Speaker 1: Bushkin. Hi, I'm Moe, the producer of Deep Background. You're
Speaker 1: probably wondering why you're hearing from me. Well, Noah woke
Speaker 1: up this morning with laryngitis. Don't worry, he's fine. He
Speaker 1: just lost his voice. Today's episode of Deep Background is
Speaker 1: with Mark Oppenheimer. Mark is a fantastic writer and journalist
Speaker 1: who spent the last few years documenting the recovery of
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Squirrel Hill is a historic Jewish
Speaker 1: neighborhood and was the site of the Tree of Life
Speaker 1: Synagogue shooting in twenty eighteen. Oppenheimer's upcoming book is called
Speaker 1: Squirrel Hill, The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the
Speaker 1: Soul of a Neighborhood, and it comes out next Tuesday,
Speaker 1: October fifth. This episode is a really great one, and
Speaker 1: I know it's close to Noah's hard The interview was
Speaker 1: taped a while back, so I'll let Noah take it
Speaker 1: from here. Mark, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1: I admire all the different kinds of work that you do.
Speaker 1: I think of you as a public intellectual on religion
Speaker 1: and a reporter and a memorist of no mean talents.
Speaker 1: But the thing I really wanted to talk about today
Speaker 1: grew out of my fascination when I heard that in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the October twenty eighteen shooting at the
Speaker 1: Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh,
Speaker 1: that you responded by diving into the life of Squirrel
Speaker 1: Hill and that you're actually in the process of writing
Speaker 1: a book about the Jewish community there and it's healing.
Speaker 1: And I thought, what an extraordinary opportunity to talk to
Speaker 1: a chronicler of contemporary American Jewish religious life about something
Speaker 1: while he's actually doing it in real time. So tell
Speaker 1: me first, what gave you the instinct to get on
Speaker 1: a plane and go to Pittsburgh. Yes, thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on. It's an honor, and I'm a fan of
Speaker 1: the show, so it's great to be in conversation with you,
Speaker 1: and I really admire your work and thank you for
Speaker 1: having me on. My father grew up in Squirrel Hill,
Speaker 1: and so did his father and his grandfather, and my
Speaker 1: family goes back in Pittsburgh into the eighteen forties when
Speaker 1: my great great great grandfather, Wilhelm or William Frank, was
Speaker 1: one of four Jews who got together to a choir
Speaker 1: land for the first cemetery, the first Jewish cemetery in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: And for Jews, you know, one of the first things
Speaker 1: you build in addition to a ritual bath is a cemetery.
Speaker 1: If if you're staying, putting down roots, and you're staying
Speaker 1: in a particular community, you need a burial ground. So
Speaker 1: there were four Jews who in eighteen forty seven acquired
Speaker 1: land for the first Jewish burial ground in Pittsburgh. And
Speaker 1: as I say, my great great great grandfather was among those.
Speaker 1: That's genuinely fascinating its own right. I didn't know you
Speaker 1: came from that particular slice of American Jewish life. You know,
Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated by Squirrel Hill, and I'm really
Speaker 1: interested to hear that your family is actually from there.
Speaker 1: I have had just a large number of friends, teachers,
Speaker 1: and mentors who all grew up in Squirrel Hill in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies who have sort of become incredibly
Speaker 1: prominent intellectuals. My colleague Joseph Kerner, who's one of the
Speaker 1: leading artist darians in the world. My colleague Bill Rubinstein,
Speaker 1: who's one of the founders of the study of gainus
Speaker 1: in the law, Evan Wolfson, who ran the Marriage Project
Speaker 1: for many years pushing gay marriage, Harry Littman, who went
Speaker 1: on to become a US attorney for Pittsburgh. And they
Speaker 1: all grew up in Squirrel Hill. They all went to
Speaker 1: the same high school, they had the same high school
Speaker 1: English teacher. Your gut is correct that Squirrel Hill is
Speaker 1: something special, and it has been Jewish longer, I think
Speaker 1: it's safe to say, than any other American Jewish neighborhood.
Speaker 1: So Jews, like other human beings, and like Americans in particular,
Speaker 1: like moving from place to place. You know, We're always
Speaker 1: looking for the next frontier. And so most Jewish communities
Speaker 1: turn over after thirty or forty or fifty years. The
Speaker 1: Jews in the neighborhood moves more else, and another immigrant
Speaker 1: group or another upwardly mobile group or downwardly mobile sometimes
Speaker 1: moves into wherever the Jews were. Squirrel Hill has been
Speaker 1: a real exception to that rule. It's never been majority Jewish.
Speaker 1: It likely peaked at forty or forty five percent Jewish,
Speaker 1: but it has been substantially Jewish since World War One,
Speaker 1: so one hundred years exactly, and it is still the
Speaker 1: case that that about fifty percent of the Jews in
Speaker 1: metropolitan Pittsburgh live either in Squirrel Hill or in one
Speaker 1: of the adjacent neighborhoods in the East End of Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: within the city limits. So that's also to say that,
Speaker 1: unlike the Jews of Boston or Chicago, the Jews of
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh did not become an overwhelmingly suburban people. Half of
Speaker 1: the Jews are still within the city limits, centered around
Speaker 1: the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. So it's a very very interesting
Speaker 1: place in American and world Jewish history. So Mark, one
Speaker 1: of the things that I'm trying to do on this
Speaker 1: podcast is enable people who don't, for example, write books,
Speaker 1: to get a glimpse behind the scenes, not just talk
Speaker 1: about the book as a finished artifact, which we all
Speaker 1: like to do, but also to find out about the process.
Speaker 1: So I want you to lift the veil for us
Speaker 1: a little bit. You go to Squirrel Hill, it's after
Speaker 1: the horrible attack. What do you do on a daily
Speaker 1: basis when you're there? How do you go about creating
Speaker 1: a network of people whom do you talk to? Like,
Speaker 1: what do you actually do every day? Okay, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you asked about that, because I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to demystify the process that journalists and writers go
Speaker 1: through when they research and when they write. For me.
Speaker 1: In this case, it began with asking a couple of
Speaker 1: people who I knew were from the neighborhood, who are
Speaker 1: the Jews who know everybody else? And who are the
Speaker 1: people who who will be happy to talk about it? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: who are the local the mayors of Squirrel Hill? Right? Interestingly,
Speaker 1: this is terribly, terribly sad. Two of the mayors of
Speaker 1: Squirrel Hill were the mentally disabled brothers who were murder
Speaker 1: Cecil and David Rosenthal, who really did walk around Squirrel
Speaker 1: Hill and pop in at storefronts and at the fire station.
Speaker 1: They knew everybody. But I was given some very good tips,
Speaker 1: and the same names kept coming up over and over again.
Speaker 1: You should talk to this person or this person. So
Speaker 1: I began with a list of about a dozen people,
Speaker 1: and I started flying to Squirrel Hill about once a week.
Speaker 1: I would either fly out of Logan Airport in Boston
Speaker 1: or LaGuardia Airport in New York City, and I would
Speaker 1: fly very early in the morning at six am, pick
Speaker 1: up a car, drive into Squirrel Hill, fighting the morning
Speaker 1: traffic into the city and get to the neighborhood around
Speaker 1: nine am, and then I would try to talk to
Speaker 1: five or six people. You were really doing these marathon days.
Speaker 1: You must have been getting up at three o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning. That's right. I was doing eighteen hour days.
Speaker 1: And I did this thirty one times in sixteen months.
Speaker 1: And my wife was heroic and very supportive about saying
Speaker 1: this does seem like an important project. But the deal
Speaker 1: that I made with her, and I think just as
Speaker 1: important with myself, was that I was going to think
Speaker 1: of myself as not being a dad or a husband
Speaker 1: one day a week, so typically Wednesday or Thursday, I
Speaker 1: just didn't exist. And you know, we paid some extra
Speaker 1: for babysitting, and my parents helped out some who live
Speaker 1: in western Massachusetts, and my wife worked harder on those
Speaker 1: days and held it all together with the kids. But
Speaker 1: by the time everyone woke up the next morning, I
Speaker 1: was back home. And so the question I went to
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh with was how does a tight knit Jewish neighborhood
Speaker 1: come together in the aftermath of tragedy. So I did
Speaker 1: have a sense that I wanted to get a couple
Speaker 1: hundred interviews at least, and I wanted people who were
Speaker 1: from all range of Jewish observance, from the most observant
Speaker 1: orthodox to totally secular. I wanted non Jews, and I
Speaker 1: wanted non white people, and I wanted people from all
Speaker 1: different parts of the neighborhood and the adjacent neighborhoods. But
Speaker 1: at a certain point, certain characters began to seem really,
Speaker 1: really interesting, and they seem to for whatever reason, they
Speaker 1: seemed to be on journeys that would be interesting to readers. Right,
Speaker 1: how did these institutions school, synagogue, public high school, supermarket,
Speaker 1: the Giant Eagle market is where everyone sees everyone in
Speaker 1: Squirrel Hill, the Giant Eagle on Murray Avenue. So how
Speaker 1: do all these institutions bring people together to make meaning
Speaker 1: and care for each other in the aftermath of something
Speaker 1: really terrible? And some characters did end up encapsulating certain
Speaker 1: answers to that better than other characters. So there are
Speaker 1: people I began to go back and reinterview. Has anything
Speaker 1: really surprised you in terms of the overall picture of
Speaker 1: how does a community bounce back? I mean, it is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where you must have had an
Speaker 1: instinct at first about what you expected. You spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time in communities and Jewish communities and urban communities.
Speaker 1: You have, as it were, a general sociological theory of
Speaker 1: how these communities do their thing. Right. Is there something
Speaker 1: that you found that really blew you away in terms
Speaker 1: of surprise? I mean, you could not be surprised and
Speaker 1: so write a spectacular book, but surprise would be interesting
Speaker 1: from their perspective of the listener, I think, sure, we
Speaker 1: all know that life snaps back to normal pretty fast,
Speaker 1: but it's still is really surprising to see. And I
Speaker 1: think this is a good thing. It speaks to people's resilience,
Speaker 1: but it is a little surprising to see how normal
Speaker 1: stuff begins to feel again for most people very shortly
Speaker 1: after something terrible has happened. Now, this is something that's
Speaker 1: culturally conditioned, right. So in Israel, for example, when there's
Speaker 1: a bombing at a cafe in the morning, they sweep
Speaker 1: up the debris and they try to get back in
Speaker 1: and open for dinner, because that's how they have to
Speaker 1: be as a culture, because there's been so much terrorism
Speaker 1: in their past. And you see that a lot in
Speaker 1: war zones that people can claw back a semblance of
Speaker 1: normalcy really really fast. And then the American tradition is
Speaker 1: much more that we like memorializing things, and we tend
Speaker 1: to hold onto our grief as almost a comfort a
Speaker 1: bit longer. And you saw both impulses in Pittsburgh. So
Speaker 1: for many many people, life returned to something seeming very normal,
Speaker 1: very quickly, especially if they didn't know someone who was killed. Now, look,
Speaker 1: eleven people out of the twenty two people inside the
Speaker 1: building were shot dead and two of the other eleven
Speaker 1: survivors were wounded. Everyone knew somebody whom this touched on, right,
Speaker 1: But if you were a little bit removed from it,
Speaker 1: if you didn't have a close friend or relative who
Speaker 1: died or was inside the building, if you were one
Speaker 1: or two degrees of separation out, for a lot of
Speaker 1: those people, life snapped back to normal very fast. For
Speaker 1: some of them, actually, the guilt of not having been
Speaker 1: at synagogue that day plagued them forevermore. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: This is a really fascinating angle that you're pointing out
Speaker 1: in you mentioned the American tendency to sit with our
Speaker 1: grief and memorialize, and you mentioned the sort of Israeli
Speaker 1: approach which tends to be let's try to get things
Speaker 1: back to normal as quickly as possible, partly for the
Speaker 1: eological reason that Design as Project is committed to the
Speaker 1: idea of bouncing back and achieving normalcy. This was, after all,
Speaker 1: a movement that began with the goal of becoming a
Speaker 1: quote unquote normal people, whatever that exactly was supposed to mean.
Speaker 1: But there's another option, which is that if you're in
Speaker 1: a place which has been seriously war torn or seriously
Speaker 1: affected by terrorism, much more consistently than even than Israel
Speaker 1: has been, you do get circumstances of repetitive trauma. There
Speaker 1: are communities that become just genuinely traumatized. And the option
Speaker 1: that you were describing the sort of hybrid of the
Speaker 1: American in the Israeli it sort of depends on being
Speaker 1: a community that doesn't think of itself as in danger
Speaker 1: for its very survival or in danger for its very existence,
Speaker 1: or at least that would be my hypothesis. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a kind of luxury to be able
Speaker 1: to bounce back and think this isn't going to happen
Speaker 1: again next week or next month. You know, I'm scared,
Speaker 1: I'm upset, but I know that rationally we can, we
Speaker 1: can get back to life being normal. And I want
Speaker 1: to just first ask you, do you buy this hypothesis
Speaker 1: that in a way, it's a kind of a privilege
Speaker 1: for a community to be able to say we're bouncing
Speaker 1: back from a terrible tragedy like this one. I do
Speaker 1: buy that hypothesis. I do think that it's a privilege
Speaker 1: and it speaks to their sense that they can still
Speaker 1: be the ideal American Jewish neighborhood again, which entails not
Speaker 1: being a victim again anytime soon. I did talk to
Speaker 1: a couple of people for whom the synagogue attack in
Speaker 1: Powe in southern California, which was six months after the
Speaker 1: attack on Tree of Life, I don't want to say
Speaker 1: even worse, but it was more painful for them because
Speaker 1: there was a way in which these couple people whom
Speaker 1: I interviewed had sort of bracketed Tree of Life as
Speaker 1: this one time, horrible exception that was devastating but also
Speaker 1: an outlier, a total outlier. And if there was another attack,
Speaker 1: and of course in powwe what one person died or
Speaker 1: two people died, but not eleven, So that felt like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's a second one, a second attack on a synagogue,
Speaker 1: and then of course we have this sort of ongoing
Speaker 1: low level program in certain Jewish neighborhood New York City
Speaker 1: of people being punched in the face and attacked more frequently.
Speaker 1: So I think that you're right that the sense that
Speaker 1: we're back to normal once it begins to feel a
Speaker 1: little bit shaky because other things start happening, then that's
Speaker 1: a whole kind of re injury of people who thought
Speaker 1: that maybe they would be going on pretty well. So
Speaker 1: that's a good segue into the next question that I
Speaker 1: want to ask you. In the topic I want to
Speaker 1: focus on now, there are lots of people in the
Speaker 1: American Jewish community now who feel that the Tree of
Speaker 1: Life attack was just one in a broader succession of
Speaker 1: violent attacks that they see as constituting a significant trend
Speaker 1: of anti Semitic violence, and that they associate, among other things,
Speaker 1: with the rise of anti Semitism in association with Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's presidency. I am to say, honestly, mildly skeptical of
Speaker 1: the narrative of a big, new, significant trend that will
Speaker 1: fundamentally change the perspective of American Jews, but I also
Speaker 1: am open to being proven wrong. About that. So let
Speaker 1: me start by just asking you where you stand on that.
Speaker 1: Do you think of Tree of Life as you know,
Speaker 1: one of a growing number of anti semitic attacks, or
Speaker 1: do you think of it as to some significant degree
Speaker 1: an outlier not only because of its severity, but because
Speaker 1: we haven't seen an attack of exactly this type since well, look,
Speaker 1: in some ways, the big anti semitic attack, the eleven
Speaker 1: person shooting, like for example, mass shootings across the United States,
Speaker 1: is always going to be an outlier, thank god, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, when you're a country of over three hundred
Speaker 1: million people, the eleven people shot here, or even the
Speaker 1: fifty or however many mass shooting since nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: affect a number of people that is pretty close to
Speaker 1: zero statistically, right, So that's inshack, Mark, I mean, that
Speaker 1: is true. Of course, you're absolutely right about that. Right. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: one would look since nineteen ninety nine and say, for example,
Speaker 1: school shootings or even more broadly, institutional shootings are now
Speaker 1: a familiar part of American life. There's a script. We're
Speaker 1: familiar with it. And that's not only from the perspective
Speaker 1: of observers or victims. It's also presumably from the perspective
Speaker 1: of shooters. We even have a terminology that goes with it.
Speaker 1: You know, we all know what the words active shooter means.
Speaker 1: You know, my kids know the words active shooter because
Speaker 1: they have active shooter drills in their school. This did
Speaker 1: not exist when you and I were kids. So there
Speaker 1: is a there is certainly a trend line there at
Speaker 1: the broadest level. It's a real thing. It's a real thing, right.
Speaker 1: I was just I wanted to bracket it by saying
Speaker 1: that in some ways I was agreeing with you that
Speaker 1: I think I was agreeing with you in that there
Speaker 1: is a way in which the panic that all of
Speaker 1: a sudden we're in this new age of widespread anti
Speaker 1: semitism and anti Semitic or white nationalist violence or anti
Speaker 1: Semitic violence from the left or the right, that we
Speaker 1: have to be very careful where we look for evidence
Speaker 1: for that, because the fact is not that many Jews,
Speaker 1: not that many school children statistically speaking, have been victim however, right, However,
Speaker 1: I actually don't think that's the most interesting way to
Speaker 1: think about it, or the most useful way to think
Speaker 1: about it. I go back to my old undergraduate teacher,
Speaker 1: Paula Hyman, the great historian of French jew of French Jewry,
Speaker 1: and of women in Judaism, who said to us in
Speaker 1: class one day, she said, one thing that's historically been
Speaker 1: true of anti Semitism is that in the society's word exists,
Speaker 1: it seems always to be cyclical, that it rises and
Speaker 1: falls and returns again, which is not a pattern that
Speaker 1: you see as much with other forms of bigotry, which
Speaker 1: some societies put to bed forever, or they rise occasionally,
Speaker 1: but basically they are blips when they rise or blips
Speaker 1: when they fall. But anti Semitism has a very sine
Speaker 1: wave like recurrence in the places where it exists, in England, France, America,
Speaker 1: also East Asia. It responds. It tends to flare up
Speaker 1: in times of stress, but it also tends to flare
Speaker 1: up somewhat randomly. And what she said to us, and
Speaker 1: this would have been in nineteen ninety five, we are
Speaker 1: at a low ebb for antisemitism. That's great, it's great
Speaker 1: to live through a low ebb. It will be back.
Speaker 1: And I think she was right, and she didn't have
Speaker 1: a great explanation for it. By the way, I don't
Speaker 1: think she had a well worked out theory. What she
Speaker 1: said is it will be back and then it will
Speaker 1: receive again. That is the nature of anti semitism. I
Speaker 1: think that's true. I think the tide has come in
Speaker 1: again for anti semitism, and it has various forms, but
Speaker 1: it has a kind of cultural currency right now for
Speaker 1: people who are inclined toward hatred or bigotry or ethnic
Speaker 1: chauvinism that it didn't have twenty years ago, and that
Speaker 1: I don't think it will have twenty five years from now,
Speaker 1: right So that will then take many forms, And one
Speaker 1: of the forms for some people is a kind of
Speaker 1: white nationalist eliminationist antisemitism where they want to kill us.
Speaker 1: And for some and this is a little bit trickier,
Speaker 1: but I think just as important, it will take the
Speaker 1: form of an indifference or a downplaying of the people
Speaker 1: who want to kill us. I have so many questions
Speaker 1: that I want to ask you in connection with this.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the hypothesis that we're in an uptick
Speaker 1: or a return of the cycle of antisemitism. Isn't it
Speaker 1: at least that the quantum of anti semitism out there
Speaker 1: hasn't really changed since nineteen ninety five, But that because
Speaker 1: of social media, our consciousness of it and its capacity
Speaker 1: to make itself known has substantially risen. So it does
Speaker 1: seem to me at least possible that what we're experiencing
Speaker 1: as a rise in the tide may in fact be
Speaker 1: a greater degree of awareness of what's been out there
Speaker 1: the whole time. And I think that might even be true.
Speaker 1: But that's conceivably also the explanation for the attacks on
Speaker 1: Orthodox and ultra Orthodox Jews, Hiredi Jews in the New
Speaker 1: York area. I think it's entirely possible that these attacks
Speaker 1: have gone on all the time, but we're not necessarily
Speaker 1: being conceived of as distinctively anti Semitic. We're not being
Speaker 1: reported in the same way, we're not being incorporated into
Speaker 1: a narrative, and weren't being discussed on social media and
Speaker 1: in other places in the same way that they are now.
Speaker 1: I'm just suggesting it's a possibility that seems consistent with
Speaker 1: the evidence. No, I think that's wrong. I mean, right,
Speaker 1: we never we never know for sure what goes unreported.
Speaker 1: But the idea that that has that the level of
Speaker 1: anti Semitic violence we've seen going on in New York
Speaker 1: City is nothing new, but simply this year got much
Speaker 1: more noticed. I don't think it's true. And what's more,
Speaker 1: I don't think the people in those communities think that
Speaker 1: it's true. That doesn't mean they're right. People can perceive
Speaker 1: that they're more endangered than they are and be wrong
Speaker 1: about it, but I don't think they're wrong. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I actually think statistically speaking, it's still close to nil.
Speaker 1: So we're kind of talking about are their cultural vibes
Speaker 1: that we can't pick that we can't reduce to statistics
Speaker 1: and possibly not, Possibly this is all just noise because
Speaker 1: you know, numbers wise, people still feel pretty safe. But
Speaker 1: the other thing I want to get to is your
Speaker 1: first question, which is to what extent is social media
Speaker 1: amplifying the general perception of anti Semitism. Well, social media
Speaker 1: amplifies everything, and one reason I don't like it, one
Speaker 1: reason I'm not on it is I think that I
Speaker 1: tend to do bad stuff. I'm like, I tend to
Speaker 1: amplify my worst thoughts when I'm on social media, and
Speaker 1: I think that it gives me bad information when I
Speaker 1: use it to get information. So of course that's true.
Speaker 1: I think all we can say to that is that
Speaker 1: there are people who do try to collect data and
Speaker 1: have tried to collec data since before the days of
Speaker 1: social media on attacks and on hate crimes, and the
Speaker 1: definition of hate crime has changed, as you know, there's
Speaker 1: a legal regime around what's a hate crime and what's not.
Speaker 1: But certainly, if you look at say the last ten years,
Speaker 1: when we've had, if not reasonably good data, at least
Speaker 1: reasonably assiduously collected data by people trying to do their best,
Speaker 1: both the FBI and the Anti Defamation League would show
Speaker 1: that there's been a pretty strong uptick in anti Semiticate crimes.
Speaker 1: That could be something as simple as a swastika being
Speaker 1: painted somewhere by people who might not even know the
Speaker 1: meaning right, but that could still make Jews feel unsafe.
Speaker 1: But also, and this is really really important, Jews right now,
Speaker 1: of all religious groups, are and have continued to be
Speaker 1: the most victimized in hate crime. Jews are pretty regularly
Speaker 1: not only the most victimized in absolute numbers, but also,
Speaker 1: given our tiny percentage of the population, the most likely
Speaker 1: to be victimized by some sort of hate crime. So
Speaker 1: we can quarrel with how those numbers are counted and
Speaker 1: all that, But to the extent we've tried to get
Speaker 1: data on it. The data really does support that we
Speaker 1: are in a moment where anti Semitism is relatively bad
Speaker 1: historically speaking. We'll be right back. You make an extremely
Speaker 1: persuasive case, so let me just concede it and then
Speaker 1: ask why. Ask the why question. Do you have a
Speaker 1: pet theory of why? And if so, is it connected
Speaker 1: to Trump or to the rise of populism globally? Because
Speaker 1: it's also worth mentioning that the rise in anti Semitic
Speaker 1: incidents is not merely in the United States, but it
Speaker 1: is also measured globally. Well. The answer to that question
Speaker 1: depends on how far back we want to go. Right,
Speaker 1: we could ask why anti Semitism always with us? And
Speaker 1: there's some pretty compelling theories that I think generally have
Speaker 1: to do. And here I think the historian Yuri sles
Speaker 1: Kind has written very intelligently about this, with the Jews,
Speaker 1: like some other groups of people, being kind of itinerant
Speaker 1: cosmopolitan merchants who have lived in many many countries throughout
Speaker 1: world history but have not always seen themselves as being
Speaker 1: of that particular country, but more importantly, have not been
Speaker 1: seen by the residents of those countries as being native
Speaker 1: to that country. And this has had to do with
Speaker 1: Jews having our own language, having Lingua Francas that native
Speaker 1: peoples don't understand. And of course it's also been amplified
Speaker 1: by the anti Semitism of both the Christian tradition and
Speaker 1: the Muslim tradition right, both of which have anti Semitic
Speaker 1: strains in them that many, many, many of the current
Speaker 1: adherents really have tried to downplay, but that still are there.
Speaker 1: So there are reasons why why anti Semitism is always
Speaker 1: with us historically and seems to be in more societies
Speaker 1: than you would think, including those that have had very
Speaker 1: very few The theory of Jews as the cosmopolitan other
Speaker 1: doesn't fit the United States very well because Jews in
Speaker 1: the United States, it does, from a very early period
Speaker 1: learn to speak English and integrated into a wide range
Speaker 1: of professions. I mean the other, the sort of deep,
Speaker 1: the deep origins theory of anti Semitism that focuses on
Speaker 1: religious origins. I think it's very plausible at a kind
Speaker 1: of grand scale explanation, but it doesn't work as well
Speaker 1: at the micro level to explain why now as opposed
Speaker 1: to another time, And you mentioned Paula Hyman's theory, which
Speaker 1: suggested at least that it's actually random walk. You know,
Speaker 1: it goes up and it goes down. And if we
Speaker 1: think that the going up now has something to do
Speaker 1: with current circumstances. And one hears a lot of Jews
Speaker 1: on the left saying it's because of Trump, and one
Speaker 1: hears a lot of Jews on the right saying to
Speaker 1: the contrary, the Trump is the most pro Jewish president
Speaker 1: the United States has ever had, and they are often
Speaker 1: conflating their conception of what counts as pro Israel with
Speaker 1: what they think of as pro Jewish. But nevertheless, that
Speaker 1: is a view that one here frequently. So do you
Speaker 1: have a view on this particular debate that I think
Speaker 1: is roiling in the American Jewish community today? And let
Speaker 1: me add, by the way, that you are right that
Speaker 1: that deep origins theory doesn't always work particularly well, or
Speaker 1: the deep origins economic theory doesn't always work particularly well
Speaker 1: in the United States, and that there are other micro
Speaker 1: theories that account for a lot more of it so
Speaker 1: or that may account for a lot more of it. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Jews, historic economic success makes us targets when
Speaker 1: the economy seems uncertain or in times of turmoil and stress.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of pieces at play there.
Speaker 1: To answer a question about the contemporary scene, I think
Speaker 1: it's useful to point out that the nineteen nineties, when
Speaker 1: we were really in a beautiful era of just low
Speaker 1: levels of jew hatred of Judeopathy, as some say, was
Speaker 1: coming at the end of a period which was really
Speaker 1: a golden era for American ethnicities and micro communities and subcultures. Right.
Speaker 1: So after World War Two, most of the barriers fell
Speaker 1: to Italians and Holes and German Lutherans and Jews and
Speaker 1: all sorts of people, white people who presented as white,
Speaker 1: I should add, who wanted to move out of cities
Speaker 1: into suburbs, who wanted to begin attending elite universities, who
Speaker 1: wanted to run for office. It's not that prejudice disappeared,
Speaker 1: but things got immeasurably better than they had been, say
Speaker 1: before World War Two, or especially in the World War One,
Speaker 1: errand before when there was a lot more nativism, right,
Speaker 1: and these were groups that were now speaking English and
Speaker 1: so forth. So we were coming off a half century
Speaker 1: of really really good times for Jews and many other
Speaker 1: white looking ethnic groups. Right. But what's happening now is
Speaker 1: that a lot of those Jews who were the beneficiaries
Speaker 1: of that don't necessarily identify as Jewish anymore for various
Speaker 1: reasons having to do with lower levels of practice, or
Speaker 1: their children don't identify as Jewish, and so forth and
Speaker 1: so on, And an increasing number of the people who
Speaker 1: publicly present as Jewish are what they call ultra Orthodox,
Speaker 1: although it's a term many people in those communities don't
Speaker 1: like because they think the ultra prefix seems demeaning. People
Speaker 1: in that trust would prefer the term Haredi, their preferred chirey,
Speaker 1: right exactly. So Haredi Jews, well, that's a community that's
Speaker 1: growing enormously, right. You can go to a Haredi town
Speaker 1: like Lakewood, New Jersey, and they're opening one or two
Speaker 1: elementary schools every year, like they just keep batting people.
Speaker 1: And these are towns that are going to be doubling
Speaker 1: in size every several decades. The neighborhoods of Brooklyn that
Speaker 1: we're containing Satmar and Lebovitch or Jews and are not
Speaker 1: big enough for them anymore, which is one reason that
Speaker 1: they have outpost in places like Jersey City. So I
Speaker 1: think that one of the things going on is we
Speaker 1: are at a stress point where the what you might
Speaker 1: call highly Americanized Jews are a rapidly shrinking portion of
Speaker 1: not only of the Jewish community, but what if people
Speaker 1: perceived to be the Jewish community and people who are
Speaker 1: associated with Orthodoxy, which has more which has different folk ways,
Speaker 1: which is often more at odds for various cultural reasons
Speaker 1: with other minority groups, and which includes, by the way,
Speaker 1: the President's daughter and son in law, they would say,
Speaker 1: is a growing proportion of American Jewelry. And that is
Speaker 1: going to cause some stress. It's also conscinating that it's
Speaker 1: costing theory, Mark, and I have never heard anybody make
Speaker 1: this argument before. I mean, I think this may be
Speaker 1: completely original to you, and if I understand it correctly,
Speaker 1: it's that the visibility of Haredi Jews, coupled with the
Speaker 1: increasing invisibility in some sense of Jews who are not
Speaker 1: self identifying by their dress and necessarily by the neighborhood
Speaker 1: in which they live as Jews, creates a kind of
Speaker 1: frictional or flash point. Yeah. But the other thing I
Speaker 1: want to add is that it's not just that the
Speaker 1: Heredi Jews are becoming a more visible portion of it.
Speaker 1: It's also that on the left, as you are, I
Speaker 1: don't like those sort of binaries, but say the left
Speaker 1: end of American Jewelry, you have people who have become
Speaker 1: so as assimilated and so and feel so disconnected from
Speaker 1: the Heredi Jews who are bearing the brunt of a
Speaker 1: lot of these anti Semitic attacks that they aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: standing up for them. So, in other words, the gulf
Speaker 1: between an Upper west Side liberal Jew or an Upper
Speaker 1: east Side moneyed Jew and a black hatted Haredi Jew
Speaker 1: and his wife and children in Brooklyn is extremely great now,
Speaker 1: not just in terms of money and culture, but I
Speaker 1: also think in terms of fellow feeling and compassion. Just
Speaker 1: the gulf seems to be very, very big. I also
Speaker 1: want to point out one more thing, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: people talk about, well, you know, Joe Lieberman was almost
Speaker 1: vice president and it's what a great time to be
Speaker 1: modern Orthodox. There is almost no photograph on Google images
Speaker 1: of Joe Lieberman wearing a Yamica. You can find more
Speaker 1: photographs of Barack Obama wearing a Yamica than Joe Lieberman.
Speaker 1: And it is not at all clear to me that
Speaker 1: even in America, which I think has been very good
Speaker 1: for the Jews, and there's no other country I want
Speaker 1: to live in, it's not clear to me that a
Speaker 1: really jewey presenting Jew could be a senator from an
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly gentile state like Connecticut, like put on a Yamica.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that Lieberman is anyone you ever
Speaker 1: would have heard of, because I do think that that
Speaker 1: sense of cultural difference and well, he doesn't look like
Speaker 1: the rest of us would kick in pretty fast for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. It's a fascinating question to Complexif
Speaker 1: one would want to ask, hypothetically, let's imagine it were
Speaker 1: a very evangelically oriented state and it was a modern
Speaker 1: Orthodox Jew and close ties to the evangelical community, I
Speaker 1: wonder I think it's a it's a very hard question,
Speaker 1: but a fascinating one. Mark. I really want to thank you,
Speaker 1: and I also just want to say personally that the
Speaker 1: fact that you're writing a book that is focused on
Speaker 1: recovery and on the capacity of the Jewish community to
Speaker 1: be resilient, to me, says a lot about what I
Speaker 1: think of as the correct response to antisemitism and to tragedy.
Speaker 1: Not to spend all of our time obsessing over that question,
Speaker 1: although we've just talked about it a lot, which is great,
Speaker 1: But to be aware also that Jews living and existing
Speaker 1: and forming life and shaping life is what has always
Speaker 1: kept the Jewish community alive and will keep the Jewish
Speaker 1: community alive no matter if antisemitism continues to exist or
Speaker 1: to rise and fall or not. So thank you for
Speaker 1: that focus. And I'm dying to read the book when
Speaker 1: it comes out. And thanks for taking us a little
Speaker 1: bit behind the scenes into your process. It's been such
Speaker 1: a pleasure. Thanks Noah. Deep background is brought to you
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Speaker 1: is Ben Talliday, and our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon.
Speaker 1: Editorial support from noahm Osband. Theme music by Luis Gara
Speaker 1: at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Lydia Jeancott,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman.
Speaker 1: I also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you
Speaker 1: can find at Bloomberg dot com. Slash felt to discover
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