The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - My Chat with Josh Hammer, Author of ＂Israel and Civilization＂ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 I'm Dr. Gadsad, author, professor, and advocate for freedom of thought.

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00:01:11.380 Hi, everybody.

00:01:12.220 This is Gadsad for The Sad Truth.

00:01:14.060 Today, I have another wonderful guest, Josh Hammer.

00:01:17.460 How are you doing, sir?

00:01:19.100 It's really great to meet you.

00:01:20.320 I'm a longtime fan.

00:01:21.060 I really appreciate you joining the program.

00:01:22.380 Thank you so much.

00:01:23.240 Oh, my pleasure.

00:01:24.160 So you are, by training a lawyer, I think you're, not that we get into the details of a CV, but your law degree is from University of Chicago.

00:01:34.020 Maybe I'll ask you later if you took a course with Professor Barack Obama.

00:01:38.140 But you're also a columnist, I think, opinion leader, opinion editor at large at Newsweek, and you have your inaugural book that just came out.

00:01:51.300 Let me just get the title right.

00:01:52.780 I don't have the physical copy.

00:01:54.220 Otherwise, I would put it up.

00:01:55.380 I think it's probably at my office.

00:01:57.040 Israel and Civilization, the Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.

00:02:02.840 Anything else we need to add to the bio?

00:02:06.460 Otherwise, let's drill down into your book.

00:02:09.080 I think that works just fine.

00:02:11.080 So there's too many fine details to unpack there.

00:02:14.940 So let's stick to the good stuff here.

00:02:16.300 I think you've got it.

00:02:16.840 I think you got it right.

00:02:17.360 Let me tell you how I, and I'm sorry to say that I only discovered your work and your voice recently.

00:02:24.280 We often go on rides, the entire family, my children, my wife and I.

00:02:30.180 In this case, we're going to get some Peruvian chicken, which we often do.

00:02:34.700 It keeps us thin and trim.

00:02:36.960 And I said, well, you know, what do you want to listen to?

00:02:39.840 I said, well, why don't you put Dave Rubin on?

00:02:41.860 You know, we all know him.

00:02:43.020 We love him.

00:02:43.880 And then here comes Josh Hammer.

00:02:45.480 And I said, oh, you know what?

00:02:46.620 I think I need to hook up with this guy.

00:02:48.340 He seems like he's got his head straight.

00:02:50.640 So thank you, Dave Rubin, for introducing me to the brilliant Josh Hammer.

00:02:55.020 So let's get into the book.

00:02:56.560 Give us a big synopsis, and then we can drill down.

00:02:59.860 All right.

00:03:00.020 So first of all, that's great to hear.

00:03:02.260 Dave's a very good friend.

00:03:03.480 We're both part of the whole South Florida cabal.

00:03:05.780 So, you know, God, you're welcome any time to join us down here on a vacation.

00:03:09.620 We, of course, would love to break bread with you.

00:03:13.360 So the book is called Israel and Civilization, the Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny

00:03:17.760 of the West.

00:03:18.400 The key part for understanding the book is that the word Israel is serving something of

00:03:22.160 a dual function.

00:03:23.240 It is referring to the capitalist state of Israel, of course.

00:03:27.040 On the other hand, it is very much referring to the nation of Israel, the children of Israel.

00:03:31.440 In other words, the Jewish people.

00:03:33.280 And the book, God, was written really in response, not necessarily to October 7th itself, but

00:03:39.360 in response to the reaction to October 7th.

00:03:42.520 Like many people, my jaw just dropped to the floor.

00:03:45.700 What I saw out there, the world had a clear moment there where it saw this stark dichotomy

00:03:50.760 between the 7th century Islamist medieval death cult and the free and flourishing state

00:03:57.760 of Israel.

00:03:58.260 And the world was deeply confused morally and strategically as to who it should side

00:04:03.480 with, this death cult or the children of Israel there.

00:04:06.960 And I decided that as a younger right-of-center voice here in America, especially given a

00:04:12.920 lot of confusion, sadly, even among certain right-of-center pockets on this issue, not just

00:04:17.940 the left-of-center.

00:04:18.760 It was time for someone to basically write the case, not just for the book, for the state

00:04:24.300 of Israel and for U.S.-Israel relations, but really just to defend the Jewish people,

00:04:28.480 to defend Judaism, to defend the original people of the book, the original monotheistic

00:04:33.300 religion, off of which Christianity, of course, ultimately was an offshoot.

00:04:38.200 And ultimately, God, the book argues that Western civilization began at Mount Sinai.

00:04:43.380 I argue that Mount Sinai, which was God's revelation to Moses and the children of Israel, that was

00:04:48.540 the initial moment that we can trace the origins of what today we call Western civilization.

00:04:53.200 I essentially argue that Western civilization is largely synonymous with the Bible and the

00:04:57.920 biblical inheritance.

00:04:58.720 So that would mean Judaism and Christianity there.

00:05:01.780 And the book covers a lot of foreign policy, U.S.-Israel relations.

00:05:04.740 It's all in there.

00:05:05.740 I talk about anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, all of that there.

00:05:09.700 But the book fundamentally is a post-October 7th defense, frankly, of the Jewish people, of

00:05:15.800 Judaism and of our joint biblical inheritance, frankly.

00:05:19.120 Would this have been a book that was simmering in your brain prior to October 7th?

00:05:26.420 Because as I was reading your bio, you used to sort of come from a more reformed background.

00:05:31.900 You've become somewhat more orthodox these days.

00:05:35.000 So is it simply the natural progression of you sort of getting more in touch with your

00:05:41.020 Judaism that led you to write this book, or is it really October 7th happened, you saw

00:05:46.260 the insane reaction that people had to this tragic story, and you said, you know what,

00:05:51.720 let me open up that laptop and start writing?

00:05:54.700 Well, you're very astute, and kudos to you for doing the background.

00:05:57.760 So I have become more observant, more religious in my Judaism over the past 5, 10 years or so.

00:06:03.500 And that definitely is part of it.

00:06:05.320 So my personal narrative is in this book.

00:06:07.900 I very much weave my personal story throughout the book.

00:06:10.640 There's not like one chapter that's dedicated to me.

00:06:13.280 I kind of just intersperse it throughout.

00:06:15.260 I try to do so in a seamless way if possible.

00:06:18.200 But the second to last chapter of the book is called The Maccabean Imperative, and that

00:06:22.820 is kind of my call to the Jewish people.

00:06:25.020 It's really the only chapter of the book that is written specifically for the Jews.

00:06:28.260 Most of the book is written primarily, I would say, for a Christian audience.

00:06:31.280 But that second to last chapter is really written for the Jews.

00:06:34.100 My personal journey does come out there.

00:06:35.920 But no, I decided to write this book purely after October 7th.

00:06:39.780 I'll actually be even a little more honest with you.

00:06:42.420 I was planning on writing a totally different book.

00:06:44.820 In fact, I had my book proposal for a totally different concept basically ready to go, and

00:06:50.020 it was fairly close to hit the submit button.

00:06:53.360 But I was kind of vacillating, prevaricating a little bit there.

00:06:56.440 And my agent basically said to me and said, you know, Josh, you're so invested in this

00:07:02.300 issue of the Jewish state, the Jewish people, the United States, the foreign policy, all

00:07:05.880 these things there.

00:07:07.240 Why don't you change topics?

00:07:08.580 And I kind of paused on it.

00:07:10.560 I mulled it over for a weekend.

00:07:12.020 And I basically said, you know what?

00:07:13.760 You're right.

00:07:14.400 And so that really was how it worked there.

00:07:17.160 But it came really organically.

00:07:19.000 As I think anyone who has read the book or at least read part of it can tell, it really

00:07:22.900 just flow quite naturally for a very simple reason, Gav, which is that is from the heart.

00:07:26.760 It really is from the heart, because that is where the personal journey, the personal

00:07:30.200 narrative comes in there.

00:07:32.460 My wife was born in Israel.

00:07:34.740 It's very personal to me.

00:07:35.980 It's very personal to me.

00:07:36.920 It's very personal to a lot of Jews, obviously.

00:07:38.780 It's very personal to a lot of inheritors and defenders of the West more generally.

00:07:44.140 So it really did flow from the heart.

00:07:45.980 And I'm really happy that I chose this as my first book.

00:07:48.780 Got you.

00:07:49.700 Now, you know, whenever I give lectures on, you know, Jew hatred and so on, I usually break

00:07:55.420 it up or the sources of Jew hatred into three categories.

00:07:59.800 Of course, the academic left, Jews are white colonizers, noble Palestinians, they're people

00:08:05.740 of color who just want peace.

00:08:07.500 And then you've got, you know, the neo, the neo-Nazis sort of, you know, the whites won't

00:08:12.980 replace us.

00:08:14.260 And then you've got the Islamic source of Jew hatred, which, of course, I'm intimately familiar

00:08:19.620 with, given my background from the Middle East growing up in Lebanon and so on.

00:08:23.560 Uh, so first, is there, is there a, in this taxonomy of Jew hatred, is there a fourth group

00:08:30.440 that I'm forgetting or that I cover pretty much the whole swath of Jew haters?

00:08:35.620 That, that is a generally accepted three-headed dichotomy.

00:08:38.540 I think when Barry Weiss wrote her book in 2019 or 2018, whenever she wrote that book, it was,

00:08:43.160 it was a similar three-headed monster, you might say.

00:08:45.620 I, I guess I will add this slight twist.

00:08:48.560 I generally accept that premise.

00:08:49.920 I guess I'll add a very slight twist, which is there are different forms of left of center

00:08:56.900 and right of center antisemitism, right?

00:08:58.840 So left of center antisemitism can basically break down into just, just straight up anti-Zionism.

00:09:05.760 Uh, if you, you basically made the argument that the Jewish state is uniquely responsible

00:09:09.480 for all the world's ills at some point that does become necessarily ipso facto antisemitism.

00:09:14.360 Then you have this kind of woke, oppressor, oppressed, DEI, post-Frankfurt school, 1960s era

00:09:20.820 form of antisemitism.

00:09:22.640 And then on the right as well, I think that there are different strands of antisemitism.

00:09:26.080 So on the, on the one hand, you, you have this, this newly reascending form, and it really breaks

00:09:32.700 my heart as someone who is so passionate about Jewish-Christian relations.

00:09:35.680 I've been adamant about this my entire life.

00:09:38.220 One of my best friends from childhood was a religious Christian.

00:09:40.580 And I, I, I, some of my best friends today are, are devout Christians.

00:09:43.940 I, I, I cherish Jewish-Christian relations.

00:09:46.300 So it breaks my heart that there are some people these days who are saying a lot of antisemitic

00:09:51.080 things in the name of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

00:09:55.160 And look, we, we, we, we can get into that if you want to there, but part of that is really

00:09:59.780 troubling there.

00:10:00.400 These are the people that are basically tweeting out Christ is King, not as an, not as an affirmation

00:10:04.500 of their own faith, which, you know, God bless, that's good for you.

00:10:07.600 I have no objection to that, but they're doing it as a taunt, as a taunt.

00:10:10.480 To the Jewish people.

00:10:11.520 So, so that is, I think, one strand of, of right of center antisemitism.

00:10:15.580 Then there's a different strand that is not coming from a nominally or purportedly Christian

00:10:20.440 starting point.

00:10:21.180 It's coming from a pagan starting point there.

00:10:23.080 This is, this is kind of where the Tate brothers come in, Andrew and Tristan Tate.

00:10:27.160 A lot of these online synonymous accounts, people like Bronze Age perverts that are basically

00:10:32.200 trying to resuscitate a lot of old pagan nostrums.

00:10:35.380 And when you start from a place of, of paganism, that's necessarily opposed to the Bible.

00:10:41.080 I mean, paganism and the Bible, pick one.

00:10:43.400 You can't have both.

00:10:44.100 They are necessarily at odds with one another as anyone who's read the 10 commandments would

00:10:48.940 be, would, would be very familiar with there.

00:10:50.600 So, so that's part of it as well.

00:10:52.980 But the, the, the two strands, unfortunately on, on the right do go hand in hand to an extent

00:10:57.800 there.

00:10:58.080 And really was trying to solve that maybe above all issues, not solve, but try to ameliorate

00:11:03.380 the damage of above all concerns.

00:11:05.300 That really is probably what motivated me to write this book.

00:11:08.220 One of the things that frustrates me the most in, in this, if I can say in this space are

00:11:15.180 the self-hating Jews, right?

00:11:17.000 The ones that I call the wood cricket Jews, right?

00:11:19.780 The Gabor Mate and his son, the Glenn Greenwald, right?

00:11:23.980 Who's a gay man, but who decide, gay Jewish man, who decides that in, in choosing whether

00:11:30.980 to support the Gazan treatment of gay Jews or the Tel Aviv treatment of gay Jews, well,

00:11:37.100 you, you just have to side with Gaza.

00:11:38.900 There's just much more flourishing trajectory for you there.

00:11:41.840 And so those guys really upset me because at least in some maybe perverse way, you can

00:11:48.640 respect the Islamic guy who hates Jews and he's committed to his cause.

00:11:53.440 But when you are Jewish and you are so parasitized, to use the term that I've become well known

00:12:01.720 for, that even upsets me more than, you know, Ahmad writing to me some Jew-hating stuff.

00:12:08.240 Do you share in that animus and what is your explanation for the unique manifestation of

00:12:14.880 the self-hating Jew?

00:12:16.820 Fantastic question.

00:12:18.060 I share your absolute dripping antipathy, disdain, disgust.

00:12:24.480 I have personally debated numerous of these Jews over the years.

00:12:27.700 I did debate with Peter Beinart on Israel-Palestinian conflict.

00:12:32.840 I debated him in 2021.

00:12:34.640 It was during COVID, so it was a Zoom-only debate.

00:12:37.560 But, Gad, I think you'll appreciate this.

00:12:39.020 My opening statement in literally the first 60 seconds of this debate, I told Peter Beinart

00:12:44.480 that he has the exact same stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as Hamas and neo-Nazis themselves.

00:12:50.320 And he seemed pretty rattled.

00:12:51.480 So I think my strategy in that debate worked, which was basically just to come out swinging

00:12:55.360 and then rattle him out of the gate.

00:12:57.000 Similarly, I had debate against Dave Smith at Princeton University just two months ago.

00:13:02.180 This was on February 11th.

00:13:03.760 This debate just happened.

00:13:05.660 Dave Smith has obviously been in the headlines over the past week or so because of his most

00:13:10.180 recent Joe Rogan appearance with Douglas Murray.

00:13:13.020 Dave Smith is a transparently self-hating Jew.

00:13:16.860 I mean, very similar to a Glenn Greenwald.

00:13:20.100 I mean, these people just totally disgust me.

00:13:22.760 But the key thing to remember, Gad, is that these people have existed for almost as long

00:13:26.960 as the Jewish people have existed.

00:13:30.540 There are various ways to unpack that.

00:13:33.840 But one traditional rabbinic teaching here is that during the exodus from Egypt, which

00:13:39.940 we are celebrating now during Passover, but during the exodus from Egypt, there were some

00:13:44.540 non-Jews who basically followed along with the Jews.

00:13:49.160 In Jewish thought, we call that the Erev Rav.

00:13:52.000 And the notion is that it was those people, the Erev Rav, who actually committed the original

00:13:56.240 sin of the golden calf right after Revelation at Mount Sinai.

00:13:59.440 And to this day, when it comes to the self-hating Jews, we think that many of them are descendant

00:14:04.640 from the Erev Rav, who literally followed Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt.

00:14:09.800 So I say all that because this problem has been with us for a very, very, very long time.

00:14:14.380 We all know the stories of the literal capos during World War II, the ones who were collaborationist

00:14:20.880 with the Nazis and their occupiers.

00:14:23.480 I'm not necessarily going to say that everyone who supports a two-state solution, for instance,

00:14:28.160 is a capo.

00:14:28.900 I try to be a little more precise with my words of choice.

00:14:32.360 But yeah, some people are genuinely just outright self-hating Jews.

00:14:36.140 Their Jewish identity means nothing to them, nothing at best.

00:14:40.640 I mean, at worst, they actually just despise the fact that they are Jewish.

00:14:43.680 But it's a problem that has existed for a very long time.

00:14:47.400 It possibly, quite likely, will never go away.

00:14:50.340 On the good side, though, on the good side, though, we're still here.

00:14:53.020 We're still here and we're still kicking butt.

00:14:54.620 So that is why I take solace in the fact that the self-haters are still with us because ultimately

00:14:59.560 they're not going to prevail.

00:15:01.160 Well, I'm glad you mentioned Dave Smith because this was an issue that I wanted to address

00:15:06.480 because I was, I mean, very, very few things surprise me at this stage.

00:15:11.840 And that, you know, I've, I've seen it all.

00:15:15.060 I've been in this, you know, battle of ideas in, in various instantiations of the battle

00:15:21.280 of ideas for many decades.

00:15:23.640 And so you would think that I'm completely inoculated against the possibility of any surprise.

00:15:28.560 But then I was surprised.

00:15:30.540 And let me tell you how.

00:15:31.760 So I posted a maybe 10 minute clip a few days ago.

00:15:35.520 I don't know if you've had a chance to see it.

00:15:37.920 Where actually I mentioned earlier that I discovered you while riding with the rest of the family.

00:15:42.680 So we were heading last week to Ottawa, where I was one of the plenary speakers at a Canada

00:15:49.660 Strong and Free Network event, which is mainly libertarian and conservative Canadians.

00:15:55.480 And, you know, we have a Canadian federal election coming up.

00:15:58.120 And so I was excited to be the plenary speaker.

00:16:00.020 And on our way to Ottawa, I said, OK, well, what should we listen to?

00:16:03.580 So, you know, Douglas Murray is someone that I respect greatly.

00:16:06.880 I love what he does.

00:16:08.720 He's coming on my show next week.

00:16:10.200 He's already been on my show.

00:16:11.380 So his book just dropped.

00:16:13.280 And so I said, OK, well, why don't we listen to his thing with Dave Smith?

00:16:16.120 I didn't know.

00:16:16.780 I wasn't very familiar with Dave Smith.

00:16:18.820 And so the first 45 minutes or so was very much not related to the content of the debate,

00:16:25.540 but rather, you know, why do we have people who know nothing about this speaking?

00:16:29.960 That was Douglas's point.

00:16:31.960 And I said very, very gently, you know, I can be quite, quite punchy and direct.

00:16:36.400 And here it wasn't at all intended to be that.

00:16:38.460 It was I love Douglas Murray.

00:16:40.420 I think he's fantastic.

00:16:42.240 God bless Douglas Murray.

00:16:43.620 I would probably stylistically not have used any appeals to authority or slash credentialism or you haven't you've never been to Gaza.

00:16:54.260 So how could none of those persuasion strategies?

00:16:57.760 I would have used Dave Smith's positions are idiotic because they are idiotic, not because he is a comedian.

00:17:06.380 And that was it.

00:17:07.480 That was the that was the start and end of any stylistic critique I had.

00:17:13.160 But otherwise, I'm I'm the biggest fan of Douglas.

00:17:16.100 If you saw the number of Jews who wrote me unbelievably nasty stuff because I because number one, I dared criticize a champion of the Jews.

00:17:29.220 In this case, Douglas Murray the day before they thought I was the biggest champion of the Jews since the time of King David.

00:17:37.080 But I suddenly became Himmler because I had the audacity of criticizing just one stylistic thing that he did.

00:17:46.280 Number two, I became also Himmler, double Himmler because I wasn't disassociating myself publicly from Joe Rogan, who's a good friend of mine, whose show I've been on many times.

00:17:58.320 Because how could I be friends with someone who grants airspace to these degenerates, meaning the anti-Israel guys?

00:18:06.400 And again, I think both of those arguments that the the Jews are making against me, frankly, are very hurtful and unfair.

00:18:14.280 But they demonstrate that even our fellow Jews, in my view, could be as parasitized by a lack of understanding of freedom of speech and freedom to associate, as I might say about anybody else.

00:18:26.980 Do you agree with me? Or of course, you don't have to agree with me.

00:18:30.340 What are your thoughts on my reaction to the animus I received from Jews?

00:18:35.520 So a few things to unpack there. First of all, Douglas is a friend like it seems like he is for you.

00:18:40.580 I actually interviewed Douglas in Tel Aviv about a year ago. I've known him for years now.

00:18:45.140 He is obviously a great champion, not just of the Jewish people, but of Western civilization as a whole.

00:18:51.140 And I wish his new book nothing but the best.

00:18:53.700 I think his book and my book are in some ways very similar, in some ways a little bit different there.

00:18:57.500 So I'm very happy that that both of them are out.

00:19:00.760 I probably would not necessarily have done stylistically what Douglas did in terms of this appeal to to authority.

00:19:07.980 I think the better tactic to take with someone like Dave Smith and query whether or not I did this myself when I debated David Princeton University is basically just to say that he doesn't know what the heck he's talking about.

00:19:19.240 And that doesn't necessarily matter whether you have a degree from this place or you visited there.

00:19:24.320 You just don't know what you're talking about.

00:19:25.780 So I'll give an example.

00:19:27.320 When I was debating Dave at Princeton in February, he was trying to make the argument that there has been a genocide in Gaza.

00:19:34.780 Now, you mentioned at the outset, Gad, that I'm a lawyer.

00:19:36.860 So I know some definitions about what genocide is and what it is not.

00:19:41.120 So I start talking about international law.

00:19:43.440 I'm citing statistics of combatant to civilian death ratios with citations to John Spencer at the West Point, the leading authority on urban warfare.

00:19:50.960 Oh, he's coming on my show next week also.

00:19:53.100 He's amazing.

00:19:54.440 You're going to love him.

00:19:55.320 He's absolutely fantastic.

00:19:56.740 So anyway, so I'm rallying off law and statistics there.

00:19:59.560 And Dave Smith's response to me is like, but look at it.

00:20:02.500 It's a bunch of rubble.

00:20:03.800 And I'm like, that's not an argument.

00:20:06.620 That's literally not an argument there.

00:20:08.640 I mean, at another point in my debate with Smith, I got him to admit that he could not – I kid you not.

00:20:14.440 He was unable to choose who he trusted more as a human being between Bibi Netanyahu on the one hand and Osama bin Laden on the other hand there.

00:20:24.300 He actually – he professed agnosticism.

00:20:27.420 He was unsure who he thought was more trustworthy.

00:20:30.800 So to me, that's probably the better tactic to take with Dave Smith.

00:20:34.560 But, I mean, Douglas is obviously brilliant there.

00:20:36.480 I will say in Douglas's defense, I think he was able to show to Joe Rogan's audience – and I've never met Joe Rogan.

00:20:44.220 I'd love to go on a show, but I've never met the guy.

00:20:46.120 But I do think that it's fair to point out that his guests have veered in a more Israel-skeptical direction.

00:20:52.200 I thought that Douglas certainly was able to land some blows in that respect.

00:20:55.980 And I think, frankly, it took a lot of courage, actually, for Douglas to do that, going into Joe Rogan's actual podcast studio and do that.

00:21:01.720 So I'm very grateful certainly for that.

00:21:04.500 But as far as you personally, I mean, you're obviously a champion of the Jewish people.

00:21:09.520 I mean, no one could possibly look at you and your work and conclude otherwise there.

00:21:13.420 So, I mean, you're the last person really who should be getting any kind of criticism there.

00:21:18.260 Look, ultimately, if we want to refine our arguments even among our friends there, I mean, we're in the battle of ideas.

00:21:23.220 That's essentially what you and I both do for a living and many of our other friends in the space there.

00:21:28.460 And it's important that you come with the facts and that you come with the arguments and you come with the tactics there.

00:21:32.560 So if you think that Douglas maybe didn't do something perfectly and could do something a little bit better next time, that's totally fair game to point that out, I think.

00:21:39.460 And in a sense, I mean, I actually – I wholeheartedly agree with the courage.

00:21:44.420 I mean, the personal – I mean, it takes more courage to criticize Islam than to walk to Joe Rogan's podcast and criticize him.

00:21:52.600 But in a sense, that also takes courage, to your point, which is you're walking into this host's platform and you're kind of wagging the finger at him.

00:22:00.980 And so in a sense, I respected him for that.

00:22:03.420 But then why can't you then grant the same respect for me – not you, I mean, but whomever is criticizing me – but grant me the same respect for saying,

00:22:13.000 look, I love 99.999% of everything that Douglas Murray says, but in my view, maybe that stylistic thing could have been done better.

00:22:21.200 And that's it.

00:22:22.020 We move on.

00:22:22.500 By the way, there are people who write to me who completely support everything I do.

00:22:26.740 They'll say, oh, you know, maybe you shouldn't use the term castrato when somebody gets – when somebody upsets you, right?

00:22:35.700 Because I can – you know, if you've been insulting me for a long time, then I can sort of take – you know, put up my sleeves and I will use spicy language with you,

00:22:45.540 always kind of with a twinkle in my eye.

00:22:47.260 But the fact that Josh might write to me and say, you know what, I wouldn't use the term castrato doesn't suddenly mean that I think that because you said that, Josh, you're now Himmler.

00:22:57.800 And so it amazes me that people aren't able to navigate through these very, very simple issues.

00:23:04.200 But I guess that's what happens when you're feverish.

00:23:07.840 All right.

00:23:08.500 Let's keep going.

00:23:10.360 You want to talk at all about some of your legal stuff, originalism and so on?

00:23:15.660 I very –

00:23:16.200 Well, let me just briefly mention one thing about kind of the Dave Smith kind of Douglas Murray follow-up as well here.

00:23:21.900 So one thing that I just generally don't think is effective in these style of debates is to go ad hominem, is to try to attack the credentials or lack thereof of the individual.

00:23:32.780 Now, you can show the person is just an ignoramus or a fool, doesn't know what they're talking about.

00:23:38.320 That's what I was trying to do with this back and forth about genocide there.

00:23:42.240 But generally speaking – so Dave Smith, as you and I were just discussing, he fits the definition of a self-hating Jew.

00:23:47.940 He is an obvious self-hating Jew.

00:23:50.060 Having said that, when I debate him in Princeton, I mean I'm walking around wearing a kippah.

00:23:55.560 I was going to the Chabad afterwards to have a kosher dinner.

00:23:58.240 I'm not going to say to Dave Smith when's the last time you went to synagogue or lit Shabbat candles.

00:24:03.000 I mean I'm going to lose the audience.

00:24:05.100 That is not an effective line of debate.

00:24:08.300 So I mean look, I mean that's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison to what Douglas did, but it's similar enough.

00:24:14.980 Generally speaking there, expose the fallacy of the argument, but you don't necessarily want to go after the person as an individual for who he is.

00:24:22.740 I – since you're – you know, let's continue with this before we go on to legal stuff.

00:24:29.260 Look, I'm in the business of persuading people, right?

00:24:32.680 And so when someone asks me, hey, why do you use sometimes humor or sarcasm, right?

00:24:37.740 I mean I wear a pink wig to – and someone will write to me and say, oh, but, you know, doesn't that affect your professorial, you know, imprimatur?

00:24:45.920 And I say, absolutely not.

00:24:47.480 First of all, I'm a multifaceted creature.

00:24:49.540 I can use multiple persuasion techniques depending on the audience.

00:24:53.280 Humor is a very powerful tool.

00:24:54.780 But it is perfectly fair to stop and think about when I'm delivering a message, what is the maximally optimal way for me to try to persuade my interlocutor?

00:25:07.040 And the only very restricted point that I was making there is that precisely to your point when you said you might lose members of the audience, and I saw it when I looked at some of the comments, some people got turned off when Douglas came in there and did that.

00:25:21.740 And I don't want to lose those people because his voice is too important, and that's all it was.

00:25:27.840 Okay, I think we've nailed this issue.

00:25:30.900 Let's talk – did your legal training in any way alter the trajectory or shape of how this book was written?

00:25:42.520 In other words, had you not been a lawyer, would there have been different arguments that would have been made that are unique to you being a lawyer?

00:25:50.160 Yeah, great question.

00:25:50.820 So I'm very passionate about the law.

00:25:53.440 I'm very passionate about the United States Constitution above all.

00:25:56.940 I've published numerous pieces of legal scholarship in constitutional law.

00:26:00.580 I still speak at law schools actually to this day.

00:26:04.140 So some of the earlier chapters of this book, Israel and Civilization, are actually heavy on the Anglo-American legal tradition, on the English common law, on the Constitution.

00:26:13.960 And I'm able to talk about that with a certain degree of knowledge and authority.

00:26:19.180 And it's not just the law.

00:26:22.000 I mean, to be clear, it is the law.

00:26:23.140 So I'll give you just one example again.

00:26:24.300 So over the past couple of years, since the lawfare against now President Trump really commenced with Alvin Bragg in New York City back in the spring of 2023, we've heard this refrain from the left over and over and over again.

00:26:35.880 They love to say no one is above the law.

00:26:38.640 Well, OK, I actually agree with that.

00:26:40.320 I don't think the law means what they think it means.

00:26:42.400 But here's the more interesting part.

00:26:45.280 Where do you guys think this notion comes from, this notion that no one is above the law?

00:26:49.140 It's literally from the book of Deuteronomy.

00:26:51.440 That is from the Hebrew Bible.

00:26:53.120 I mean, in fact, back in the late 14th, early 15th century, an old English common lawyer by the name of John Fortescue observed in one of his treatises that it was part of the common law of England that the king is not above the law.

00:27:07.620 And he cited Deuteronomy.

00:27:08.320 He literally cited the Bible for that proposition.

00:27:12.160 So, I mean, all of that is in the book there, and I think I'm able to do so for sure to an extent due to my legal training.

00:27:18.040 But, you know, there's also just basic things about our country, about the United States that I think people today just seem to have forgotten there.

00:27:26.060 So, I mean, something as prosaic as the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, this shining peon to American exceptionalism in our great country there.

00:27:34.240 I mean, look on the outside of the Liberty Bell.

00:27:36.780 I mean, to hear some people say it, you know, you might think that it was a pagan source.

00:27:40.720 No, it's literally the book of Leviticus.

00:27:43.580 The Hebrew Bible is what is quoted there on the outside of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

00:27:48.060 Thou shalt proclaim liberty throughout the land.

00:27:50.480 Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson both wanted the great seal of the United States to be Moses pardoned the Red Sea.

00:27:56.700 I'll actually go even further than that.

00:27:58.800 If you go back and look at the pilgrims crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the Mayflower, believe it or not, they actually had conversations about potentially having a clean divorce, a severance of the English language, and then start speaking Hebrew when they got to the new world in North America.

00:28:15.400 I remember you saying that on Ruben's show, and it surprised me, but go ahead.

00:28:19.700 No, it's really incredible, isn't it?

00:28:22.320 I mean, when you look there, I mean, the captain of the Mayflower spoke over a thousand words of Hebrew.

00:28:29.740 Now, this never advanced beyond conversation.

00:28:32.980 It was not seriously considered there, but this notion of philo-Semitism and specifically of a form of Christianity that is deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible, this really does kind of play a huge role in the founding of America, and that's definitely one of the arguments of my book there.

00:28:50.560 But to kind of go back just briefly to my legal training there, I mean, I remember a guy when I was a first-year law student at the University of Chicago Law School, they basically throw you into the lion's den when it comes to learning the common law.

00:29:02.980 You have the common law classes of contracts, torts, property, and you learn civil procedure, criminal procedure, and so forth there.

00:29:09.840 But there's not really a big emphasis placed in legal education today, at least in the United States, when it comes to first establishing where the common law comes from.

00:29:19.700 They kind of just throw it at you and say, okay, here are these guys in the old white wigs writing about the law back in these dusty chambers in the 1600s, but where is it coming from?

00:29:28.660 Well, it's really coming from the Bible.

00:29:30.580 I mean, these are mostly Christian men who are repeatedly citing Scripture, and in many cases, the Hebrew Bible, and frankly, in some cases, actually just the Talmud itself.

00:29:41.200 I mean, there was one Englishman in the 1600s, a man by the name of John Selden, a brilliant, brilliant English conservative, kind of like a predecessor to Edmund Burke, really, about 150 years before Burke lived.

00:29:54.060 John Selden was a devout Christian.

00:29:55.740 They called him Rabbi Selden because he was a Talmudic expert.

00:29:59.700 He was an expert in Talmudic law, and that kind of affected how he actually wrote about the English common law itself.

00:30:06.700 So, I mean, this is all in the book, but yes, I mean, to an extent to your question, I think part of it really does get back to my legal training, and in many ways, I still think about the law basically every day of my life still.

00:30:16.720 I'm glad that you mentioned Talmudic law, and then I want to stick to the law from an evolutionary perspective.

00:30:23.640 Maybe that will titillate your curiosity, so hopefully I'll remember to come back to that.

00:30:28.520 But one of the things that's been pissing me off recently, whenever I post something on social media regarding, you know, whatever, child brides or something, then there'll be a whole bunch of ridiculous Jew haters that usually it's almost always the same meme.

00:30:43.020 It's sort of a bunch of quotes from various parts of the Talmud where, you know, it says something that's reprehensible, or, you know, you can lay in bed with a two-year-old or whatever it is.

00:30:55.380 I never know if it is true or not, or if it's taken out of context or not.

00:31:00.920 Well, first of all, are you familiar with the types of memes I'm talking about?

00:31:04.520 Have you seen?

00:31:04.880 Of course.

00:31:05.380 Yes.

00:31:06.420 Do you not think that it might be worthwhile for someone, it may not be you, you may not be the right Talmudic scholar, but to sort of, and of course people will ignore it, the Jew haters will ignore the definitive rebuttal.

00:31:18.920 But it seems, so I don't know enough about that particular quote from a particular edict in the Talmud to say that it's BS or not.

00:31:29.320 And therefore, since I am, I have epistemic humility, I know what I know, and I know what I don't know, then I won't traverse that minefield.

00:31:36.700 But it seems to me that these types of memes are so prevalent that someone should take the time to just offer rebuttals to all of these.

00:31:46.160 What are your thoughts on that?

00:31:48.920 It's a great question.

00:31:49.460 I've actually thought about, I've literally thought about this exact question before.

00:31:52.520 So on the one hand, I have personally retweeted or reposted, whatever we're calling it these days, some threads that do exactly this.

00:32:00.140 So there's this one account, this guy lives in New York City, I honestly cannot remember his name.

00:32:05.720 It's not a high volume account, I think he has maybe 3,000 followers or so, but he has done exactly this.

00:32:11.020 He's an Orthodox Jew, he's learned in Talmud, and he tries to systematically debunk some of this.

00:32:16.560 And I'm oftentimes inclined to repost this.

00:32:20.400 On the other hand, I get worried.

00:32:23.280 I get worried about Jews feeling the need to defend the legitimacy of the Talmud.

00:32:29.340 The Talmud is just what, I mean, our tradition says that the Talmud is just the oral Torah.

00:32:33.740 It is just the component of God's revelation to Moses at Mount Sinai that was not actually codified in the Torah.

00:32:39.380 There was an oral component, and the only reason that it gets written down is after the destruction of the Second Temple when it became a literal necessity because the Jews were not living there in the land of Israel anymore there.

00:32:50.280 So I get skittish about that.

00:32:53.440 And traditionally, this has not always ended well, actually.

00:32:56.080 So there was something called the Disputation of Paris, I believe it was in the 13th century.

00:33:01.800 The king of France was not a big fan of the Jews and essentially called for a grand debate between one of the Jews' representatives, one of the great hachamim, one of the great rabbis there in France at that time, and a leading Catholic theologian.

00:33:17.500 And it was rigged, obviously, the debate, and surprise, surprise, the Jews lost.

00:33:21.900 And as a result of that, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of Talmuds and various Jewish holy books that were just ceremoniously burned in the city streets there.

00:33:32.040 So I get a little leery of this looking at the history, but I hear you.

00:33:36.460 It's something that I've thought about myself.

00:33:37.960 I'm very much of two minds on it.

00:33:39.360 I'm a little torn on the question there.

00:33:40.540 But there are some people out there that are doing this, but they're not necessarily the highest volume accounts.

00:33:44.940 Ultimately, God, I'm skeptical that this would do a whole lot of good, to be honest with you, because I think a lot of people that are criticizing the Talmud there, they're not actually – they don't care about what the Talmud says.

00:33:57.280 They're just going for a very cheap shot against the Jews.

00:33:59.520 The Talmud is basically a series of arguments.

00:34:02.360 I mean I've been doing Dafiyomi, which is the daily Talmud learning cycle, for the past five years now.

00:34:07.980 Literally every single page of Talmud are various rabbis very much disagreeing with each other, oftentimes in very heated and personal terms, actually, which is kind of humorous.

00:34:18.120 There's a whole book, by the way, literally a whole book called Talmudic Insults.

00:34:22.940 It's like the best insults from the Talmud there.

00:34:25.280 Now, really, Judaism is not necessarily the biggest –

00:34:27.580 I must come from that tradition.

00:34:29.580 My insults are poetic on social media.

00:34:32.100 Right, so Judaism, say what you will, it's not necessarily the biggest proponent of keeping discourse at all times civil.

00:34:38.720 I mean if you've got to make your point in a heated fashion, then sometimes that is very much called for.

00:34:43.240 But anyway, those are kind of my thoughts on the question there.

00:34:46.140 I'm very much of a split mind on it, but I'm inclined towards thinking that it might do more harm than good, honestly.

00:34:52.680 Well, and I think – so maybe some of my viewers and listeners might be tired of me repeating this example.

00:34:58.780 But about a year ago, I was on a show hosted by a British psychiatrist, and toward the end of the show, he asked me a question that I think no one else has ever asked me,

00:35:09.740 which is of all the years that you've been a behavioral scientist, a professor, what is the singular phenomenon that has most surprised you about the human condition?

00:35:18.520 And so I paused for a second and said, probably the inability to change someone's mind once it is, you know, solidly anchored in its position,

00:35:29.740 which of course is a, you know, it's a pessimistic outlook for someone who exists to hopefully try to change people's minds.

00:35:38.160 Now, to the point of what we're talking about, I think that even if you offered refutations for each of those Talmudic things that the meme puts out,

00:35:47.240 the person who is espousing that position is going to go, la, la, la, I don't want to hear it.

00:35:52.900 So to your point, I don't – I mean, I would still like to have it in my back pocket so that I can pull it out if I need to,

00:36:01.080 knowing full well that you probably are not going to listen to me because you're not an honest interlocutor.

00:36:06.080 Okay, I promised to do evolutionary law.

00:36:09.360 Before I even discuss what it is, can you at all surmise – and forgive me, I hope I'm not putting you on the spot –

00:36:16.520 how would you apply a Darwinian analysis to the law?

00:36:20.320 Can you think of any way?

00:36:22.680 Well, I mean, first time I've been asked this own question, so I'm thinking through this in real time as your student, I suppose.

00:36:30.560 I mean, Darwinian thought is survival of the fittest there.

00:36:34.200 So you have competing legal codes and you see which basically stands the test of time.

00:36:38.100 That would be my best guess.

00:36:39.520 Well, and it's certainly a very good one.

00:36:42.020 I mean, yes, that's great.

00:36:43.780 But the term actually, at least the way I use it, and actually it's in this book right here, which was my first book ever.

00:36:52.060 It was an academic book, so quite technical, titled The Evolutionary Basis of Consumption.

00:36:57.300 And in Chapter 1, I do an evolutionary analysis of Hammurabi's Code.

00:37:03.700 The idea being that many of those edicts, since they stem from Darwinian beings, ultimately point to an evolutionary reality.

00:37:16.040 For example, I don't remember the exact quote in Hammurabi, but, you know, the man goes out to war and then he comes back and his wife is pregnant, whatever,

00:37:26.240 where there is the possibility that there could have been paternity uncertainty.

00:37:30.800 Well, paternity uncertainty is a very, very key driver of many sex differences between men and women, right?

00:37:36.880 There is such a thing as paternity uncertainty.

00:37:39.460 There is no such thing as maternity uncertainty.

00:37:41.700 That's why men are much more unforgiving of cacoldry than women.

00:37:45.540 If a man cheats on a woman, it's only about a 30% chance that this ends the marriage.

00:37:50.460 If a woman cheats on a man around cultures, it almost guarantees the dissolution of the marriage because it is triggering paternity uncertainty.

00:37:59.260 And so evolutionary law is recognizing that fundamental features of legal codes are going to have a vestige of our evolutionary-based human nature.

00:38:12.660 What are your thoughts on that?

00:38:15.600 Fascinating.

00:38:16.200 I didn't know that, by the way, about the competing percentages for divorce falling from adultery from male or female.

00:38:22.620 So that's genuinely interesting.

00:38:25.720 It actually makes a whole lot of sense just kind of thinking it through as kind of just a common sense, just logical observation of human beings account there.

00:38:34.500 Look, I mean, I think, I mean, to kind of connect the dots here, you probably see part of this in the Mosaic Law.

00:38:40.080 I mean, frankly, in the Ten Commandments itself.

00:38:41.860 I mean, the Fifth Commandment is honor your parents, honor your mother and your father there.

00:38:47.300 I mean, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but to me, that seems about as evolutionary as it gets.

00:38:52.040 I mean, these are literally the beings that gave you life.

00:38:54.300 I mean, it naturally follows from a natural perspective, an evolutionary perspective there, that you're going to want to honor those there.

00:39:01.540 You know, Hammurabi's Cope, of course, actually preexisted the Ten Commandments.

00:39:04.500 It was there hundreds of years prior to the Ten Commandments and was deeply influential in its own right there.

00:39:11.920 So, you know, not something I've given a whole lot of thought to there.

00:39:16.100 But, I mean, this is not that different, frankly, than what I think a lot of legal theorists call natural law, which is this idea that the legal code as enacted,

00:39:25.480 or positivist law, or actual positive law, really ought to reflect that which is natural, that which is transcendental there.

00:39:33.280 And, you know, Christianity and Judaism have slightly different approaches to this, what is the natural law, and so forth there.

00:39:39.500 But, you know, even in Judaism, you know, we understand that there are some things in the legal code, in the Bible or Talmud,

00:39:47.440 that are, quote-unquote, reasonable or natural.

00:39:50.720 We actually can distinguish between the commandments that are reasonable or extra reasonable.

00:39:55.900 We call those mishpatim or chukim.

00:39:57.740 There's a whole Talmudic debate, actually, about this, which is differentiating between the commandments,

00:40:02.800 such as honor your mother and father, that are reasonable, or those that might not seem as reasonable,

00:40:08.180 such as the laws of kashru, keeping kosher, and so forth there.

00:40:11.140 So there is this idea of natural evolutionary law in the biblical religions, Christianity and Judaism alike there.

00:40:18.420 And, honestly, I haven't given a whole lot of thought to this, but it's definitely food for thought.

00:40:22.220 I appreciate it.

00:40:22.560 I'll give you one more example, then we move on to the next stop.

00:40:25.280 I'm very much enjoying my chat with you.

00:40:28.560 In The Consuming Instinct, which was a trade book that I wrote for the masses trying to explain evolutionary psychology

00:40:35.420 in understanding human behavior, I have a couple of pages where I discuss,

00:40:41.700 and I only thought of it now because you mentioned kashrut laws, kosher laws, for our viewers who may not understand that term.

00:40:48.560 And I actually argue that you can provide—now, of course, the rabbis don't like this idea

00:40:54.580 because I'm offering a biological explanation for what is supposed to be a divine edict.

00:41:01.440 So, for example, I argue that if you look at some of the prescriptions or edicts against eating certain types of shellfish foods and so on, right?

00:41:13.160 I argue, well, imagine you are now in an environment in the Middle East where the shellfish,

00:41:21.440 whether it is infected with a really deadly pathogen or not, you can't tell it.

00:41:27.860 You can't smell it.

00:41:28.860 You can't—so there is no statistical regularity that would permit for cultural learning to be transmitted from one generation to the next.

00:41:39.420 What happens, Mordechai eats it, he's perfectly fine, Moshe eats it, and he drops dead.

00:41:47.180 Since we can't have any statistical rule to establish when you can eat it or not,

00:41:54.360 suddenly we ascribe it to a godly thing, it makes perfect evolutionary sense.

00:41:59.580 Now, again, I can understand how, from a theological perspective, people don't like this explanation

00:42:04.920 because they'd like to ascribe it to God.

00:42:07.620 But many of these food-related edicts, even an Islamic thing, could be explained as attempts to stop pathogenic infestation.

00:42:17.220 And here's another one.

00:42:19.360 Now, this, I only know it from second source.

00:42:21.880 John Durant, I think, wrote a book called The Paleo Manifesto many years ago,

00:42:26.140 where he argued that out of the 613, you know, codes, mitzvot and so on,

00:42:32.940 something like 20% of them are linked to purification rituals.

00:42:39.100 And that itself explains the fact that in many pandemic realities, Jews had much lesser mortality rates

00:42:52.960 because they were so obsessive about washing and so on,

00:42:56.740 which then would cause the non-Jews to think that they are, you know, part of the devil

00:43:02.480 because how come the rest of us are dropping dead while those asshole Jews are alive and thriving?

00:43:07.860 And so I think there are a whole range of ways by which we could take some of the stuff that I work in,

00:43:14.640 in evolutionary theory, and apply it to all sorts of either legal or religious contexts.

00:43:19.700 This sounds like your next book.

00:43:21.200 I would very much pre-order that book.

00:43:24.020 That sounds fascinating.

00:43:25.440 So, you know, one thing on the purification rituals,

00:43:29.260 it's probably important for the viewers to understand that when Judaism and Jewish law speaks of purity versus impurity,

00:43:36.240 yes, part of it is what it sounds like in the modern connotation, keeping yourself clean.

00:43:42.960 But a lot of it is actually more ritualistic than anything.

00:43:45.600 So, for instance, a woman who is during her menstruation cycle is impure,

00:43:50.400 but there's no moral stigma.

00:43:52.400 There's nothing wrong about that.

00:43:53.460 That's literally who we are as human beings.

00:43:55.780 So part of it, I agree to an extent, is kind of actual hygiene and cleanliness.

00:44:01.500 Part of it is really just more ritualistic.

00:44:04.060 They're ultimately oriented towards trying to separate the profane from the holy,

00:44:08.940 trying to achieve this maximal Jewish idea of collective holiness,

00:44:12.400 which is really kind of the ultimate goal of the Jewish people and their being here on earth.

00:44:18.200 The laws of Khashrude are interesting as well.

00:44:20.840 And I guess here's my take on that.

00:44:23.340 Let's remember that the laws of the Torah, all 613, were not meant to be universal.

00:44:30.900 They were given to a specific people at a specific place in time.

00:44:34.980 Now, there is a concept of universality and universal laws in Jewish thought,

00:44:39.640 but those are the seven laws of Noah, the seven Noahi laws, not the 613 commandments there.

00:44:45.180 And if you look at the seven laws of Noah, which are these universal laws,

00:44:49.600 which I argue in the book should be thought of as the moral minimum that countries around the world should abide by,

00:44:56.200 we might think of that as the closest thing to universally binding natural law.

00:45:00.540 So one of the seven laws there is that you shall not eat a live animal because it is repulsive,

00:45:06.800 it is unholy, it is not fair, it's cruel to the animal, frankly.

00:45:10.540 But the actual detailed laws of Khashrude are not there in the Noahi laws.

00:45:14.960 They're actually really just meant for the Jewish people.

00:45:17.660 So to your point, I mean, maybe at the precise time when these laws were given thousands of years ago there,

00:45:23.880 yeah, I mean, your example about Mordecai has the shellfish, he's fine, Moshe eats it, he drops dead.

00:45:29.240 It genuinely might be for that reason, actually.

00:45:31.960 I mean, I have no objection to that there whatsoever there.

00:45:35.600 You know, I mean, traditional Jewish thought would say the commandments are the commandments just because God said so.

00:45:40.620 But I think it's totally fair to ask, why did he say so?

00:45:43.580 We're not always going to know the answer, but sometimes we might.

00:45:46.660 Right.

00:45:47.720 I know that I alluded earlier to the fact that you went from being more Reformed to Orthodox.

00:45:52.980 Recently, we celebrated our son's bar mitzvah.

00:45:58.160 Mazel tov.

00:45:58.800 Thank you.

00:45:59.340 And, you know, of course, well, of course, some people don't do it, but I put on Tfilin, you know, at the synagogue, and I actually posted that photo, which, of course, many people were very happy about.

00:46:12.360 Other people were very upset about because that proved that I was this disgusting Jew and so on and so forth.

00:46:16.800 But because I was talking about the trajectory of how you went, I actually put on Tfilin for, I think, an 11-year period uninterrupted because of a rabbi that I had met at Cornell.

00:46:31.940 So I did my graduate training at Cornell, and there is a Chabad rabbi there who, you know how those Chabad guys are.

00:46:41.540 They bring in all the Jews and so on.

00:46:43.240 But you know that there's going to be an ask at the end of the trajectory.

00:46:47.480 And so one day I was sitting with him, we still remain very good friends, 30 plus years later.

00:46:54.120 As I was preparing to leave Ithaca, New York, having finished my PhD, he said, you know, God, you have a very Jewish soul.

00:47:00.660 I said, oh, rabbi, I feel like I'm in trouble.

00:47:03.360 Something is coming my way.

00:47:04.760 He goes, you want to do me a favor?

00:47:06.340 I said, go ahead, rabbi, what is it?

00:47:08.420 He said, would you put on Tfilin?

00:47:10.140 Would you promise me that you'll put on Tfilin?

00:47:11.780 And I hadn't put on Tfilin for many, many years since, you know, since my bar mitzvah and so on.

00:47:16.000 And this would have been, I'd be, what, 29, I finished my PhD, something like that.

00:47:22.580 And so for the next 11 or 12 years, uninterrupted, I honored that promise with that rabbi.

00:47:31.980 Rabbi Eli Silverstein, if you're listening to this, it was all due to you.

00:47:36.500 But in any case, the funny ending of that story is that, and I would take Tfilin anywhere I went and so on.

00:47:44.320 I mean, really uninterrupted.

00:47:45.440 And then there was a year when I was at Club Med with my wife.

00:47:50.580 And it's so, Club Med, if you don't know, is a all-you-can-eat place where you pay a lot of money to eat all kinds of good food.

00:47:57.520 And it so happened that Kippur happened during the time of the all-you-can-eat feast.

00:48:04.300 And it was my birthday.

00:48:05.640 And I faced that Herculean bifurcation in the road where do I stay true to my promise, although I didn't promise to do it forever, or do I now break it all?

00:48:17.840 And unfortunately, Club Med broke me because I wasn't willing to do Kippur, not eat, while I paid all this money.

00:48:26.180 And it's my birthday.

00:48:27.260 And I think that sent me down the road of not putting on my Tfilin.

00:48:31.620 That was my story of how I sort of reverted back to putting on Tfilin.

00:48:35.980 Do you have a similar story of what led you from being wherever you were in your Reformed days to becoming a lot more practicing?

00:48:45.500 It's a great question.

00:48:46.740 So this is in the book to an extent as well.

00:48:49.900 It did not happen overnight.

00:48:52.140 I did not kind of have – I mean, to kind of mix metaphors here, I did not have a Saul on the way to Damascus-style moment, right?

00:48:57.720 I did not have like a true kind of singular epiphany, but there were various moments over the years that very much put me in the direction that I am today.

00:49:07.240 So the way that I describe it, Gad, in the book is a lot of people today, Jews and Christians alike, those who grew up in a more religious home, so Orthodox Jews, Evangelical Christians, and so forth there,

00:49:17.860 they oftentimes will arrive at their political conclusions from their religion, which makes sense.

00:49:23.620 I mean, if a religion is the most important thing to you, then you're going to view the civil world, the secular world, and so forth through that lens.

00:49:31.760 I did basically the exact opposite.

00:49:34.680 So I was always the token conservative, like literally going back to when I was in seventh grade.

00:49:39.060 So I was in seventh grade when 9-11 happened.

00:49:42.140 I grew up on the Hudson River north of New York City.

00:49:44.540 I could see the Twin Towers.

00:49:46.440 Like so many of my generation, that was a big moment for me, and I realized that evil exists.

00:49:52.020 And when you realize that evil exists, you necessarily also realize that good exists because how could God create a world where there's only evil but not good?

00:49:59.900 It doesn't make any sense.

00:50:01.000 What would be the purpose of creation?

00:50:03.120 And so once you understand that there is this real empirical and moral dichotomy between good and evil, you're basically a conservative before you know it

00:50:11.220 because you've already rejected the global utopianism of John Lennon's song Imagine and so forth, right?

00:50:16.420 So I was basically a conservative at a very, very young age, and at some point there were various moments where the Jewish element kicked in.

00:50:26.740 So, for instance, my first time to Israel was actually on my Taglit birthright trip.

00:50:30.980 I did it pretty late.

00:50:32.020 I was 20 years old, I guess I was, during college.

00:50:35.300 And I remember standing there in Sderot, on the border between Gaza and Israel, looking out into Gaza.

00:50:43.360 This was only a few years after Hamas took over, and it kind of just hit me.

00:50:47.580 I was like, oh, my God.

00:50:48.900 I mean, I've been a defender for years.

00:50:51.440 At that time, I was largely defending the Bush administration and their policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

00:50:56.980 My views on some of that have changed a little bit over the years.

00:50:59.720 But regardless, it just clicked.

00:51:02.100 I was like, oh, my goodness.

00:51:03.020 I mean, this is the same fight.

00:51:04.280 This is literally the exact same fight.

00:51:05.960 What Israel is doing, this is the exact same thing that I've been defending in high school and college and so forth for years now.

00:51:11.260 But it was really only a few years after that that I started getting deeper into the weeds of conservative political thought.

00:51:17.380 I started reading people like Edmund Burke, maybe above all, people like Roger Scruton.

00:51:22.060 And you start reading some of these great conservatives, and there's really one thing that stands out above all,

00:51:27.660 which is this repeated emphasis on tradition, on this notion that nations, whether nations like the Jewish people or nations in the sense of America, Canada, Britain.

00:51:38.160 Nations only exist at a certain point because of this intergenerational compact, as Emin Burke called it, between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

00:51:46.360 So as I started getting kind of deeper into the weeds of conservative political philosophy, trying to buttress my own thinking on these matters there,

00:51:55.040 at some point it kind of just occurs to you naturally, and you ask, well, this makes sense.

00:51:59.700 And so why am I not doing this?

00:52:01.880 I mean, I come from the Jewish people.

00:52:03.920 I come from the world's oldest continually existing people on the face of the earth today, the tiny nation that gave the world monotheism.

00:52:10.920 So it was kind of that intellectual curiosity that led me to start going to more services and studying with a rabbi here or there.

00:52:17.220 And it was a few years after that that I first started laying to feeling on a daily basis.

00:52:23.240 Kashru came even after that, and then Shabbat even after that.

00:52:26.460 So, I mean, it really was not an overnight thing or anything like that there.

00:52:30.840 Frankly, I still have a ways to go.

00:52:32.740 You know, my wife, my in-laws are Israeli.

00:52:35.820 They speak fluent Hebrew.

00:52:36.780 My Hebrew is terrible.

00:52:38.580 So I really need to improve on that.

00:52:39.920 So I've got a long ways to go, to be honest with you.

00:52:42.160 But I would like to think that I'm on the right path.

00:52:44.920 Do you feel that – so I've often compared proselytizing versus non-proselytizing,

00:52:52.600 which, let's say, Islam would be the perfect manifestation of the former.

00:52:57.520 Judaism would be the perfect manifestation of the latter.

00:53:00.280 I've always said that when it comes to marketing as a marketing problem, Islam is incredibly successful

00:53:05.820 and Judaism is incredibly unsuccessful in that we're still at 15 million, last I checked.

00:53:12.760 Do you think that it would be valuable – and I'm not pretending that you might know the answer to this theologically,

00:53:19.840 but I've always wondered whether we need to relax some of the entries to barrier to join the tribe

00:53:29.480 because I know that a lot of people who might otherwise be, you know, interested in exploring Judaism,

00:53:35.960 once they see that, you know, it is baked into the religion to try to dissuade you,

00:53:41.620 you shouldn't be, you know, converting for ulterior motives and so on,

00:53:45.640 whereas in, let's say, in Islam, you just say the shahada, you proclaim it publicly, and voila, you are Muslim.

00:53:53.640 Do you ever think about that, or do you view it from the other perspective, which is no, you know,

00:53:58.780 the sort of the chosen ones, and therefore that needs to remain pure,

00:54:03.500 and therefore it makes sense for us to have great barriers to entry?

00:54:06.720 Yet another great question. You're very good at this.

00:54:11.780 So I do veer towards the latter and not the former, but I will explain why.

00:54:18.540 So first of all, you know, we discussed earlier how there's this differentiation between the universal laws,

00:54:25.540 the seven laws of Noah, and then the 613 particularist laws for the Jewish people.

00:54:30.080 So the traditional kind of Jewish mentality is, if you are a non-Jew who is only bound by these seven laws,

00:54:36.460 you want to take upon yourself the additional 606, basically, to get to 613 there.

00:54:42.240 You know, I mean, bear in mind that you're taking on a tremendous burden there, right?

00:54:46.160 So, I mean, that's kind of the traditional mentality, as to why it would be initially dissuaded.

00:54:51.680 Now, it should be noted, though, that Judaism does repeatedly,

00:54:56.080 I mean, the Hebrew Bible repeatedly, over and over and over again, welcomes the convert.

00:55:00.860 The translation typically in the Torah is proselytes, but it's referring to converts there.

00:55:07.120 Over and over and over again, I mean, for instance, when the laws of the Sabbath are established there,

00:55:11.900 you are to respect the seventh day and rest on the Sabbath, as will all in your family,

00:55:17.140 all of your animals, your ox, your donkey, and the stranger and the proselyte.

00:55:21.260 So it's the exact same rules there.

00:55:23.120 In the Bible, we see that people come from converted lines.

00:55:28.220 King David, King David comes from a line where his ancestors were actually converts.

00:55:34.300 The book of Ruth, Ruth is a famous example, actually.

00:55:37.820 My people will be your people, and my God will be your God, is the famous line from the book of Ruth.

00:55:43.660 So, I mean, Judaism absolutely welcomes the convert,

00:55:46.280 but it just wants people to make sure they understand exactly what they're signing up for.

00:55:50.200 And ultimately, what they're signing up for, which kind of ties the circle here,

00:55:53.500 what they're signing up for is what the book of Exodus in chapter 19 refers to as being a holy nation and a kingdom of priests.

00:56:01.140 That really is, I'm really kind of mixing metaphors here, but what Aristotle would call the telos,

00:56:06.040 like what is the actual overarching orientation of a legal order?

00:56:10.060 That statement that I just said from Exodus, that's really the telos of the Jewish people.

00:56:15.360 I mean, that's what we're called to do, is to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation trying to be a spark of divinity in this world.

00:56:22.040 At least traditionally speaking, that is how Jewish thought understands the role of the Jewish people.

00:56:26.960 So when you understand that there, I think there's something to be said for making sure the people who want to convert fully understand that what they're signing up for is what they're signing up for there.

00:56:37.940 But I hear you loud and clear.

00:56:39.480 And again, I've had this thought too.

00:56:40.740 I actually have had this thought over the years.

00:56:43.480 You know, it's worth noting that, you know, the Orthodox conversion process obviously is quite stringent.

00:56:48.840 You know, more theologically liberal strands of Judaism aren't necessarily quite as stringent.

00:56:52.760 We can debate whether or not that's a good and a bad thing there.

00:56:55.060 But I think that Orthodox conversion is tough, but it's tough for a very compelling reason, I think.

00:57:00.740 Yeah, no, that makes sense.

00:57:01.840 All right, I want to read the title of the book so that people can go out and get it.

00:57:05.720 And I hopefully want us to end on an optimistic note because it's very easy to go into the quicksand of pessimism.

00:57:13.540 So the book is Israel and Civilization, the Fate of the Jewish People and the Destiny of the West.

00:57:18.960 And I love the artwork on the cover.

00:57:22.040 Really beautiful, very compelling.

00:57:24.360 Can you give us some hope?

00:57:26.600 Is there ever going to be peace in the Middle East?

00:57:30.520 Are we going to find the vaccine against endemic, invariant, inerrant Jew hatred?

00:57:36.420 Give us something to walk away and feel good about ourselves.

00:57:40.220 Okay, so I actually am an optimist by nature, believe it or not.

00:57:44.600 I'm born on Abraham Lincoln's birthday, and Lincoln is my favorite figure in all of American history, and he is kind of the quintessential optimist in American history.

00:57:53.340 Actually, Lincoln is in this book a little bit as well.

00:57:56.640 So there's numerous reasons for optimism.

00:58:01.300 Most concretely, we haven't talked a whole lot about the actual state of Israel itself there.

00:58:05.160 I'm actually deeply optimistic about the state of Israel, the modern Zionism.

00:58:11.980 To me, Israel is actually, geostrategically, is in one of the best places, if not the best place that it has been since the state was formed in 1948.

00:58:20.460 For many, many decades, Israel had existential enemies on all sides trying to kill it, where it was Egypt, it was Jordan, it was Syria, it was the Saudis and the various others in the Arabian Peninsula there.

00:58:33.100 At this point, Israel essentially has one existential enemy, which is the Iranian regime.

00:58:37.800 Now, Turkey could become there.

00:58:39.240 I don't want to whitewash Turkey.

00:58:41.240 A receptype Erdogan's Turkey could become that.

00:58:44.280 And Israel is watching that situation in Syria like a hawk right now, given the Erdogan influence in Damascus.

00:58:49.460 But right now, it really is the proverbial head of a snake, which is the Iranian regime in Tehran and its various proxies.

00:58:56.000 That is Israel's one major issue.

00:58:58.740 And that's – on the one hand, that's scary because Iran is a very scary country.

00:59:03.100 They've demonstrated that repeatedly.

00:59:04.660 But it's also kind of reassuring that there's only one threat.

00:59:07.780 And that point, I think, is only buttress by looking at various signs for optimism within Israeli society itself.

00:59:14.620 Israel has by far the highest birth rates of any Western-style country, by far.

00:59:18.560 And by the way, that's not just religious Jews.

00:59:21.060 Even secular Israelis have a birth rate that is considerably, considerably higher than European countries, North American countries, Australia, New Zealand, you name it there.

00:59:31.260 And the reason for that is because Israel is a very happy country.

00:59:34.340 People are very happy there.

00:59:35.640 It consistently ranks in one of the happiest countries in the world there.

00:59:38.940 Yes, it's frenetic.

00:59:39.920 Yes, it's chaotic.

00:59:40.860 As anyone who's ever visited has gotten this sense there.

00:59:44.100 It can be a little stressful when it comes to parking and checking out the supermarket before Shabbat there.

00:59:49.020 But the country overall is in really, really, really good shape.

00:59:52.420 And that, to me, is a very, very, very, very compelling sign of optimism.

00:59:57.360 From your lips to God's ear.

00:59:59.240 What a pleasure it is to meet you, Josh.

01:00:01.480 Thank you so much for coming on.

01:00:03.140 Come back any time that you feel like it.

01:00:05.580 And I'm really glad that we've connected.

01:00:07.520 Thank you so much.

01:00:08.720 Oh, the pleasure is mine.

01:00:09.580 Thank you so much.

01:00:10.400 Cheers.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - April 17, 2025

My Chat with Josh Hammer, Author of ＂Israel and Civilization＂ (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_821)

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