahu, so I understand that completely. But I think it's a matter of gradations, right? Look, Obama ended his term quite literally in December of 2016

by becoming the first American president in 43 years, I believe, to not veto a vicious anti-Israel decision or resolution at the United Nations Security Council. Tell everybody, the listeners won't know what the details are. The details are, I think it was something to do with settlements and the United States usually vetoes such condemnations from the UN Security Council. This time Barack Obama decided to go out with a bang and say we're not going to veto it, we're going to let this resolution pass because Israelis need to be taught a lesson. And what was wrong?

Famously, he also is the one who called Bibi Netanyahu a chicken shit. You know, there is there is disliking a leader and even a cabinet on a sort of personal or ideological level. But then there is still the larger kind of outlet of commitment to this country in which you say, look, I'm not going to burn the building down, even though I don't like this asshole. What was made at the stage? in which you say, look, I'm not going to burn the building down even though I don't like this asshole. I don't think you made that distinction. I mean, quite a few people on the left and on the right think that these settlements are an unnecessary provocation to the entire issue. And they certainly are one of the first things out of the mouths of young Americans when they're explaining why they don't like Israel. So why was Obama wrong for abstaining on that resolution?

For so many reasons. Let's start with one. And let's start with a simple example. For years, we have been told that if the United States moved its embassy to Jerusalem, which is something that American presidents have promised to do since, I believe, Ronald Reagan, there will be riots. There will be blood in the streets because the Arabs will never accept it. the demon emperor and says okay watch me hold my beard and he does so he moves the american embassy to israel and you know what happens nothing happens so first of all let's i think it's really important that we all remember that a lot of the uh perceived wisdoms of washington when it comes to the israeli palestinian conflict are simply blatant lies they're just uh you know ossified theories that have proven themselves again and again and again to be silly. But even if you believed very firmly that Israel had no right to settle in Judea and Samaria, these would be, by the way, Jews who come from Judea, even if you believe that that was very detrimental to Israeli-Palestinian peace, you still have to kind of stop and say, okay, look, I have two regimes here. One is kind of ass-holish, but traditionally our kind of strongest ally. So at the very least, I could put a veto in place and support it.

The other is a literal terrorist organization led by a sclerotic octogenarian that still pays thousands of dollars to every Palestinian who murders Jews out of American aid dollars. So this does not strike me as a particularly difficult choice, either strategically or morally. But you support the settlements, is that right? Personally, I don't think that, I don't even understand the term settlements. We're looking at international agreements. We're looking at a green line that was drawn after the 1967 war. And we're looking at an attempt to reach some kind of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

Personally, I don't understand how you could reconcile with people who all across the board, in Gaza and in the West Bank, Hamas and PLO alike, are committed to killing you. To me, it's almost a non-question. I can only negotiate and make these distinctions with people who don't want to behead babies. Well, and you're saying that the PLO and the West Bank wants to behead babies like Hamas? The PLO still spends a considerable amount of its budget, again, under Biden and under Obama before him, although Trump put an end to it, still spends millions and millions of dollars of aid money, paying salaries to individuals or families of individuals who had murdered Jews. This is called the pay for slave program. That, I think, tells you everything you need to know about their intentions, because if these people wanted to negotiate peacefully and in goodwill, they could have achieved this a very long time ago. For a very long time, there's nothing that Israelis wanted more than for the two state solution for the Oslo Accord framework to work. Palestinians did whatever they could from Yasser Arafat to Abu Mazen to Hamas to make sure that never happens. That's for sure. I agree with you on that. But I am curious if you if Israel continues to settle and spread their settlements out in the West Bank to the areas that are not kind of assumed to be

part of the you know, what Israel would part of the areas that Israel would retain in return for land swaps, but to really get out there. It seems like Israel would then be embarking on a future which would mean at some point a Palestinian majority or a huge number of Palestinians without rights within Israel. It's a really complicated conflict. Right. So why would anybody want to, like, what's the gain by pursuing a policy like that, even if everything you say is true, and the tremendous price Israel pays public relations-wise with the world, and the, I'm sure you've seen the horrible way that the settlers behave from time to time. Why would we, as Israelis, want to go down that road?

The minuses just seem to outweigh the pluses on that. I hear you completely. Everything that you say is absolutely true and smart and justified, except I think many Israelis received an answer to this question, and a very grim one, on October 7th this year, because in 2005, we left Gaza. We left it gleefully, even though it meant uprooting tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes, which was very difficult for Israeli society to do. What we reasoned would happen is we would have complete separation. They would be there. We would be here. We would give them some work permits to alleviate their condition. We would

try to do things as humanely as possible, but we would be separate. And we saw again and again and again, year after year, attacks, rockets culminating in the murderous pogrom of October 7th. So everything that you say is right, except for everything that Israelis are saying right now is also right, that when they're trying to disengage or trying to empower Palestinians or trying to withdraw their own civilians from Palestinian populated areas, they seem to only be bringing the murderers closer to Israeli homes. Look, I think there will need to be some kind of solution. I think the solution will at some point probably have to do with some sort of population swaps,

slash redrawing of maps, slash uprooting of communities. It will be a very difficult solution for some Palestinians and for many, many Israelis. But I think the first thing that needs to happen is for Palestinians both of the secular PLO brand and of the religious Hamas brand to understand that this attempt to eliminate and annihilate us. It just ain't going to work. All right. Something happened with his video? Yeah, it's pitch black. I can't see the, I can't see. We set it to turn dark when people are saying something we don't agree with. Hold on, let me try and turn out the light because it's getting dark here in Miami. Maybe that's the issue. Noam, do we want to talk about something that.

Yeah, listen, I'm not. Yeah, let him figure his lights out. I'm not, I don't know what I feel about everything, but I do feel like Israel would be much better off definitely not pursuing these settlements and, you know, obviously pursuing the peace process, even if it's just knowing that it's not going to work. There you are.

All right. This is not the best light. Well, it's as good as what we're going to do. Okay. Do you want to get to the guns, Noam? So, yeah, you wrote a column. Let's get to guns. You wrote a column in the New York Post suggesting that Jewish people purchase.

In tablet. In tablet. That Jews buy guns. Yes, sir. I'm surprised Alana went for this. She's not a gun type. We're all gun types now. Well, I would just go ahead. Preface by saying, you know, I saw a lot of people on Twitter and Instagram posting this, what I thought was awful meme of, would you hide me? Right. And, you know, Jews saying, you know, let's come to this.

We got to ask our non-Jewish friends, would you hide me? And to those people, I say, well, we do it. If you really think it's come to that, I don't believe it's come to that or it's anywhere near that. But if you truly believe that it's come to that, we do have a Second Amendment that you might want to check out. And again, I don't think it's come to that, but if you do think it's come to that, then you should be on board with the Second Amendment. Hallelujah.

What has gone on here? Did I just fall into an all right... There are people posting memes, Noam, Jews saying, would you hide me? Okay, I'm sorry. So don't you think that if you think that it's that bad, that maybe you should be a little bit more enthusiastic about your constitutional right to have a gun? Yes, yes.

I don't think that's what... When Noam's the most left-wing person in the room. Well, I mean... I don't think we're talking about the... I think you're talking more about the risk of street crime, street attacks. I don't think you're thinking about actually Jews being rounded up and having to hide, do you? Well, if there's street attacks, then you'd have to hide from those too, I would imagine. Right, but would you hide me means like an authority was going to come to. But whatever. However you want to explain it, tell us why you think Jews are at the point now

where they should be considering self-defense like that. So look, I obviously don't think that the year is 1943, and I don't think that the, you know, Columbia-educated Einzelskopen would march and round up all the Jews from the Trader Joe's on 93rd and Columbus. I don't think any of that is happening. I think it's still America. I think we're still great. I think we're still blessed. But you're

also seeing especially in cities where I live in Upper West Side of New York and elsewhere in large towns you see instances of violence that you never saw before. You see attacks you see brazen kind of anti-Semitic incidents. We saw a Jewish man be killed just the other day for waving an Israeli flag at a Palestinian protest, being violently shoved to the ground, hitting his head and dying. I think when that happens, you do need to re-evaluate your safety personally, especially when it comes on the heels of a large movement for weakening and defunding police forces all over. We see in New York, we see the police really markedly less and less and less interested and capable in maintaining the peace in these skirmishes for a whole host of totally understandable reasons. So if that's the climate and you really do believe that there's danger

there's a really sensible arrangement protected by the Second Amendment to the Constitution get a gun and be safe. Can I just say one thing? So I will be pleased with myself in one sense that I find that I can't resist the same kind of arguments that I would normally make, even when I would like to embrace the position being spoken. But as to this guy who was, quote unquote, killed, was it in Los Angeles? Yes. Paul Kessler. Yeah, I don't think that I'm satisfied that I know what happened. If there was an altercation...

Now, altercations happen all the time. And if the guy fell in that altercation... That's what happened. And broke his head and died. He was hit with a megaphone. Well, he was hit in the head with a megaphone first. So what happened. And broke his head and died. He was hit with a megaphone. Well, he was hit in the head with a megaphone first. So what happened? Tell me exactly what happened.

He was hit in the head with a megaphone and then fell and hit his head and then he died. So I guess what I'm saying is that do we know that the person who killed him was trying to use deadly force or was just a fight? Like I've been involved in so many bar fights where people pick up stuff, cue balls, whatever it is, you know. I just don't know that this is... I don't want to forgive it because the violence alone is enough, but I don't want to conflate it with somebody who went out looking to kill a Jew.

Well, I mean, somebody hit him in the head with a megaphone with enough force that he was knocked to the ground. I mean, this was a 65 or 69 year old man. I've seen both numbers written. He was, as far as all reports have gone, was peacefully protesting and he was hit in the head. I think what Noam is saying is, in that particular instance, would the use of a gun have been legal? Guy takes a megaphone, he's about to hit you with a megaphone. I think it would be legal.

Are you allowed to shoot a guy with a megaphone? I think you are. I think that a bevy, a gaggle, a minion, if you will, of armed Jews will make it so that people will think twice or three times before raising a hand to a Jewish person. Yeah, I should learn the facts on that. I just, you know, you see this kind of thing all the time. But there's no question there's been, there's a lot going on. But legally, from a self-defense standpoint, you know, at what point some guy pushes you,

says, fuck you, pushes you, you can't just shoot him. I think you can hit somebody. I think if you're about to get hit over the head with a heavy metal object, you can shoot. You don't have to get hit. There's no requirement to get hit over the head with a metal. Guys, my daddy is a bank robber. I learned very different rules at home.

It's the you send one of ours to the ER, we send two of yours to the morgue type of mentality where I come from. Now, in New York City, you know, I'm more likely to get attacked outside of my home, which means for a gun to be effective, I need to have a concealed carry permit. How hard is that to get in New York? It's almost impossible, as I understand. You're asking amazing questions. So, first of all, it is very difficult, which is why we sued a whole host of us gun nuts. Not me personally, but people that I know and love and support.

We sued the state. We went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found, of course, that New York's behavior was unconstitutional. So what did the geniuses led by Governor Kathy Hochul do? They went ahead and said, OK, you could have concealed carry permits, except that there are 20 restrictions called sensitive zones in which you cannot carry a gun, even with a permit. They include churches and synagogues and mosques, parks, schools, theaters, the subway, the entirety of Times Square. So literally, yeah, you could carry a gun to protect yourself, except for not if you want to take the subway or walk by a park, a school, a church or 42nd Street. But isn't there ample evidence that without really strict laws about who can buy guns, which, as we well know, that in this country are complete garbage, that it's a real, real problem, as we see with every, you know, turning page of the news on an almost daily basis we're just talking like jews by going aren't we only jews are permitted to buy guns you're completely right except for all other people who buy guns without permits who are in charge of or responsible for you know such a vast majority of these guns. If you look at gun statistics, you discover two very, very interesting things. First of all, three interesting things. First of all, that these great big tragedies like Columbine or the shooting

of the Florida High School are simply a drop in the bucket statistically speaking. They're not thousands and thousands and thousands of people every year lose their lives this way. What you do discover are the way people do lose their lives to gun violence are two other things. First of all, gang-related violence, which are people who do not have gun permits, obviously, and ask Chicago how well it works to make guns very, very hard to get legally.

And then the majority, by which I believe more than like 62% of gun deaths in this country, are caused by suicide, which teaches you that you have a major, major mental health crisis, which are all these people going to kill themselves if they don't have guns? No, you could probably have saved a whole host of them if they didn't have ready access to a firearm. But then that only tells you that you could solve this problem by instituting a bunch of laws and regulations that allow, for example, family members to report mental conditions to law enforcement officials and have those officials confiscate temporarily a firearm from an individual who is considered to be at risk. THEIR PASSENGERS. THEY ARE NOT CONSIDERED AT RISK. THEY ARE NOT CONSIDERED AT RISK. THERE ARE GOOD SOLUTIONS TO THIS PROBLEM. WE ARE NOT INTERESTED IN TRYING THEM BECAUSE IT HAS BECOME AN ITEM OF RELIGIOUSLY ZEALOUS CONVICTIONS BETWEEN TWO SIDES

WHO ARE NOT WILLING TO COMPROMISE. I'M A LITTLE BIT CONFUSED ABOUT WHERE THE STATE OF THE LAW IS IN NEW YORK. IT IS STILL THE LAW THAT YOU that you can't conceal carry on the subway? And what's the law as it stands now? You cannot conceal carry on the subway. You can have a concealed carry CCW permit, but there are, as I said, all these limitations and restrictions to them, though I assume that there will be another lawsuit

very quickly that will allege correctly that also these restrictions are not constitutional. Now, say I'm on the subway, and I do have a permit to conceal carry, and I see somebody harassing, one subway rider harassing another subway rider, yelling in their face, and maybe they start to push that person. Maybe a fight breaks out between them. What can I do as a as a as a gun if if anything is there anything i can have the gun on the subway well i'm saying if if if if i

do have have permission to have a gun on the subway just theoretically legally speaking what can i do say a guy punches another guy in the subway and starts off and they they and and i mean you know you're allowed to use a gun to save the life of a third party but what if it's just a fistfight theoretically I'll find and this is something that I learned from serving in the Israel Defense Forces I find that there are two categories of situations in which a guy will come in handy there is the very extreme cases in which there are people who are out there to kill you,

and you shoot to kill them first and save your own life and lives of innocent people. That is, thankfully, not a situation we see very often. The other situation is a situation in which there are situations that escalate, as you said, like fistfights, like something that is just bubbling on the cusp or on the verge of violence,

in which just the introduction of a firearm to the scene has an almost magical effect to calm everyone down because you just changed the balance of power. And he said, look, don't force me to use this thing. My experience is that usually that makes everyone sort of back off and be like, OK, this is no longer a fair fight. One of us has a gun. I often hear the axiom that you don't take a gun out unless you're going to use it. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION.

I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I THINK IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. this though you may not believe me i'm proposing responsible gun ownership which is gun ownership

that comes with some restrictions and licensing which is something that sadly most of my gun nut buddies do not support which comes with extensive training on how to use it but also with with with training and understanding on which situations uh would benefit from the introduction of this firearm and which situations would only escalate if you if you revealed your weapon i think that is something that you could be trained for in fact there are entire academies for tactical training that do exactly that and if you made every person who wanted a gun license go through some you know minimal training i think you would be much better Well, I don't think I'm on board with this. I don't, for some reason, this could be my own failure to get it.

I don't see our future as Jews being particularly worried about violence, although I do expect to see some kind of uptick of some kind of violence during this period of the war. I expect that to calm down. My biggest fear is certainly I don't think Jews are gonna experience the kind of violence that everybody was worried about just you know 20 years ago in Manhattan and didn't get guns guns but my my biggest fear has been for a long time that we're being made into afrikaners that uh that being jewish you know how when somebody uh comes over and you meet them and they say where are you from you say i'm german and there's a kind of like awkward pause where the german guy feels a little is wondering how you're going to react and it's

just a little like even even this all these years later if you if you lay down that fact oh i'm i'm german they're so ah okay well you know no problem i don't care that you're german you know, no problem. I don't care that you're German. It's awkward. I think that this is where we're coming to with being Jewish, that there's just like a slight stigma associated with it, and doubly so if you embrace it, if you embrace the identity in any kind of conspicuous way, with a Jewish star, wearing a chai, having a Star of David in your restaurant window like we do wanting it wanting to take a semester abroad you name it and this is a tremendous step back for the Jewish

community in America who you know was probably living more free more freely than any Jewish community in the history of the world. You know, I'm not an expert on Jewish history, but certainly it was an unusual time in Jewish history. We're regressing to the mean. The ideology of the young, which is intersectional and progressive and identity-based, does not bode well for any turnaround on that.

The future of Israel not being able to make peace with its neighbors who are ready and willing to use the pictures of their own people dying as part of their PR war to ostracize Israel on the world stage. All of this seems like intractable and very, very, very depressing problems and a very, very depressing future coming to us. I don't think a Holocaust has to be, or even murder of Jews able to have the carefree Jewish existence that I did as a citizen of the United States of America is heartbreaking to me.

And I don't know that guns will solve that. I can't tell you how strongly I disagree with you. Okay. I think, look, there is something, I'm an immigrant to this country. You don't disagree with the future that I'm laying out. You just disagree about the gun part, correct? No, no, I disagree with the future that you're laying out completely and totally and wholeheartedly. Okay, tell me.

I am wildly optimistic. Look, I was born in Israel. I came to this great country. I'm an immigrant here. I chose it. And the thing that makes, one of the many things that makes this country great is that this is a covenantal country. THE COUNTRY IS A COVENANTAL COUNTRY. THE NAME OF THIS COUNTRY IN HEBREW IS THE LANDS OF THE COVENANT.

THIS IS A COUNTRY THAT BELIEVES ITSELF VERY STRONGLY, LIKE ISRAEL. BY THE WAY, THEY ARE THE ONLY TWO COUNTRIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD THAT BELIEVE THIS IDEA. THEY ARE IN A COVENANT WITH GOD

FOR SOME SPECIAL REASON. THAT REASON IS TO SPREAD THIS GREAT MESSAGE. ARE YOU CRAZY? NO AMERICAN BELIEVES THAT. OH, I BELIEVE DEEP DOWN INSIDE MOST AMERICANS BELIEVE THAT. for some special reason. That reason is to spread this great message. Are you crazy? No American believes that. Oh, I believe deep down inside, most Americans believe that. We believe in American exceptionalism.

We believe we're special. Even Barack Obama doesn't believe in it. But go ahead, go ahead. I don't mean to interrupt you. I'm sorry. He's the outlier. He's the exception to this. Wasn't he born in Kenya?

No, no. Oh, stop that. Come on. She's kidding. Go ahead. And I think that once you look at the history of this country you realize that every hundred years or so we renew this covenant we did it in 1776 where we proclaimed freedom throughout the land we did it in 1861 when we stood up to the scar of slavery we did it in 1964 where we finished the work of

dignity and human and civil rights and we're doing it again right now, renewing core commitments in the face of a minority of our fellow Americans who believe very, very different things. I do not for one moment believe that the American future or the American Jewish future is grim. I think that the near immediate future is rocky. But I think you have so many Catholics

and Christians and Hindus and Asians and Muslim Americans who have a very firm understanding of American greatness and why it's so special and are just pulling through. Well, I hope you're right. I mean, the polls don't show that. That's a very sunny optimistic uh personality that you have there i'm sorry no i i hope that you're right i it's it's almost as if that's a religious point

of view is it i believe it 100 is but by the way you're looking for evidence look look at all our rappers like literally every single great rapper right now is rapping about jesus you know these people are godly people listen to chance the rapper these are people who are taking orders from or marching to the beat of a very different drum and that to me is really where the majority of americans are and it's an outlook of belief it's an outlook of optimism it's an outlook of working together with like-minded people very different than what you see in you know hollywood or the new york times or columbia university but much more american than anything else out there well you know anyone who knows me knows that more than anything i love to be right and i want to thank

you because you've motivated me to live till 2064. And I just so I could be there to say, you're wrong. It didn't happen. Like you said, how old would you be? You'll be 100. I'll be 102. So but I'm going to do it just to just to rub your nose in it. Okay, listen, I do hope that you're right. Can I ask a question? I know Liel has to go to his book tour. So what's the immediate future here with Israel and Palestine? What do you see in the next, you know, first of all, how do we get out of this disaster and, I don't know, a little bit forward? Only that, huh?

Yeah. In 30 seconds, can you just wrap that up for us? If anybody can. I will say this. I think the way forward is realizing and recognizing that what we're seeing right now is not a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. It is a much more intricate, large-scale conflict

between the so-called axis of resistance that involves Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen and their allies in China and Russia and other, you know, tyrannical, murderous, disastrous regimes, and between the rest of the world. It is the fight of the Armenian THE FIGHT OF THE RUSSIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE RUSSIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE

FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE

FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE FIGHT OF THE UKRAINIANS, THE Beheading babies has a really strange way of clarifying for people. But we don't. Don't make me. I think we're going to see it very swift. I don't want to be one of those people correcting that story. But do we know that that story is true? Yes, for a fact. But not the 4 to 51.

What did they say for us? I don't know. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We know that babies were tortured and killed and dismembered, and we know enough that's true. Whatever. So here we are. We're standing in a war of civilization that includes the Americans and the Saudis and the Ukrainians and the Armenians and many others from many corners of the world against absolute tyranny and barbarism, which includes the Russians and the Iranians and the Chinese and anyone who backs their benighted coalition. Roger Waters said that it's a false flag operation. Did you see that? That's right. Yes. That fucking guy didn't write such good music. I'd be done with him. He is a tremendous talent musically.

But I won't buy any of his music. But any music that I happen to have, I'll listen to. I'll suffer through it if it comes on Spotify. Or I'll listen to it on YouTube. All right. Well, anyway, it's been a pleasure to have you on. Tell us, Tom, what does been a pleasure to have you on. Tell us, by any means, does Atomwood have any wisdom? What does Atomwood say about the trans issue and gender-affirming care?

It must say something. There is a lot of transgender talk in Atomwood. Legit. There is? Yeah. And what does it say? Well, it basically reminds us yet again that gender is a biological fact or sex, I should say, is a biological fact encoded into every cell of our bodies. It also reminds us that in the minority of the cases, there are people who are suffering from legitimate conditions of not kind of conforming to whatever the circumstances of their birth were. It urges us, obviously, to be very compassionate and caring towards these people. And it warns us against this kind of confusion that we could transcend all these categories like so many clothes that we put on and off. That is a very, very succinct summation. But that's real. I mean, that's really in there. I mean, can you give us any any quotes of. Well, first of all, it's astonishing that it acknowledges that there are all kinds of conditions. It acknowledges hermaphrodites. It acknowledges people who are born with one set of genitalia, but, you know, cannot connect to it. It acknowledges people who are who are intersex. It acknowledges all kinds of, you know, should we say deviations from the biological. It, I think, then goes strongly to the biblical prohibition against sort of confusing, if you will, the sexes.

The Torah famously says that, you know, men should not dress as women and women as men. Do with that as you will. But to me, the thing that I take from it is this outlook of, first of all, compassion, just to really look at these situations and say to yourself, judge every person according to their own condition and criteria and come out at it from a quality of mercy.

And at the same time, remember that there are strong and irrefutable laws of God and nature that should not be contested for fun and pleasure. Did you really read the entire Talmud? I am. The Talmud is not something that you read. It's not a book. My friend Jonathan Rosen called it a net for catching God. It's not how many times you read it,

it's how many times it goes through you. I'm still making my way through it as I will until the day I die. It is an amazing thing that it exists, right? It's just amazing. Now, just to clarify, the Talmud has sometimes It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing.

It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing.

It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing.

It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing. THE RABBI SAYS THIS, THE OTHER RABBI SAYS THAT. IT'S NOT SOMETHING. THIS IS THE THING. IT'S LITERALLY ON EVERY PAGE. THE GENIUS OF THE TALMUD, I WILL MAKE THIS AS QUICK AS I CAN, THE TALMUD WAS WRITTEN AT A STAGE IN WHICH THE TEMPLE, THE YEAR 70 CE, MORE OR LESS, THE TEMPLE IN JERUSALE WAS BURNT BY THE ROMANS. THEN THE RABBI GOT TOGETHER AND ASKED HIMSELF A SEMINAL QUESTION OF HOW DO YOU SAVE THIS R you save this religion, which for 538 years was predicated on, you know, sacrifices in the temple. How do you save it now that the temple no longer exists?

And they had two amazing insights. The first is you could take this entire religion and capture it in a book, which is already like an astonishing insight. You could take all these sacrifices and things that you used to do and r write some rituals and write them down and make people read them and remember them. But then they realized that if they only wrote down laws and rules, people would be turned off. They would say, ah, that doesn't appeal to me anymore. That doesn't apply to me anymore. That's not for me. So instead of writing down laws, they wrote down arguments. And they invite you to come in and argue with them when you read a page of Talmud you're entering a thousand year long arguments between between Jews between rabbis who lived hundreds of years apart between every learner who's ever studied that page of Talmud that's the genius

thing it's not about the answers fuck the answers it's about better ways of asking questions okay Okay, sir. Well, it's been a pleasure. We'd love to meet you in person if you're ever in the neighborhood. I would love that. It'd be nice to meet you in person. All right. So that's it.

What's the name of the book again? One more time? How the Talmud Can Change Your Life. Surprisingly modern advice from a very old book. Get it on Amazon.com, but not on Shabbat. Thank you very much, sir. Email to podcast.com. Good night, everybody. Good night.

Good night.