# Video: The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance & End of Days Ethics, Tradition, and Power in Israel June 17, 2024 ![RCPI Book Series Shaul Magid and Mikhael Manekin poster](/sites/g/files/omnuum8216/files/styles/hwp_16_9__480x270/public/rpl/files/rcpi_book_series_shaul_magid_and_mikhael_manekin-no_qr_code.png?h=8bc8a5e2&itok=oDXUukW2) This joint book talk is part of the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Book Series Spring 2024 and will feature “The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance” by Shaul Magid and “End of Days Ethics, Tradition, and Power in Israel” by Mikhael Manekin. “The Necessity of Exile” is a progressive collection of essays on the Jewish relationship to Zionism and exile. Magid invites us to rethink our current moment through religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition. “End of Days” is a meditation on Jewish morality in the age of Israeli Jewish power, and a cri du coeur by an Orthodox Israeli Jew and former combat officer in the IDF. Manekin calls on fellow Israelis to examine the Jewish religious ethical tradition for an alternative to the secular and religious Zionism that sanctifies power, statehood, and sovereignty. Featuring: - Shaul Magid, Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative Affiliate, and Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College - Mikhael Manekin, Religion and Public Life Fellow in Conflict and Peace, and director of the Alliance Fellowship program Moderated by Atalia Omer, T. J. Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding This event took place on February 7, 2024. SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School. SPEAKER 2: The Necessity of Exile-- Essays from a Distance and End of Days Ethics, Tradition, and Power in Israel. February 7, 2024. DIANE MOORE: Welcome to this incredible opportunity for this really rich discussion. I'm so delighted that you're all here. And welcome, our audience online. And again, I want to say thank you for participating in this important series of conversations. So I'm Diane Moore. I'm the Associate Dean of Religion and Public Life here at Harvard Divinity School. And this particular event is sponsored by our Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, which is one of the branches of Religion and Public Life. The RCPI, Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, centralizes an analysis of injustice, violence, and power, and examines how a more capacious understanding of religion can yield fresh insights into contemporary challenges and opportunities for just peace building. The mission statement for Religion and Public Life is to promote the public understanding of religion in service of a just world at peace. So this RCPI initiative falls within that frame and this discussion is very much related to those questions. We're delighted to have this conversation about these two really rich and critically important books with our two authors, Shaul Magid-- I always-- I'm sorry. I keep wanting to call you "Mah-jid" and I know it's Magid, so apologies for that-- and Mikhael Manekin. So both of them are RCPI fellows with us this year. And we're delighted to be able to offer this opportunity to highlight these two important texts. They will be in discussion with our dear friend and beloved colleague Atalia Omer, whom I will introduce. And then Atalia will introduce, more fully, our authors. Atalia Omer is Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She is also TJ Dermot Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peace Building here at Harvard Divinity School and a Senior Fellow in our Conflict and Peace program. Her book, Days of Awe-- Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians, is highly relevant to this conversation today. She also has several other books that I will not delineate here because we won't get to our conversation. But I also encourage you to read her latest book, Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding. And we had a forum on that just two weeks ago here. So please welcome our guests and Professor Omer who will introduce our authors for today. Thank you. ATALIA OMER: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Professor Moore. So the framing for the event today is really to provide an opportunity to think through the books on their own terms but also bring them together in ways that will generate a conversation that will be meaningful for the time, for the moment, in which we are. So Mikhael Manekin is a Religion and Public fellow in Conflict and Peace at the Religion and Public Life Program, RCPI at Harvard Divinity School. And among his many forms of activism, he is the director of the Alliance Fellowship program, an Arab-Jewish political network in Israel. He is also a former director of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli veterans group focused on educating the public about the occupation of Palestinians. And Mikhael is one of the key leaders of a new movement called the Faithful Left, a movement of religious Jews in Israel promoting equality through the language and prisms of the Jewish tradition. So the book is very much coming from this place. And Professor and Rabbi Shaul Magid is a distinguished fellow in Jewish studies at Dartmouth College and also a Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish Studies here at Harvard. He is a public intellectual and an incredibly prolific author on a rich array of topics in Jewish studies. An incomplete lists of his books include Hasidism Incarnate, Hasidism Christianity and the Construction of Modern Judaism that came out with Stanford in 2014. And most recently, before this most recent book-- I think it was most recent, but I have a feeling there was another book in between-- Meir Kahane, the Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical, that came out with Princeton University Press in 2021. And of course, the focus of today's discussion and the voice that Professor Magid will articulate is about the necessity-- the title of the book, The Necessity of Exile, Essays From a Distance, which came out with Ayin Press. And as you know, the book that Mikhael wrote, End of Days Ethics, Tradition, and Power in Israel, is a very, very fresh recent English translation. But the book came out in Hebrew. And I had the privilege of reading it both in Hebrew and English. And it was amazing to see that something did get lost in translation. So I think it will be important to bring that into the conversation. So in terms of the format, we'll start with a brief overview of about five to seven minutes from each. And then I have a few questions with the intentionality behind the questions to facilitate the conversation but also bring out again, as I said, kind of generative motifs that will be applicable for the current moment for questions about Jewish power-- and also Jewish power, Jewish ethics, Jewish politics, and Jewish constructive and peacebuilding-oriented work. So we'll start-- and then we'll open up to Q&A. And I think it will be a very organic conversation. So Shaul, do you want to start with your piece? I mean whatever you feel comfortable. SHAUL MAGID: OK, I was saying to-- I was saying to Yael, Mikhael's wife, yesterday that I think what I would rather happen is that I would talk about his book, and he would talk about my book. But we didn't have any time. It's OK. It's OK. And I say that because I take some responsibility for Mikhael's book because I also-- when I read it in the Hebrew, I had to twist his arm to agree to translate it into English because he didn't want to translate it. He didn't want it to be published in English because he thought that it's really an Israeli story. And he didn't really think that it would reach a diaspora audience. So in order to basically convince him to do this, I agreed to write a foreword where I'd try to situate it, but he will say why he thinks some of it was lost in translation. So I want to just talk for a few minutes about the Necessity of Exile. And one of the things that's interesting between both of our books is that our own positionality really plays a very central role in the book. Mikhael's book starts with a personal story, with a personal anecdote. And the person is really-- kind of exists throughout the book. And that's true with my book as well. I mean, I have a separate chapter, My Tragic Love Affair with Zionism, where it's really an autobiographical chapter of my relationship with and eventually-- or becoming more complicated as time goes on with Zionism. So I wanted to just say a few very, very short things because we'll get a chance to get into it more in the Q&A. And that is, how the book has been somewhat misunderstood in at least a couple of ways. The book is not anti-Israel but it is anti-Zionist. And it's precisely about trying to make a distinction between Zionism as a political ideology and Israel as a nation state. So in some way, I had to come up with a brand with the word so I called it counter-Zionism. And the basic assumption of counter-Zionism is that Zionism, as a political ideology, comes into existence in the 19th century, maybe the late 18th century. And in some way, as all national ideologies, is very complex and very problematic but also drove this project that eventually became the state of Israel. And the assumption of the book is that Zionism has done its work and in all the messy ways that nationalisms do their work. And that it doesn't really provide a good map or template for thinking about the coexistence of a Jewish state that has a significant population of non-Jews. So it's really about trying to rethink the notion of Israel beyond Zionism or after Zionism. And the other distinction that I want to make, and the person that published a very, very generous review of the book in the New York Times kind of missed this point, is the distinction between diaspora and exile. And the book is not about diaspora-sim. The book is about exile. And I begin with an anecdote that in May 1942, there was something called the Biltmore conference where David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann came to New York to try to convince American Zionists to get on board with their status project because American Zionism was not statist at that time. And the American Zionists agreed on one condition, that America would no longer be called galut, exile but golah, diaspora. And Ben-Gurion agreed. He eventually rescinded on that promise. But he eventually-- he did agree to say, OK, America is not exile but diaspora because exile will seem to be a negative pejorative term. And what I'm trying to argue in the book is just the opposite, that I'm trying to reinstate exile as a healthy and crucial positionality in understanding Jewish existence not only for the Jews that live in the diaspora but for the Jews that live in the state of Israel as well. Because the problem of ending exile, the problem of forgetting exile, is that the problem of thinking that history has been fulfilled, the problem of thinking that the Jewish question has been answered. Very, very easily maybe inevitably but even if not inevitably very easily slides into a certain kind of ethnonational chauvinism, which is I think where Israel is mired today. And the notion of exile as a more humbling position of this is not the end, the not yet, history has not been fulfilled, does two things. First of all, it keeps alive the possibility of a better future. And it also allows those Jews who are living in the land of Israel in the state of it, which is now the state of Israel, to rethink their own responsibility. And here is where it kind of dovetails with Mikhael's book, to rethink their own responsibility, vis-a-vis the people that they live with, without thinking that they are part of some kind of redemptive messianic vision on the one hand or rejecting the messianic idea altogether on the other. And I think that Zionism does one of two things. Either it argues for the fulfillment of the messianic idea, or it argues for the erasure of the messianic idea and I think both of those are mistaken. And the implementation of exile as a positionality within the existence of Jewish life in the diaspora and in Israel holds the potential for a certain sense of humility, on the one hand, that also keeps alive the possibility of creating something better. So that's what I try to do in the book, and I hope you find it helpful. So I'll stop here. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: Yeah, so thank you. And before I talk about the lost in translation, I will say that the book is excellently translated by a good friend and activist and anti-occupation activist, Maya Rosen. But the question of translation, I think, is going to be a lot of our conversation here in general. Because in terms of the themes that Shaul writes about in his book, I think I'm writing from a very similar, let's call it theological, and political outlook. But from a perspective of somebody whose home is in Israel, I've had the tremendous fortune over the last two decades to be involved in anti-occupation activism that's been my sort of profession for the last 20 years. There's a guy here who was one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, and he roped me in along with some other people. And I've had the really good fortune of being involved in that struggle while living as an Israeli, raising my kids in Israel. And to make it perhaps more challenging in the perspective of our conversation, living within a-- let's call it religious Zionist community, in the sense that I send my kids to religious Zionist education. I pray in a synagogue that is religious Zionist. So structurally, formerly, formally I belong to a community that I am theologically and politically increasingly opposed to. And the book is really an attempt to try to explain myself-- first and foremost to myself and to my kids, but try to explain the political and theological tradition that I belong to and A, try to figure out what happened to it, meaning what happened to the religious political perspective which viewed moderacy, empathy, compassion, sort of a general I would say hesitancy, and skepticism of violence, maybe not pacifism but skepticism of violence, which perhaps was associated with my grandparents or great grandparents generations of Jews. What happened that today when we close our eyes and we imagine a religious person in Israel, we imagine the opposite virtues. And we would imagine somebody who is really the voice of aggression. Many times increasingly in recent months, voices of vengeance. So what happened in this time period that we're living in that that tradition was lost? And is it even possible to reconstruct that tradition in a political perspective in a time where Jews are living in Israel, and we have the type of power and privileges that we have? So those are really the questions that I'm trying to wrestle with. And I would say I'm both trying to understand that within religious communities in Israel but also with left communities in Israel, which tend to be at least self-perceived themselves as very secular or nonpracticing religious. So that sort of in-between point where on one hand, you are viewed as a-- let's call it an anomaly, within the religious community, but also viewed as an anomaly within the left activist world is what I'm trying to write about. I would say that what I come up with is in a sense a form-- I very much agree with what Shaul said about exile, definitely in the theological sense. The book is primarily about-- or parts of it are primarily about the fact that I don't view Israel as the beginning of redemption, which is maybe I'll say something about translation. The book in Hebrew is called Atchalta, which means really the beginning of redemption or the dawn of redemption. And it's translated to English as end of days. I find that-- first of all, the minute we thought of that, I said, we definitely need to do it and not explain. I find it fascinating that the dawn of redemption and end of days are the same phrase-- meaning the same thing. In terms of how we define the beginning of redemption, it's just that I felt that, in the American context, if I call it the dawn of redemption, the irony wouldn't be-- the irony would pass over the American audience. And I felt end of days maybe is a bit more apt. Back to the theme of exile, in that sense, the theological perspective is that all Jews are living in exile, including in the land of Israel, until the redemption comes. And the redemption is not a political one in the sense that, in the Zionist sense, that we will take away or we will take power and construct our own redemption but rather the redemption is one that we pray to and have a dialogue with God about. So in that sense, I think there is very much a connection between the theories and the thoughts in both books. What increasingly becomes relevant for me-- and maybe I'll end off with this, at least beginning this-- is that the question of how a Jewish state should behave is one which I'm not really interested in the book. I think that the minute that you ask that question, you really disconnect yourself from the ability to ask what's more important for me, which is how a Jewish individual should behave or how a community should behave. And that's why this book isn't a Zionist book, or a non-Zionist book, or an anti-Zionist book, or a post-Zionist book. It's just not really that focused on that question. The question that's interesting for me is, how should a Jew behave in any context? And in the given situation, in Israel, how should one behave in a context where not only do we have an incredible amount of power and privilege-- which to not mean that we're not vulnerable, of course, we are, as any human being is-- but we do have incredible amount of power and privilege? But also a lot of the words that I find significant to my religious world are already being used in the secular world. So you end up living a type of double life in which words mean one thing to you and another thing to the state. And how do you have that conversation is really my focus. Maybe I will say lastly about that, the book is constructed as a virtue ethics book. That's the language which I'm trying to-- a Jewish virtue ethics book is a language which I'm trying to reconnect with from a ethical moral perspective. There's a tremendous amount of Jewish literature, primarily in the Middle Ages but not only about what are the virtues of, for lack of a better word, good Jew? And what are those vices? And my attempt is to try to have a conversation with those virtues in the current political sense. So maybe that's a good beginning. ATALIA OMER: Great. So I'm actually going to invite you now to, in many respects, reflect on one another's book on the tensions that emerge because the books are not saying the same things. And again, it does relate to the different positionalities. So in rereading the books, I identified differences in how you approach questions of home, exile, and diaspora, Jewish power, and Zionism. So I want to invite you to reflect on how you understand the convergences and divergences in your approaches. Does the tension between the positions relate to Shaul's counter-Zionist position? And perhaps you want to unpack a little bit more. Counter-Zionism how is it different or the same than anti-Zionism? So a counter-Zionist position that offers kind of sites of reclaiming exile from Zionist erasures and negations. And Mikhael, your effort to invest religious ethics in political realities in the land without abrogating the Zionist frame. So if you can reflect on maybe tensions, convergences, divergences, and it does go to the issue of the positionalities. Yeah. SHAUL MAGID: I think I'll start. I think that there are certainly interesting overlaps with the book, but I think there are also some differences. And so the counter-Zionism position that I suggest is one whereby-- people say to me, oh, if it's anti-Zionist, it's anti-Israel. And I try to disabuse them of that. That's not what I'm saying. It's also not, for example-- I mean, the book does engage with Judith Butler and Daniel Boyarin a great deal. And I have a lot of respect for both of them and for their positions-- for the cosmopolitan position of Judith Butler and for the diasporic nationalism of Boyarin. But mine is really a different project because I am assuming the existence of the state of Israel as it-- because it exists on some level. And people will say, well, does Israel, have a right to exist? And Israel has as much of a right to exist as any country has a right to exist. I don't think any countries have a right to exist. So I'm not a nationalist. I think nations are brutal violent places. And that's the world we're living in right now. Maybe it won't be the world where we'll always going to live in, but that's just-- I don't think it's any worse or better than any other nation. I do think, though, that to Mikhael's point, I think that-- and this is one of the things that I talked about in my 972 review of his book that-- ATALIA OMER: The Hebrew version. SHAUL MAGID: The Hebrew version, right. That it really is engaging the question of power. And not only the power of the-- power of the collective. And I I know back-- I'm old enough to know that back in the '70s and early '80s, that was the very big question. David Hartman, Yitz Greenberg, people were all asking that question. This is the challenge. There's a fascinating video or audio of Rav Soloveitchik in the '60s asking that question. What will Jews do with power? Can they actually move from the place of powerlessness to power to maintain the ethics of Mikhael's grandfather, who is kind of the ghost that's hovering around the entire book? That was a conversation that I was very much a part of in the '80s. I think to some extent, the answer to that is no, that Israel has not succeeded in using power in an ethical way. Not the only one that hasn't, but it hasn't. So I'm not sure that that's really the relevant question anymore. And I think what stands between Mikhael and I on this question is that Mikhael is saying, can we get back to-- because I think Mikhail's book is a Zionist book in some way. Can we get back to a different kind of Zionism that his grandfather would be proud of, that his grandfather would identify with? In a certain sense, it's a diasporic Zionism because the ethics of his grandfather, not having known his grandfather, but the way it's depicted in the book is a diasporic Jewish positionality about the relationship to the other. I suppose my question or I should say my suggestion is that the problem may be not what kind of Zionism. The problem may be Zionism itself. And that that's the reason why, in my view, in some sense, I feel like Israel is banging its head against the wall. It's trying. In some way it's trying. Oslo was trying. There are real attempts within the Zionist project to get to this moral ethical place. And it seems to always slip into this kind of chauvinistic model. And what I'm suggesting is that chauvinism is not an aberration. It's not an aberration. It may be what the thing actually is. And if that's the case, is there a way of thinking otherwise about what it would be to coexist? I use as an example-- it's a kind of egregious example I admit-- but I use the example of manifest destiny from the mid-19th century, which Joseph O'Sullivan developed this idea of manifest destiny, which was a justification for the westward movement to the Oregon territory. It was a horrible policy. It committed genocide against Native Americans and all of that. But I use that example because ideology-- because it's really only very, very, very reactionary, right wing nationalists that still have this idea of manifest destiny, that America has dropped that ideology, and that ideologies and the things that ideologies produce are not identical. They're not identical. Ideologies can become obsolete. And new ideologies can emerge given the realities on the ground. And so there is a kind of trying to put a square peg in a round hole to some degree. And I think that's where Mikhael and I maybe differ because I think he's still-- I think his book is more optimistic in some way than mine, that we can find that Zionism of his grandfather. We can find that ethical moral place that somehow got swept up with the realities of history and the pain of marginalization, and the catastrophe of the Shoah, and all of those things somehow we can still kind of get back to something that you would be proud of and that he would be proud of. And I'm just not so sure that's possible. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: Great. I think maybe it would be helpful for me, in the context of this conversation, before I talk about ideologies, rather talk about what I want, like on the ground, and then what language we can talk about ideologically after that because I think so much of the conversation, particularly in national contexts and very much in the context of Zionism, a lot of people use those words and mean very different things. And then there's very little conversation about what people actually want, but the conversation is rather about the ideology surrounding that. And I think it's helpful even as an exercise to talk about what actually happens on the ground and then say, well, that could be Zionism. That could be not Zionism. What does it really matter as long as we're forwarding X or forwarding Y? So I'll do this obviously very superficially. But I'll try my best. There are roughly 20 million people living in the land of Israel or the land of Palestine. Roughly half of them are Jews, and roughly half of them are Palestinians. And I am interested. And I am personally very happy about that, meaning I would not-- I don't see that as an obstacle, that what do we need-- what are we going to do? There are other people who are not from our religion, but we need to compromise. Rather, I think that it could potentially be a beautiful understanding of our region in a different time and in a different future. And I would like, in the future, that all of those people would have complete freedom and ownership as a people of that region in whatever context makes most sense for those people. So that has everything to do with personal political rights but also national political rights and also questions of immigration and questions of return. So on a personal level, while I think that in the-- and I'm not much of a nationalist either. What are we going to do? We're living in a nationalist age. And in the nationalist age that we're living in, I think it is my understanding that Jews have a right to national self-determination just like any other people, a political right, not a natural one. But obviously, not in any sense that that can be at the expense of anybody else. So self-determination is very important for me. A majority is not that important to me. Taking away the right of return of others is not very important for me. What is important for me is that I'm able to live in freedom and in prosperity in the region in which I live in exactly the same way as Palestinians are. And that doesn't mean that we have the same histories. And it doesn't necessarily mean that it's fair, from a historical perspective from any way that you view it, but in the context that I'm in living in now. And as I said, I'm an activist, so I'm primarily future oriented. I think that's how activists work. That's what's of interest to me. Now, that sounds perhaps like a moderate democratic position. I think in many sense I see it as a moderate democratic position. Sadly, I think it's considered a relatively radical position in this day and age, I would say, on to two points. One is the question of ownership, not meaning-- there are many-- I'll speak as an Israeli. So on the Israeli side, there are many Israelis who think that what they would call Arab citizens of Israel, I'll say in the '48 perspective, deserve equal rights, but equal rights isn't enough. I think it needs to be equal ownership. So it's not only that Palestinians should get the same check as Jews should get. They should be signing the check in the same way. And so that's one point that's important to stress. And the second is that I don't see this as a compromise, which is another thing you hear many Israelis and Palestinians saying. What are you going to do? We need to compromise about two states, or we need to compromise and give up land. I don't see my desire to have a, for lack of a better term, binational framework as something that I'm giving up on some other idea of an exclusivist. I'm by no means have any exclusive relationship with the state. And I think exclusivism in general is a very problematic position. Now, some people would call that an anti-Zionist position, probably at this point most Zionists. Some people would call that a Zionist position. I imagine many diaspora Palestinians would call that a Zionist position. So I'm aware of the fact that where you position yourself in this conversation has to do with that. But as I've been called a Zionist in this context, I'll be happy to explain where Zionism is actually very helpful and beneficial for me after I said that I'm against any exclusivist nature. So first of all, it's my political community. And I feel that it is not only in the cynical sense, but in the real sense, that there's something very politically problematic about trying to talk to a community and first disassociating yourself from it saying, first of all, I want you to know my political community who I'm trying to convince and trying to have a conversation with, I'm not part of your identity and national ideology. I am beyond that. I am past that. So from an Israeli perspective, and here I think the positionality is actually very important, if I'm trying to have a conversation with my political community, it's important for me to speak in the language of my community. Secondly, in many-- for better or for worse and many times also for better, even if I decide ideologically that I'm not a Zionist from a lived experience, and from my privileges, and from my privileges as a citizen, I'm still very much part of a Zionist framework. And a lot of times this is my conversation with a lot of my non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Israeli friends, that saying you're not a Zionist doesn't mean that you automatically don't have the privileges of any Jew living in the country. From a formal perspective, I'm very much part of the Zionist project. Maybe I want it to lead to a different conclusion than many Zionists want to. But from a formal perspective, no matter what I say, I'm still going to send my children to Zionist education because that's the education that there is in the country. I'm still going to benefit from everything that I benefit from as a Jew living in Israel. So pretending as if I just say that I'm not part of something will mean that I'm not part of something I think isn't a serious personal position. And maybe lastly, also in a positive sense, I benefit from a lot of what Zionism has created. And even though I'm hypercritical and in many times very marginal or marginalized in the way things are now in the country, I speak with my children in Hebrew. I feel comfortable with their teachers, maybe not on politics but on just how they care for my kids. I feel that the project or the state has given a lot to me from a lot of different perspectives. And it's important for me while I'm very critical and while I'm in argument with a lot of that to be thankful for what that project has given me. So while I am at this point probably diametrically opposed to the theology not only of religious Zionism but of Zionism in general, I'm also very thankful for a lot of what it has given me and my family. And that's something which is sometimes hard to wrap one's head around. But that's fine. We're living in a complicated era. And it's important for me to stress that point. And maybe on the last point of that is that what's interesting for me is that in the Israeli context, when the book came out, there was actually very little conversation about the Zionist element of the book. Only when it's translated to English so then the conversation on Zionism comes up. And I think that has a lot to do with viewing Israel as a battle of ideas versus living in Israel as a lived experience. And that's not that one is right and one is wrong. It's just it differs from where you are. ATALIA OMER: Yeah, I think you articulated the subjectivization of that you are a product of and how you navigate it in this context. Shaul, do you want to respond to anything that Mikhael put on the table? SHAUL MAGID: Well, yeah, there's a lot of it. I had something-- Sorry. I had something in particular. But let me just say this. I think that a lot of pushback that we've both been getting, both personally, and social media, and things like that, is because we're trying to break through a particular kind of narrative that has become very, very cemented into certainly the psyche of the American Jewish community. I think Israel is different, and it's always been interesting that the left in Israel has always been far to the left of the American left, the American Jewish left on this particular question. I think one of the things that I'd like to bring up is-- and then I'll give it back to you, Atalia-- is that very early on-- and just as Mikhael is more future oriented, I think my own training makes me more historically oriented. Very early on in the Zionist project, Zionists knew that this was a problem. And they called it the Arab question, which in a certain sense was just the transformation of the Jewish question, which gave birth to Zionism. And so the Jewish question is resolved by the Arab question. And they were very aware of that. And they wrote about that in the aughts and the teens and the 20s. There was a lot of conversation not only on the left. And what ended up happening, from my perspective, is Zionism went from being a Jewish national movement to being an emergency. After Hitler comes to power in '33, after Europe starts to collapse. And that very relevant question of the Arab question is put aside because they entered into an emergency situation. How can we save as many Jewish lives as possible as quickly as we can? And the tragedy of the story, from my perspective, is that the Arab question never really came back. I mean, it came back in moments like in Oslo, for example. You start to see that the Arab question really emerges. But it never really is taken as seriously as it was taken in the teens and 20s of the 20th century. And I think that we're living in the aftermath of the erasure of the Arab question as a fundamental challenge to the entire Zionist project. ATALIA OMER: Yeah, and this actually leads me-- it's a perfect segue to the second question, big question that I prepared, and then we'll open up. And so I want to name the fact, I'm very aware we are sitting here, three Jews, three Israeli Jews really. Also you, Shaul. And so the absences are very clear. And the conversation has been about Jewish politics and ethics and the realities of Jewish power and domination. And there are no Palestinians physically on this panel, but obviously, Palestinian experiences and realities are very much at the center of this conversation, and interrogation, and grappling, and atonement. And so I want to invite you to talk about how, from your perspective, how reclaiming and reimagining Jewish ethics and meanings-- what does it mean to be Jewish? What's the role of Palestinian history as Palestinian experience the realities of Zionism? What's the role of the moral demands of Palestinians in your process of reclaiming, reimagining the future orientation? I mean, part of it Mikhael, you want to reclaim your grandfather's Jewish ethics but in a different context, context of Jewish power within a Zionist frame. As you said, we kind of establish that. So what does it mean? And I actually-- as Shaul was talking, I was reflecting on 1923, the Iron Wall, Jabotinsky talking about the very basic of at least naming it. Not looking at the land as empty, but naming that the nature of the relationship is of power and domination. So I wanted to put it on the table, name what kind of conversation we are having and bring those other kind of relational aspects to the foreground. SHAUL MAGID: Yeah. Sorry. I'll be very quick. Just two things, last week I went to see Rashid Khalidi. I know some of you also were there. And he gave a very interesting reading of the Iron Wall. And he said that Jabotinsky who was really kind of the patriarch of the Israeli I guess right wing, one would say, it's not the religious right but the right wing of Likud. He said that Jabotinsky was absolutely right in the Iron Wall when he said to his Israeli or, at that point, not yet Israeli readers, the Arabs will rebel against us because that's what people that are subjugated do. And this is the thesis of the Iron Wall therefore we have to create an iron wall to prevent that but that people who are subjugated will eventually rebel. And I wanted to couple that with something that Yosef Weitz, who was the founder of the JNF, the Jewish National Fund, that's right-- Lifelong Zionist, basically created this whole agricultural world in Palestine. In his diary, at the end of his life, he said something that was very, very striking. He became very disillusioned, by the way, in the 1950s. But at the end of his life, he writes in his diary, the Arabs will never forgive us for what we've done to them. It's fascinating. ATALIA OMER: But he was also the architect of the, quote unquote, "transfer policy." SHAUL MAGID: Of course, that was the irony, right? He was the architect of the transfer policy, and yet he writes this in his diary just the same way that Jabotinsky was the architect of a very, very militant reactionary position and yet really recognized. And I bring that up as a response to your question because I think that something that Mikhael does in his book and I think people on the Israeli left are doing more than people on the American Jewish left is recognizing the truth of both of those statements of Jabotinsky's statement and of Weitz's statement, that the Palestinian narrative is a real narrative. And it's a narrative that needs to be paid attention to. And it's a narrative that really speaks to a Jewish question, the Jewish question of your grandfather. ATALIA OMER: That was created in Europe. SHAUL MAGID: That was created in Europe and then gets translated back. But the unfolding of the project itself, that question somehow became erased, forgotten, justified, invalidated through a course of in part Palestinian resistance, violent resistance, that emerges in various stages-- from the First Intifada to the Second Intifada to October 7 and everything in between and everything before. But that doesn't mean that the narrative isn't a narrative, and it's something that needs to be paid attention to. And without the recognition of that narrative, any real lasting sustained solution is impossible, from my perspective. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: Yeah, so a couple of thoughts on that. First, I will say that the last chapter of my book is a monologue, which is perhaps a weird thing to do from a Jewish ethical perspective, historically. But the last chapter of my book is a monologue of a Palestinian partner, a political partner and good friend of mine. His name is Samer Swaid. It's important for him to talk about and it was important for me purposely to talk about the fact that he's not a Muslim Palestinian. He's a Druze Palestinian but uses the language of indigeneity very much in his perspective. And for me, it was important not only because it's important as one is constructing an ethic, a counter ethic or an ethic, to understand what people are viewing you from a distance or beyond that point. But also because I think the-- if I want to understand, I'm very much not romantic about the marginalized and the oppressed even if my grandfather, in the context of this conversation, was one or perhaps specifically because my grandfather was marginalized and oppressed, I don't have some sort of romanticism of returning to that position of being oppressed and being marginalized. That being said, if I want to understand his marginalization, I think we have a way to access that by people who are marginalized by us. And it was very important for me to see how the community, the political community, that the larger political community that I belong to both tries to access that perspective of past marginalization but also marginalizes currently. And hearing how Samer speaks about both being marginalized by the Jewish experience in Israel but also his deep love and connection to the Druze diaspora around the world is something which is very-- sounded to me very, very similar to the Jewish experience. And I thought that was for me a way to explain to the people that I have a conversation with about what it means to be hegemonic and marginalized or what it means to be an oppressor and oppressed in various degrees. Maybe if we're already quoting around Iron Walls, and now I feel responsibility to the Zionist project to quote Zionists who I like. So Ami Ayalon who is-- may all past Mapainikim be like Ami Ayalon-- he's a former-- a lot of things. But also former head of the Secret Service. And one of the, I think, most humanistic voices coming from that world. Also regarding Gaza now, one of the few and important voices coming from that world talking about the importance to both end what's happening now in Gaza but also to lead this into full freedom and equality for all. Wrote a book a couple of years ago and within it wrote that what the Israelis haven't understood regarding the Iron Wall is that while it might have been necessary, to some extent in the past, the Arab world has accepted Israel since at least 2001, 2002, with the first, the Saudi Initiative and then the ratification of that by most of the Arab world but has put a provision to that which is that Palestine needs to be a state. And instead of understanding and recognizing that there is no need for an Iron Wall anymore, Israel has yet to understand that it has to pay prices to be a democracy. But that ship could have sailed years and years ago. And I say that now both because up until now, we've been having understandably a conversation. And it is important to recognize that there is a terrible, terrible tragedy unfolding in Israel, Gaza, Palestine, as we speak. And we're having a conversation in that context but also because that lack of understanding that many of my people that we can actually be in a democratic scenario but what that would entail is having is not being exclusivist in our control of the region is something which is very pressing. So it wasn't directly connected to the question you asked, the Samer thing was. But I think it is important to recognize that in that sense, the inability of Israel to-- and this I think very much connects to a lot of what Shaul writes about in his book, the inability to say, well, we don't need a JNF anymore. We don't need a Jewish agency anymore. We don't need all of these structures, which perhaps might have been relevant in the past, is something which is also holding back the ability of Israel to actually achieve its own interests and goals, which is to normalize itself in the region. ATALIA OMER: Mikhael, before we turn to the audience, do you want to say a few words about the Faithful Left, the movement you are a part of and how it emerged and so forth? MIKHAEL MANEKIN: So yeah, I kind of got-- I mean, on a personal level, I'll say this anecdotally, I got tired of organizing protests and then having somebody come to the protest seeing me and saying, it's so nice to see somebody like you here as if I'm a guest in my own community, even if it might be their first time there at a protest ever. I think if you actually go to anti-occupation activism in the West Bank, there's actually a lot of people who come from various communities. But there's a high proportion of people who come from religious backgrounds for a lot of different reasons. So that's on the anecdotal. On the more maybe depressing, I think we are increasingly seeing as Jews who are opposed to ethnic supremacy for religious reasons. I grew up in a religious-- I grew up very happily in a religiously committed and very left home. But religiously committed and very left people tend to send their kids to right wing institutions that's how I was treated. And that's how I treat my kids. But when I was growing up, the project was a greater land of Israel and a necessary byproduct was ethnic supremacy. And at this point, ethnic supremacy is the product of religious Zionism. And that increasing frustration and tragedy and as it becomes more and more-- as religious Zionism becomes more and more obscene, and violent, and aggressive, it becomes increasingly-- it became increasingly clear to me and other activist friends that there needs to be a religious political response to that. So the Faithful Left was formed exactly a year ago after the election. It started with a conference. People kept on saying, oh, all five of you will come. 700 people showed up. There's a conference in two weeks as well. And there's also a book coming out in two weeks or three weeks of religious left responses to the war. I think in many senses it might be pushing the left forward on this thing, which I'd be happy to hear more voices like that coming from the Israeli left at this point with all the complexities involved. But the Faithful Left is really an attempt to create a stream within Jewish thought and tradition, which is opposed to ethnic supremacy but also has a problem with economic inequality, gender inequality, other issues. Maybe one more thing to say about that it's not only or maybe even not primarily people coming from religious Zionist backgrounds. There are a lot of people who are coming there from Haredi or ultra-Orthodox backgrounds and from Mizrahim and \[INAUDIBLE\] communities. So the voices there tend to be different than perhaps the liberal religious voices of the past. ATALIA OMER: Great. OK, so let's open up. See what questions are generated for you. AUDIENCE: I'll just continue. Yes, hi. My name is Yael, Mizrahi or no. Thank you, Shaul. I'll just continue on what you were just saying, though because I'm curious you obviously position yourself outside of religious Zionist theology and politics, at least. You mentioned it a few times. You have issues. So beyond the Faithful Left, which is very important and super interesting, I'm more curious about your book. And I've seen it used in more traditional religious Zionist circles as a way to express a new strand of religious Zionism. Did you write this in mind that you would like to create conversations within religious Zionism? Or is this for people who are outside looking in? And have you had success with that? And would you still call yourself a religious Zionist? Sorry, that was-- SHAUL MAGID: \[INAUDIBLE\] MIKHAEL MANEKIN: I don't know. I mean, can I answer-- I would answer-- I don't put much thought perhaps-- like the bad cynical answer would be it depends on the donor. But the more serious answer would be that I am living within-- you know what, I don't know. Is that an OK answer? But I should explain why. It's becoming increasingly difficult to position ourselves at the margins of this community. I say that with great sadness. A lot of the teachers-- it's always just comfortable to talk about kids because that always points to the structural. Maybe I'll add there are four education systems in Israel. Right, they're completely segregated. There is a Arab education system, which is run by-- not by Arabs. It's run-- I mean, it's overseen by the state. There's an ultra-Orthodox education system, which is state funded but private, which is irrelevant to the life that I live because I'm interested in knowledge from outside of my community. Then there's a secular Zionist education system. And then there's a religious Zionist education system. And when you have kids who are three, you have to choose who you are. You have to be one of those four options. And that's really who you are or who till your kids graduate and have those four options the option, which is still closest-- which will still make my children feel least odd is the religious Zionist option. That being said, a lot of the teachers of my kids have voted for Ben-Gvir in the last elections. And when they find out, my kids' friends find out that the kids are on the left, they'll say like, what, like Gantz? Like Benny Gantz? That left? And then it's really hard to try to even explain the position that we come from. So formally, structurally, just like I'm not much of a nationalist but living in a nationalist time, within Israel, I'm a pretty bad religious Zionist but living within a religious Zionist space. But as I said before, that mandates of me to also be loving to that community. And I can't send my children to a school and not have great love for the people who are spending their time. Usually, in the Israeli context, teachers from middle-class, lower-middle class background who are spending their time trying to make my kids good people. And I can't come and just talk about what a terrible theology they subscribe to. I need to have some sort of dynamic which also loves the people who care for my children. So that's the longer answer to I don't know. I will say that it's becoming increasingly difficult over the last year to say that I'm in the margin of that community. And I'm also very not romantic about that community or very not optimistic about the community being able to reform itself so long as there is occupation. Maybe in one day, God willing, when they will end the occupation and Palestinians will have a right of return and all of that will be great. There will be a religious Zionist stream, which is more humanistic. But I'm aware that so long as we are positioned in the way that we're positioned, religious Zionism will just continue doing Zionism religiously, which is in this sense a negative thing. ATALIA OMER: OK, so-- AUDIENCE: I'll give you the mic. Introduce yourself. AUDIENCE: My name is Jeffrey Lewis. I have nothing to do with Harvard. But I'm very interested in what you had to say and what you've written about. Shaul, my question is really to Mikhael, but I was really fascinated by your-- I was really fascinated when you said that the left in Israel is far to the left of the American Jewish left. It's a longer conversation. Mikhael, I wanted you to round out what you started to talk about, which is navigating two different communities. I mean, you live in a community in which you are at odds with the vast majority of the community, politically. And then you go to the secular anti-occupation groups who are secular and and in-- MIKHAEL MANEKIN: Self-perceived, I don't know. AUDIENCE: --well, and in some ways actively hostile to religious and to religion for reasons that may be legitimate. But I'm just curious how you navigate both sides. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: I think it's more of a temperament question than anything else. I'm a happy guy, and I navigate it well. I've had-- I don't view my political position even though-- I mean, myself, Dotan, and other people in this room, I'm sure we've had a background of being, let's say, more confrontational situations. And I've been harassed by settlers and maybe arrested a bunch of times. But it's a pretty comfortable experience being an Israeli Jew in Israel. I don't view myself as much of a dissident. I go home thank God to a place of safety. There are some things which are a bit uncomfortable about being a political activist. But mostly, I'm just very happy that I have the opportunity to be in that position. I think our role is to have a conversation and to educate. And if that's the role, then we also need to listen. And we also need to do it usually sort of amicably, I think is the word. But I don't view it as much of a burden, in that sense. And I also think that there's something very important about not feeling completely at home. It's also a very Jewish concept of maybe not only exile and diaspora but the idea of gerut, the idea of just not feeling completely comfortable where you are is sort of a very strong ethical tradition. And I think there's a lot to that to saying I'm not exactly 100% comfortable where I am is a good healthy place to be. ATALIA OMER: It's also important to note that with respect to the left, it's often has been understood in Israel in a misnomer because the opposition to the occupation and with occupation of the territories of '67 was often an Ashkenazi project and not connected to what Mikhael is also doing in terms of your activism to other more left activism, labor, issues of Arab Jews, Mizrahis, Ethiopians, all those communities that their struggles, in many respects, should intersect with Palestinian struggles. I mean, analytically, at least. So the fact that-- I mean, when you call yourself left, it's connected to other left. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: Yeah, when I say left, I mean a hesitancy of nationalism as a hesitancy of more things, more like accumulation of wealth and accumulation of power. And there's also parts of the Ashkenazi left, which I like very much, and they're also my allies. But there are, of course, other parts as well. So yeah. ATALIA OMER: Yeah, and actually here I want to invite Shaul in because you've done so much work on the American Jewish landscape because part of the exercise that we went through to differentiate, to highlight the convergences and divergences between the hermeneutical work that you are both doing in different kind of positionalities with different interlocutors. I mean, often the American Jewish left that is anti-occupation is also very centrally involved in other kinds of struggles that are very deeply and locally US located, Black Lives Matter. And of course, it's also transnational and global. But we need to understand the situatedness of American Jewish actors. And part of the exercise is really to highlight the divergences that it's not we're not talking about one Jewish struggle. SHAUL MAGID: Yeah, and it's true. I mean, the difference is there's obvious difference. The Israeli Jewish left is part of a majority culture that feels responsibility and wants to engage the minority culture, whereas the Jewish left in America is the minority culture that's trying to be a part of a majority culture. And that majority culture has been increasingly-- and I'm not talking about over the last decade, but over the last 50 years-- increasingly antagonistic toward the Zionist project that many people on the American Jewish left field a part of. A lot of that came out around the women's march. A lot of that came out around the dyke march in Chicago where Zionists is becoming a litmus test for being a part of the progressive left. And this is happening post October 7. Also, and there is a connection. And we talked about this a little bit in a class recently and something that I was doing yesterday. There is a connection between the Black Lives Matter and the pro-Palestinian solidarity movement. And it's not reducible to antisemitism There's something else going on. And I think the challenge of the American Jewish left is being able to navigate a very difficult passage of being committed to the progressive issues that are part of the American Jewish left and also maintain an engagement with the Israel-Palestine, even if that engagement is complicated, even if that engagement is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, I think that for a lot of people in the American Jewish left to basically have to repudiate any relationship with Israel or Zionism to be admitted, that becomes the ticket of admission. That doesn't start with Black Lives Matter. That starts after the new politics conference in 1967, three months after the Six-Day War where somehow Israel was seen to be in the protocols of the new politics conference, was seen to be a colonialist occupying power. This is literally three months after June 1967. So it's a long-- there's a long story to it. So it's a very different-- I'm just saying it's a very different set of challenges that the American Jewish left has to navigate. ATALIA OMER: Yeah, it's important to illuminate because of the reductive way in which any kind of argument about Zionism and antisemitism are deployed in the current moment SHAUL MAGID: Yeah. ATALIA OMER: So let's see other questions. Maybe in the back over there. AUDIENCE: Jacob \[INAUDIBLE\]. Thanks so much for your comments in these books. I received this discussion as a fairly bleak portrait of the ability of these ideas to take hold in Israel. And I believe in the power of ideals, but ideas have their moment. Their moments are created by context. And I'm curious what will be the context and how can we, in exile, in the diaspora, as Jews in the diaspora, help create the context for some of these powerful ideas to take root? ATALIA OMER: Use the power of your tax money. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: You want to go for it? SHAUL MAGID: You can take another question. ATALIA OMER: Yeah, OK. AUDIENCE: A question for Mikhael. I'm wondering if you feel like there's been any effort to push you out of the religious Zionist community and also if you yourself feel like you have any red lines that at which point you wouldn't be able to be part of it? ATALIA OMER: \[INAUDIBLE\] SHAUL MAGID: Yeah. AUDIENCE: My name is Judith Gurevich. I have a very silly question. Where is Jewish guilt in Israel? Because we grew up with Jewish guilt, and I always wondered if in Israel it's something that has to be erased for life to start again. So I'm really curious to know because Larry David and all that, Jewish guilt is part of our lives. And so how does it work in Israel? SHAUL MAGID: Jewish guilt is bad. The lack of Jewish guilt is bad. And I think we're seeing both sides of it. AUDIENCE: But it's more like in the context of Israel and a broader discourse. It's about entitlement. SHAUL MAGID: Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, to take root, it's fascinating question. And I think that there are two things going on right now. There is a war happening where people are dying. And there's a narrative war happening about who owns the story. And that narrative war is happening in America on two different planes. It's happening within the American Jewish community, and it's happening in the American progressive community. And I think that people that are on the progressive Jewish left yet still remain engaged with Israel-Palestine intellectually, emotionally, existentially, are really caught between these two planes of a narrative. On the one hand, being banished from, excised from the American Jewish conversation, being the Un-Jews, as Gil Troy and Natan Sharansky noted in their Tablet article, or from the, as I said, before the American progressive community, which is saying you have any relationship to Zionism, you have any engagement with this, you're not invited because that's a colonialist project that's killing people and so on and so forth. So in a certain sense, so how does that-- it's a small besieged community, but interestingly-- I'll end with this. And give it to Mikhael-- I mean, I'm almost afraid to say it, but what the war has done has actually brought the progressive Jewish left to life. I mean, the numbers of organizations that have just this exponentially grown out of this horrible war, whereas the American progressive, the Jewish progressive left in America was minuscule and was not a part of the conversation. All of these groups have almost come out of the soil. So it's brought something to life. And part of what it's brought to life, I think, is as horrible as all of this is I think that a lot of increasing numbers of young American Jews are coming to the realization this paradigm cannot continue. Something seismic has to change. And I think that's part of the project. Now, Israel, is a very different reality as Mikhael will speak to in a moment because I think that the Israeli left knew this for a long time and is, in a certain sense, reacting. But when you're in a war zone, it's a very different template in terms of what can and can't be said. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: Just to connect to that point, I do think it's still too early to tell, sort of this what's happening with this emergence of a primarily young Jewish left. It's too early to tell because the political relationships which will or will not be formed in the coming months and years, we don't know yet. I would like to hope. And this is a challenge I think structurally, intellectually for a lot of identity reasons. I would like to hope that the relationship of the Jewish left to anti-occupation activism, to Palestinian freedom in general, recognizes that it needs to be mediated through local actors on the ground, in the region, which includes Jewish Israelis. So I think it's too early to be frustrated. If I was to be frustrated, it's that potential skipping over of the Israeli left by and saying we want to just directly work with the Palestinians, which I think is actually sort of mimicking in many senses sort of the birthright problem, which is, by virtue of us being Jews, we don't need the Israelis. We can just directly work with Palestinians. But I think more sort of politically, I think this emergence can be potentially very beneficial if there is ongoing political conversation between Israeli, both Jewish and Palestinian left, Palestinian left in Palestine and in diaspora, and the American Jewish left, meaning that conversation can't skip over actors. And hopefully, it won't. There's very much a difference of perspective. Shaul and I were talking about this briefly before. I just got back from three weeks in Israel. It's very different. Just our positionality, we're here viewing people in a ditch. And people in Israel and Palestine are in a ditch. And when you're in a ditch, you can't see outside of that ditch. And a lot of times-- I won't speak about others. I'll speak about myself. I'm frustrated, let's say, with lack of empathy of Israelis towards Gazans. But it's not necessarily lack of empathy. It's just people who are in a ditch, and they can't see outside of that. So recognizing and understanding how different physical contexts create different perspectives, we could actually be using that to our mutual benefit and not only judging each other. Israelis are frustrated that Americans don't recognize the ditch. Americans are frustrated that Israelis are in the ditch. But the point is that we're just not seeing things from the same perspective. And I think politically it would be very wise to just understand the perspectives and not just judging. I will say quickly about the red lines. If there are political red lines, they've been crossed years and years ago. I think I've made that abundantly clear. That being said, just to make it more complicated if Ben-Gvir; Smotrich; I know Marzel; Fetterman, who's also attacked me physically; and a whole bunch of other people needed a tenth to pray for a minyan, I'd join. And that is because I don't want politics to dictate that conversation. I'd join any minyan of Jews. That makes me a problematic tribalist. And maybe lastly about guilt, first, I direct you to the Breaking the Silence website. But more significantly, Shaul has this great chapter in the book about critiquing Donniel Hartman's troubled committed and the sort of liberal Zionist in general-- I don't really care. Just show up to the protest. You can feel guilty. You can feel not guilty. You can be happy. You can be frustrated. The question is not what you do. It's what you do. It's less how you feel. If people are going to do like coresistance work with Palestinians because they feel incredibly guilty, that's fine. If they have no sense of guilt, but they think it's the right thing to do, that's great. Just from an activist perspective, I just want people to show up and their personal temperament in that, whatever. Whatever motivates people to do the work, it's fine. They just need to do the work. ATALIA OMER: Mikhael, you talked about the ditch. But the ditch was not just dug after on October 7 and after October 7. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: Yeah, of course. ATALIA OMER: The ditch has been going on for at least 75 years. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: Oh, I'm not saying-- I'm not saying recognizing that needs to withhold judgment. ATALIA OMER: No, no, no, no, no. But with respect to the Israeli Jews not being able to feel empathy or recognize really the humanity of Gazans, that did not-- they didn't feel it strongly for 16 years when Gazans were under siege. And now it's obviously exponentially elevated. But the ditch has been going on for a while. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: In order to push myself on this as well, when I say that about Jewish recognizing the limits of Jewish empathy, that should clearly mean that one needs to recognize the limits of Palestinian empathy. And I'm not talking-- and there's this really frustrating thing where Israelis are being saying like, so what has changed in your mind after October 7? I'm like, what has changed in my mind? We've been warning about this for years. We've like-- ATALIA OMER: The reckoning, right? MIKHAEL MANEKIN: So there's obviously-- there's obviously a context to everything and there's a context-- there's an October 6, as you said, in a seminar that we're in a couple of months ago-- that needs to be-- that needs to be dealt with in any political activist or any viewer of the situation needs to understand. But there's a Jewish saying, which I imagine, is just a human saying which is \[SPEAKING HEBREW\] which is we need to also recognize. It translates to, you don't judge a person in their time of pain. And I'm not saying we shouldn't judge Jews at their time of pain. We shouldn't judge or we should recognize the time of pain of obviously not only of Jews, but also of Palestinians and their, let's call it, limited empathy towards Jewish suffering, so. AUDIENCE: Thank you. My name is Sherry Flashman. I'm not affiliated or associated with the school. I was wondering if you could just expand, Shaul, when you talk about the American Jewish left, who you are talking about. And when you say there's been an explosion of groups or coming of alive, who you're actually referring to? SHAUL MAGID: Well, I could keep it pretty local, actually. There is a a group at the Harvard Divinity School called Jews of Liberation, which was a small group of about-- I don't know, 10 or 11 students. I mean, some of them are here, that has existed for a while. It defines itself as a if I'm getting it right-- a non or anti or-- ATALIA OMER: Anti. Anti. SHAUL MAGID: Zionist group, OK. AUDIENCE: How do you define yourself? SHAUL MAGID: OK, how do you define yourself? Yeah, OK, Fran. Oh, I didn't see. Fran's over there, right. OK. AUDIENCE: Hello. Oh, hello. I'm Francesca Rubinson. I'm one of the coleaders and facilitators of a student organization here at Harvard Divinity that has existed since the fall of 2021 called Jews for Liberation. And we are a creative, pluralistic, warm, political space that is open to anti-Zionist Jews, non-Zionist Jews, and those questioning their relationship to Zionism. SHAUL MAGID: Right, that's the part I missed. AUDIENCE: That's what we are. SHAUL MAGID: Right, and just to add there is also an undergraduate group called Jews for Palestine. And there is a recently founded group in the law school called Tzedek, which basically I think goes according to those. Now those are new. Tzedek is new. It was just formed. So just within this campus, you have three separate groups of young Jews who are defined, as Fran defined them, on this very complicated question. And if you go to other campuses, Columbia, Penn, Cornell, Michigan, Berkeley, you'll find other kinds of things. So there's something that's really kind of emerging out of the ditch on some level. ATALIA OMER: Yeah, but it's been emerging for a while because-- SHAUL MAGID: There's more. I missed the-- ATALIA OMER: Oh, more. AUDIENCE: No, it's OK. AUDIENCE: Time. Oh. AUDIENCE: I got it. SHAUL MAGID: Yeah, yeah, of course. AUDIENCE: \[INAUDIBLE\] to rush, but IfNotNow or-- ATALIA OMER: Yeah, yeah, this is what I wanted to say. SHAUL MAGID: Yeah, yeah. OK, yeah, yeah. AUDIENCE: Oh, I was just going to add I was just going to add that I think there's some informal connections with JVP and with IfNotNow and local groups. But also I think that there's a range of political opinions and positionalities within our group as well. But I just wanted to share that we had 50 folks gathered for a Shabbat dinner in recent weeks. And there were many people there who said they had not had been felt comfortable or had the opportunity to be in a spiritual space of that kind with people who shared some what they felt were very important values to them ever before. So that felt very important. MIKHAEL MANEKIN: Could I just say as I know that there are Israeli leftists in this room, I think we should be viewing this as a tremendous opportunity for dialogue and for growth and not just think about, wait a minute, why are they a bit different from us on this issue? Or why are they a bit frustrating on that issue? Which is usually the conversation-- the dual conversation between this, it's actually a really important step forward. ATALIA OMER: Great activist and good, what can we do? Yeah, I wanted to say that yes, there is kind of a real escalation of Jewish-Palestine solidarity activism and activism across that spectrum that was articulated, including meeting people where they are in the process. But I studied this kind of mobilization. And you can actually trace spikes that are correlated very positively with assaults on Gaza 2008, 2014, 2021. This is not like-- you don't need to be a genius to figure out the relationship between those. SHAUL MAGID: Can I say one thing about this? So I had a Zoom meeting last night of the synagogue that I am the Rabbi of in the summer of about 25 or 30 congregants on this question. And for an older generation, and by that, I'm talking about myself, it's very, very vexing for baby boomer Jews, how can our children and grand-- How can they think how can they do this? How can they think this way? How can they identify this way? How can they affiliate-- It really is so difficult to for them to understand. And the way I explained it is, first of all, younger people-- and this was true of me during the anti-Vietnam war days and as a lot of others-- younger people are much more interested in a certain kind of purity politics that ultimately very often overextends itself. However, as I said to these baby boomers, many of whom were antiwar activists, we actually ended the war. If we had listened to our parents, the war would have gone on for years. So there's something that's accomplished through that overextension. And the other thing that I said, which is really relevant, is that I think-- and I'm talking to an older crowd-- the country Israel that you fell in love with 40 years ago is not the same country anymore. Your kids see a different country. And you can argue about, which is more real and which is more fantastical, but the country that younger students see on their computer screens is not the country from 1970 or 1972 or it's just a different place-- ATALIA OMER: 1948. SHAUL MAGID: 1948. But I'm just saying within the experience of their own lifetime. So when you talk about Israel and when they talk about Israel, you're talking about a different place. Now, it's not categorically different. Obviously, it's the same place. But the reality is a different reality. And there is a serious kind of generation gap and inability to understand. You don't have to agree with the position of Jews for liberation. But you have to realize that this is coming from a deeply invested, committed activist place that is looking at a place that they find to be extremely, extremely problematic. ATALIA OMER: Yeah, I think that a fitting thought to end with, Shaul, you just articulated of yeah, we, you rebelled against the parents, and you ended the war. SHAUL MAGID: Yeah. ATALIA OMER: Yeah, so maybe we'll conclude with that. SPEAKER 2: Sponsor the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Religion and Public Life. 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