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You know, when we look at how a healthy human

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body operates, we usually have a pretty straightforward

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understanding of cause and effect. Right. It

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makes sense. Yeah, exactly. You get a cut, your

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white blood cells rush to the site, they fight

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off the bacteria, and the skin heals. You just

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move on. It is a deeply logical system. Yeah.

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The body's defense mechanisms are generally very

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predictable. Right. But then you have something

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like an autoimmune disease. And suddenly that

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entire predictable logic just, well, It collapses.

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Totally. The body is functioning perfectly well,

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maybe even thriving. And then inexplicably, the

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immune system just gets confused. It misidentifies

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the threat. Yes. It looks at a completely healthy

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integral part of its own tissue, like a joint

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or an organ, something that has literally been

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there all along, helping the body function. Right.

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And it suddenly decides, you know, this is a

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foreign invader. This is a pathogen. and the

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body turns its most violent defense mechanisms

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against itself. That is honestly a phenomenal

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way to frame it, because when the system attacks

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itself, it doesn't think it's doing something

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wrong. Right, it thinks it's helping. Exactly.

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It actually believes it is saving the organism.

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The body thinks it is performing this righteous,

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necessary act of self -preservation, even as

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it destroys its own healthy tissue. And that

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biological malfunction. That terrifying internal

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misidentification of a threat is probably the

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absolute best lens we have for understanding

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the massive Deeply complex topic. We are diving

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into today. It really is Welcome to today's deep

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dive. We are so thrilled to have you with us

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because the scope of what we are tackling in

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this session is Frankly staggering. Yeah, it's

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a lot We are unpacking the arguments the political

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motivations, and the sweeping historical concepts

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that are embedded in Dara Horn's forthcoming

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book, the final solution to the Jewish question.

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And we should clarify, we aren't just looking

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at Horn's book in isolation here. No, definitely

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not. To truly grasp what she is arguing, we have

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brought in a towering stack of the source materials

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she relies on. A huge stack. We are going chapter

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by chapter, idea by idea, unpacking the highly

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rigorous academic, economic, and sociological

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research that forms the entire foundation of

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her worldview. Because Horn is making some massive

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claims, right? And to understand that, we have

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to look at the data. Exactly. We have demographic

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economic history from researchers Maristella

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Botticini and Zvi Ekstein. Right, their work

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is fascinating. It really is. And we have these

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magisterial historical analyses from David Nirenberg

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and Yosef Haim Yerushalmi. Plus, we are pulling

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in sociological insights on modern political

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movements from Charles Small. And we're even

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going to examine some highly detailed, very recent

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institutional reports from the Harvard Anti -Semitism

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Task Force and the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance.

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It is just a remarkable convergence of disciplines.

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You have economics, theology, sociology, and

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modern campus politics all colliding to explain

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this one incredibly persistent historical phenomenon.

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Now, before we get into the mechanics of all

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this, I want to establish some ground rules for

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how we are going to navigate this material with

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you today. Yeah, this is super important. Because

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the text we have on the table tackles some of

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the most... highly charged, fiercely debated

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political issues of our time. We're talking about

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intense campus protests, the Israeli -Palestinian

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conflict, global anti -Semitism, all of it. Right.

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So as your guides, we want to make our mission

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here incredibly clear. We are here strictly to

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act as impartial analytical reporters. Absolutely.

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We will never be taking sides and we will not

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be endorsing any specific political ideology.

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That is vital. because our goal is to help you

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understand the architecture of these arguments.

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We want to expose the historical origins of these

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concepts, debate the political motivations these

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authors identify, and show you exactly how these

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researchers interrelate their findings. Right.

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If we step into the arena to play partisan politics,

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we lose the ability to clearly analyze the structural

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mechanisms these scholars are actually trying

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to expose. Exactly. We have to stay objective

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to see how the engine works. Okay, so let's unpack

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this. We begin with Horne's introduction, where

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she describes a deeply strange, deeply uncomfortable

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phenomenon that started happening to her a few

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years ago. Right after she published her previous

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book, People Love Dead Jews. Right. She writes

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that she basically, accidentally, became the

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anti -Semitism Lorax. The anti -Semitism Lorax.

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It is. It's such a striking... slightly absurd

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image. It is. It's from the classic Dr. Seuss

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book where the little creature pops out of a

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tree stump and declares, I speak for the trees,

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while the industrialist completely ignores him

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and just keeps chopping down the forest anyway.

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It perfectly captures the futility she describes

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feeling because she writes that American Jews

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just started approaching her everywhere. Everywhere.

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At her book signings, sure, but also via email,

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in the grocery store, in random public spaces.

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And they would come up to her to confess these

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deeply personal stories of everyday modern antisemitism.

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And what makes her account so unsettling is the

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sheer banality of it all. It's not just stories

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of organized extremist marches. It's the quiet,

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everyday fractures in society. Let me give you

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some of the examples she uses, because they really

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stick with you. She talks about a 40 -something

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guy wearing a kippah just walking through a grocery

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store. Out of nowhere, another shopper violently

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rams him with his shopping cart and shouts, the

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kosher bagels are in the next aisle. Wow. Or

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she writes about a young, gorgeous, aspiring

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actor in Hollywood. This woman kept going to

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auditions and kept being told by casting directors

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that she looked too Jewish for the parts. And

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the kicker is she was being told she looked too

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Jewish, even for specifically Jewish roles. Right.

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It got so psychologically damaging that she entirely

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abandoned on -screen acting and switched to voice

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acting, just so her face wouldn't disqualify

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her. The psychological toll of that, of having

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to literally erase your physical presence to

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participate in your chosen profession, is profound.

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But Horne also points out that the stories involving

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children are the ones that truly shake her readers.

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Yeah, the stories about the kids are genuinely

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disturbing. She recounts a mother in Chicago

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who took her preschooler to a children's museum.

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The kid is wearing a kippah, just... playing

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with a toy cash register minding his own business.

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Right. And the mother realizes that random adult

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strangers are stopping, pulling out their phones

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and snapping pictures of her Jewish toddler playing

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with money. A grotesque real -time manifestation

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of an ancient stereotype projected onto a three

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-year -old. Exactly. And then she talks about

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high school kids getting pennies thrown at them

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in the hallways in the 21st century. Pennies.

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It's just so blatant. A middle school student

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in Indianapolis whose public school teacher deliberately

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used a map of the Middle East that completely

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erased the state of Israel. Right. And here's

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the thing that Horn really hones in on. It's

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not just the incidents themselves. It's how her

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readers, the victims of these incidents, try

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to process them. That's the fascinating part.

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They tell Horn, you know, oh, it was probably

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just a joke or they were just dumb teenagers

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or it's just a lone wolf acting out. They are

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desperately clinging to any form of plausible

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deniability. Because the alternative is simply

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too terrifying for them to accept. Horne notes

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that what unites all these people from the actor

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in Hollywood to the guy in the grocery store

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isn't just fear. It is a profound paralyzing

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bewilderment. They do not understand how this

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is happening in their society. Exactly. So I

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really want to dig into that bewilderment. Why

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are American Jews specifically so uniquely confused

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by this. If you look at Jewish history, persecution

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isn't exactly a new phenomenon. So why the shock?

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Porn argues that the shock stems from a deeply

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ingrained American civic religion. American Jews,

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like most Americans, are fundamentally raised

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on an ideology that is best encapsulated by that

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famous quote popularized by Martin Luther King

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Jr. Oh, the arc of the moral universe. Yes. The

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arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends

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toward justice. Right. We are taught that history

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is a steady, albeit bumpy, march of progress.

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Yes, there are setbacks. Yes, there is systemic

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injustice. But eventually, over time, society

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learns. Marginalized groups become accepted and

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things get better. It's the idea that history

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is a ladder. But Horn points out that Jewish

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history entirely contradicts this American optimism.

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It shatters the idea of the ladder. How so? Well,

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if you look at the macro level long arc of Jewish

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history, it is not a steady climb toward justice.

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It is terrifyingly a repeating boom and bust

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cycle. She walks through these massive historical

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case studies to prove this and it's honestly

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dizzying to look at them all lined up. I'll start

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with Alexandria in the year 66 CE. Alexandria

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was one of the greatest cities of the ancient

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world. And the Jewish community there wasn't

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just surviving, they were thriving. Right. They

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were highly integrated into Greek speaking culture.

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We are talking about philosophers like Philo,

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people holding significant positions of economic

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and civic power. They were deeply woven into

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the fabric of the city. Boom. Massive success

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and integration. And then the bust. In 66 CE,

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the societal tensions snap. The surrounding population

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turns on them. and 50 ,000 Alexandrian Jews are

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slaughtered in the streets. It's just a total

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collapse. Or look at Golden Age Spain. The Iberian

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Peninsula under Moorish rule? This is often cited

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as the ultimate example of interfaith coexistence.

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Right, the convivencia. Exactly. You had Jewish

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scientists, poets, philosophers, and physicians

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who were revered by the society. You had figures

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like Samuel Han Nogged. Wait, who was that? He

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was a Jewish scholar who literally served as

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the vizier of the Muslim state of Granada. He

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even commanded Muslim armies. Total integration

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into the highest echelons of power. And then

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the dynasties shift. The Almohads arrive. Eventually

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the Christian Reconquista takes over. The Inquisition

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begins. And the entire community faces a brutal

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binary choice. Convert to Christianity. Leave

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the country with nothing. Or be burned at the

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stake. a total collapse at what seemed like a

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permanent golden age. And she traces this all

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the way up to the modern era. Look at Baghdad

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in 1941. The Jewish community in Baghdad wasn't

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some new immigrant group. They had been there

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for two and a half millennia, long predating

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the arrival of Islam. Right, since the Babylonian

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exile. Exactly. And by the early 20th century,

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they were deeply integrated into modern Iraqi

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society. They were prominent musicians, government

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officials, and they owned an estimated one -third

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of the city's major commercial businesses. They

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were fundamentally Iraqi. Until June 1941. The

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Farhood. Yes. A massive, horrifying summer rampage

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of pillage, rape, and murder carried out by their

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own neighbors incited by pro -Nazi propaganda.

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And within a single decade, that entire ancient

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120 ,000 -person community had to flee for their

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lives. The society they helped build just violently

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expelled them. Horn even points to the Soviet

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Union. Yes, the early Soviet state actually financed

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and celebrated secular Yiddish culture. They

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established state -sponsored Yiddish theaters

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and publications. Boom again. But by 1952, Stalin's

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paranoia had fully calcified into the doctor's

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plot, and the state was systematically executing

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the very Jewish cultural leaders it had previously

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championed. Bust. To really drive home the psychological

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terror of this cycle, Horne references a 1911

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Yiddish story by a writer named Lemon Shapiro.

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Ah, yes. The story asks a really simple question.

254
00:12:11,200 --> 00:12:14,460
How long does a pogrom last? And the answer the

255
00:12:14,460 --> 00:12:18,659
story gives is 10 years. 10 years. Not a few

256
00:12:18,659 --> 00:12:22,200
days of violence, but a 10 -year societal rot.

257
00:12:22,759 --> 00:12:25,580
The story is about a shopkeeper. One day, a customer

258
00:12:25,580 --> 00:12:28,899
comes in, takes some goods, refuses to pay, and

259
00:12:28,899 --> 00:12:30,940
hurls an anti -Semitic insult at the shopkeeper.

260
00:12:31,759 --> 00:12:33,480
The shopkeeper is furious and wants to fight

261
00:12:33,480 --> 00:12:36,559
back, but his wife stops him. She says, you know,

262
00:12:36,580 --> 00:12:39,220
Don't say anything that customer's friendly with

263
00:12:39,220 --> 00:12:41,539
local officials. You'll just make it worse. So

264
00:12:41,539 --> 00:12:45,360
they endure it. Right. And that sets the precedent.

265
00:12:46,159 --> 00:12:49,200
Over the next 10 years, it's just a slow, normalized

266
00:12:49,200 --> 00:12:54,149
escalation. Minor insults. More thefts. Broken

267
00:12:54,149 --> 00:12:57,190
window here. Shove child there. It just becomes

268
00:12:57,190 --> 00:13:00,409
the background noise of their life. Until exactly

269
00:13:00,409 --> 00:13:02,669
10 years later, the mob finally burns down the

270
00:13:02,669 --> 00:13:05,450
store and murders the wife. What is so crucial

271
00:13:05,450 --> 00:13:07,809
about that story is the concept of the boiling

272
00:13:07,809 --> 00:13:11,159
frog. The psychological toll of that 10 -year

273
00:13:11,159 --> 00:13:14,179
build -up explains precisely why Horn's readers

274
00:13:14,179 --> 00:13:17,860
in 2024 are so desperate to dismiss the throne

275
00:13:17,860 --> 00:13:20,600
pennies and the shopping cart rams as just jokes.

276
00:13:20,960 --> 00:13:22,679
Because if they aren't jokes, then the clock

277
00:13:22,679 --> 00:13:25,860
is ticking. Exactly. They are terrified that

278
00:13:25,860 --> 00:13:28,500
they might already be in year two or three of

279
00:13:28,500 --> 00:13:31,279
that 10 -year timeline. And they want Dara Horn

280
00:13:31,279 --> 00:13:33,879
to tell them that they aren't. It's deeply unsettling.

281
00:13:34,039 --> 00:13:38,320
Okay, I have to push back here or at least play

282
00:13:38,320 --> 00:13:41,000
devil's advocate for a second because if we accept

283
00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:44,379
horns premise It creates a massive historical

284
00:13:44,379 --> 00:13:47,440
mystery Okay laid out if the historical pattern

285
00:13:47,440 --> 00:13:50,279
is this repeating loop where Jews integrate seamlessly

286
00:13:50,279 --> 00:13:53,220
achieve massive societal success And then the

287
00:13:53,220 --> 00:13:55,320
society suddenly fractures and turns on them.

288
00:13:55,519 --> 00:13:58,100
We have to ask a foundational question, right?

289
00:13:58,320 --> 00:14:00,820
What drives that initial success in the first

290
00:14:00,820 --> 00:14:03,470
place? Why do they keep ending up in these positions

291
00:14:03,470 --> 00:14:06,210
of prominence across completely different geographies,

292
00:14:06,470 --> 00:14:09,269
different empires, and different millennia? And

293
00:14:09,269 --> 00:14:12,269
why does that very success make them so uniquely

294
00:14:12,269 --> 00:14:16,169
vulnerable to the bust? That is the pivotal question

295
00:14:16,169 --> 00:14:18,750
of this entire deep dive. Because if you just

296
00:14:18,750 --> 00:14:21,470
look at the busts, you only see a history of

297
00:14:21,470 --> 00:14:23,610
victimhood. Right. To understand the mechanics

298
00:14:23,610 --> 00:14:26,190
of this loop, Horn's thesis requires us to look

299
00:14:26,190 --> 00:14:28,870
at the underlying socioeconomic realities of

300
00:14:28,870 --> 00:14:31,169
Jewish life. And to do that, we are bringing

301
00:14:31,169 --> 00:14:34,110
in the incredible paradigm -shifting economic

302
00:14:34,110 --> 00:14:37,470
research of Maristella Bottaccini and Sieve Eckstein

303
00:14:37,470 --> 00:14:40,429
from their book, The Chosen Few. Now, I have

304
00:14:40,429 --> 00:14:43,700
to say, reading Bottaccini next time, blew my

305
00:14:43,700 --> 00:14:47,000
mind. Because if you were to ask me, or frankly

306
00:14:47,000 --> 00:14:49,259
if you ask the average historian or take any

307
00:14:49,259 --> 00:14:51,659
standard high school history class, why Jews

308
00:14:51,659 --> 00:14:54,279
historically ended up concentrated in urban professions

309
00:14:54,279 --> 00:14:57,960
like finance, banking, medicine, and trade, the

310
00:14:57,960 --> 00:15:00,500
answer is always exactly the same. The standard

311
00:15:00,500 --> 00:15:03,320
narrative. It goes back to early 20th century

312
00:15:03,320 --> 00:15:06,460
historians like Cecil Roth. Right. The narrative

313
00:15:06,460 --> 00:15:08,379
is that Jews were originally farmers, but when

314
00:15:08,379 --> 00:15:10,779
they got to medieval Christian Europe, the Catholic

315
00:15:10,779 --> 00:15:13,639
Church banned them from owning land. And they

316
00:15:13,639 --> 00:15:15,720
were banned from joining the medieval craft guilds.

317
00:15:15,899 --> 00:15:18,759
So they were literally forced off the land and

318
00:15:18,759 --> 00:15:20,720
shoved into the only profession Christians were

319
00:15:20,720 --> 00:15:22,919
supposedly banned from doing by the church, which

320
00:15:22,919 --> 00:15:26,179
was charging interest on loans or usury. The

321
00:15:26,179 --> 00:15:28,179
idea is that they were forced into urban finance

322
00:15:28,179 --> 00:15:31,539
out of pure desperate survival. It makes sense

323
00:15:31,539 --> 00:15:34,639
intuitively. It fits the narrative of persecution.

324
00:15:35,340 --> 00:15:37,179
But Botticini and Eckstein spent years looking

325
00:15:37,179 --> 00:15:40,299
at actual historical economic data, land charters

326
00:15:40,299 --> 00:15:42,580
and tax records, and they came back and said

327
00:15:42,580 --> 00:15:45,500
this entire narrative is historically false.

328
00:15:45,919 --> 00:15:48,100
Completely false. Completely. They proved that

329
00:15:48,100 --> 00:15:50,440
Jews could and did own land in medieval Europe.

330
00:15:50,820 --> 00:15:52,639
They point to early medieval charters in places

331
00:15:52,639 --> 00:15:55,840
like Narbonne in France, Trier in Germany, Barcelona

332
00:15:55,840 --> 00:15:58,860
in Spain, and even in early Norman England. Right.

333
00:15:59,210 --> 00:16:01,669
These royal and municipal charters explicitly

334
00:16:01,669 --> 00:16:03,610
granted Jewish citizens the right to own real

335
00:16:03,610 --> 00:16:06,710
estate, vineyards, and agricultural fields. So

336
00:16:06,710 --> 00:16:09,070
the bedrock of the standard narrative that they

337
00:16:09,070 --> 00:16:11,990
were legally banned from farming is a myth, which

338
00:16:11,990 --> 00:16:14,509
immediately raises an enormous economic puzzle.

339
00:16:14,610 --> 00:16:16,929
Yeah, a massive one. If they weren't forced off

340
00:16:16,929 --> 00:16:20,370
the land by hostile laws, why did an entire global

341
00:16:20,370 --> 00:16:23,649
population voluntarily abandon agriculture in

342
00:16:23,649 --> 00:16:25,789
a world where land was the ultimate source of

343
00:16:25,789 --> 00:16:28,059
wealth? And to answer that, Baruchini and Eckstein

344
00:16:28,059 --> 00:16:30,879
say we have to rewind the clock way past medieval

345
00:16:30,879 --> 00:16:33,340
Europe. We have to go all the way back to the

346
00:16:33,340 --> 00:16:35,980
Middle East, to the first and second centuries

347
00:16:35,980 --> 00:16:39,440
CE. Specifically, to the aftermath of the year

348
00:16:39,440 --> 00:16:43,200
70 CE. This is arguably the most traumatic world

349
00:16:43,200 --> 00:16:45,299
-altering date in ancient Jewish history. The

350
00:16:45,299 --> 00:16:48,139
destruction of the temple. Yes. The Roman Empire,

351
00:16:48,200 --> 00:16:50,559
crushing a Jewish rebellion, completely destroys

352
00:16:50,559 --> 00:16:52,759
the Second Temple in Jerusalem. To understand

353
00:16:52,759 --> 00:16:54,720
the impact of this, You have to understand what

354
00:16:54,720 --> 00:16:58,259
Judaism was before 70 CE. It wasn't just a book

355
00:16:58,259 --> 00:17:01,179
-based religion. No, not at all. It had two core

356
00:17:01,179 --> 00:17:04,319
pillars. The written Torah, yes, but equally

357
00:17:04,319 --> 00:17:07,420
important were the physical daily ritual sacrifices

358
00:17:07,420 --> 00:17:10,759
performed by hereditary class of priests in the

359
00:17:10,759 --> 00:17:13,250
temple. When the Romans burned the temple to

360
00:17:13,250 --> 00:17:15,809
the ground, the entire sacrificial pillar of

361
00:17:15,809 --> 00:17:18,130
the religion vanished overnight. The priestly

362
00:17:18,130 --> 00:17:20,369
class lost their jobs. The religious center of

363
00:17:20,369 --> 00:17:23,799
gravity was gone. The religion was facing total

364
00:17:23,799 --> 00:17:26,220
extinction. And the group that stepped into this

365
00:17:26,220 --> 00:17:28,740
vacuum to save it was a sect of scholars known

366
00:17:28,740 --> 00:17:30,779
as the Pharisees, who would eventually evolve

367
00:17:30,779 --> 00:17:33,059
into the rabbis as we know them today. Right.

368
00:17:33,519 --> 00:17:36,339
They realized that if Judaism was going to survive

369
00:17:36,339 --> 00:17:39,319
without a geographic center or a temple, it had

370
00:17:39,319 --> 00:17:41,960
to become entirely text -based. And they didn't

371
00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:45,039
just suggest this as a nice idea. In the century

372
00:17:45,039 --> 00:17:47,619
following the destruction, they instituted a

373
00:17:47,619 --> 00:17:50,200
radical, legally binding religious ordinance.

374
00:17:50,400 --> 00:17:52,579
This is the turning point. They decreed that

375
00:17:52,579 --> 00:17:54,980
every Jewish father was religiously obligated

376
00:17:54,980 --> 00:17:57,599
to send his sons, usually starting around age

377
00:17:57,599 --> 00:18:00,480
six or seven, to a primary school to learn how

378
00:18:00,480 --> 00:18:03,299
to read and study the Torah in Hebrew. Now we

379
00:18:03,299 --> 00:18:05,299
need to pause here and really appreciate the

380
00:18:05,299 --> 00:18:08,319
magnitude of this decision. If we look at the

381
00:18:08,319 --> 00:18:10,700
demographic and economic realities of the first

382
00:18:10,700 --> 00:18:13,599
millennium, no other religion, no other cult,

383
00:18:13,960 --> 00:18:16,819
no other civilization on earth had a norm requiring

384
00:18:16,819 --> 00:18:19,700
universal male education. None. We are talking

385
00:18:19,700 --> 00:18:22,680
about a deeply agrarian world where upwards of

386
00:18:22,680 --> 00:18:26,519
95 to 99 percent of the global population consisted

387
00:18:26,519 --> 00:18:29,500
of illiterate subsistence farmers. Put yourself

388
00:18:29,500 --> 00:18:32,220
in the shoes of a poor Jewish farmer living in

389
00:18:32,220 --> 00:18:35,799
the Galilee in the year 200 CE. You are working

390
00:18:35,799 --> 00:18:38,579
from sunrise to sunset just to grow enough wheat

391
00:18:38,579 --> 00:18:41,539
to keep your family from starving. Right. And

392
00:18:41,539 --> 00:18:43,539
your religious leaders come to you and say you

393
00:18:43,539 --> 00:18:45,960
must take your able -bodied six -year -old son

394
00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:48,500
out of the fields. where he could be helping

395
00:18:48,500 --> 00:18:51,180
you work. And you must pay a portion of your

396
00:18:51,180 --> 00:18:53,680
meager income to a teacher so your son can learn

397
00:18:53,680 --> 00:18:57,039
to read a scroll in Hebrew. And remember, Hebrew

398
00:18:57,039 --> 00:18:59,740
wasn't even their daily spoken language at that

399
00:18:59,740 --> 00:19:02,140
point. Most people in the region spoke Aramaic

400
00:19:02,140 --> 00:19:05,140
or Greek. So you are paying for your child to

401
00:19:05,140 --> 00:19:08,740
learn an ancient, sacred language. It was a massive,

402
00:19:09,539 --> 00:19:12,400
staggering economic sacrifice with absolutely

403
00:19:12,400 --> 00:19:15,819
zero immediate economic return. Being able to

404
00:19:15,819 --> 00:19:17,980
read the book of Leviticus did not help you plow

405
00:19:17,980 --> 00:19:22,160
a rocky field any faster. So what happened? Human

406
00:19:22,160 --> 00:19:24,619
nature happened. Botticini and Eckstein point

407
00:19:24,619 --> 00:19:26,940
out that many of these farmers simply couldn't

408
00:19:26,940 --> 00:19:29,880
afford it. Or they rationally looked at the cost

409
00:19:29,880 --> 00:19:32,019
-benefit analysis and said, I'm not doing this.

410
00:19:32,819 --> 00:19:35,509
So they converted. They voluntarily converted

411
00:19:35,509 --> 00:19:38,349
to Christianity or other emerging sects where

412
00:19:38,349 --> 00:19:40,569
the requirement for salvation was simply faith

413
00:19:40,569 --> 00:19:43,250
rather than expensive literacy. You just have

414
00:19:43,250 --> 00:19:46,150
to believe. You don't have to pay tuition. This

415
00:19:46,150 --> 00:19:48,630
blew my mind. This educational mandate caused

416
00:19:48,630 --> 00:19:51,130
the Jewish population to absolutely plummet.

417
00:19:51,329 --> 00:19:53,950
Drastically. Botticini and Eckstein's demographic

418
00:19:53,950 --> 00:19:56,130
data shows that world jewelry dropped from roughly

419
00:19:56,130 --> 00:19:59,609
5 .5 million in the first century down to about

420
00:19:59,609 --> 00:20:02,509
1 .2 million by the seventh century. Millions

421
00:20:02,509 --> 00:20:05,130
of people didn't just die in wars. A massive

422
00:20:05,130 --> 00:20:07,369
portion of that drop was voluntary assimilation

423
00:20:07,369 --> 00:20:09,990
away from Judaism because the educational norm

424
00:20:09,990 --> 00:20:12,309
was too economically punishing for poor farmers.

425
00:20:13,069 --> 00:20:15,970
But here is the crux of their thesis and where

426
00:20:15,970 --> 00:20:18,029
the economic history completely turns upside

427
00:20:18,029 --> 00:20:21,650
down. The ones who did stay, the ones who absorbed

428
00:20:21,650 --> 00:20:24,230
that massive cost generation after generation

429
00:20:24,230 --> 00:20:27,150
out of pure religious devotion, inadvertently

430
00:20:27,150 --> 00:20:29,950
created something unprecedented in human history.

431
00:20:30,490 --> 00:20:33,150
What was that? Over several centuries, they created

432
00:20:33,150 --> 00:20:36,009
an entire population with a uniquely literate

433
00:20:36,009 --> 00:20:39,109
and numerate culture. A universally educated

434
00:20:39,109 --> 00:20:42,230
agrarian population. It's an oxymoron for the

435
00:20:42,230 --> 00:20:44,390
time. But because they could read, they could

436
00:20:44,390 --> 00:20:47,680
also write. They could draft contracts. They

437
00:20:47,680 --> 00:20:50,099
possessed a unified legal and civil code, the

438
00:20:50,099 --> 00:20:52,200
Talmud, which was codified during this period.

439
00:20:52,559 --> 00:20:55,019
Exactly. And they developed a vast system of

440
00:20:55,019 --> 00:20:57,359
rabbinic courts that allowed for the enforcement

441
00:20:57,359 --> 00:21:00,180
of those contracts across vast distances. It

442
00:21:00,180 --> 00:21:04,259
was an accidental human capital cheat code. They

443
00:21:04,259 --> 00:21:07,160
spent centuries building this up purely for theological

444
00:21:07,160 --> 00:21:10,660
reasons. And then, history delivered a massive,

445
00:21:11,039 --> 00:21:13,220
exogenous shock that suddenly made that literacy

446
00:21:13,220 --> 00:21:17,279
incredibly valuable. The Islamic Empire. Yes.

447
00:21:17,519 --> 00:21:21,660
Between 750 and 900 CE, the Islamic Empire expanded

448
00:21:21,660 --> 00:21:24,240
rapidly, stretching from the Iberian Peninsula

449
00:21:24,240 --> 00:21:26,660
in Europe all the way across North Africa and

450
00:21:26,660 --> 00:21:28,900
the Middle East, right up to the borders of India.

451
00:21:29,130 --> 00:21:32,210
And with that massive empire came an era of spectacular

452
00:21:32,210 --> 00:21:34,789
urbanization. The caliphs weren't just building

453
00:21:34,789 --> 00:21:36,849
empires. They were building massive new cities.

454
00:21:37,369 --> 00:21:41,309
Baghdad, Cairo, Cordoba. And what do new booming

455
00:21:41,309 --> 00:21:43,490
urban centers need to function? Well, they don't

456
00:21:43,490 --> 00:21:46,690
need more farmers. Right. They need administrators.

457
00:21:46,990 --> 00:21:49,609
They need long distance traders. They need doctors,

458
00:21:50,069 --> 00:21:52,549
craftsmen, and financiers. They need people who

459
00:21:52,549 --> 00:21:55,789
can manage complex logistics. They need literate

460
00:21:55,789 --> 00:21:58,609
people. So these Jewish farmers in places like

461
00:21:58,609 --> 00:22:01,369
Iraq and Persia looked around. They realized

462
00:22:01,369 --> 00:22:03,910
that their religious obligation to read had given

463
00:22:03,910 --> 00:22:06,849
them portable human capital. Right. They realized

464
00:22:06,849 --> 00:22:08,769
they could make vastly more money using their

465
00:22:08,769 --> 00:22:11,190
literacy in the booming cities than they ever

466
00:22:11,190 --> 00:22:13,309
could scratching out a living in the dirt. So

467
00:22:13,309 --> 00:22:16,230
they voluntarily, enthusiastically abandoned

468
00:22:16,230 --> 00:22:18,630
agriculture. Botticini and Eckstein show that

469
00:22:18,630 --> 00:22:21,750
within about 150 years, almost all Jews in Iraq

470
00:22:21,750 --> 00:22:24,369
and Persia moved to the cities and took up skilled,

471
00:22:24,769 --> 00:22:26,960
lucrative trades. To illustrate how powerful

472
00:22:26,960 --> 00:22:29,200
this was, the researchers highlight the historical

473
00:22:29,200 --> 00:22:32,619
accounts of Benjamin of Tudela. He was a 12th

474
00:22:32,619 --> 00:22:35,000
century Jewish traveler from Spain who spent

475
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:37,900
years mapping the vast network of Jewish trade.

476
00:22:38,599 --> 00:22:40,660
Because Jews shared a common written language,

477
00:22:40,880 --> 00:22:43,240
Hebrew, and a common legal framework, the Talmud,

478
00:22:43,900 --> 00:22:46,200
a Jewish trader in Cordoba, Spain could draft

479
00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:49,359
a complex letter of credit and send it with a

480
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:51,849
caravan to a Jewish trader in Baghdad. And that

481
00:22:51,849 --> 00:22:53,890
trader in Baghdad could honor the credit knowing

482
00:22:53,890 --> 00:22:56,150
that if there was a dispute, the contract was

483
00:22:56,150 --> 00:22:58,410
fully enforceable under Jewish law in a rabbinic

484
00:22:58,410 --> 00:23:01,289
court. In the medieval world, where international

485
00:23:01,289 --> 00:23:03,950
trust was almost nonexistent, that kind of cross

486
00:23:03,950 --> 00:23:06,329
-border institutional trust network was practically

487
00:23:06,329 --> 00:23:09,670
magic. It is the ultimate network effect. And

488
00:23:09,670 --> 00:23:11,829
this explains the transition to Europe. When

489
00:23:11,829 --> 00:23:13,950
Jews eventually migrated into Christian Europe,

490
00:23:14,349 --> 00:23:16,430
they didn't arrive as desperate farmers looking

491
00:23:16,430 --> 00:23:19,359
for plots of land. Right. They arrived as a highly

492
00:23:19,359 --> 00:23:22,400
specialized, highly literate urban middle class.

493
00:23:23,019 --> 00:23:26,059
The host rulers, the kings and bishops, actually

494
00:23:26,059 --> 00:23:28,740
invited them in specifically to stimulate their

495
00:23:28,740 --> 00:23:31,660
underdeveloped agrarian economies. Right. The

496
00:23:31,660 --> 00:23:33,720
text mentions figures like Aaron of Lincoln.

497
00:23:34,380 --> 00:23:36,700
He lived in 12th century England and was at the

498
00:23:36,700 --> 00:23:39,200
time the wealthiest man in the entire country.

499
00:23:39,500 --> 00:23:42,279
He wasn't huddled in a ghetto. He was actively

500
00:23:42,279 --> 00:23:44,440
financing the construction of major Christian

501
00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:46,960
cathedrals and bankrolling the military campaigns

502
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:49,519
of the English king. And Botticini and Eckstein

503
00:23:49,519 --> 00:23:51,720
trace this intellectual and economic lineage

504
00:23:51,720 --> 00:23:53,970
all the way up to the modern era. They point

505
00:23:53,970 --> 00:23:56,390
to David Ricardo, famously known as one of the

506
00:23:56,390 --> 00:23:58,829
founding fathers of modern economics, and the

507
00:23:58,829 --> 00:24:01,289
inventor of the theory of comparative advantage.

508
00:24:01,410 --> 00:24:03,990
Oh, wow. Yeah. He was born into an Orthodox Jewish

509
00:24:03,990 --> 00:24:06,730
family in London, spent his childhood rigorously

510
00:24:06,730 --> 00:24:08,930
trained in the analytical logic of the Talmud,

511
00:24:09,410 --> 00:24:12,329
and seamlessly translated that exact same analytical

512
00:24:12,329 --> 00:24:15,009
rigor into dominating the London Stock Exchange.

513
00:24:15,569 --> 00:24:18,720
OK, so this is an incredible origin story. A

514
00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:21,220
purely theological mandate to read a sacred text

515
00:24:21,220 --> 00:24:24,640
accidentally creates the ultimate economic advantage

516
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:27,279
over a thousand years. But I have to bring us

517
00:24:27,279 --> 00:24:29,779
back to Darahorn's cycle of doom here. The boom

518
00:24:29,779 --> 00:24:32,180
and bust. Right. Because if this human capital

519
00:24:32,180 --> 00:24:35,700
made them so successful, so wealthy, so vital

520
00:24:35,700 --> 00:24:38,180
to the growth of empires, why did those same

521
00:24:38,180 --> 00:24:41,220
empires keep turning on them? Why does Aaron

522
00:24:41,220 --> 00:24:43,279
of Lincoln's wealth eventually lead to the Jews

523
00:24:43,279 --> 00:24:46,720
being expelled from England in 1290? How does

524
00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:50,559
success breed such lethal vulnerability? This

525
00:24:50,559 --> 00:24:53,299
is where we transition from economics to sociology

526
00:24:53,299 --> 00:24:56,500
and theology. Because as Horne points out, the

527
00:24:56,500 --> 00:24:58,740
surrounding societies didn't just look at this

528
00:24:58,740 --> 00:25:01,220
highly mobile literate minority and say, wow,

529
00:25:01,339 --> 00:25:03,779
what a great educational policy. We should copy

530
00:25:03,779 --> 00:25:06,500
that. No, obviously not. They looked at them

531
00:25:06,500 --> 00:25:10,539
with deep systemic suspicion. In a world of illiterate

532
00:25:10,539 --> 00:25:13,259
peasants who were inextricably tied to the land

533
00:25:13,259 --> 00:25:17,099
of their birth, a highly mobile, educated, economically

534
00:25:17,099 --> 00:25:19,880
prosperous minority that stubbornly refuses to

535
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:22,480
assimilate into the majority religion is inherently

536
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:24,920
threatening. They were the ultimate other. They

537
00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:27,579
didn't fit into the feudal pyramid of lords and

538
00:25:27,579 --> 00:25:30,559
serfs. Exactly. And according to the magisterial

539
00:25:30,559 --> 00:25:33,099
work of the historian David Nierenberg, the way

540
00:25:33,099 --> 00:25:35,779
Western societies reacted to that otherness didn't

541
00:25:35,779 --> 00:25:38,529
just result in standard prejudice. It actually

542
00:25:38,529 --> 00:25:40,650
became the foundational bedrock of Western thought

543
00:25:40,650 --> 00:25:44,230
itself. I found Nirenberg's book, Anti -Judaism,

544
00:25:44,549 --> 00:25:46,190
The Western Tradition, to be one of the most

545
00:25:46,190 --> 00:25:49,849
challenging texts in this stack because his thesis

546
00:25:49,849 --> 00:25:53,230
is profound and frankly it is terrifying. It

547
00:25:53,230 --> 00:25:56,529
really is. He argues that what we call anti -Semitism

548
00:25:56,529 --> 00:25:59,930
or anti -Judaism isn't just a generic bigotry.

549
00:26:00,269 --> 00:26:02,150
It's not like disliking people who are left -handed

550
00:26:02,150 --> 00:26:04,769
or being prejudiced against a rival neighboring

551
00:26:04,769 --> 00:26:08,460
tribe. Nierenberg argues that it is a basic structural

552
00:26:08,460 --> 00:26:11,680
tool. A cognitive framework. Right. A cognitive

553
00:26:11,680 --> 00:26:14,519
framework that Western civilizations have continuously

554
00:26:14,519 --> 00:26:18,259
used for 2 ,000 years to define themselves and

555
00:26:18,259 --> 00:26:20,799
to define their enemies. Nierenberg calls it

556
00:26:20,799 --> 00:26:24,240
a form of pedagogical fear. How does a society

557
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:26,539
teach its citizens what is good, what is moral,

558
00:26:26,539 --> 00:26:28,680
and what is true? The easiest way is to point

559
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:31,380
to an avatar of what is bad, immoral, and false.

560
00:26:31,559 --> 00:26:34,220
And because Jews were often the only prominent,

561
00:26:34,279 --> 00:26:36,859
persistent, nonconforming minority embedded within

562
00:26:36,859 --> 00:26:39,980
both the Christian and Islamic worlds, societies

563
00:26:39,980 --> 00:26:43,400
used the concept of Judaism to represent whatever

564
00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:46,160
they considered to be their ultimate existential

565
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,539
evil. So wait, you're saying that the hatred

566
00:26:48,539 --> 00:26:51,559
wasn't actually about the reality of Jewish people

567
00:26:51,559 --> 00:26:54,519
at all. It was about a society's own internal

568
00:26:54,519 --> 00:26:58,259
anxieties. Precisely. Societies construct their

569
00:26:58,259 --> 00:27:01,549
own identity by loudly and violently rejecting

570
00:27:01,549 --> 00:27:04,829
whatever they define as Jewish. And Nirenberg

571
00:27:04,829 --> 00:27:07,710
traces how this definition shapeshifts across

572
00:27:07,710 --> 00:27:10,430
centuries. Right. Let's look at how this mutates.

573
00:27:10,609 --> 00:27:13,049
Take early Christian societies in the Roman Empire

574
00:27:13,049 --> 00:27:16,309
in the Middle Ages. OK. In that era, the highest

575
00:27:16,309 --> 00:27:19,529
societal virtues were piety, faith, and the elevation

576
00:27:19,529 --> 00:27:22,289
of the spirit over the flesh. So how was Judaism

577
00:27:22,289 --> 00:27:25,910
framed? Judaism was framed as the ultimate carnality.

578
00:27:26,329 --> 00:27:30,019
Ah. It was portrayed as a rigid, soulless adherence

579
00:27:30,019 --> 00:27:32,900
to physical, literal law over the grace of the

580
00:27:32,900 --> 00:27:36,299
Spirit. Jews were the impious, the blind, the

581
00:27:36,299 --> 00:27:38,799
Christ killers. They were the theological foil.

582
00:27:39,579 --> 00:27:42,619
But then, history moves forward. You get to the

583
00:27:42,619 --> 00:27:45,839
18th century. The Enlightenment. The Age of Reason.

584
00:27:46,539 --> 00:27:49,769
Suddenly, theology's out. Secular rationality,

585
00:27:50,089 --> 00:27:52,390
science, and universalism are the highest virtues.

586
00:27:53,490 --> 00:27:55,289
Society's trying to throw off the yoke of the

587
00:27:55,289 --> 00:27:58,579
church. Right. So you might assume that Enlightenment

588
00:27:58,579 --> 00:28:00,420
thinkers would look at the Jews and say, hey,

589
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:02,339
you guys suffered under the church too, let's

590
00:28:02,339 --> 00:28:05,839
be allies. But they absolutely didn't. They did

591
00:28:05,839 --> 00:28:09,059
the exact opposite. Nirenberg points specifically

592
00:28:09,059 --> 00:28:11,839
to towering Enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire

593
00:28:11,839 --> 00:28:15,059
and the Baron de Holbach. They wanted to emancipate

594
00:28:15,059 --> 00:28:17,700
European society from Christian priestly power.

595
00:28:18,319 --> 00:28:22,190
But how did they attack Christianity? How? They

596
00:28:22,190 --> 00:28:24,250
argued that the worst parts of Christianity,

597
00:28:24,650 --> 00:28:26,789
the intolerance, the religious superstition,

598
00:28:27,109 --> 00:28:30,369
the irrational dogmas, were actually ancient

599
00:28:30,369 --> 00:28:33,369
Jewish traits that had somehow infected Europe.

600
00:28:34,190 --> 00:28:36,609
They argued that to be truly enlightened, modern,

601
00:28:36,690 --> 00:28:39,490
and rational, society had to purge itself of

602
00:28:39,490 --> 00:28:44,460
this backward Jewish spirit. This is wild. So

603
00:28:44,460 --> 00:28:47,119
when a society values religion above all else,

604
00:28:47,500 --> 00:28:50,220
Jews are framed as the ultimate godless blasphemers.

605
00:28:50,589 --> 00:28:53,470
When a society values secularism and reason above

606
00:28:53,470 --> 00:28:56,329
all else, Jews are suddenly framed as backward,

607
00:28:56,829 --> 00:29:00,329
irrational religious zealots. Exactly. The late

608
00:29:00,329 --> 00:29:02,609
chief rabbi of the UK, Jonathan Sacks, wrote

609
00:29:02,609 --> 00:29:04,549
brilliantly about this shape shifting nature

610
00:29:04,549 --> 00:29:07,430
in his book, The Dignity of Difference, which

611
00:29:07,430 --> 00:29:10,089
is another key text we're looking at. Yeah, that

612
00:29:10,089 --> 00:29:12,630
book is essential here. He points out how these

613
00:29:12,630 --> 00:29:15,250
accusations are completely contradictory, yet

614
00:29:15,250 --> 00:29:18,490
held simultaneously. Sachs notes that if you

615
00:29:18,490 --> 00:29:21,369
look at the 19th and 20th centuries, the contradictions

616
00:29:21,369 --> 00:29:24,910
become absurd. Under Nazi ideology, Jews were

617
00:29:24,910 --> 00:29:27,089
hated because they were seen as the masterminds

618
00:29:27,089 --> 00:29:29,970
of international capitalist finance, hoarding

619
00:29:29,970 --> 00:29:32,930
all the world's wealth. But simultaneously, in

620
00:29:32,930 --> 00:29:35,109
the very same era, they were hated because they

621
00:29:35,109 --> 00:29:37,769
were seen as the masterminds of global communism,

622
00:29:38,269 --> 00:29:40,970
trying to destroy wealth. They were hated because

623
00:29:40,970 --> 00:29:43,190
they were clannish, insular, and refused to mix

624
00:29:43,190 --> 00:29:45,730
with society. But they were also hated because

625
00:29:45,730 --> 00:29:48,069
they assimilated, intermarried, and supposedly

626
00:29:48,069 --> 00:29:50,750
infiltrated the highest levels of society. They

627
00:29:50,750 --> 00:29:53,470
were hated for clinging to their ancient, primitive

628
00:29:53,470 --> 00:29:56,049
faith, and they were hated for being rootless,

629
00:29:56,250 --> 00:29:58,410
secular cosmopolitans who believed in nothing.

630
00:29:59,170 --> 00:30:01,589
And this brings us back to the autoimmune metaphor.

631
00:30:02,329 --> 00:30:04,910
The specific charge doesn't matter. The underlying

632
00:30:04,910 --> 00:30:08,799
mechanism is what matters. Dara Horan takes Nirenberg's

633
00:30:08,799 --> 00:30:11,440
framework and Jonathan Sack's observations, and

634
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:13,869
she synthesizes them into what she calls The

635
00:30:13,869 --> 00:30:17,930
big lie. The big lie is essentially a sociological

636
00:30:17,930 --> 00:30:20,910
blank check. A society is experiencing stress,

637
00:30:21,329 --> 00:30:23,690
economic collapse, political upheaval, a pandemic.

638
00:30:24,630 --> 00:30:26,730
The leaders just write the name of their deepest

639
00:30:26,730 --> 00:30:29,109
fear or their greatest systemic problem on that

640
00:30:29,109 --> 00:30:31,730
blank check, hand it to the public and say, the

641
00:30:31,730 --> 00:30:33,690
Jews are responsible for this. And they cash

642
00:30:33,690 --> 00:30:36,529
it in to unify their own people. Exactly. And

643
00:30:36,529 --> 00:30:38,650
crucially, the big lie provides a permission

644
00:30:38,650 --> 00:30:41,569
structure for violence. By convincing a population

645
00:30:41,569 --> 00:30:43,950
that Jews are actively destroying whatever the

646
00:30:43,950 --> 00:30:46,329
society values most, violence against them no

647
00:30:46,329 --> 00:30:48,609
longer feels like base bigotry or murder. It

648
00:30:48,609 --> 00:30:51,069
feels like a righteous cause. It feels like a

649
00:30:51,069 --> 00:30:54,619
heroic defense of virtue. Right. If you are a

650
00:30:54,619 --> 00:30:56,880
devout peasant in the Middle Ages, joining a

651
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:00,059
mob to kill the Christ killers isn't a sin. It's

652
00:31:00,059 --> 00:31:03,059
a defense of God. If you're a university student

653
00:31:03,059 --> 00:31:05,619
in 1930s Germany who believes in the new science

654
00:31:05,619 --> 00:31:08,930
of eugenics and racial purity. Attacking Jewish

655
00:31:08,930 --> 00:31:11,930
professors isn't thuggery. It is a heroic defense

656
00:31:11,930 --> 00:31:14,900
of human biology and the nation's future. You

657
00:31:14,900 --> 00:31:17,339
don't see yourself as a villain. You see yourself

658
00:31:17,339 --> 00:31:20,000
as the immune system fighting off a pathogen.

659
00:31:20,539 --> 00:31:23,460
And Horn points out that because it is a structural

660
00:31:23,460 --> 00:31:26,099
lie designed to serve the society, the big lie

661
00:31:26,099 --> 00:31:28,920
always relies on a complete inversion of reality.

662
00:31:29,180 --> 00:31:32,140
It is entirely impervious to facts. Completely.

663
00:31:32,819 --> 00:31:35,309
Whether it is the medieval blood libel, claiming

664
00:31:35,309 --> 00:31:37,470
Jews secretly murder Christian children to use

665
00:31:37,470 --> 00:31:40,950
their blood for matzah, or the 20th century protocols

666
00:31:40,950 --> 00:31:43,210
of the elders of Zion, claiming Jews secretly

667
00:31:43,210 --> 00:31:45,450
control all the world's governments. The big

668
00:31:45,450 --> 00:31:47,910
lie demands that you ignore the evidence of your

669
00:31:47,910 --> 00:31:50,890
own eyes. Which brings us to a very uncomfortable,

670
00:31:51,089 --> 00:31:53,509
very immediate present -day application of these

671
00:31:53,509 --> 00:31:56,609
theories. Because if Nirenbergenhorn are right,

672
00:31:57,230 --> 00:31:59,769
if the big lie is a permanent structural tool

673
00:31:59,769 --> 00:32:01,890
that constantly mutates to attack whatever a

674
00:32:01,890 --> 00:32:04,670
society values most, we have to look at our own

675
00:32:04,670 --> 00:32:08,130
society. We have to ask, what does modern Western

676
00:32:08,130 --> 00:32:11,470
society value most today? And specifically, because

677
00:32:11,470 --> 00:32:14,430
of the source material Horn focuses on, we need

678
00:32:14,430 --> 00:32:17,630
to ask what modern Western academia values most

679
00:32:17,630 --> 00:32:20,599
today. Exactly. And to do this, we are going

680
00:32:20,599 --> 00:32:22,660
to look at the findings of two recent highly

681
00:32:22,660 --> 00:32:25,420
scrutinized institutional documents, the Harvard

682
00:32:25,420 --> 00:32:28,180
Anti -Semitism Task Force Report and the report

683
00:32:28,180 --> 00:32:31,000
from the HJAA, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance.

684
00:32:31,240 --> 00:32:34,119
Right. And again, as your guides, we are strictly

685
00:32:34,119 --> 00:32:36,460
imparting the findings of these documents to

686
00:32:36,460 --> 00:32:38,640
show how they map onto the academic frameworks

687
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:40,920
of Nierenberg and Horne that we've just discussed.

688
00:32:41,619 --> 00:32:44,680
So let's apply the Nierenberg formula. What are

689
00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:47,769
the highest, most unimpeachable virtues on a

690
00:32:47,769 --> 00:32:51,130
modern, elite college campus today. The highest

691
00:32:51,130 --> 00:32:54,549
virtues are anti -racism, anti -colonialism,

692
00:32:54,849 --> 00:32:57,170
intersectional justice, and human rights. That

693
00:32:57,170 --> 00:33:00,930
is the moral currency of modern academia. Therefore,

694
00:33:01,430 --> 00:33:03,569
according to the mechanics of the big lie, the

695
00:33:03,569 --> 00:33:06,049
Jewish state, and by extension, the majority

696
00:33:06,049 --> 00:33:08,329
of Jewish students who feel a connection to it,

697
00:33:08,630 --> 00:33:11,250
must be framed as the ultimate embodiment of

698
00:33:11,250 --> 00:33:14,630
racism, colonialism, and human rights abuses.

699
00:33:15,069 --> 00:33:18,650
The paradigm demands it. And the HJA report details

700
00:33:18,650 --> 00:33:21,710
exactly how this theoretical framework is practically

701
00:33:21,710 --> 00:33:24,630
enforced across university departments. The report

702
00:33:24,630 --> 00:33:27,970
notes that there is a recurring practically scripted

703
00:33:27,970 --> 00:33:30,210
academic narrative taught across various courses

704
00:33:30,210 --> 00:33:33,049
that promotes the view that Israel is not just

705
00:33:33,049 --> 00:33:35,609
a flawed nation in a complex conflict, but rather

706
00:33:35,609 --> 00:33:39,309
the world's worst evil. A white European settler

707
00:33:39,309 --> 00:33:42,250
colonial power exclusively practicing apartheid

708
00:33:42,250 --> 00:33:45,950
and genocide? Exactly. What is particularly fascinating

709
00:33:45,950 --> 00:33:48,650
about these reports is how they highlight instances

710
00:33:48,650 --> 00:33:52,210
where standard academic rigor is seemingly bypassed

711
00:33:52,210 --> 00:33:54,769
in order to uphold this narrative. Because the

712
00:33:54,769 --> 00:33:57,349
narrative requires Jews to be framed as European

713
00:33:57,349 --> 00:34:00,450
colonizers, any historical data that complicates

714
00:34:00,450 --> 00:34:03,650
that framing has to be discarded. Right. The

715
00:34:03,650 --> 00:34:06,670
HJA report points to a really stark example of

716
00:34:06,670 --> 00:34:09,050
this. They highlight a syllabus used at the Harvard

717
00:34:09,050 --> 00:34:11,480
Chan School of Public Health. Now, You might

718
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:13,760
ask, how does a public health class get involved

719
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:16,000
in redefining historical Jewish origins? Yeah,

720
00:34:16,099 --> 00:34:17,619
that seems like a stretch. Well, the course was

721
00:34:17,619 --> 00:34:20,199
on the settler colonial determinants of health

722
00:34:20,199 --> 00:34:22,659
and the syllabus assigned an article by a writer

723
00:34:22,659 --> 00:34:25,579
named Tarek Dana, which explicitly claimed that

724
00:34:25,579 --> 00:34:27,780
Jews are merely a religious group, not an ethnic

725
00:34:27,780 --> 00:34:29,579
group, and therefore they have absolutely no

726
00:34:29,579 --> 00:34:32,079
indigenous or historical territorial ties to

727
00:34:32,079 --> 00:34:34,420
the Middle East. The Harvard Task Force report

728
00:34:34,420 --> 00:34:36,980
explicitly contrasts that syllabus with actual

729
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:39,739
hard scientific data produced by the university's

730
00:34:39,739 --> 00:34:41,800
own researchers. Oh, the genetic studies? Yes.

731
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:44,139
They cite genetic research published in the highly

732
00:34:44,139 --> 00:34:46,619
prestigious journal Cell, co -authored by David

733
00:34:46,619 --> 00:34:49,340
Reich, who is a prominent professor of genetics

734
00:34:49,340 --> 00:34:51,719
at Harvard Medical School. That genetic research

735
00:34:51,719 --> 00:34:54,739
demonstrates clear, irrefutable, shared Middle

736
00:34:54,739 --> 00:34:56,900
Eastern ancestry linking modern global Jewish

737
00:34:56,900 --> 00:34:59,280
populations directly back to the ancient Levant.

738
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:01,800
We just spent 20 minutes talking about the destruction

739
00:35:01,800 --> 00:35:04,159
of the temple in Jerusalem and the diaspora from

740
00:35:04,159 --> 00:35:07,250
the Middle East. It is... historical and genetic

741
00:35:07,250 --> 00:35:10,309
fact. But the sociological course ignored the

742
00:35:10,309 --> 00:35:13,170
hard genetic science to push a theoretical narrative

743
00:35:13,170 --> 00:35:16,170
that defines Jews strictly as foreign European

744
00:35:16,170 --> 00:35:20,090
white colonizers. Why? Because if Jews have indigenous

745
00:35:20,090 --> 00:35:23,590
roots in the region, the simplistic binary of

746
00:35:23,590 --> 00:35:26,630
white European colonizer versus brown indigenous

747
00:35:26,630 --> 00:35:30,429
victim falls apart. So the indigeneity has to

748
00:35:30,429 --> 00:35:33,440
be erased to make the theory work. And the report's

749
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:35,960
catalog, how this erasure extends to the speakers

750
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:40,559
invited to campus. The HJA report quotes a religion

751
00:35:40,559 --> 00:35:42,719
and public life fellow at the Harvard Divinity

752
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:45,980
School who stated publicly that American Jewish

753
00:35:45,980 --> 00:35:48,360
immigrants have always been a foundational building

754
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:50,579
block for the white supremacist infrastructure

755
00:35:50,579 --> 00:35:53,579
in this country. Wait, they are claiming that

756
00:35:53,579 --> 00:35:57,340
Jewish immigrants who faced massive quotas, discrimination

757
00:35:57,340 --> 00:36:00,320
and violence in America were the foundational

758
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:03,429
building block of white supremacy? Yes. And the

759
00:36:03,429 --> 00:36:05,630
Divinity School also hosted a program focused

760
00:36:05,630 --> 00:36:09,829
on the urgent need to de -Zionize Jewish consciousness.

761
00:36:10,409 --> 00:36:13,190
Which Dara Horn points out has a chilling historical

762
00:36:13,190 --> 00:36:17,090
echo. The Soviet Union also ran massive state

763
00:36:17,090 --> 00:36:19,909
campaigns to de -Zionize its Jewish citizens

764
00:36:19,909 --> 00:36:23,869
in the 1970s. It's the same language repurposed.

765
00:36:24,110 --> 00:36:25,809
But how does this actually operate on the ground

766
00:36:25,809 --> 00:36:28,670
for students? The Task Force report dives deep

767
00:36:28,670 --> 00:36:32,070
into the mechanics of intersectionality. Intersectionality

768
00:36:32,070 --> 00:36:34,869
in its original academic context was a framework

769
00:36:34,869 --> 00:36:37,269
for understanding how different forms of discrimination

770
00:36:37,269 --> 00:36:40,250
like race and gender overlap. But on campus,

771
00:36:40,409 --> 00:36:42,909
it has evolved into a political framework that

772
00:36:42,909 --> 00:36:45,250
links various global liberation movements together

773
00:36:45,250 --> 00:36:48,550
into a single unified struggle. So under this

774
00:36:48,550 --> 00:36:50,889
framework, the Palestinian cause is explicitly

775
00:36:50,889 --> 00:36:53,889
and inextricably linked to black liberation and

776
00:36:53,889 --> 00:36:56,389
racial justice in the United States. You can't

777
00:36:56,389 --> 00:36:58,670
support one without supporting the other. Exactly.

778
00:36:59,030 --> 00:37:01,469
The report mentions an art installation at Harvard

779
00:37:01,469 --> 00:37:04,289
Yard in 2019 called The Wall of Resistance, where

780
00:37:04,289 --> 00:37:06,289
student groups explicitly stated that you cannot

781
00:37:06,289 --> 00:37:08,710
care about racial justice in America without

782
00:37:08,710 --> 00:37:11,510
also fighting and dismantling Zionism. And this

783
00:37:11,510 --> 00:37:14,889
linkage relies on recycling very old tropes.

784
00:37:15,150 --> 00:37:17,309
The task force cites a specific cartoon that

785
00:37:17,309 --> 00:37:20,170
was circulated by groups of pro -Palestinian

786
00:37:20,170 --> 00:37:22,889
students and faculty at Harvard in early 2024.

787
00:37:23,159 --> 00:37:25,260
I remember reading this in the report. The cartoon

788
00:37:25,260 --> 00:37:27,760
depicted a white hand branded with a star of

789
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:29,960
David holding a noose around the necks of two

790
00:37:29,960 --> 00:37:32,940
men of color Mohammed Ali and the former Egyptian

791
00:37:32,940 --> 00:37:35,880
president Gamal Abdel Nasser. What is crucial

792
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,840
about that image is its history. The report notes

793
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:42,679
that this exact imagery originated in 1960s radical

794
00:37:42,679 --> 00:37:46,000
activism specifically within the Student Nonviolent

795
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:49,150
Coordinating Committee or SNCC. Right. And it

796
00:37:49,150 --> 00:37:51,630
was forcefully condemned at the time by towering

797
00:37:51,630 --> 00:37:53,449
civil rights leaders like A. Philip Randolph

798
00:37:53,449 --> 00:37:56,210
and Bayard Rustin, who called it out as being

799
00:37:56,210 --> 00:37:59,449
filled with anti -Semitic venom. But here it

800
00:37:59,449 --> 00:38:02,110
is 60 years later, being recycled as progressive

801
00:38:02,110 --> 00:38:04,329
academic critique. And the practical effect on

802
00:38:04,329 --> 00:38:06,329
the modern students, according to these reports,

803
00:38:06,989 --> 00:38:09,929
is the enforcement of a form of hereditary guilt.

804
00:38:10,809 --> 00:38:13,010
American Jewish students are basically told that

805
00:38:13,010 --> 00:38:16,010
they are inherently complicit in global white

806
00:38:16,010 --> 00:38:19,070
supremacy and colonial atrocities unless they

807
00:38:19,070 --> 00:38:21,650
publicly, vocally disavow their connection to

808
00:38:21,650 --> 00:38:24,269
Israel. Which for the vast majority of Jews is

809
00:38:24,269 --> 00:38:26,530
deeply intertwined with their religious identity,

810
00:38:26,789 --> 00:38:28,989
their family history, and their ethnic survival.

811
00:38:29,449 --> 00:38:32,269
They are essentially forced to bifurcate their

812
00:38:32,269 --> 00:38:34,510
identity. They have to leave a piece of themselves

813
00:38:34,510 --> 00:38:36,969
at the door if they want to participate in progressive

814
00:38:36,969 --> 00:38:40,489
campus spaces. But this raises a massive contradiction,

815
00:38:40,809 --> 00:38:43,110
one that many observers find deeply confusing.

816
00:38:43,869 --> 00:38:46,190
How does a progressive academic movement, a movement

817
00:38:46,190 --> 00:38:48,510
that claims to champion human rights, women's

818
00:38:48,510 --> 00:38:51,889
liberation, and LGBTQ plus protections, align

819
00:38:51,889 --> 00:38:54,730
itself so closely with radical Islamist organizations

820
00:38:54,730 --> 00:38:57,730
like Hamas, which the sources note actively suppresses

821
00:38:57,730 --> 00:39:00,570
women's rights and violently persecutes gay Palestinians?

822
00:39:01,329 --> 00:39:04,170
It seems like a total cognitive dissonance. How

823
00:39:04,170 --> 00:39:06,579
do you square that circle? To understand that

824
00:39:06,579 --> 00:39:09,119
paradox, Horne's work implicitly relies on the

825
00:39:09,119 --> 00:39:11,659
research of scholars like Charles Small. Small

826
00:39:11,659 --> 00:39:14,000
directed the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary

827
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:16,579
Study of Anti -Semitism, and he writes extensively

828
00:39:16,579 --> 00:39:19,500
about a phenomenon he calls the Red -Green Alliance.

829
00:39:19,820 --> 00:39:23,079
The Red -Green Alliance. Red standing for orthodox

830
00:39:23,079 --> 00:39:25,840
leftist Marxist movements, and green standing

831
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:29,449
for radical political Islam. Exactly. Small argues

832
00:39:29,449 --> 00:39:31,309
that over the last few decades there has been

833
00:39:31,309 --> 00:39:34,550
a bizarre but highly effective ideological convergence

834
00:39:34,550 --> 00:39:37,889
between the far left and radical Islamism. On

835
00:39:37,889 --> 00:39:39,849
the surface, as you noted, they seem like total

836
00:39:39,849 --> 00:39:42,969
opposites. Totally. One is fundamentally secular,

837
00:39:43,230 --> 00:39:45,909
liberal, and often Marxist. The other is hyper

838
00:39:45,909 --> 00:39:47,969
-religious, fundamentalist, and reactionary.

839
00:39:48,389 --> 00:39:51,489
But Small says they share a deep, unifying, overarching

840
00:39:51,489 --> 00:39:54,590
hatred of Western imperialism, global capitalism,

841
00:39:54,949 --> 00:39:58,050
and American hegemony. So it's classic real politic.

842
00:39:58,690 --> 00:40:01,210
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It goes deeper

843
00:40:01,210 --> 00:40:04,630
than just tactical alliances. Small sites scholars

844
00:40:04,630 --> 00:40:07,369
who argue that segments of the orthodox left

845
00:40:07,369 --> 00:40:10,289
experienced a crisis after the fall of the Soviet

846
00:40:10,289 --> 00:40:13,030
Union. The traditional working class in the West

847
00:40:13,030 --> 00:40:16,289
wasn't rising up to overthrow capitalism. So

848
00:40:16,289 --> 00:40:19,059
they needed a new proletariat. They essentially

849
00:40:19,059 --> 00:40:21,920
identified the displaced, marginalized members

850
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:24,559
of the Islamic world, and specifically the Palestinians,

851
00:40:25,139 --> 00:40:27,719
as the ultimate victims of Western imperialism.

852
00:40:28,179 --> 00:40:30,199
They became the new vanguard of the revolution

853
00:40:30,199 --> 00:40:33,360
against the capitalist empire. And because of

854
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:36,599
that theoretical framing, Small argues, Western

855
00:40:36,599 --> 00:40:39,159
academics and activists suffer from a profound

856
00:40:39,159 --> 00:40:42,420
post -colonial guilt. They view these groups

857
00:40:42,420 --> 00:40:46,369
through a lens of total victimhood. And because

858
00:40:46,369 --> 00:40:48,730
they view them solely as victims of Western oppression,

859
00:40:49,590 --> 00:40:52,469
they become willing to excuse, contextualize,

860
00:40:52,550 --> 00:40:56,829
or simply ignore severe human rights abuses like

861
00:40:56,829 --> 00:41:01,110
systemic sexism, violent homophobia, and authoritarianism

862
00:41:01,110 --> 00:41:04,309
within those Islamist regimes. Small quotes a

863
00:41:04,309 --> 00:41:06,849
scholar named Daniel Saboney, who describes this

864
00:41:06,849 --> 00:41:10,170
as a form of inverted racism. Western liberals

865
00:41:10,170 --> 00:41:12,349
burdened by colonial guilt essentially don't

866
00:41:12,349 --> 00:41:14,389
expect the peoples of the Middle East to adhere

867
00:41:14,389 --> 00:41:17,710
to the same criteria of universal human rights

868
00:41:17,710 --> 00:41:21,769
and civility as the civilized West. They hold

869
00:41:21,769 --> 00:41:24,710
them to a fundamentally lower standard. And that

870
00:41:24,710 --> 00:41:28,030
lower standard allows them to excuse the virulent

871
00:41:28,030 --> 00:41:31,630
exterminationist anti -Semitism that is explicitly

872
00:41:31,630 --> 00:41:34,889
embedded in radical Islamist ideology. They view

873
00:41:34,889 --> 00:41:37,829
the anti -Semitism not as a genuine threat, but

874
00:41:37,829 --> 00:41:41,010
merely as an understandable, if unfortunate,

875
00:41:41,869 --> 00:41:44,630
expression of anti -colonial frustration. Okay,

876
00:41:44,730 --> 00:41:47,210
I want to take a breath here. We have mapped

877
00:41:47,210 --> 00:41:50,389
out this incredibly deeply entrenched ideological

878
00:41:50,389 --> 00:41:53,550
framework. We have Harvard Divinity School talking

879
00:41:53,550 --> 00:41:56,710
about a specific Jewish sinfulness. We have the

880
00:41:56,710 --> 00:41:59,210
big lie mutating seamlessly to fit the modern

881
00:41:59,210 --> 00:42:01,849
language of human rights and anti -colonialism.

882
00:42:02,550 --> 00:42:04,550
We have the Red Green Alliance providing academic

883
00:42:04,550 --> 00:42:07,690
cover for radical ideologies. It's a lot. This

884
00:42:07,690 --> 00:42:10,909
raises a glaring question. How has Western society

885
00:42:10,909 --> 00:42:13,750
attempted to counter this? We haven't just been

886
00:42:13,750 --> 00:42:16,150
ignoring anti -Semitism for the last 50 years.

887
00:42:16,389 --> 00:42:19,469
No, we haven't. For the last 40 to 50 years,

888
00:42:19,769 --> 00:42:22,170
the primary heavily funded tool the West has

889
00:42:22,170 --> 00:42:25,789
used to combat antisemitism is Holocaust education.

890
00:42:26,429 --> 00:42:28,869
We are talking about massive state -sponsored

891
00:42:28,869 --> 00:42:32,409
museums, mandatory public school curricula across

892
00:42:32,409 --> 00:42:35,829
the country, massive educational mandates, billions

893
00:42:35,829 --> 00:42:39,159
of dollars spent on remembrance. Yes. But, as

894
00:42:39,159 --> 00:42:42,360
Dara Horn forcefully argues, and as this is backed

895
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:45,159
up by sociological researchers like Stuart Foster,

896
00:42:45,639 --> 00:42:47,980
Andy Pearce, and Alice Pettigrew in their extensive

897
00:42:47,980 --> 00:42:51,260
work on Holocaust education, it is not working.

898
00:42:51,599 --> 00:42:54,380
Right. In fact, Horn argues something even more

899
00:42:54,380 --> 00:42:56,880
provocative. She argues that the way we teach

900
00:42:56,880 --> 00:42:59,380
the Holocaust might actually be making the problem

901
00:42:59,380 --> 00:43:03,579
worse. I am having a really hard time with this

902
00:43:03,579 --> 00:43:08,489
claim. Making it worse. That feels like a massive,

903
00:43:08,489 --> 00:43:11,599
almost offensive claim to make. Why would teaching

904
00:43:11,599 --> 00:43:14,239
people about the worst, most documented atrocity

905
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:17,360
in human history make anti -Semitism worse? How

906
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:19,739
does that mechanism even work? To understand

907
00:43:19,739 --> 00:43:22,179
her logic, we have to look closely at Horn's

908
00:43:22,179 --> 00:43:24,679
earlier book, People Love Dead Jews, which is

909
00:43:24,679 --> 00:43:26,619
heavily cited by Foster and his colleagues in

910
00:43:26,619 --> 00:43:29,630
their academic review. Horn observes that the

911
00:43:29,630 --> 00:43:32,570
vast museum exhibits that were built in the 1990s

912
00:43:32,650 --> 00:43:35,809
the era of Schindler's List and the opening of

913
00:43:35,809 --> 00:43:38,610
the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, were built

914
00:43:38,610 --> 00:43:42,030
on a profound bedrock optimism about human nature.

915
00:43:42,769 --> 00:43:45,829
The idea was basic exposure therapy. If we just

916
00:43:45,829 --> 00:43:48,849
show people where hatred ultimately leads, if

917
00:43:48,849 --> 00:43:51,210
we show them the mountains of shoes, the train

918
00:43:51,210 --> 00:43:54,389
cars, the ashes, the sheer undeniable horror

919
00:43:54,389 --> 00:43:57,469
of the camps, they will be so shocked and so

920
00:43:57,469 --> 00:44:00,610
moved that they will be cured of hatred. Exactly.

921
00:44:00,829 --> 00:44:03,670
But Horne points out the fatal flaw in this educational

922
00:44:03,670 --> 00:44:06,090
approach. In order to make the Holocaust relevant

923
00:44:06,090 --> 00:44:09,590
to a broad non -Jewish public, educational mandates

924
00:44:09,590 --> 00:44:12,730
frequently reduce an incredibly specific, historically

925
00:44:12,730 --> 00:44:15,670
complex mechanism of anti -Semitic scapegoating

926
00:44:15,670 --> 00:44:18,449
into a generic universal message. They turn it

927
00:44:18,449 --> 00:44:21,670
into a universal parable. Be an upstander, not

928
00:44:21,670 --> 00:44:24,230
a bystander. Practice tolerance. Don't bully

929
00:44:24,230 --> 00:44:26,690
people. Right. It gets flattened into a generic

930
00:44:26,690 --> 00:44:31,469
message of don't hate and love one another. Horn's

931
00:44:31,469 --> 00:44:33,530
critique of this is withering. She says, and

932
00:44:33,530 --> 00:44:36,210
I'm paraphrasing the core of her text here, that

933
00:44:36,210 --> 00:44:38,909
the idea that the Holocaust drives home the importance

934
00:44:38,909 --> 00:44:42,570
of love is entirely objectionable. Wow. The Holocaust

935
00:44:42,570 --> 00:44:44,570
did not happen because of a lack of love. It

936
00:44:44,570 --> 00:44:46,769
didn't happen because people were just generally

937
00:44:46,769 --> 00:44:49,809
mean to each other. It happened because an entire

938
00:44:49,809 --> 00:44:53,710
modern, highly educated society completely abdicated

939
00:44:53,710 --> 00:44:56,710
responsibility for its own massive problems and

940
00:44:56,710 --> 00:44:58,949
instead used the machinery of the state to blame

941
00:44:58,949 --> 00:45:01,670
those problems on the specific people who represented

942
00:45:01,670 --> 00:45:04,789
what they feared most. It is the Nuremberg big

943
00:45:04,789 --> 00:45:08,210
lie operating at industrial scale. Germany was

944
00:45:08,210 --> 00:45:11,130
humiliated after World War One. They were economically

945
00:45:11,130 --> 00:45:13,949
devastated by hyperinflation. They were politically

946
00:45:13,949 --> 00:45:17,699
fractured. Exactly. The Nazis didn't lack love.

947
00:45:17,949 --> 00:45:20,590
They actively deployed the big lie to blame the

948
00:45:20,590 --> 00:45:23,090
Jews for their national suffering. They framed

949
00:45:23,090 --> 00:45:25,230
the extermination of the Jews not as an act of

950
00:45:25,230 --> 00:45:28,210
hatred, but as a righteous cause for the salvation

951
00:45:28,210 --> 00:45:30,730
of the German nation. And when modern education

952
00:45:30,730 --> 00:45:33,650
universalizes the Holocaust, when you make it

953
00:45:33,650 --> 00:45:37,150
a generic story about the generalized evils of

954
00:45:37,150 --> 00:45:40,210
intolerance, you strip away the specific anti

955
00:45:40,210 --> 00:45:42,860
-Jewish mechanics that made it possible. Jonathan

956
00:45:42,860 --> 00:45:45,119
Sacks writes about this danger as well. He argues

957
00:45:45,119 --> 00:45:48,300
that curing antisemitism requires society to

958
00:45:48,300 --> 00:45:50,599
respect what he calls the dignity of difference.

959
00:45:50,980 --> 00:45:53,730
What exactly does he mean by that? Sacks argues

960
00:45:53,730 --> 00:45:56,050
that humanity's greatest moral failing is the

961
00:45:56,050 --> 00:45:58,070
persistent belief that those who do not share

962
00:45:58,070 --> 00:46:00,829
our faith, our race, or our specific political

963
00:46:00,829 --> 00:46:04,110
ideology do not share our humanity. He argues

964
00:46:04,110 --> 00:46:07,170
that antisemitism is the ultimate historical

965
00:46:07,170 --> 00:46:09,050
assault on the right to be different. Right.

966
00:46:09,199 --> 00:46:12,420
So when Holocaust education universalizes the

967
00:46:12,420 --> 00:46:15,480
event, it actually erases the very Jewish difference

968
00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:17,900
that anti -Semitism attacks in the first place.

969
00:46:18,260 --> 00:46:21,059
It asks people to pity Jews only as universal

970
00:46:21,059 --> 00:46:24,199
dead victims, rather than asking society to respect

971
00:46:24,199 --> 00:46:27,179
them as a specific living, distinct people with

972
00:46:27,179 --> 00:46:30,360
agency. It sounds to me like modern Holocaust

973
00:46:30,360 --> 00:46:33,019
education is like trying to teach fire safety

974
00:46:33,019 --> 00:46:35,420
purely by walking people through tragic, horrific

975
00:46:35,420 --> 00:46:37,639
photos of burnt -down houses. That's a great

976
00:46:37,639 --> 00:46:39,960
way to look at it. You show them the ashes and

977
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:42,400
the charred beams and you say, look how sad this

978
00:46:42,400 --> 00:46:45,300
is. Fire is bad. Don't let fires happen. But

979
00:46:45,300 --> 00:46:47,460
you never actually teach them how the fire started.

980
00:46:48,159 --> 00:46:49,920
You don't teach them the chemistry of combustion

981
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:53,679
or how a tiny spark catches dry wood or how to

982
00:46:53,679 --> 00:46:56,980
recognize an arsonist. That is a brilliant analogy.

983
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:00,719
If you only look at the ashes, you have no idea

984
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:03,079
how to recognize a political arsonist when they

985
00:47:03,079 --> 00:47:05,739
hand you a match today. You think anti -Semitism

986
00:47:05,739 --> 00:47:08,059
only looks like a guy with a swastika armband,

987
00:47:08,119 --> 00:47:10,099
so you are completely blind to it when it shows

988
00:47:10,099 --> 00:47:13,119
up wearing a suit or a lab coat or carrying a

989
00:47:13,119 --> 00:47:16,360
sign protesting colonialism. So if showing pictures

990
00:47:16,360 --> 00:47:19,940
of the ashes doesn't work, what is the alternative?

991
00:47:20,099 --> 00:47:22,900
How do we build a fireproof structure? Well,

992
00:47:23,019 --> 00:47:25,480
Horn has a concrete solution. If you want to

993
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:27,719
stop fires, you have to teach people how to recognize

994
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:30,639
the sparks. And her proposed solution is a completely

995
00:47:30,639 --> 00:47:33,400
new educational framework that she conceptualizes

996
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:37,969
as The Tell Institute. The Tell. I love the double

997
00:47:37,969 --> 00:47:41,170
meaning here. In archaeology, a tell is a massive

998
00:47:41,170 --> 00:47:43,369
mound built up over centuries in the Middle East.

999
00:47:43,829 --> 00:47:46,530
It's layer upon layer of ancient civilizations

1000
00:47:46,530 --> 00:47:49,769
built on top of the ruins of the last one. Yes.

1001
00:47:49,849 --> 00:47:53,269
And in poker or in psychology, a tell is the

1002
00:47:53,269 --> 00:47:56,150
subconscious tick, the recurring pattern of behavior

1003
00:47:56,150 --> 00:47:58,849
that gives away a lie. So Horn wants to pivot

1004
00:47:58,849 --> 00:48:01,469
completely away from teaching Jewish victimhood.

1005
00:48:01,659 --> 00:48:05,159
She doesn't want another museum of ashes. She

1006
00:48:05,159 --> 00:48:07,019
wants to replace it with a curriculum centered

1007
00:48:07,019 --> 00:48:10,380
on Jewish agency, historical resilience, and

1008
00:48:10,380 --> 00:48:13,579
the groundbreaking anti -tyrannical ideas that

1009
00:48:13,579 --> 00:48:15,920
Jewish civilization introduced to the world.

1010
00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:18,920
Because, as she notes, if you only teach about

1011
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:21,239
the Holocaust, you are defining Jews solely by

1012
00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:24,059
what was done to them. You are making them passive

1013
00:48:24,059 --> 00:48:26,750
objects in someone else's history. Right. She

1014
00:48:26,750 --> 00:48:29,309
wants to teach how Jews have actively made choices

1015
00:48:29,309 --> 00:48:31,769
throughout history. And crucially, she wants

1016
00:48:31,769 --> 00:48:34,409
to teach the history of the big lie through rigorous

1017
00:48:34,409 --> 00:48:38,050
pattern recognition across millennia. She builds

1018
00:48:38,050 --> 00:48:41,010
this proposed curriculum around specific historical

1019
00:48:41,010 --> 00:48:43,789
case studies that expose the mechanics of the

1020
00:48:43,789 --> 00:48:45,909
lie itself. Let's walk through some of those

1021
00:48:45,909 --> 00:48:48,150
case studies, because they really pull all of

1022
00:48:48,150 --> 00:48:51,449
our sources together into a cohesive whole. She

1023
00:48:51,449 --> 00:48:55,530
starts way back in the ancient world, 40 CE Alexandria.

1024
00:48:56,090 --> 00:48:59,409
Right. We have the figure of Appian. He was an

1025
00:48:59,409 --> 00:49:02,190
ancient Greek grammarian and a prominent public

1026
00:49:02,190 --> 00:49:05,269
intellectual in Alexandria. Appian propagated

1027
00:49:05,269 --> 00:49:08,150
some of the earliest recorded systematic anti

1028
00:49:08,150 --> 00:49:10,969
-Jewish slanders. He accused Jews of sedition,

1029
00:49:11,570 --> 00:49:14,170
of harboring secret hatred for humanity, and

1030
00:49:14,170 --> 00:49:16,829
of misanthropy, simply because they refused to

1031
00:49:16,829 --> 00:49:19,090
worship the local Egyptian gods or the Roman

1032
00:49:19,090 --> 00:49:22,809
emperor. It was Pure propaganda designed by an

1033
00:49:22,809 --> 00:49:25,409
intellectual to justify political violence against

1034
00:49:25,409 --> 00:49:28,070
a prosperous minority. And then she moves forward

1035
00:49:28,070 --> 00:49:30,530
to the 15th century to analyze the mechanics

1036
00:49:30,530 --> 00:49:33,150
of the blood libel. This is where we bring in

1037
00:49:33,150 --> 00:49:35,849
the historian Magda Teeter, who wrote the definitive

1038
00:49:35,849 --> 00:49:38,550
academic book on the blood libel, focusing on

1039
00:49:38,550 --> 00:49:42,730
the case of Simon of Trent. In 1475 in the city

1040
00:49:42,730 --> 00:49:46,309
of Trent, Italy, a Christian toddler named Simon

1041
00:49:46,309 --> 00:49:49,550
went missing and was found dead. The local Franciscan

1042
00:49:49,550 --> 00:49:51,969
preacher immediately blamed the small local Jewish

1043
00:49:51,969 --> 00:49:54,190
community, claiming they murdered the boy to

1044
00:49:54,190 --> 00:49:56,929
use his blood for Passover rituals. The classic

1045
00:49:56,929 --> 00:49:59,989
trope. Exactly. The Jewish leaders were arrested,

1046
00:50:00,309 --> 00:50:03,789
brutally tortured until they offered forced confessions

1047
00:50:03,789 --> 00:50:07,389
and then executed. But Teeter's historical research

1048
00:50:07,389 --> 00:50:10,730
highlights the mechanism of how this local tragedy

1049
00:50:10,730 --> 00:50:13,989
became a global lie. The local bishop of Trent

1050
00:50:13,989 --> 00:50:16,909
wanted to make Simon a recognized Catholic saint.

1051
00:50:17,099 --> 00:50:19,539
because having a martyr's shrine would attract

1052
00:50:19,539 --> 00:50:22,760
pilgrims and money to the city. Right. But the

1053
00:50:22,760 --> 00:50:25,619
pope was skeptical. To force the pope's hand,

1054
00:50:26,099 --> 00:50:28,519
the bishop utilized a relatively new revolutionary

1055
00:50:28,519 --> 00:50:31,639
technology, the printing press. He commissioned

1056
00:50:31,639 --> 00:50:34,619
the mass production of printed broadsides and

1057
00:50:34,619 --> 00:50:37,199
gruesome woodcut images depicting Jews torturing

1058
00:50:37,199 --> 00:50:39,940
the boy. He essentially flooded Europe with these

1059
00:50:39,940 --> 00:50:42,599
pamphlets. It was the 15th century equivalent

1060
00:50:42,599 --> 00:50:45,889
of viral fake news. The printing press was the

1061
00:50:45,889 --> 00:50:48,389
Twitter of its day, accelerating the big lie

1062
00:50:48,389 --> 00:50:50,610
across borders before the truth could catch up.

1063
00:50:51,190 --> 00:50:54,150
Exactly. And Horne traces this exact same technological

1064
00:50:54,150 --> 00:50:57,170
pattern forward. She looks at the 1920s in America,

1065
00:50:57,329 --> 00:51:00,429
where the industrialist Henry Ford used his massive

1066
00:51:00,429 --> 00:51:02,949
wealth and his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent,

1067
00:51:03,449 --> 00:51:05,630
to publish and distribute the protocols of the

1068
00:51:05,630 --> 00:51:09,289
elders of Zion. The famous forgery. Yes. The

1069
00:51:09,289 --> 00:51:13,289
Protocols was a proven, fabricated Russian forgery

1070
00:51:13,289 --> 00:51:16,289
claiming a Jewish global conspiracy, but Ford

1071
00:51:16,289 --> 00:51:19,010
used modern mass media to pump it into hundreds

1072
00:51:19,010 --> 00:51:22,429
of thousands of American homes. Again, new mass

1073
00:51:22,429 --> 00:51:25,769
media accelerating the lie. Then she looks at

1074
00:51:25,769 --> 00:51:28,269
the 1941 Farhood in Iraq, which we discussed

1075
00:51:28,269 --> 00:51:31,349
earlier. That pogrom didn't just happen spontaneously

1076
00:51:31,349 --> 00:51:34,579
because neighbors suddenly got mad. It was systematically

1077
00:51:34,579 --> 00:51:37,559
incited by virulent pro -Nazi propaganda that

1078
00:51:37,559 --> 00:51:40,719
was broadcast directly into the Arab world via

1079
00:51:40,719 --> 00:51:43,960
the new technology of shortwave radio. And finally,

1080
00:51:44,019 --> 00:51:46,320
she brings us right up to the modern era, to

1081
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:50,420
the year 2001. Specifically, the UN World Conference

1082
00:51:50,420 --> 00:51:53,300
Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. Right.

1083
00:51:53,860 --> 00:51:56,900
This was supposed to be a global conference dedicated

1084
00:51:56,900 --> 00:51:59,800
to fighting racism. But as the legal scholar

1085
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:02,400
Owen Fiss notes in his account, The Durban Diaries,

1086
00:52:02,889 --> 00:52:06,349
It devolved into a massive state -sponsored festival

1087
00:52:06,349 --> 00:52:09,789
of anti -Semitism. Fiss describes how NGOs and

1088
00:52:09,789 --> 00:52:12,329
activists at Durban essentially hijacked the

1089
00:52:12,329 --> 00:52:14,989
modern language of human rights. They argued

1090
00:52:14,989 --> 00:52:18,150
that any Israeli action was inherently an anti

1091
00:52:18,150 --> 00:52:21,030
-Semitic act against Palestinians, relying on

1092
00:52:21,030 --> 00:52:23,969
the linguistic trick that Arabs speak a Semitic

1093
00:52:23,969 --> 00:52:26,849
language, too. Fiss actually coined the term

1094
00:52:26,849 --> 00:52:30,130
anti -Semantics for this phenomenon. Anti -Semantics.

1095
00:52:30,420 --> 00:52:33,219
It is the reinvention of history through the

1096
00:52:33,219 --> 00:52:36,360
deliberate appropriation of terminology. If you

1097
00:52:36,360 --> 00:52:39,320
redefine words like apartheid and genocide to

1098
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,559
exclusively mean Jewish self -defense, you have

1099
00:52:42,559 --> 00:52:45,159
successfully updated the big lie for the 21st

1100
00:52:45,159 --> 00:52:48,219
century. And today, the internet and algorithmic

1101
00:52:48,219 --> 00:52:50,760
social media serve as the ultimate hyperfast

1102
00:52:50,760 --> 00:52:53,539
accelerant for this semantic inversion. Exactly.

1103
00:52:53,860 --> 00:52:56,780
So how does Horn suggest we actually use this

1104
00:52:56,780 --> 00:52:59,449
curriculum to fight back? We have all these layers,

1105
00:52:59,590 --> 00:53:01,809
all these case studies showing the lie, adapting

1106
00:53:01,809 --> 00:53:05,369
to every era and every new technology. How does

1107
00:53:05,369 --> 00:53:08,769
recognizing the pattern stop the cycle? She draws

1108
00:53:08,769 --> 00:53:11,050
heavily on the work of the great Jewish historian

1109
00:53:11,050 --> 00:53:14,090
Yosef Chaim Yerushalmi. In his seminal book,

1110
00:53:14,269 --> 00:53:17,389
Zakor, which translates to remember in Hebrew,

1111
00:53:17,869 --> 00:53:20,289
Yerushalmi explores the profound tension between

1112
00:53:20,289 --> 00:53:23,969
modern, secular academic history and traditional

1113
00:53:23,969 --> 00:53:27,059
Jewish memory. Yes, Yerushalmi points out that

1114
00:53:27,059 --> 00:53:29,440
for most of its thousands of years of existence,

1115
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:32,039
Judaism wasn't actually interested in writing

1116
00:53:32,039 --> 00:53:34,659
academic history books. They didn't care about

1117
00:53:34,659 --> 00:53:36,980
chronicling exact dates of battles or the reigns

1118
00:53:36,980 --> 00:53:39,860
of kings. Right. Instead, they focused on maintaining

1119
00:53:39,860 --> 00:53:43,139
what they called the Shaushelet HaKavala, the

1120
00:53:43,139 --> 00:53:45,599
chain of tradition. It was a way of recording

1121
00:53:45,599 --> 00:53:47,860
the transmission of law, ethics, and doctrine

1122
00:53:47,860 --> 00:53:50,780
from generation to generation. It wasn't just

1123
00:53:50,780 --> 00:53:54,659
a dry list of dead people. It was a living, continuous

1124
00:53:54,659 --> 00:53:57,320
chain that connected the ancient texts and the

1125
00:53:57,320 --> 00:53:59,880
ancient resilience directly to the present moment.

1126
00:54:00,340 --> 00:54:02,760
Anne Horn wants to reconnect modern society to

1127
00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:05,340
this chain. She wants to show students that,

1128
00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:08,460
yes, new media always accelerates the big lie,

1129
00:54:09,059 --> 00:54:11,059
and tyrants always use it to consolidate their

1130
00:54:11,059 --> 00:54:14,739
power. But she also wants to show that Jewish

1131
00:54:14,739 --> 00:54:17,179
resilience constantly outlives those tyrants.

1132
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:20,320
The ultimate goal of the Tell Institute is not

1133
00:54:20,320 --> 00:54:23,579
to ask people to pity Jews. Pity is useless against

1134
00:54:23,579 --> 00:54:27,119
the big lie. Pity doesn't stop a mob. The goal

1135
00:54:27,119 --> 00:54:29,420
is to cultivate critical curiosity instead of

1136
00:54:29,420 --> 00:54:32,119
hatred. By exposing the mechanics of the lie

1137
00:54:32,119 --> 00:54:35,539
across 2 ,000 years, you give people vital media

1138
00:54:35,539 --> 00:54:38,039
literacy. You give them the historical pattern

1139
00:54:38,039 --> 00:54:40,480
recognition to see when they are being manipulated

1140
00:54:40,480 --> 00:54:43,579
by a tyrant, a political movement, or an algorithm.

1141
00:54:44,639 --> 00:54:47,690
It is about empowering the listener. You're just

1142
00:54:47,690 --> 00:54:49,789
learning about Jewish history. You're learning

1143
00:54:49,789 --> 00:54:52,829
how to spot the sociological blank check before

1144
00:54:52,829 --> 00:54:55,449
your society cashes it. You learn how to spot

1145
00:54:55,449 --> 00:54:58,570
the arsonist holding the match. Exactly. When

1146
00:54:58,570 --> 00:55:01,670
you see a mass movement claiming that one specific

1147
00:55:01,670 --> 00:55:04,909
complex minority group is the singular magical

1148
00:55:04,909 --> 00:55:07,190
source of all the world's problems, whether they

1149
00:55:07,190 --> 00:55:09,429
claim that problem is capitalism, communism,

1150
00:55:09,650 --> 00:55:12,190
or colonialism, you will have the historical

1151
00:55:12,190 --> 00:55:14,750
x -ray vision to recognize the underlying disease.

1152
00:55:15,179 --> 00:55:17,699
you will recognize that the society is attacking

1153
00:55:17,699 --> 00:55:20,480
itself. That is an incredibly powerful place

1154
00:55:20,480 --> 00:55:24,199
to land. Let's pull all of these threads together

1155
00:55:24,199 --> 00:55:26,980
because we have covered a staggering amount of

1156
00:55:26,980 --> 00:55:30,300
ground today. We started by exploring the bewilderment

1157
00:55:30,300 --> 00:55:32,420
of the modern American Jewish experience and

1158
00:55:32,420 --> 00:55:35,380
the terrifying reality of the historical boom

1159
00:55:35,380 --> 00:55:39,039
and bust cycle. We then dove into the economic

1160
00:55:39,039 --> 00:55:41,880
data to see how a first century theological mandate

1161
00:55:41,880 --> 00:55:44,699
for universal literacy created an incredible,

1162
00:55:45,179 --> 00:55:47,280
portable human capital advantage for the Jewish

1163
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:49,579
people, allowing them to thrive in the booming

1164
00:55:49,579 --> 00:55:52,139
cities of the Middle Ages. We traced how that

1165
00:55:52,139 --> 00:55:54,960
very economic mobility and success made them

1166
00:55:54,960 --> 00:55:57,320
a target for Western societies who generated

1167
00:55:57,320 --> 00:56:01,659
the ideological tool of anti -Judaism, the mutating

1168
00:56:01,659 --> 00:56:05,059
big lie, to explain away their own internal anxieties.

1169
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:08,079
We examined how that ancient cognitive framework

1170
00:56:08,079 --> 00:56:10,920
has seamlessly mutated today, dressing itself

1171
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:13,119
up in the contemporary language of human rights

1172
00:56:13,119 --> 00:56:16,199
and anti -colonialism within the intersectional

1173
00:56:16,199 --> 00:56:19,059
frameworks of modern academia. We discussed why

1174
00:56:19,059 --> 00:56:22,059
the traditional 1990s model of Holocaust education,

1175
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:25,179
focusing on universal victimhood and generic

1176
00:56:25,179 --> 00:56:28,219
love, has fundamentally failed to stop this rising

1177
00:56:28,219 --> 00:56:31,420
tide because it erases the specific mechanisms

1178
00:56:31,420 --> 00:56:34,260
of the hatred. And finally, we explored Dara

1179
00:56:34,260 --> 00:56:36,860
Horn's proposed solution, replacing the narrative

1180
00:56:36,860 --> 00:56:39,900
of passive victimhood with a narrative of historical

1181
00:56:39,900 --> 00:56:42,840
agency, teaching the mechanics of the big lie

1182
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:45,360
so that people can recognize the patterns of

1183
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,039
manipulation. So we want to leave you with a

1184
00:56:48,039 --> 00:56:50,400
final provocative thought, something to mull

1185
00:56:50,400 --> 00:56:52,860
over as you navigate the news feeds, the campus

1186
00:56:52,860 --> 00:56:55,139
debates, and the political rhetoric of today.

1187
00:56:55,909 --> 00:56:58,900
If David Nirenberg and Dara Horn are right, If

1188
00:56:58,900 --> 00:57:01,440
antisemitism truly is the ultimate historical

1189
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:03,860
canary in the coal mine for a society that is

1190
00:57:03,860 --> 00:57:07,159
seeking dangerous ideological purity, then we

1191
00:57:07,159 --> 00:57:09,380
need to fundamentally rethink how we evaluate

1192
00:57:09,380 --> 00:57:12,460
the health of our own institutions. We often

1193
00:57:12,460 --> 00:57:14,880
assume that the true measure of a healthy functioning

1194
00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:17,599
democracy is how well it assimilates all its

1195
00:57:17,599 --> 00:57:21,239
people into one homogenous, agreeable, unified

1196
00:57:21,239 --> 00:57:24,579
mass. We think consensus is the ultimate goal.

1197
00:57:25,239 --> 00:57:28,630
But maybe it isn't. Maybe the true measure of

1198
00:57:28,630 --> 00:57:31,530
a healthy society is how safely it allows people

1199
00:57:31,530 --> 00:57:34,530
to fiercely, unapologetically insist on remaining

1200
00:57:34,530 --> 00:57:38,929
different. Pay close attention to the tells in

1201
00:57:38,929 --> 00:57:42,059
your own media ecosystem today. Watch for the

1202
00:57:42,059 --> 00:57:44,500
moments when complex, deeply rooted societal

1203
00:57:44,500 --> 00:57:47,500
problems are suddenly blamed on a single convenient

1204
00:57:47,500 --> 00:57:51,260
scapegoat. Because if you look closely at that

1205
00:57:51,260 --> 00:57:54,239
autoimmune response of history, you will realize

1206
00:57:54,239 --> 00:57:57,579
that the hatred it produces isn't just a diagnosis

1207
00:57:57,579 --> 00:58:00,300
of the minority being targeted. It is a high

1208
00:58:00,300 --> 00:58:03,360
definition scan of the society doing the hating.