Within Reason - #74 Rabbi David Wolpe - What is Judaism?

Episode Date: June 30, 2024

David Wolpe is an American rabbi, and Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School. He was named the most influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek in 2012. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Free access ends August 24th. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. Judaism as a concept, one of the things that confuses a lot of people about it is the question of what it is, that is, are we talking about a religion? Are we talking about an ethnicity? Are we talking about a nation? Are we talking about a people? Like, when someone says Judaism, what is the thing that they're talking about? The problem with answering that question is that these are all Western concepts and Judaism precedes the invention of the West. And I am almost

tempted to say all the things that it's not so that people will understand them what it is. It's not a race because you can't convert to be a race. It's not a religion because there are Jews who are not religious, but they're still Jews. There's no contradictions there. You're born Jewish and you're not born Christian because you have to have a certain belief system. So maybe the best way to describe it is as a religious family because you're born into a family, you can join a family, and really the only way you leave a family is if you choose another family. And historically in the Jewish tradition, even though, according to Jewish law, even if you convert, you're still considered Jewish. Organically, the community didn't accept

people generally who converted to another religion. Now, some people will say that Judaism is something you can never convert out of. Right. Once you're a Jew, you're always a Jew. Do you think that's true? Well, that became an issue during the Spanish Inquisition, when so many Jews converted under duress that they used an old Talmudic principle, which reads a Jew, even if he sins is still a Jew, to refer to conversion because they wanted to make it possible for those Jews to come back easily into Judaism and not to feel shame because what they did wasn't really of their own choice. And so that's become a sort of Jewish legal principle that you really can't conferred out of Judaism. So that's the standard Jewish legal principle. But, I mean, organically speaking, the truth is you can because in a generation or two or three people disappear. And this is also going to depend on what kind of Judaism we're talking about, right? People have different ideas about how to convert, if it's possible to convert, if it's possible to leave, what it really means.

maybe you can give us a quick overview of some of the principal different strands of Judaism in their approach to what it means to be a Jew. So the only the principal strands of Judaism are orthodoxy conservative in reform. The main difference is that the reform movement accepts what's called patrilineal descent. That is traditionally being Jewish meant you were born of a Jewish mother. That made sense, of course, because you didn't know who the father was. you always knew who the mother was. And so it is still true that if you're born of a Jewish mother or you convert to Judaism,

traditional Jewish practice accepts you. The reform movement decided that because so many people were raised in mixed households, and some of them were raised Jewish, that if you have a Jewish father and you're raised Jewish, they would consider you Jewish. So that's the principal division. And then there are, if you get down into the weeds, there are differences in the way people convert. But they're generally, what it involves is learning a mikva, which is a ritual bath. It's like the precursor of baptism and for a man's circumcision. I find it interesting

that somebody can be a completely non-religious Jew. Somebody can be completely atheist. They can never attend any kind of religious worship and not identify with any of the stories of scripture. and yet their Judaism seems to be something they can't escape, which is the sense in which it is treated like an ethnicity. So there's an obvious sense in which you can't stop being a Jew when you sort of treat Judaism as an ethnicity. But I mean, do you think that's appropriate? I mean, like, how do you sort of approach that fact? It's what Judaism is. That's why I said you're trying to put it into Western categories, but it doesn't fit.

It's not an ethnicity. It's also not a religion. It's something that predates the concepts of ethnicity or religion. And that's why I use the word family. It's the best analogy that I can use. And the answer is, even if you leave your family and you don't see them for 30 years and then one day you show up at the door, you're still family. And so I think that that analogy works fairly well.

It's not, it doesn't overlay perfectly, but it will serve. But would you say, for example, I mean, I've spent a lot of time talking to Catholics. And because I was baptized and confirmed into Catholicism, they say that at best or at worst, I suppose, all I can ever really be is like a bad Catholic. Right. It doesn't sort of matter what I do. I've been confirmed. Like, that's it. And I've always felt quite uncomfortable by that fact because I don't think I'm a Catholic.

I don't recognize that sort of sense of ownership of me in a group, you know. And I can imagine that for a lot of non-religious Jews, they say, look, I don't identify with a religious tradition, I don't believe in God, I don't go to the synagogue. of that kind of stuff, I don't know, they might say, well, I don't, I don't want to be considered Jewish. It is entirely possible that someone could say, I don't want to be considered Jewish. I feel as though your, my principles about how I see people in their groups and other people's principles about how they see themselves don't necessarily coincide. And in the Jewish tradition, you are Jewish.

if you're born Jewish and even though you might wish to leave that now the rabbis have rabbis meaning the rabbis of the Talmud confronting this forensic difficulty they decided that everybody's spirit

was actually present at Sinai so you see you might not think that you signed on but in fact you did but practically speaking I think this is also a historical development that so many Jews over pressure over so many years were I

pushed out or enticed out or pressured out that the Jewish community wanted to make a firm statement that actually you can't leave. You might think you can, but you can't, which was also a way of making it easy to come back. Because that same Jew who says, I don't want to be considered a Jew. If in a year they decide I do want to, they can walk into the synagogue and everyone will accept them. Now, you mentioned a moment ago about this maternal lineage. One of the things that a lot of people do know about Judaism is that if your mother is Jewish, then you are Jewish, but it doesn't follow that if your father is Jewish, that you're Jewish too. And you implied a moment ago that this was sort of a practical measure, because you always know who the mother is, you don't always know

who the father is. Is that the origin of this? Well, we don't know the origin for sure. I mean, in the Bible, it seems as though it's more patrilineal. It's like Jacob is, right. So, and I think that that's in part because you brought women into the folds, so to speak. But it was probably, it probably at least had some origins in practicality around the time of Ezra and Nechemia, so the later biblical period, because in fact, when there were, when there was intermarriage and conversion and all those things and people were leaving or coming and you wanted to know if a child was Jewish or not, that was the way to know. It just, I mean, it seems a little strange to me. And And you're right that, you know, concepts like religion, concepts like ethnicity, these are

modern concepts. But I guess I'm trying to get this straight in my head. Like, you know, if I wanted to convert to Judaism, presumably that's an option that's open to me. I mean, is that an option to open to me in all Jewish religious traditions? Or are there? Absolutely. In all Jewish religious traditions.

Always. It doesn't sort of matter to whom I'm born. That doesn't matter at all. I can become a Jew. And what would that look like? Like, what would it require me to do? Would I have to sort of make a confession of things that I believe? Would I have to sort of just rethink my relationship with people?

What would it, what would it mean? So depending on how you converted, whether you converted reformed conservative Orthodox, the essentials would be that you would have to have some course of study, some commitment to live Jewishly, and then how specific, how observant, how ritualistic that was depended on with whom you converted. and if you're a man, then traditionally you would have to be circumcised, which from the time of Paul has proved something of an obstacle, strangely enough. Yeah, I can see that.

And then if I did convert to Judaism and I'm now a Jew, will there be traditions that say, well, because you've converted to Judaism, now you can't leave? Or is it just the people who are sort of born into Judaism? Once you're Jewish, you're fully Jewish. And that would include, for example, you know, if I had a wife who converted to Judaism and then had a child, that child is automatically Jewish. But, you know, suppose that, I don't know, maybe, you know, what if, you know, I have a wife and we're not married and then she gets pregnant? And then I decide, okay, I need to, I need to marry, I need to marry this woman and raise this child.

And the child is born to a now Jewish mother, but at the time of the child. Well, you're marrying her. It doesn't make her Jewish. I'm sorry, rather she converts to Judaism, like during her pregnancy. It doesn't matter. So. In fact, it's because, in part because in ancient times, again, the idea, for example, that you could artificially inseminate someone didn't exist.

It was a question of giving birth. So if you give birth as a Jew, the child is Jewish. Okay. I find that quite interesting, given that there's a lot of debate, especially, with sort of religious undertones about where sort of life begins when a child begins to be its own sort of separable person. And it seems to me that if you say that until that child is actually born, like if this mother converts to Judaism the day before she gives birth, then the child that comes out is Jewish. But if she converts a day afterwards, that child is not. Does that that seems to

sort of maybe rub up against the religious intuition that that child is its own unique person long before the actual moment of birth? Well, the child is. always its own unique person, whether they're Jewish or not. But in terms of whether they belong to the people of the Jewish tradition, it depends whether they're born to someone who's part of that people. And if they don't, they can then join the people. You can convert an infant. What is interesting in the Jewish tradition is if you do convert an infant, at 13, that child has a right to renounce the conversion. And is that not true of children who are born Jews? That is not true of children who are born. Interesting. So. Because you made the choice on their behalf. Yeah. But the sort of metaphysical

presumption is every Jew who's born Jewish made the choice back at Sinai on their own. Right, right. That's so fascinating because I'm sort of imagining this pregnant woman and sort of she wants to convert to Judaism. And I don't know. There's probably some ceremony involved. There's some moment. And suppose she says, you know, I'm going to convert Judaism because I want my child to be Jewish. And then, you know, the rabbi comes along and says, you know, sorry, something's come up. We have to delay this for two days. And then she gives birth. And then she gets birth. And then the child would have to be converted.

And suddenly now the child at 13, everything changes, you know? Well, it doesn't. I mean, I don't know of an instance, actually, of a child of 13 who actually renounced their, but this is part of a, and you're very familiar with this in a thousand different ways, it is almost impossible in slippery slope arguments to make distinctions that always hold and always make sense. So you say, like, a day before the child is, you know, is not, the mother isn't Jewish and then a day after is all of those sorts of things are capable of infinite slicing. So at some point, any tradition, any legal system has to say this is the point at which things change, especially if they're remediable.

Because if a child is born not Jewish, you can change it. It seems, you know, as arbitrary to me as like the fact that if you're born on U.S. soil, you're a U.S. citizen. Right. It sort of depends when you get on the plane. But this to me gets at this confusion that can arise when trying to consider what Judaism is. And the word sort of ethno-religious is often thrown around. If you think it's a condition of soul, then it's very confusing. But if you think what it is is like citizenship, then it's not so confusing. I think that's probably right. I mean, it seems to me that if we're talking about like ethnicity or race, you know, if two Rwandan people, parents have a child. It sort of doesn't matter when that child's born. There's no, there's no sort of slippery slope confusion because the child that comes out is, is just going to be Rwandan, no matter what, nothing changes there. If they're in Rwanda at the time, but if they're in America at the time. I mean, like, in terms of their race and ethnicity, rather than their nationality, right? Like, that's just what that child is going to be. But Judaism does not

work that way. However, when it comes to, so that's why, you know, Judaism doesn't work like an ethnicity. So some people might then say, well, okay, well, it's more like a religion then, But then it also no, because, like, you can't sort of be inescapably born religious if religion is a sort of a product of what you believe about the world, right? And so it sort of doesn't fit neatly into either category. That's true. But you see why this is confusing for people? Of course. And trying to work out what this thing is.

Of course. That's why I use the family analogy, because it's the best one I have. But it's also why there's so much misunderstanding about what Jews are because Christians use. Christian categories which don't fit. And it's also, by the way, and I think this is worth mentioning, it also explains certain differences between Judaism and Christianity that people may observe, but don't fully understand. One is, it's one of the reasons why Christianity is a much more transportable religion. It's built to be universal in a way that Judaism isn't.

But on the other hand, it's why Judaism is a much more connected religion. So, for example, when the Soviet Union persecuted Jews, they also persecuted Christians, but there was no worldwide Christian movement to save the Christians of the Soviet Union. But there was a worldwide Jewish movement. Why? Because there is this kinship sense that Christians don't feel with one another, that Jews do feel with one another. And it's a result of this different kind of origin. There's more to say about that. But I think that that's also, that helps people understand it's not pure.

a declaration of faith, it is a sort of membership in what Jews think of as in eternal people. Do I need to believe in God to be Jewish? No. There are many Jews who don't. I suggest it, but you don't have to. Do I need to believe in God to convert to Judaism? Depends with whom you convert, actually. There are some Jewish, I don't want to say groups, ideologies, whatever that would say you don't and others that would say you do. Interesting. I guess I'm sort of maybe perhaps inappropriately or unfairly trying to get to grips with what the sort of necessary and sufficient conditions are for Judaism here. You talked earlier about this. I would say the greatest condition is you want to throw your lot in with the destiny of the Jewish people. Right. That's

what you're asked again and again. So it's sort of an, it's like an attachment to a people rather of then a system of beliefs. In fact, yes, it involves a system of beliefs, but if you look even at the classic example of conversion, which is Ruth in the Bible, she says, your people shall be my people and your God shall be my God. She proceeds people to God, which is reverse of the way Christianity would put it. Yeah, well, this, this sort of theme of the chosen people of God is like the theme of the Hebrew Bible and it does seem strange to me I must say and I speak to a lot of my Christian friends about this and we sort of say you know how do you feel about Judaism and they say well you know obviously we're not Jews but Judaism is very special it's obviously attached to

Christianity the Hebrew Bible is their old testament it's still part of their scripture but a lot of them have said to me but to be honest I haven't really got my head around this and I can't really figure out what's going on when God says, this God that I believe in, God of love, God who wants to come to know everybody, creates everyone in his image, says, but these people are my favorite. Oh, he doesn't say favorite. So what does it mean to be the chosen people? It means you have a certain responsibility in the world, a certain mission in the world.

In fact, I had this, and by the way, it's the favorite there, so I'll say, I'll tell you one story and then say something who's specifically Christian Jewish. I remember once, my brother is a professor at Emory, and so is the Dalai Lama. He no longer goes because he's older. But so my brother was bringing a bunch of students to meet with the Dalai Lama in Darm Sala. And I met them there. And so my brother and I had an audience with his wife with the Dalai Lama, not with the Dalai Lama's wife, with my brother's wife. And as we sit down and when I was there, I actually gave a lecture to the monks in Tibet about how you survive in exile because they were all in exile.

But when we sat down, the first thing, as he opened the conversation, he points at me and said, what's this about? the chosen people anyway. Yeah. So I said, it's true. Jews believe they have a special mission in the world. I said, but that doesn't mean that other peoples don't have a special mission. We assume other people probably think they're chosen too. And he bursts out laughing. He goes, yeah, we also think we're special. Yeah, sure. I don't know of a people that don't think they're special, even though the Jews always get this. If you ask the Albanians, are Albanians special? I'm sure they will say, yes, Albanians are special. And the other piece of this is that that I must confess, irks me a little bit sometimes in conversations with Christians who

have a hard time with the chosen people idea. Here's another theological difference between classical Christianity and Judaism. In order to be saved, you must believe in Jesus. If you don't, you're damned. Judaism does not have that. In the Jewish tradition, if you are a good person, you get whatever the world to come is, which is a separate question. But whatever it is, you get that. So in fact, I think chosenness has less consequences eternally for Jews than belief in Jesus does for Christians, but nobody says

to Christians, how dare you, have this tremendous hubris that you think only people who believe like you can be saved. Well, I think there's a, there's a extent to which belief in Jesus, and I don't know if Christians would be happy with the idea of it being belief in Jesus. It might, I mean, a lot of people say you don't need to know who Jesus is to be saved, this kind of thing. Acceptance of Jesus. Sure. Acceptance of Jesus, you know, acceptance of a message of a sacrifice. But there's, there seems to be a level of autonomy there where somebody can, to some degree, choose to do that or choose not to do that. You can choose to be Jewish. We just went through this. It takes a little more work, but you can do the same thing.

It seems like, at least in the Hebrew scriptures, you know, God here is building something akin to a nation, a nation of people. And that seems. But many people in the scriptures join that nation. Many different people do. Who don't start out being. part of that nation. So again, yeah, I mean, this would, this will definitely require the idea that, you know, becoming a Jew is analogous to becoming Christian, where it's something that you can sort of choose to do. You can choose to join up. It might be a difference in what you have to exactly, the kind of thing you have to accept, but something that you can do, because I think the problem people will have is that if God has chosen a people and that people is identified with something like the modern concept of ethnicity, then that starts getting very troublesome

It does, but think of it this way. So I say to, I don't know, to my organization, we have a special mission in the world, members of party X, Y, or Z, and you're special because you're going to, you're going to be the ones who are save American democracy, party X. And then someone comes along and says, how could you be so conceited as to say they're the ones who are going to save democracy? I would say, because that's what their mission is. If you want to join them, join them And you can be part of the ones that save democracy too or whatever the mission is. So I don't see that as a, at all, a statement of racial or ethnic superiority. So this concept of chosen people is about sort of duty and it's about, it's sort of something you can join.

And I can sort of see what you're saying there. But like when I look in the Hebrew Bible and I see some of the stories of what this nation got up to, I said that I wanted to talk about some of these stories. I've been speaking a lot recently to Christians about some of the Old Testament atrocities, it's the label that would often be put on them. And for them, it's easy enough for them to sort of say, well, you know, Jesus is kind of a part two, and it's sort of undoes it. And we have a very special relationship with these stories.

But I think you'll have to answer differently, which is why I'm interested to ask you about these things. So, you know, God has this chosen people, and he promises them a land. and that land is occupied. There are people living there. And so God senses people to occupy this land. And when the people refuse to give it to them, they end up getting slaughtered. Men, women, children.

I'm talking about the Canaanites, of course. You have these stories of the Amalekites. You have the stories of the Midianites. And Moses, or his successors, and their armies, are commanded to march up to this land and told in no uncertain terms to kill men, women, children. children, animals. You know, in Samuel, we have the story of this sort of this instruction

to slaughter animals. And when they keep the king and some of the animals alive, God says to Samuel, I regret that I ever made Saul King because he didn't, he didn't follow my instructions. It's like he's been and he gets punished for not killing all of the animals. Now, this idea of a sort of chosen people with a special duty that people can sort of come along and say, yeah, I like what you're doing, I want to get on board, that seems pretty fine. But this idea that I'm reading in this text, there's a chosen people with their promised land. And if you're not okay with that, then you're going to get killed. That seems a little bit more raw to me. I wanted how you interpret that part of the chosen people. There are, no, there are multiple really interesting

and important questions here. One is, let's start first with the difference between Christianity and Judaism. Sure. The reason that Christianity is not um does the new testament has does not have stories like that is precisely because it was born in the roman empire so there were no wars there was no contention there was no civil legislation it's one of the reasons why christianity such an internal um religion is because if you create a religion in the desert like moses or like mohammed then your civil legislation and your religious legislation are one they're the same there's no separation between church and state

because you're creating a religious civilization. Christianity was spared that phase of history, and as a result, Christians didn't have civil legislation as part of Jesus' legislation because obviously the Roman Empire took care of all of that. They didn't have a land that they wanted to conquer or not conquer, although clearly the revolts against Rome were at least in part, in part some of the toxicity that you see in the New Testament towards Jews were about the revolts against Rome and the anger against Rome. But in the Hebrew Bible, you have an ancient people and a chronicle of what probably happened over and over and over and over again with virtually every ancient people.

I don't think the story of the Israelites is unique, except that they survived for thousands and thousands of years. But I think that that's how, and by the way, if you look in the book of Joshua, the actual conquest of the land is a much more assimilative process than it is actual conquering of the land. So it's almost like the rhetoric is much more martial than the reality. But I think that this is precisely because that was how, look, I'm not someone who thinks that God wrote every word of the Bible. And I think that this is exactly how ancient Israelites interpreted their own mandate was just like the tribes around them who conquered land one from the other.

They conquered as well. And you could either join them or not join them and have a war just as all subsequent attempts to destroy them were men, women, children. That was the way, unfortunately, were worked often in the ancient world and sometimes in the modern. But when we think of this nation of Israel as God's chosen people with direct access to the commands of the moral author of the universe, when people say... Who's the we? Am I included in that way? Well, no, not you, not me, but the... Well, the reason I say that is because I actually don't think that God said to them directly kill men, women, and children.

It's, I think that the Bible is the product of human beings, inspired by God trying to struggle with. God's meaning, but clearly it is an ancient text from an ancient people that intermixes stunning moral insights and spiritual truths with the realities of a very ancient world. Of course, points in the Hebrew Bible, we have the recorded voice of God telling the nation of Israel to do what I would consider to be some quite intolerably unethical war practices. Would you say that, I mean, you just said a moment ago, you don't believe that God wrote every word of the Bible. I think that, of course, the Hebrew Bible as a whole shouldn't be treated as if God wrote every word. But those instances were...

Well, actually, that's how the Jewish tradition traditionally saw it as God wrote every word. And what I'm saying is the modern understanding of the Bible is that it's written by human beings. It developed over a long period of time and that some of their understandings of what God wants, I think, are the understandings of people who lived thousands of years ago. and and I use the Bible's own principles to criticize the Bible. So where the Bible tells us, you know, God said these words, it's not sort of a narrative. I mean, it's not sort of, even something like the Genesis story, like in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It would be weird if, if like God said those words, you know, like I can sort of understand that.

But where the Hebrew Bible says, these are the words that God spoke to Moses, for example. Are you telling me that you're happy to sort of read that and say, well, maybe they just recorded it wrong? No, no, no, not at all. They recorded it wrong. I'm not a literalist. Sure. It is that this is what they understood God to want of them. And I think that as a people who lived in a very different universe from the universe we live in, what they understood God to want of them is not at all what we always understand. God to want of us. And so it's not as though, oh my God, I got it wrong. It's rather that the Bible, which spans, by the way, some thousand years of writing was a gradual process. And you can even see inside the Bible criticism of the Bible. It's why some of the later writings don't accord with earlier writings because this is a process of coming to grips with an understanding God,

which takes a long time and under duress tends to be less, I think, has less fidelity to what we understand to be God's will than when situations are better. So how do you specifically interpret these passages? I mean, maybe for the sake of the audience and for the sake of our own sort of context here, I can point to some directly. Some of the ones that I've been raising as objections in my debates with Christians, for example, would include Deuteronomy chapter 20 versus 10 onwards. when you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace.

If they accept and open their gates, all of the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and she'll work for you. If they refuse to make peace with you, bearing in mind that peace is forced labor and engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, and the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves, and you may use the plunder the Lord has given you from your enemies. It then continues. However, in the nations that the Lord God has given you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes, completely destroy them. The Hittites, Amarites, Canaanites, so on, as the Lord your God has commanded you.

Otherwise, they'll teach you to follow the detestable things that they do in worshipping their gods and sin against them. I interpret them exactly the way I just said, which is that was how an ancient people in war behaved, and they understood that to be God's will. But do you think God issued this command? I mean, I don't know how many times. I've said several times. No, I think that human beings wrote that book, inspired sometimes by God, sometimes recording exactly what ancient people said. But no, I don't think God spoke. I'm not a literalist. I don't think God spoke those words. I think human beings wrote the Bible. And they often, in the Bible, instantiated what their desires were and projected them onto God, which people have a tendency to do. Okay, so I'm fine with that. And I'm sorry if I make you feel like you're repeating yourself. I'm trying to get to grips with the people. Well, your assumption, I think that the disconnect here is that you represent a tradition, not you, but you're representing a tradition that doesn't allow for the critical study of the Bible that starts with the assumption, which is what I start. with that human beings wrote this book. Yeah, sure.

Okay. And once you start with that assumption, you read the passages very differently. Yeah. Then if you start with the assumption that God wrote this book, now you have to explain why God did those terrible things. I just don't make that assumption. I think what I want to know is your opinion on, I mean, you said that this is people sort of investing their own motivations and ideas into the words of God.

The people, and maybe we just don't know, but the people who did write these words down, the people who did sort of commit these words so traditional to paper eventually. Do you think they were at least honestly attempting to say this is what we actually think God said? Or do you think that it was more an attempt to represent their own ideas? I mean, I can't know for sure, but I think that they were. I think that this is what they really believed God wanted them to do. And part of the reason that I believe that is because we see it, that same sort of belief persists today. Sure.

that people really believe what God wants of me is to destroy these people and to take what they have because it should be mine. So I think that that's a very powerful and enduring human desire. The difference in part is that, again, that the Bible, it still exists and that we see it laid out so clearly. the reason that the Bible is the Bible is because right next to such objectionable passages our passage is not only of great moral beauty but of these kind of transcendent principles that we have absorbed so much that we can criticize the Bible based on the Bible's own principles so people attempting to record what they think God might have said, but really probably just imparting their own values and ideas into the words of God.

I suppose the question that people really want answered when they find this in Scripture, people who are troubled by this, is like, well, however this did end up in Scripture, whether it was really the word of God or not, is this the kind of thing that God could in principle have said? Because if the answer to that is no, then the people who wrote this down trying to record what God said must have made a mistake. Yes. Oh, I think they clearly. Oh, well, I think a mistake is probably not the word that I would use. If you ask me, is the God that I understand as God, which is already, in some ways, a ridiculous statement to make because to understand God is, you know, I sometimes say to the, to our teens, like when you were two, could you understand a 15 year old? And obviously you can't. And the distance between God and human beings, in my tradition is much greater than that between a two and a 15 year. year old. So when I say what I understand as God, it's kind of silly, but nonetheless, the God as I understand God would never say such a thing. And of course, the people who wrote it, who really

believed they were expressing the highest values that they knew and believed that God had given them those values and that voice, I think they were completely sincere. I find it very hard to believe that people wrote stuff like that and thought, huh, we're going to put one over on the future and tell them God said it, you know. But to be clear, I want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly in all of the instances across the Hebrew Bible where these kinds of issues are, these kinds of commands are issues. We have to address specific issues. Okay, sure, sure.

So it's to, but if you're talking about massacres of innocence, do I believe that that's what God wants of us? No, I don't. Right. And so how would you approach the criticism that people listening to this might then have, that that seems to imply that when they're reading the Hebrew Bible, they need to keep in mind that some of the things that are recorded in there are, or you didn't like the word mistaken, but not really what God said, basically. I completely agree with it. And does that undermine our trust of the Hebrew Bible as a whole? I think, well, if what you need to believe in the Bible is a literal understanding of the Bible, it absolutely undermines it. No question. And this is, by the way, a process that I've seen again and again and again, when people start to study, for example, modern criticism of the Bible, where you start to start. to see literary tropes and that different parts of the Bible use different levels of Hebrew language.

So that, for example, when we were testing the microphones, you started to repeat one of Shakespeare sonnets. And anybody listening could tell, oh, that's not something that he made up. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the same thing happens in the Hebrew Bible. You see levels of different ages of Hebrew. So once that happens, people all of a sudden, there's a sort of shattering effect. Like, oh my God, I thought this was exactly what God said, and now I see it as partly a product of the human, or maybe fully a product of the human aspiration for God, but not what God said.

And then you have to have a different kind of religious approach from the approach of someone whom I'm calling a literalist. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I don't speak Hebrew and so, or read Hebrew, and so when I learned that a lot of the Hebrew Bible does sort of switch, as if you were reading an English text that suddenly switched to speaking in Shakespearean English, you would just be struck by this knowledge that you're reading an amalgamation of texts and authors, but because it all gets translated into one English exome to read, that doesn't come through, which is fascinating. It does seem to me, I mean, the Hebrew Bible, maybe we should spend just a moment spelling out, what it is. I mean, there are words thrown around Hebrew Bible, Tanaka, Pentatechuk, Torah. So the Hebrew Bible is what's called a step canon, by which I mean it has five books, the Torah, and those are considered the most important. Then there are Naveem, which means the prophets, but it actually includes the historical books like Joshua, judges, Samuel, kings,

all of those books, and also the prophets that everyone has, everyone, there's biblical, literally literally has heard of, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, so on, and the 12 minor prophets. And then there are what are called the writings, the Ketuvim. And those are all the other books. There are Daniel, Jonah, Ruth, Esther, on and on, Proverbs, Psalms, Job. And so that's why it's Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim. It's called Tanakh in Hebrew. And the only reason we refer to it is the Hebrew Bible is because that distinguishes it. Jews don't obviously like to call it the Old Testament because that implies there's a new one. Yes, yeah, yeah. But the Hebrew Bible is what Christians would call the Old Testament. Right, exactly. And it's made up of different parts. And I'm interested in

this because I speak a lot about the genre of scripture and the genre of different books within the sort of biblical canon. And so a moment ago when you said, well, look, you know, I'm not a biblical literalist. I don't read this taking every single word as if it came out of God's mouth, but it seems to me that there are different intentions with different genres of different texts. I agree. So for example, when I read the book of Genesis, I think I'm dealing with obvious mythology. That's not an insult. I mean to say it's a genre of text of mythology. When I read something like Exodus, it seems to be more historical. But certainly when there's a part of the textual canon, which you say, you just said it contains the history.

Right. The fact that there's a distinguishably sort of historical set of texts says to me that when you're reading those texts, it would make sense to say, well, in this instance, we should be more literal, at least in the sense of thinking that this is attempting to describe actual history. Because when you say biblical literalism. I think that's true. For example, I wrote a book about David, for example. When you read the book, when you read the story of David and Samuel, it's very close to modern histories. Now, it also, obviously, involves God as a character in that book, but nonetheless, it feels, I agree with you, very different from reading Abraham's story and much closer to what we understand as a biography. Right, sure. Yeah. And so when you say that, when you're reading a book that's more obviously historical, when you say, well, I don't read it as a literalist, what does it mean to read a historical text as a non-literist? Well, there are two, there are, I think, two parts. I'm not sure. sure which one, I'm not sure which would be your follow-up question to this, but I will say if the follow-up question is, if it's a historical text and God speaks, does that give it more

credibility than if it's a mythological text and God speaks? I would say no. Okay. But if you're asking, is it more likely that it records actual historical events? My answer would be just that. It is more likely. Is it, but are, but, but did, for example, the court historian of David, who wrote the books of Samuel. Was he as exercised as a modern historian about whether, in fact, the dialogue was exactly right? I think probably not. How do you interpret the book of Job?

Job, Job, I mean, I consider it to be probably in the category of myth. I don't know if you wouldn't like that sort of genre delineation. But I mean, it reads to me, most people will be familiar with the story, if not the dialogues that make up the bulk of the middle of sort of this council of this like divine counsel and the accuser comes along identified as Satan. And they sort of have this bet over this guy, Job, this very devout individual who worships God and Satan says, well, you know, he only worships you because you're so good to him. And God essentially over a series of stages gives him the. the ability to just wreck Job's life and his wife dies, kids die, house.

His wife doesn't die. Sorry, kids die. Everything just sort of like gets taken from him and destroyed. And he spends this, the majority of the book, in fact, just like speaking with his friends and they're saying, well, you must have sinned against God or maybe, you know. And eventually God finally gives Job this audience. And instead of explaining why it's happened, instead of, you know, giving him any kind of justification for the behaviors of Satan, he just says, well, who the hell are you? You know, who is this at darkened it's counsel by words without knowledge, you know? And Job is seemingly so terrified by this that he sort of instantly realizes that it was a stupid thing to even ask and repent in dust and ashes.

The irony of this story for me is that the audience is told why this has happened to Job. We're told exactly why this is happening. And yet when Job says, why is this happening, Lord, God says, well, how the hell do you think you could even possibly understand? And yet, as a reader, we're sort of being told what the reason is. And so it seems to me, a lot of atheists read the story as like God sort of toying with Job and being sort of the evil one in the story, the bad guy. And then when Job quite, you know, justifiably asks for a response, God says, well, who the hell are you? So in order to give you a proper answer, I have to make two literary distinctions. One is that most biblical scholars think, modern biblical scholars, think that the prologue and

the epilogue were written after. And the poetry is actually, and the character of Job was a character that was known in the ancient Near East, that is a suffering person who suffers unjustly. And so the Bible takes this character and tries to give the biblical answer. And I think that the biblical answer actually is not exactly the one that is usually assumed, which is, Job, you're an idiot, you can't understand. And the reason I say that in part, it's more complicated, but to put a point on it, God says to Job at a certain point, your friends have not spoken the truth about me as you have. And what's the truth that Job spoke

that they didn't. The truth that Job spoke is, I didn't deserve to suffer. They kept saying, you did, you did, you did. And he kept saying, oh, I didn't. I mean, maybe I did a little bad, but I didn't do this. And then God says, you were right and they were wrong.

And so I think what the Bible is trying to say is, there actually is, according to the human perception of suffering, there is unjust suffering in this world. And although we may not know why, it is true, and we can call it unjust suffering. and God doesn't get to get off the hook for everything because Job was right. He didn't deserve it. Now, for a lot of people, for a lot of religious people, suffering in this world, unjust

suffering, unmanageable suffering, the thought of it is that there's some consolation to be taken from the fact that this is all heading towards some kind of salvation, some kind of afterlife, some kind of enjoyment of God in heaven, where you're sort of compensated, or maybe your suffering because you deserve to suffer because you're a sinner and we live in a fallen world and Jesus is going to come and take that sacrifice for you. What does Judaism offer as a response to the sufferings of the world? First of all, Judaism does actually believe in a world to come. It doesn't elaborate it nearly as much as Christianity does. It just speaks about it in those sort of general terms, in part, I think, because it's very hard to describe

a plausible vision of heaven. You know, in letters from Earth, Mark Twain says, people think that they're going to lie on Greenfields and listen to harp music, and they wouldn't want to do it for five minutes while they're alive, but they think they'll be happy for the rest of eternity doing it after they die. But the, I think that the reason that it, for example, is not really mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, except for one or two slight, like Daniel chapter 12 and one mentioned in Isaiah, is that you really should keep these two things distinct. That is, is there unjust suffering in the world? Yes, there is.

And you should not belittle the suffering by saying, oh, but it's going to be fine. Because that's a diminishment of the human experience of real suffering, and it's too easy. But does Judaism believe that human beings have a spark of God in them that is eternal? Absolutely. And so do I. So I would say both things are true. And my only explanation for why, and it's not, it is hardly adequate. But when people say, why is there unjust suffering in the world, the only worthy explanation that I know of is what's basically called dys teleological suffering, since you were a philosophy major, I'll give you the term. It's suffering for no reason. And that is the only kind of suffering that, enables goodness because if you know that when you're good you'll get rewarded and every time you steal you'll get a disease you'd never steal but your goodness would be purely prudential it would not be moral the only way to be morally good is to not know what's going to happen to you even though you're morally good and so yeah yeah i think that that's why there's unjust suffering

in the world because the world is a great moral drama and that's what we're supposed to be doing It's fascinating for all the time I've spent talking about the problem of evil. I don't think I've heard this response in conversation before. It's not a kind of attempt to justify suffering by saying, like, well, more goods come out of it or, oh, it has to be there for free will or this kind of stuff. It's like a lot of people parody the religious by saying, oh, you're telling me that the only thing stopping you from going and, you know, shooting up a school is the fact that God doesn't want you to. Well, that's terrible. You know, that's terrifying. Does that mean that if I turn you into an atheist, you're going to go and do that?

Like, no, you want to do that anyway, right? And there is this problem as well of there being no such thing as altruism, you know, like, you know, giving some money to the homeless person because you would feel so bad. I mean, if you see a, I often give the example of like a firefighter running into a building to save a child, being sort of interviewed by the news afterwards. And he says, well, I just, you know, I didn't even think about it. I had to do it. You know, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't. And we go, what a hero? But what's he just said?

He said he's done it for his own sake, you know? I couldn't have slept at night if I couldn't do this. Yes, but that's the definition of a good person is somebody whose moral impulses are what motivate them. If you want, I mean, it's impossible to ask of someone to do that which they would, they would by definition, not do. Yeah. It's so interesting the idea that the reason suffering, unnecessary suffering exists is because if it didn't, then people would be secure in the, the consequent. of their actions, and it wouldn't leave room for doing things for their own sake. With the Brunson Skinnerbox, basically.

That's interesting. I mean, I think there's a whole philosophical discourse to be had as to whether that is a preferable world for the one that doesn't have any suffering, but doesn't have that good. I agree with you. There is, but this is the one we got. Yeah, I think that's, it would be interesting to go down, but I'm, I'm, there's still so much more that I want to learn about, about Judaism, and we were talking about the afterlife in general.

And, I mean, I've heard the idea said before that sort of, well, Judaism doesn't really have an afterlife. That sort of develops later on in the New Testament when I'm speaking with Christians, but it seems like you're saying that there is a concept of afterlife, but maybe it's not very well described. It's not well described in the Hebrew Bible. In the Talmud, which is in the time of Jesus and later, a little earlier than Jesus, a little after Jesus and later, it's mentioned on almost every page, constantly mentioned the world to come. So we know that that early Israel was exposed to the idea of the afterlife, because after all, Egypt is like the capital of mummification and pyramids and afterlife. But for some reason, and maybe this is why,

it did not really capture, and that's why it's so scant in the Bible, but by the time, by the time of the Talmud, which is probably 50 BCE and onward, it became fairly fully fully developed. Why do you think it only develops sort of later on in this tradition? I don't know my sort of very uneducated intuition is over time the corporate fate gave way to the individual fate. And if you can think of, it doesn't matter what happens to me as long as the people Israel is okay or survives, then the afterlife isn't so important. But once you think, hey, it really matters what happens to me, then actually the afterlife takes on a whole new significance. You said there were a few instances in the Hebrew Bible where an afterlife is sort of referred to or mentioned. What does it say?

Daniel chapter 12, it says, some will awake to everlasting life. So that's like an explicit, that's the most explicit mention of the afterlife. But Daniel is a later book. Yeah, sure, sure. in your vision of what to expect when somebody dies, I'm interested just in your personal views, because some people have this idea of you die and your soul just sort of eventually ends up in this new place called heaven. Some people imagine that you'll be sort of asleep until some kind of physical resurrection. Do you think this afterlife will be a physical one? Will you have a body?

Is it a spiritual one? Like, what do you expect? I will say, like, because Judaism has an idea of physical resurrection, I like, I like, I like, like, in theory, I like the idea of physical resurrection only because that's a way of saying a body is not a bad thing. And I approve of thinking of bodies as good things as opposed to like repositories of sin. But I find it impossible to believe that actually there'll be physical resour. I just can't wrap my head around it. Although in the Talmud again, it says, you know, if God can make somebody from dust, God can make somebody from the remains of somebody, which makes

sense. Nonetheless, what I would say is, look, I couldn't imagine this world before I came into it. I didn't, you know, eyes and tuna fish and hotel rooms and it's way beyond me. So how could I possibly imagine what another world would be like? Yeah. This is part of my, I mean, science fiction is almost always an extrapolation of what we already know because we by definition can't imagine things we don't know. And and so I, I, when I want to be homiletic about it, which I do from time to time. I quote this parable that opens a book about Jewish mourning, about two twins in a womb. And one of them believes there's a world outside the womb and one doesn't. And the one who believes it says, of course, there's got to be another world. And the one who doesn't says,

we've never known anything else. We've never seen anything else. It says, now imagine that the one who believes it is born. Back in the womb, his sibling is mourning of death. But outside, they're celebrating a earth. And that's what it's like when you die. So do you think it is similarly inappropriate or irrational to mourn when people do die? No, because what you're, for the most part, what you're mourning is your loss of them. I think people are less often mourning the person than they are the loss of the person. Yeah, so I've heard this response before because this comes up as an objection. A lot of people say, you know, oh, well, you think you're an atheist, you don't act like an atheist, you believe in morality, you believe in conscience, you know, you must really believe in God. And my response to that has been to say, well, you mourn when people die. Right. And people do say to me, well, it's because of the separation. But the story I give there is to say, imagine that, you know, a really close friend of yours is moving to Australia or they're sort of going off on a spaceship somewhere. For whatever reason, you know, technology will not permit you to ever contact them again. They're getting on. a boat, they're going off somewhere, and you'll never be able to speak to them again. They're

going to have a whole new life somewhere else, and they wish they could talk to you, but you just can't for some reason. And then they get on that boat, and then you learn that halfway to wherever they were going, the boat sank and they drowned. I think you'd be more upset, even though in both cases you were going to be separated from the same amount of time. It does seem like we do get upset about something to do with death. And if you really believe in an afterlife, it seems like you're perhaps doing so irrationally. So I think it's an interesting thought experiment. I would say in some ways, yes, although I think that part of the reason why you mourn someone who died is because it is an ineradicable separation and one that you can't explain or

understand and and the other reason I think is that you can believe and by the way I have met people who literally don't mourn because of belief in an afterlife like their belief is so strong they really don't mourn someone who dies which I find really um hard hard to believe but it's true um and I think that it is the the mysterious almost the spooky inexplicability of you were here today. That's why people always say, but I just spoke to him yesterday, as though people that you speak to yesterday don't die. There's something uncanny about it that makes it different. I agree from like going to an, and even if there's a life somewhere else, it's still uncanny. It's still hard to believe. And that's one of the reasons why I would have

people come to my office and they would have been married 50 years, 60 years. The person is 90 years old and they say this is so unfair, it's so wrong, and it's because the emotional shock of death is so immense. Talk to me, if you don't mind, about the challenge posed to Jewish theology by the rising of Christianity. Here's a religious tradition that says, look, we have these historical texts, these texts which are really well historically attested, that a man died and rose from the dead and claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, in the face of somebody who says, this is a historically tested

event, you know, if what he was saying was true, then you should accept this man as your your Lord and God. What do you say in the face of those ideas? So, I mean, the, this is, as you can imagine, this has been debated for thousands of years. The principal thing I would say is, look, the Jewish community was there. They met him. They spoke to him. They knew him. Somehow, he didn't make the impression. Like if God's walking on earth, you would think more than 12 people would say, oh my God, that's God's walking on earth.

So I think that Christianity actually has a bigger burden than Judaism. If God literally walked the earth, why didn't the people around him recognize him? I wonder, I don't know how much we can know about, you know, the proportion of people who actually met and interacted with Jesus who believe. Well, you have in the New Testament, the Jews saying, you know, gathered around the cross, and Jesus walked among the Jewish community

and was a Jew and so it seems to me a really difficult unless you want to go the root of the Jews are wicked which many Christians did for a long time precisely to explain this to explain why they wouldn't I think that it's harder for Christians than it is for Jews to explain

how this guy proved to be relatively ineffectual I think that Looking at, for instance, the accounts of the resurrection, I'm often told that what we have is a sort of group of eyewitness testimonies that people claimed to see Jesus after he died. And the people who saw Jesus were quite limited. I mean, Paul seems to suggest that 500 people saw Jesus at one point, but he's appearing to his disciples. And so for the wider community of people, all that they actually had to go on when it comes to the resurrection was the testimony of the people that saw him. They didn't actually get to see Jesus for himself.

No, but they saw Jesus. walk in the world? Was Jesus not special enough for the majority of Jews to see that God is actually walking on earth? And also, even if 500 people, I mean, we don't have that kind of, you know, there's no testimony

in Jewish sources at the time. Which you would think there would be, because after all, there have been other false messiahs in Jewish history, forgive me for calling Jesus a false Messiah, but that's how he's seen in Jewish history. And they were very widespread. And like Shaptaitzvi in the 16th century, 1600s swept across the Jewish world.

And people who met him were immediately impressed and thought, oh my God, this really is the Messiah. So the bottom line is I don't think that Jesus is a theological challenge to the Jewish tradition. When people ask me how Judaism sees Jesus, we see him as a teacher who said some things I agree with, some things I don't agree with. There are lots of reasons to me why Jews didn't accept Jesus as anything more than a gifted teacher and spinner of parables and a committed Jew. And on the idea of things that are morally, let's say that's the sort of historical case

about who Jesus claimed to be, but also talking about his moral teachings. You say there are things that he said you didn't like. Yes. Especially given the fact that you say he's committed Jew, but here he is saying things that you don't like. What are some examples of the things that he didn't? Abandon your father and mother to follow me. I think that that's not a principle that I would adhere to or when he curses a tree. Yeah. I mean, there are some things about Jesus that that I would explain as a Christian the way I explain depredations in the Hebrew Bible, which is this is an ancient person and he has ideas of his time just like they did a thousand years before.

Sort of what I was about to say is that, like, you know, you can point to the character of Jesus and say that, you know, the fig tree didn't have any figs, and so he cursed it and it died. That's very strange. And seemingly out of accord with the character of Jesus or certain things that he says, you know, you'll be forgiven for absolutely anything except blaspheming the Holy Spirit that you'll never be forgiven for. And it's sort of like, whoa, it sends a shiver down your spine.

But, I mean, somebody could just say, as you said of elements of the Hebrew Bible earlier, look, I mean, there are things that people try to. record that they either got wrong or did he didn't actually say and that sort of going on in the in the in the new testament canon as well yes i mean that's i i if a christian wants to make that argument i have no problem with it look i i i am a promoter of christianity in general that is as as a as the creator of the west i think christianity has given enormous benefits to the world but theologically it doesn't i remember when i was in eighth grade we had a i went to a jewish day school and they brought to their credit a Baptist preacher to tell us the theology of, and he told us that we

were all going to hell. He said, look, you're nice boys and girls, but I want you to know that you have to accept Jesus to, which okay. It was good for us to know that that theology existed in the world. I don't think it did us any arm. But I remember saying to him, I thought I was going to try to catch him. So I said to him at the time, is Jesus perfect? And he said, yes. I said, is God perfect? And he said, yes. And I said, it's the Holy Spirit perfect. And he said, yes. And I said, well, by definition, perfection doesn't need anything added to it. So two of the three of them are superfluous. And I still find, like, I understand that the contradiction is built into Christian theology. But for someone looking from the outside, it makes much more sense to have one unitary God than to have a Trinity. And so I don't have a problem thinking of Jesus as just a person. It fits with my theology and it fits also with my, philosophical approach to religion. Judaism has a lot in common with Islam in that respect, in its treatment of the figure of Jesus

and the message of Christianity. I mean, I think Islam will see, well, sees Jesus as a prophet and sees the Gospels as containing important information, just that they've been corrupted, whereas Judaism would say he's sort of religiously irrelevant. Jesus actually, right, exactly, does not play a big, like in my Jewish education, it was just not, he wasn't important. People didn't talk about it.

It was equivalent to Muhammad, which is where there is an important diversion between those two world religions. One of the things that Christianity did was have a sort of debate in its early church about what sort of Jewish practices and Jewish customs needed to remain after Jesus. And so Christians no longer observe the same food laws. They no longer circumcised their children. do you feel like that is a terrible mistake? I mean, how integral do you think that these elements are to Judaism? And we spoke earlier about... It's a terrible mistake if you want to be Jewish.

It's not a terrible mistake if you wish to be Christian. We spoke earlier about how I said, do I need to believe in God to be Jewish? And you said, it sort of depends on who you would. But immediately you said, no. I mean, do I need to be circumcised to be Jewish? If you're born Jewish, you are Jewish, whether you're circumcised or not, but it is a mandate of the tradition to be circumcised. So it's a mandate to be circumcised, but not a mandate to believe in God?

Well, both of them, both of them are mandates of the tradition, but you ask me, could you be Jewish without it? They're both mandates. The first of the Ten Commandments is, I am the Lord of God. So it's pretty much a mandate of the tradition. But if you don't believe in God, then they don't say, you are no longer Jewish. But just to clarify them what we were talking about earlier, if you are a Jew, you should believe in God. I think so. You think so.

I do. Can we talk about circumcision where this comes from? Like what, like, what? All I know is it comes from the Bible, and it was supposed to mark in your flesh the covenant with Abraham and all the generations that followed. And I suppose that it came from like the idea that a mark in the generative organ would be carrying the seed forward and that that's where it came from. But there's not a great, there's not like a go-to, agreed upon explanation of why specific. this action is the way of indicating... Well, it's only...

It's agreed upon only in the sense that it was done to Abraham. Yeah. So that's... I've heard, I mean, a lot of people make this criticism of Judaism, this sort of picture this circumcision as a form of genital mutilation. And a lot of people are very troubled by this. I've seen it sort of debated back and forth. I know Christopher Hitchens made a big song and dance about this too.

I mean, you must understand that criticism. I'm sure he said at one point, and I don't know if this is true, but he said that Maimonides writes that the purpose of circumcision, at least in part, is the dulling of sexual pleasure. Yes. Well, Maimonides, Maimonides was an extraordinarily important and gifted, probably the most important Jewish philosopher and legalist. like many rationalists, because Maimonides was a thoroughgoing rationalist in a medieval age, like many rationalists, Maimonides was not particularly positive about things of the body, despite the fact that he was a doctor. So yes, Maimonides probably did believe that. I don't think he had any evidence to actually say that that was true.

And for thousands of years, it does not seem to have significantly impaired the ability of Jews to reproduce and have children. So I would say if somebody came to me and said, should I circumcise my child and there's not a religious imperative to do it, I would say, look, the World Health Organization says you should, which they do, but I'm not going to tell you you should do it. But as a religious imperative as a Jew, I think it's an important statement to make. I saw a debate once between Christopher Hitchens and somebody representing the Jewish religion. I can't remember who it was. And they're talking about circumcision. And his opponent makes this, this judge. He says, well, you know, it seems perfectly safe and fine, and the only effect that it seems to have on people is increasing their statistical probability of winning a Nobel Prize.

And everyone laughs. And he says, oh, you know, my son cried more at his first haircut than he did it as brisk, right? And they're sort of laughing. And Hitchin says, you know, I find, I don't find the compulsory genital mutilation of children a fit subject for humor in the same way that you do. I mean, imagine if I were to say right now, my daughter cried more at her first haircut than she did when I, cut off a clitoris. What would you think of me to say such a disgusting, evil thing? And then he said, and you've just proved my point. You've proved my point that religion makes morally normal people do and say wicked and evil things. You've just proved my point. And the audience

are up to an applause. What do you make of that exchange? First of all, I think that to call circumcision genital mutilation, like thousands of years of Jews would disagree with you. And there is no evidence that it dulls pleasure unlike a clitorectomy, which Judaism has never practiced and doesn't practice. And I don't, and I think that while it is true that any ideology and everybody bears ideologies, not just religion, any ideology can make people do things, sometimes bad things that they would not do otherwise. I mean, when I had this debate with Hitchens, I would always say, like, Marxism hasn't made people do bad things, fascism hasn't made people do bad things. Anything that someone believes deeply can make you do bad things. I don't think circumcision

is a bad thing. And I think the vast majority of adult men who've been circumcised would agree with me. You understand why that would put off new converts, of course. Of course. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, by the way, that that's, I don't know that that's by design, but I think that there is something to that, which is it is actually an awesome thing in the traditional meaning of that is full of awe to join the Jewish people. We have not had an easy time of it in this world. And it's not something I think that should be done. I welcome converts and I think it's wonderful for Judaism to have converts and they add immeasurably to Jewish life. But I think it should be done soberly and thoughtfully. I must ask you in closing about Christopher Hitchens, the debate that you

had. I was stuck in a customs queue or passport control queue last night for something like an hour and a half. And so I managed to re-listen to at least half of that debate that you had with him. I'd listened to it years ago. I was a big. Oh, I had, I don't know which one. There were like five or six of them. Oh, really? Yes. One of them, by the way, was on the afterlife. He and Sam Harris and Brad Artson, who's another rabbi and I, and this was shortly before he died, we're debating whether there was an afterlife. Yeah. I feel like I've seen everything that Hitchens has ever said as long as it's on YouTube at some point. So I've probably seen that. But I'm talking about there was a one-on-one exchange. It's the one where he has that line about free will and, and gets

that was in Boston. I actually thought that that was his weakest. Yeah, so listening to it back, I was going to say, like, it's, like, famously, he's got this sort of rhetorical charm and he makes people laugh. But if you were to sort of, I've always thought with a lot of Hitchens' debates, if you were to take the arguments that were made on every side, and you had to write them out in sort of syllogistic form, and you weren't allowed to use the same language, you had to translate it into your own words and write the arguments outside by side, he'd lose a lot more of the debates that people think that he did. I wondered, what was your sort of reaction, say maybe like one of the first times you debated him, you must have sort of known what you were getting yourself

in for, but afterwards you sort of finish up. What's running through your head about how it went? I wrote a couple of obituaries after he passed away. First of all, it was in some ways a wonderful experience to debate him. Because as I'm not, I was not immune to his charm and to his humor and offstage, we got along very well. I mean, we got along well on stage too, but offstage got along very well. And I very much enjoyed his company. But I did, on two or three occasions that I remember, I did think that he was, I don't know exactly, the right word, but he was using his charm to mask the fact that he didn't have an argument. And one was clearly on free will, where he said the old line about, I will just choose to have

free will. But that doesn't in any way address the reality that I think without God there's no way to get. I've used this as an example. I made a video once called the Sophistry of Christopher Hitchens. And I sort of did it because Hitchens is so well liked in the community that I come from of sort of atheist YouTube, right? They love the guy. And I thought, let's find three or four examples of where I think, you know, you've got to pay attention here. And you're making this criticism.

Look, on atheism, I mean, do you believe in free will? Where can free will come from? And he says, well, I think we have free will because we have no choice but to have it. And everyone laughs. And then it's sort of like, you know, job done, as if that even comes close to answering the question. But he did get away with doing that quite a lot. And interestingly, I think admits it.

I think at some point immortality, he writes, you know, sacrificing the point for the sake of a cheap joke, which, you know, I'm not above doing. He sort of knew that that's what he was doing some of the time. So, I mean, what was your impression of his sincerity as a debater, given his proneness to do that kind of thing? So there was a degree to which I think Hitchin was born sort of with these rhetorical howitzers, and he decided, oh, I'm going to turn it on this. And then he just did. So I think he had a genuine anger about religion. look, I learned actually later when I read his autobiography that his mother ran away with a priest and they died in a suicide pact. That could turn you against religion. But I don't want to

attribute his anger about religion to psychological factors, but I'm just saying like his personal experience with religion was also not good. And so I thought that to some extent it was for him always an Oxford debate. It was always kind of a field of play. I did not feel some people that I've debated about religion. I felt like they felt their soul was at stake. I don't feel that with Hitchens. I didn't feel that way. I thought if he had lost a point he would just, I got to do better on that one. Like he's having fun. He had fun. It's like a theater. Which did not mean he was insincere, but it meant that he had fun. In some ways when I would see, for example, his debates on Iraq, there was more fervor in that, even

than there was in the religious debates. And I think that he, as long as the person he was arguing with didn't individually annoy or irritate him or say something he thought was stupid, then he was mostly having fun. You had a two-hour-long limousine ride with Christopher Hitchin. once, between debates, where because you were talking about religion publicly, he said we can talk about anything except religion. What did you talk to Christopher Hitchens about two hours, if not religion? So first of all, we talked a lot about scotch. He talked a lot about scotch. And I will tell you that black label is the perfect blended. That's what he told me. He said, blue label is too expensive and red label is not worth drinking. And I remember

also something else. We talked about one or two of the other religious figures. that he had debated, the ones that he was not, that he did not have respect for. Now, I have no idea what he said about me behind my back. I'm just saying that I know what he said about other people behind their back.

And then I pressed him, the one thing that I will talk about, that I pressed him on Israel because I said, look, I understand that you were very anti-Israel in your early, but now that you have seen the ideology because this was,

I mean, his anti-religious stance was a product like Sam Harris of 9-11 in the aftermath. He said, now that you've seen the anti-Western ideology of jihadism, how do you feel about the fact that that's what Israel actually faces, not all the time in every instance, but as a general? And he said to me, I have too many Palestinian friends to revisit that issue. And I understood him to say, and I mean, I know this, like, the most, in some ways, I'm not referring to to that statement in particular, but I said to someone the other day, the most morally corrupting thing in the world is friendship. Like, if you're in government and you have friends, it's very, I saw this at the university too. There were people who took stands because they had friends in the university and they didn't want to hurt them or offend them. And the same thing with government and the same thing in general world. It's like insider stock trading.

Why is it because you're my friend and I don't want to not and you ask me what stock and I don't want to be the jerk who says, I'm sorry I can't tell you. And so I'm not saying it was morally corrupt. That's too strong a term. But I understand that he would say, look, I have really close friends who've really suffered as Palestinians under Israel. And I cannot be seen as somebody who says they're right about something. I just can't do it. And I completely understand and respect that. There are sometimes in life when you have to go against it, which is not easy, but it's very hard.

We know that Christopher Hitchens loved his friends. It's interesting. I mean, that's such a powerful way of putting it. The friendship is the most morally corrupting thing in the world. It's also the most wonderful. But that's the thing. I mean, people see friendship as one of the greatest fruits of morality. I'm sure that GE Moore, the intuitionist, the critic of John Stuart Mill, when trying to land on what are some examples of things which you can just intuitively know to be good without further need for justification, he chose friendship as one of those examples.

And I think that he was right. It is intuitively good. And, I mean, the Talmud says, chevruta omituto, which means friendship or death, literally. Wow. So, but having said that, if you're in a position, of power, the people that, it's not generally the people that you don't care about that end upending you, it's your friends. And so, it's like any, like any other great motive force. Friendship is a force multiplier, like religion. Religion is a force multiplier, which means it can do great good

in the world. It can do great evil. And friendship, too. With friends, you can do great good, but also with friends, when one or another of them wants you to do something you ought not to do, it's really hard to say no. I mean, our crime families are, you know, a good example of this corrupting force of friendship. Friendship poisons everything, right? That was going to be his next book. For those of you don't know, he wrote religion. That was Christopher's book. God is not great how religion poisons everything.

And someone once in front of me called him Chris and he said, do not circumcise my name. So just to tie everything together that we have spoken about. That's amazing. You know, that is a joke that I've made myself without realizing he got there first. It's sort of when it comes to humor in religious debates as an atheist, it's sort of like philosophers and Plato, you think you've come up with something, but Plato's thought of it first. You think you've got a funny quip about religion. Hitchens probably got there first at some point.

And also, I have to say, I mean, in terms of like also, um, since. Sam Harris had a lot of clever turns of phrase and so on. Dawkins, not so much. Dawkins was not, humor was not his, he was more bludgeony. Yeah, he also is maybe not such a fan of small talk. Right, that's all the truth. It's interesting. I mean, people are interested almost from a, from a gossipy perspective of, you know,

what's it like? What are they really like offstage, this kind of thing? It sounds like your experiences, at least with someone like Christopher Hitchens, were brought up to them. So they were wonderful. I mean, first of all, he used to try to get me to drink before our debates and I would say to him, you know, I'm not so, as he was throwing back one scotch after another, I'm not so foolish as to drink. And he would, I remember he said to me in Boston before that debate, he goes, just have some beer. It's like water. And I thought, not for me. It's actually not like water for me. It's like water for you. But, but if you want to know what Hitchens was like at his most Hitchensy, I remember he would never come early. They would say, you know, the debate would be at six and they would say, we want you there by 515. And I, of course, being the good boy, would show up at 515 and he would never

come early because he resented having to stand around when he knew that they weren't going to bring him up on stage until a quarter of six. So I was standing there in the lobby of the hotel, waiting, waiting, waiting at, and at a quarter of six, he shows up with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other and says, hello, darling. And that's what he was like. it was extremely difficult not to like him. You just couldn't. Well, Rabbi Wolpe, thank you so much for your time. I think we've had quite a broad-ranging discussion here. I'll be interested. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah, well, I hope so. And yeah, we're here in Atlanta for a conference. I know you're about to go on stage. What are you talking about today? The crisis of liberalism. And I'm with

Ayan Herseali, which would be very interesting. Well, I hope that goes well for you. I'll try and catch some of it myself if I can. And yeah, thanks for taking the time. Sure. Thank you.